AS204: Tommentary Thursday

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:31 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 204 and I'm your host Thomas Smith. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for joining me today. I'm just so happy with this show lately and what we've gotten to do and the guests I've gotten to talk about and the response from listeners as well. I'm really loving it. Keep it up, guys, because I get comments, I get emails, especially as regards to the abortion episodes where it was a little bit controversial. And I'd mentioned to you that I got comments that didn't exactly like my, you know, my treatment of the issue. Well, I have two commenters who are willing to come on the show, and we're going to hash it out. And, and I just really enjoy the opportunity to, to possibly let everyone, including myself, most of all, for me, benefit from the other point of view, because that is something I really think is important.

0:01:27 Thomas: And as I think about sort of the role that I want my show to play, and I think you guys probably listeners already know this, but I've gotten a lot of new listeners lately, so maybe it's something I could say now very briefly, but when I think about the role I want to play in the podcast sphere, there's a million podcasts, there are more podcasts than there are people, I know it's like the classic pitch, look, I know you have a choice when it comes to your podcasts.

0:02:01 Thomas: Well, that's absolutely true. You have a lot of choices when it comes to your podcast, and a lot of you might have a podcast you listen to, but maybe you only have one or two, and I know how that is. I don't have time to listen to as many as I want to, so it takes a lot to make sure you keep listening. And I just wanted to say that the role I see for my show is really entertaining all sides of a debate and getting to the bottom of it. I mean, that doesn't mean everything. I'm probably not going to be debating anyone on whether, you know, I don't know, whether slavery was right or something absurd like that. But when it comes to more controversial issues, one thing I've been noticing, and this can kind of launch into, I'm going to do some commentary today, and maybe a brief thing I'll mention is, I have to say, there are atheist leaders and there are people in the the community who I just, I really don't like how they go about what they do.

0:02:57 Thomas: And that's their right, of course. And it's my right to just criticize and give my opinion. People can do whatever they want. I understand not everyone has the patience to deal with people they disagree with, but I think it's really harmful when you create a culture, even among your own Twitter followers or whatever it is, your blog followers, your podcast listeners, even if it's, it's that when you create a climate of, if you disagree, I'm going to shut you down. I'm going to block you from the entire thing. I'm not going to let you to participate anymore. Yeah, it's your right. It's of course their right to block someone on their Twitter. I'm never going to suggest it's not. Anyone can do that. I'm, I've never, I don't know. Not suggesting it's, not their right, but I, I just don't, if it's done too liberally, if it is blocking on Twitter, I have only had to do it, I think, like once.

0:03:45 Thomas: No, I do not even think once. That might have been on Facebook or something. One time I had someone just messaging me nonstop over and over. That's the only thing I'll block if someone doesn't stop. If they just, if after I say, look, I see what you've said here. I think we just disagree. It's not worth talking about, which rarely happens. I'll want to talk about anything.

But if it's an issue where they're just totally wrong and don't, you know, aren't capable of really having a rational discussion, which can happen. There are people who literally you just can't talk to them. They're not, you know, they're not even hearing you or reading you. Sometimes you need to block someone if they, if they really are harassing you, but when it comes to, oh, you've said something slightly disagreeable that I don't want to see, block, I just think that's a bad way to do things.

I think it's an easy way to create an echo chamber. And I, in particular, I, you know, I mentioned Gad Sod, uh, did that to me when I just made one, a very, uh, what I thought was a reasonable but a disagreeing comment on his Twitter, he blocked me immediately, and I just thought it was so odd because he was so mad about someone blocking him. And he was far worse than I was. Relatively speaking, he was harassing the person far more than I, than my couple comments did to him. So I just want to say, all this is to say that that's what I see my role as.

And if that's not the kind of show you're into, well, then you're not into my show. And that's okay. But I'm really, really proud of the audience that I have now, because I think that I get so much from you. And I think that you guys get a lot from the show. And I don't usually take time to acknowledge things like this, but I just want to say thanks for listening.

