Posted on 07/03/2018 2:53:50 PM PDT by babyfreep
America's founding document might be too politically incorrect for Facebook, which flagged and removed a post consisting almost entirely of text from the Declaration of Independence. The excerpt, posted by a small community newspaper in Texas, apparently violated the social media site's policies against hate speech.
Since June 24, the Liberty County Vindicator of Liberty County, Texas, has been sharing daily excerpts from the declaration in the run up to July Fourth. The idea was to encourage historical literacy among the Vindicator's readers.
The first nine such posts of the project went up without incident.
"But part 10," writes Vindicator managing editor Casey Stinnett, "did not appear. Instead, The Vindicator received a notice from Facebook saying that the post 'goes against our standards on hate speech.'"
The post in question contained paragraphs 27 through 31 of the Declaration of Independence, the grievance section of the document wherein the put-upon colonists detail all the irreconcilable differences they have with King George III.
Stinnett says that he cannot be sure which exact grievance ran afoul of Facebook's policy, but he assumes that it's paragraph 31, which excoriates the King for inciting "domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages."
The removal of the post was an automated action, and Stinnett sent a "feedback message" to Facebook with the hopes of reaching a human being who could then exempt the Declaration of Independence from its hate speech restrictions.
Fearful that sharing more of the text might trigger the deletion of its Facebook page, The Vindicator has suspended its serialization of the declaration.
In his article, Stinnett is remarkably sanguine about this censorship. While unhappy about the decision, he reminds readers "that Facebook is a business corporation, not the government, and as such it is allowed to restrict use of its services as long as those restrictions do not violate any laws. Plus, The Vindicator is using Facebook for free, so the newspaper has little grounds for complaint other than the silliness of it."
Of course, Facebook's actions here are silly. They demonstrate a problem with automated enforcement of hate speech policies, which is that a robot trained to spot politically incorrect language isn't smart enough to detect when that language is part of a historically significant document.
None of this is meant as a defense of referring to Native Americans as "savages." That phrasing is clearly racist and serves as another example of the American Revolution's mixed legacy; one that won crucial liberties for a certain segment of the population, while continuing to deny those same liberties to Native Americans and African slaves. But by allowing the less controversial parts of the declaration to be shared while deleting the reference to "Indian savages," Facebook succeeds only in whitewashing America's founding just as we get ready to celebrate it.
A more thoughtful approach to Independence Day—for both celebrants and social media companies alike—would be to grapple with those historical demons.
Of course I agree that the Declaration was awesome and groundbreaking.
I wonder, though, if Scalia is right in apparently thinking we are better off on a secular foundation, legally and officially, a foundation that includes all.
Not to mention the fact that if you don’t have the freedom to NOT believe, then believing loses its meaning. It’s no longer a choice, so it’s nothing.
I’m sure this issue is why the wise-guy lawyer brought it up in the Q and A. Scalia knew just what he was getting at.
Wish there was a recording of this meeting. Lots of other good questions, and of course the speech itself.
I wonder, though, if Scalia is right in apparently thinking we are better off on a secular foundation, legally and officially, a foundation that includes all.
Not to mention the fact that if you don’t have the freedom to NOT believe, then believing loses its meaning. It’s no longer a choice, so it’s nothing.
I suspect that Scalia was threading a needle, given his audience, and retained a theistic foundation of Nature Rights.
Just to be clear, you can have freedom to NOT believe in a GOD/Creator, but you can’t deny Mans ability for logic, reason and objective morality.
We can debate where those abilities come from but you must admit that they don’t come from Man.
I’ll just add this before I go.
A two or three year old is constantly asking why.
Why this and that, why why why.
Answering them with, because I said so or because the Bible says so is NEVER satisfying.
Authority lies within.
He was adamant. Emotional. I don’t think he was at all catering to the crowd. Probably he disliked Napolitano the amateur.
I’m not going to get into the other debate here right now. I just finished telling some folks on Facebook that the former head of research for NASA believed we weren’t alone in the universe-—BECAUSE OF EZEKIEL 1! I don’t think they believed me, but it was true.
And clearly I do not spend much actual time on Facebook considering the news coverage I’m seeing this morning.
I stand corrected.
“domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless MS-13 Savages.”
Fixed it.
So what's going on with this thread?
