Correct. If a right "shall not be infringed", then it shall not be infringed. Period. End of discussion. That right is inviolate. Any obstruction to its exercise is plainly anti-American.
If someone set a bomb using a speech recognition algorithm looking for specific elements of political speech, and I knowingly detonated it with that kind of political speech, would the act of my political speech be protected speech?
Is the act of shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater protected speech?
Surely there should be some limits on what constitutes protected speech.
Is this a troll post? It's taught in Constitutional Law 101 that shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre is, in fact, Constitutional.
The source of that quote was a war-time judge who used that analogy in his ruling in 1919 against people handing out anti-war flyers. A ruling that was overturned in 1969.
It was precedent for 50 years.
That precedent died 56 years ago. It's been dead for longer than it even existed.
Shouting fire in a crowded theater was never literal, it was an analogy for speech that runs counter to the government's desires, namely protesting the draft to fight in some pointless inhuman European meat grinder, thousands of miles from home.
Anti-war protests were what was meant by "shouting fire in a theater". That's what our government was trying to ban.
It's certainly not a strawman when it's an oft repeated argument going back to Oliver Wendell Holmes' dictum in Schenck v. United States (and even further, as Holmes didn't invent this argument). The argument doesn't change if it's "There's a fire! Run, everyone!" -- and saying "that isn't speech, it's an emotional trigger" would be an intellectually dishonest evasion--lots of actual true blue speech triggers emotions.
P.S. I won't engage further with people clearly not arguing in good faith.
There it is. Actual true blue speech triggers emotions.
Speech communicates ideas. It is mostly opinions. If you state something as fact, when it isn't, it is libel. As such, saying "there is a fire" in the theater is not speech, it is an exclamation.
If you aren't for free speech, then yes, yawning is speech.
Note that I didn't say anything about the 1st Amendment having no limits, nor does the Constitution say that--someone else said that I was "Correct" but put words in my mouth.
As for that "shall not be infringed" wording that is in the Constitution, there's a whole lot of sophistic, intellectually dishonest ideological rhetoric around it. The historical record shows clearly the Founders did not mean by their language what many people today insist that it means--for instance, they passed a number of gun laws restricting their use, and the original draft of the 2A contained a conscientious objector clause because, as the opening phrase indicates, "keep and bear arms" at that time referred to military use (and "arms" included armor and other tools of war; it was not a synonym for "firearms"). And some of the modern claims are absurd lies, such as that the 2A was intended to give citizens the means to overthrow the government, or that "well-regulated" doesn't mean what it does and did mean. George Washington was dismayed by the Articles of Confederation not giving him the power to put down Shay's Rebellion ("Let us have a government by which our lives, liberties, and properties will be secured"), and one of his first acts after the Constitution was ratified was to use the militia to put down the Whiskeytown rebellion.
I've noticed a number of pieces lately that seem to suggest that managers and leaders doing nothing is actually good. It's been this way for a while - "bring me solutions, not problems" is the classic boss's abdication, placing themselves above their teams as judges and deciders rather than leaders - but I wonder if this current glut is caused by AI anxiety. After all, if your job is to just choose between options that other people will implement, why not have Claude do that? But if it's a good thing for your boss to do nothing, maybe he can keep his job.
If someone says this unprompted, I’d suspect they aren’t a manager, they aren’t even an employee. They provide roughly the same input one provides while ordering food at a restaurant. Basically they are a customer, but also on the payroll.
That being said, there are some cases where this might be said out of frustration. I’ve seen in my life a few people whose output is mostly finding and bringing issues to the table for someone else (who?) to magically solve them. That still brings some value, and maybe they’d make excellent auditors, but it wears the team and maybe their managers down.
When I say something like this it usually means “I don’t want to dictate your job to you. You’re here because you’re smart, ambitious, and capable. We’ve talked at length in team settings and 1:1 about our goals. What do you think are the problems that need attention, and what solutions do you propose?”
The anti-pattern I’ve seen from some folks is that they never want to propose solutions because then it’s someone else’s fault if those fail. These folks often demonstrate minimal ownership of any decisions, so they don’t feel bad complaining about all the problems they see. Not only is that unhelpful, it can actually be very toxic for the team. (As you mentioned.)
So when I’m saying “bring solutions” what I’m really asking for is some shared ownership of the choices and consequences—I’m asking folks to act like the main character in the story. And don’t worry, I own the consequences of the mistakes in my team to my leadership—this isn’t about throwing them under the bus. (Getting this to work well requires a lot of trust both ways.)
> When I say something like this it usually means…
Yes, exactly. This isn’t “do my job for me”, this is “do the job you have, and solve the problems you should be able to solve”. It’s also, at times, “pointing at fires is junior shit - find a fire extinguisher while you call 911.”
But see, Claude can do nothing even better than it can choose between options. So why should that boss keep his job again?
"Bring me solutions, not problems" can mean "You are a competent, knowledgeable employee, who has identified a problem. You know enough to look at the alternatives and decide which is best, or at least which ones are workable. Bring me that, not just the problem."
And if it does mean that, it's empowering. You with your hands on the situation, you get to tell the boss what you think the best answer is, and the boss backstops you from deciding something that won't work in the bigger picture.
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