0:05:24 Thomas: Thanks most of all to anyone supporting the show, but even if not, if you can, it's okay. I mean, just listening and participating and being part of this little community that is growing, actually, of people who want to hear all sides of the story and don't want to go, you know, kind of crazy on anyone, who don't really want to just shut someone out or personally insult people as a way of dealing with arguments. It's surprising. It's surprisingly how hard that is to find, but I just think it's not as fun. I think that's the issue, you know? I don't think my podcast is as fun, and I think that's just the truth of the matter. And if anyone wants to accuse me of being a little too high minded or arrogant about it or anything, that's fine. You're free to do that. But I find that to be true.

0:06:10 Thomas: I mean, most of a lot of the content, especially blogs or tweets, I mean tweets, it's hard, you don't get as much time to or space to say everything you want, although that could be changing soon. But it's so just personal insult to anyone, anyone who you don't agree with. It's just insult, insult, label them as some other out group, and then you're done. And it's just so useless to me. I've always found it to be completely useless. So thanks for listening.

Thanks for creating this little community of people that I think share that viewpoint. And the reason I thought of it is it's never more apparent than when I do an episode like maybe the last one or the abortion one where I get people I've never heard from, which I have thousands of listeners, but I get people that are like, yeah, I always listen, but I never comment. But I happen to comment this time. It just really made me think like, yeah, I think there are a ton of people who just listen, think about the issues and don't comment, which is fine. But it's also hard to know from my perspective, you know, because if I see one comment that's like happens to be someone who's a little more closed minded or a little bit more angry, that's okay, by the way, feel free to still listen.

But then I think, oh, this is what my listening audience is. But it's really become apparent in the past few weeks that not at all. You know, I got a ton of great listeners who are very thoughtful and it's really cool. I've gotten a lot of email in the last few weeks. So thank you for that.

0:07:40 Thomas: All right, well, let's move on to some actual commentary. That was just a brief thing I wanted to mention. Let's hit that little drum beat thingy I made. Usual, I have a lot of things I want to get to, we'll see if I get to them, but the first thing I want to talk about is Obama's speech about gun control from yesterday or the day before, well, it doesn't matter, whenever you listen to this it was before, before now. I, man, I like Obama, I just want to say a few things off the bat. I actually really like Obama. I watch this whole speech. I never watch speeches. It's a little slow.

He's a very slow speaker. It is kind of difficult. For someone who does not have a lot of time, which I do not, I am sure a lot you are very busy as well, he takes an incredibly long time to say the simplest things. But it may be that that is 100% the best way to make a speech as a president. I will fully acknowledge that because who knows, you know, your common denominator of who you're aiming for, but it's just, you know, some people think guns are good.

0:08:55 Thomas: Others think guns are bad. I didn't even mean to do an impression of them there, but I just started doing. No, it really is difficult for me to listen to for that reason. But again, I acknowledge that it's probably a good way to do it. It allows people to catch up or something. But anyway, all I mean to say is I'd never really spent much time listening to his speeches for that reason. It's kind of hard for me, but I had seen everybody, all the news outlets, crying Obama, Obama with tears coming down his face, you know, says whatever about gun control. And I immediately, I had a very interesting reaction that I don't think anyone had. It's the, well, I don't know. Let me just explain. I I guess I'm just so cynical that I never believe things like this.

0:09:43 Thomas: I just don't, I, I don't believe that the president is genuinely having this uncontrollable emotional reaction every time I hear something like, and it doesn't matter the fact that I fully, I agree with everything Obama said and I like Obama. I want to get those things, just totally get those up front just to make it clear how weird of a situation this is for me. And I wonder if anyone else, I really, this is really a cry for help. I wanna know, I wanna to know if anyone else is as cynical as I am, because it might, it may be just a personal failing, but I also think I'm right. Like if I were, okay, me sitting here right now, I'm recording in my little studio and I'm in my mind, I've got all kinds of things I want to say. I'm trying to keep things straight. Nevermind Obama, who's in front of a live audience.