In their context of living close to nature with its Darwinian threats, it made sense to be capable of remorseless savagery (as distinct from sadism) and detached from sentimentality about it. When Europeans arrived with their advanced technologies and tools, there was a true culture shock. It has been a blessing that many Native Americans preserved the holy and harmonious parts of their culture and have supported the U.S. in WW2 and in other wars. Thinking particularly of the Navajo Code Talkers, some of whom President Trump recently honored at the White House.
While Americans might arguably deserve the right not to believe "in" God, their disbelief cannot set aside the actuality of whether there is a God or not. Yet many of their progressive demands are based on an assumption of disbelief in, or fascist suppression of, the reality that there is a creative organizing force vastly beyond our control that has set universes, and the physics and chemistry of their contents, in predictable patterns since time immemorial.
Until 1948, SCOTUS jurishprudence never did away with the implicit understanding that there is a God, and that God both created and can control nature, and that much of Natural Law is observable and deeper levels of it are discoverable.
What we are faced with today is that courts have elevated the social values and intellectual posturing of persons who do not believe that there is a God, or facts, or any form of authority, onto the same social footing as persons who do believe in God. This is fine at a polite dinner party, but it becomes malignant when it champions partial birth abortion, the mutilations of transgender surgery and other modern atrocities being forcefed as gospel to schoolchildren, including the obligation to view one's believing parents and neighbors as ignorant bigots.
Without proof, secularist zealots are winning legal punishments over persons who respect God's creations, such as biological sex. They look at a baby and declare its sex is "assigned", not biologically inherent. Parents have been punished for not wanting to share custody with a divorcing partner who has "discovered" his or her homosexuality, or for not supporting a child's decision to change "genders." So far, the courts have been unwilling to "establish" a standard of truthiness in line with our Declaration.
Who are also, for the most part, descended from South American tribes of Indians.
Aaaaaaand we're back!
This is the fundamental issue and it's not anything new.
The Courts are not defining or defending the Nature Rights of the Individual that is the foundation of our entire Nation.
Our politicians never promote the sovereignty of the individual and their unique character(s) of self, morality and potential.
Our Constitution works for the benefit of everyone when a majority of people understand where their ability for logic, reason, curiosity and morality come from. It doesn't come from any man made government.
This is where the war is being fought
It's a war between those that accept the undeniable truth of Nature Rights and those that either reject Nature Rights or are afraid to even consider the implications.
Facebook recognized their mistake. It was in the papers today.
Good to know...thanks, firebrand.
You can’t prove where our rights come from. It’s not science. It’s not logic or math. It’s not even philosophy, although those guys who realized it are called philosophers.
It’s a deep knowledge that our founders had, and most of us have. They kept it out of the official papers because it can’t be proved.
They set up a government, however, that is just, and in alignment with God’s justice. That’s as far as we can go. As the DA said, “It’s all you got.” If you see the inherent justice of our laws, you see it. If you don’t, you don’t.
The people who don’t believe in God may eventually win in tearing down our system of government. It’s a form of cultural anarchy to say there are no genders, for instance. It’s a form of social anarchy to say some forms of human life are more entitled to live than others. They may win. There’s a very interesting final chapter to this whole story.
The “witness of nature” would be a suitable address to such a question-box angel. Look Junior, let’s step outside, what do you see? Did it all happen of itself? Let’s look at ourselves, what do you see?
That’s for an actual child, whose mind isn’t cluttered with sophistry. The sophistry of older people makes it harder.
Belief in the bible is easier to back up when the people who say they do also look special, rather than like selfish arguers. That’s what is sometimes known as lifestyle witness.
What may be worse is the contagion of the attitude of the left unto the right, resulting in two warring camps of secular liberals, and secular or semi-secular barbarians.
In such a fight, the barbarians will carry the day by force. They’ve dropped all notion of conscience because of all the crying of wolf about it. But they will only have a second or third rate country.
God isn’t just for the convenience of secular arrangements, and sometimes He may even be an embarrassment to secular arrangements.
For sure! There's another kind of justice, a much greater, more complex, more comprehensive, more loving kind, that can only be dispensed by the Almighty. Sometimes it doesn't feel like justice and it doesn't feel like love, but our faith tells us it is.
Not to mention all the wonders in addition to justice.
How does mewe support itself? Not carping, but something or someone has to pay for their bandwidth.
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