Comment Re:"Illegal content" what bullshit (Score 1) 42
So you honestly believe all those judges and lawyers that claim to be involved in upholding the law (including the constitution) are actually [i]all[/i] violating it by legislating first-amendment-violating precedent from the bench? That's some massive coordinated conspiracy there.
Might I be so bold to propose an alternate explanation? You misunderstand the protections the constitution grants. It does not grant license to say whatever you want, whenever you want, to whomever you want, regardless of the consequences. And good thing too; because that's the way of chaos. If anything, the constitution's poorly phrased and vague protections lead to protecting clearly harmful deception for no good reason; and simultaneously, the protections are way too narrow; applying only to certain forms of government intervention, not indirect forms, nor intervention by powerful non-state actors, (e.g. intervention by other states or the likes of platforms).
It would be nice if we had actually meaningful protections for potentially constructive discourse, whistle-blowing, and honestly expressed belief that cannot reasonably be known to be false. You know, the less snazzily phrased stuff that actually matters when it comes the the whole point of free speech, being that it informs the electorate and public discourse. As is, the exceptions to the protections in the US are laughably broad, failing to protect valuable speech routinely, e.g. allowing systematic chilling effects, and indirect punishments. And it's also way too vague, protecting not only grey area statements you might feel are reasonable to protect to avoid chilling effects, but also outright lies and deception for which no reasonable argument can be made that they contribute. So on the one hand, the government can coerce the public discourse freely, but simultaneously cannot even get involved in dealing with known falsehoods; it's like liars are presumed innocent even when proved guilty.
But perhaps the most damning bit of it all? In some cult-like mass suspension of disbelief we've all grown so vigorously protective of some document a bunch of rather humanly imperfect democratically-challenged guys wrote up that we don't even dare consider that it's perhaps possible to improve on it, and indeed that perhaps rather than being so sure we've got all the answers that [i]just maybe[/i] it might be worth looking around and seeing what works why, and which protections matter, and [i]improving[/i] rather than creatively reinterpreting old statutes ever less reasonably. The founders weren't perfect; and we should be able to do [i]better[/i] by now (indeed modern partisanship is largely a consequence of errors of judgement by the founders!), [i]and[/i] even when we do retain laws from centuries ago, we've basterdized them beyond recognition. Do you really think e.g. the founders thought that unregulated lobbying and campaign finance by corporations was something that could and should be protected by the first amendment? Of course not; that's the result of ever more strained and abstract interpretation of statutes, rather than intent.