0:10:30 Thomas: He's, he's been going, by the way, he started crying in minute 30-ish of his speech after already an introduction and all that. And the first 30 minutes, there's some jokes too. Like he had a couple of jokes. He just got done saying some, it was good jokes, actually. I thought they were pretty funny. And the idea, so for me, the idea that someone goes from that in front of a crowd of people where he's reading a speech or he's memorized it, one or the other, probably reading it. And, and the idea that he's just overtaken by emotion rather than he's very, in a calculated way, decided, okay, I need to become emotional at this point in my speech, that's going to be the option I think it is every time. And it is so weird because I don't know, I feel completely alone in this.

0:11:20 Thomas: I feel like, and again, I'm not even being critical. I just have a hard time when everybody is treating something a certain way and I just see it as completely different. I still think it's okay. And here's the thing. I don't think it's like, oh, this is fake or this is necessarily insidious or he doesn't really care. I think he does care. Here's the thing. I really think he cares. I think he cares about the issue. He is affected. Who knows how affected he's been by some of these shootings. I'm sure he had a lot of victims' families there. I am sure that affects someone. All I'm saying is if I write here, I know everyone's different, but if I were to try to start crying here or were to like, even if I'm talking about the most difficult subject in order to get, which I've talked about some difficult subjects on the show before, in order to get me to actually start crying when I'm thinking about recording, I'm Thinking about who's listening.

0:12:17 Thomas: I'm thinking about what I'm looking at my notes, you know, like in order for that to to happen? Like, I would have to find out someone died. Like, it would have to be in real time. Like something, some information. Now, again, maybe I'm just using my personal experience and trying to apply it to someone else, but Obama is very calculated in things and in a good way. And I just, I'm so cynical about this and I merely, I won't spend too much time on it, but I really do want to know, is anyone the same as me on this? Again, I fully support Obama, fully support the speech, but he he definitely was like, okay, I need to cry here. And he kind of poked a tear out of his eye. And here's the other part of it. So he gets a little silent. He's in the middle of saying, and he picked a good spot.

0:13:03 Thomas: It was after he said, it's horrible, horrible to be laughing. I understand, but sorry, it's who I am. He said, after Sandy Hook, essentially, I think it was, that first graders kill. It is very sad, but he's already processed this information. He's not finding out that first-graders just died. That would be a different story. If someone just tells you or you see on the news, you see news footage of it, I would cry. That's horrifying. If information hits you in that unexpected way. But this information has been processed. Now, am I a robot? I don't actually think I am, by the way. If you think I'm someone who never cries, I'm not. I actually cry frequently at poignant art and even music sometimes.

0:13:50 Thomas: I feel like I have a very active emotional part of me, but that's all the more reason why I can't relate to this and why I don't know. I should stop talking about it because I have a feeling it's going to be one of those things where no one really gets what I'm trying to say and maybe I haven't articulated it it properly, but it's just so he goes a little silent. Sorry, I didn't finish what I was saying. He goes a little silent and then you hear the camera clicks and that would throw me off even more. Okay. Put yourself in this position. You're making us put yourself in the mindset of someone who's being 100% sincere. So I'm, we're talking hypothetically, you're being totally sincere. You didn't go into this speech intending to cry. You went into the speech. I'm going to make a speech. That's what I'm going to do.

0:14:36 Thomas: You've got your talking points. You got it. You didn't go and do it trying to cry. And then maybe something sets you off a little bit. Maybe you read the part in your speech that you've already rehearsed a bunch of times. You read the part about, oh, first graders when they died. Maybe just hypothetically, you start to feel some emotion like you might cry. When you stop and you hear, and you can, maybe I'll play it for you, but you hear the like right when he stops, the camera lenses. Wouldn't that take you out of it? But that would immediately, as soon as that happened, I would think, oh my, this is, so now I'm just a, I get it. This is just a good photo op now. Like this, how, how weird does, would that feel to you? Is it just me? I really want to know. That's a lot of my commentary is just like, is it just me? And maybe it is. And a lot of it is, let me play that. I'll actually find the clip.

0:15:26 Clip: First graders, and from every family who never imagined that their loved one would be taken from our lives by a bullet from a gun.

0:15:55 Clip: Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad. Thank you.

0:15:59 Thomas: So that part in the middle was where he just reached up to his eye and then instantly every camera person was like, oh, yeah Oh, this is every photographer rather was like this is this is it. This is what we came here for good Like I don't know. I mean at the same time, it's pretty moving. He's very, it's very, seems very sincere, and again, I'm not even, I'm really not criticizing it other than to say I just think it's 100% calculated. I really think he thought, here's, here's a good place, maybe I'll allow myself to get a little worked up about it. That's all, that's all I want to say, and I think it's funny because, what's funny about this, in a funny, not in a ha-ha, but in an interesting way, is that it's such an opportunity for liberals to say how dare anyone make fun of Obama for crying at this, and Republicans to say like, this is bullshit, like I can't believe someone's crying, you know? And I'm neither of those. My thing is, yeah, no, I think he made it happen.

0:16:59 Thomas: I think he went into the speech intending to do something like that, but it's okay. I mean, it's fine. I don't have a problem with it. So again, once again, I find myself in the middle. Okay, now I want to talk about the substance here because it's rare that I get to talk about gun control when a shooting hasn't just happened. I can actually just talk about it because Obama was talking about it. And I think there were some really good points he made. And I, and I should, I especially should emphasize this after seemingly being very callous about his crying. So I apologize for that. But, but he, he made some very great points. Like, well, first off, my opinion on this, and I've had some people, some gun rights people argue with me. And I've even had some rational people say, look, the studies show gun control doesn't actually help or something.

0:17:51 Thomas: Yeah, and who knows? Like, honestly, I think this is such a difficult issue to find nonpartisan research on. It's incredibly difficult. I almost don't trust anything because who knows. It's like either the NRA is behind it or someone very anti-gun is behind. It's very difficult. But all the same, I Think Nicholas Kristof said it great in a column. Them, I don't know, a few weeks or a month ago, basically titled, I think it was titled like, we're not even trying.

On gun control, we're Not Even Trying. And that's right. I mean, that's the main issue. If there's anyone, I know there are people who perhaps disagree. I'm pretty anti-gun. I don't, I'm not in favor of taking away every single gun. I think it could be okay, especially if statistics show, again, more statistics that it's hard to rely on in such a partisan issue, but if statistics do indeed show.

That people who get concealed carry permits commit even fewer crimes than police officers, well, then, that's tough to argue, that is a stat I heard from Sam Harris, and I trust him to report stats appropriately, but if someone wants to show me anything debunking it, that fine, I'm open to that, but anyway, if that's true, like if that kind of statistic is true, open or concealed carry, if it requires like a lot of training, and it requires certain permits and it requires people who want to be responsible gun owners, like I'm okay with that, if that's really the stats, if they commit fewer crimes than than police officers, then obviously that's less of a crime or less of an problem than it is to have armed police officers, which no one is talking about really.

I mean, I don't think anyone that I know is in favor of completely disarming police officers, even though they, there is a lot of brutality problems and all that and killing of unarmed black men, but that's another another issue.

0:19:40 Thomas: So, So if I were to quickly sum up, because I don't want to talk too much in detail about it, I would say I'm in favor of, uh, the ability to concealed carry of a small gun, but once, once it gets to, oh, but I should be able to own a AK-47 or a semi-automatic or whatever. And people often get on me for, you don't even know the terms of the gun. Yeah, I don't care. I don'T care. I'm not into guns. I'm not. If you really want me to line up a detailed analysis of every type of gun and whether or not it should be allowed, I'm not really interested. Just I'll leave it to the lawmakers to work out the details. Let it be known that anything capable of killing a crap load of people in a very fast time, I'm not in favor of. A handgun, still deadly, still plenty deadly, still Second Amendment-y.

0:20:29 Thomas: If you can have a handgun that's still, you know, it's your right to bear arms, I think that could be okay. I'm open to arguments on either side of that. I know some people are in favor of just completely getting rid of all guns. I'm not sure I'd go to that degree. But as Christoph was saying, we're not even trying. I mean, there's so much. I think what really pisses me off, and where Obama is so right on this, where he's absolutely right on, is when he talked about 90% of Americans supported the gun control efforts that he, he tried to do three years ago, and that the, I think Biden had a part in it. 90% of Americans supported this. And frequently you see polls where even, and he referenced it, even gun owners are okay with more gun control.

0:21:16 Thomas: Most of the public, like a vast majority of the public, is in favor of more gun control. It just can't happen. Now, is there anyone, feel free to comment, is anyone who's anti-gun control who thinks it's okay that even when 90% of Americans are supporting this legislation to do some modest gun control, that our system is so messed up and the politicians are apparently so bought by the NRA that we can't even get it through when 90% of people want it? Does anyone think that's okay? I'm very curious. Like it seems to me that almost anything, I mean, 90% of Americans want it.

It's something that seems like pretty harmless, a very no-nonsense, just kind of gentle gun control. All, the idea that we can't even get that passed is very, very damning on the current state of politics. I mean, an entity like the NRA should not be able to buy that much support. I don't know how that has to change. Campaign finance, perhaps, maybe that's part of it. Maybe some sort of, yeah, getting the money out of politics, maybe Bernie Sanders type solution. I I don't know. Speaking of Bernie Sanders, here's one thing that I may disagree with people on, because it came up in the Hillary versus Bernie debate, and then the other guy.

0:22:42 Thomas: In the Democratic debate featuring Hillary, Bernie, and the other guys, from The Wire, who is interesting, but he's just clearly, it's not his time. He'll probably be the next nominee. But anyway, he's juste there to hang out.

0:22:55 Thomas: Hillary disagreed with Bernie on something, and I found this interesting, because she almost accused him, and this might have been the first debate, actually, not the second one so much, but she referenced, oh, Bernie Sanders is not even in favor. He voted against holding gun manufacturers responsible for this. And Bernie said, well, yeah, I don't really think we ought to hold gun manufacturers responsible.

And this is something, and I think I disagree with some liberals on, because I don't believe we should hold gun manufacturers responsible when their gun kills a bunch of people.

Now, it's a different story if we're talking about someone who sells a gun and doesn't follow regulations, someone who, uh, sells a gun and, and doesn't do a background check if that's required, although, you know, there's some loopholes we gotta get rid of, but if someone, basically, it's my opinion that if someone is operating within the law, if they are making a product that, under our our Constitution, under our law, under the laws of the land, is a legal product to make and to sell, and they're following all the regulations regarding that, I don't think we ought to hold them responsible. That seems to me just to be trying to go too far in gun control and trying, just finding any, that seems to be like grasping at straws to find some way to limit the violence, which I can respect.

I certainly, when you look at the numbers and the gun violence that's happening, I can respect wanting to limit it in any way you can and wanting to lash out on anyone you can. But I just think I'm kind of with Bernie Sanders on this, where it's like, well, they're operating within the law. They're just manufacturing a product that is legal. I don't see how we could then say, well you sold this product and then someone then used it to do something bad, now it's your fault.

0:24:36 Thomas: Unless we change, once guns are illegal to manufacture, sure, then that would be be a different story, but they're not. So I will never understand that. So if anyone disagrees with me on that, let me know. Just a final thing, I think he made some great points on, he had some good rhetorical points, again, they took about 10 minutes to say, that's just my little thing, he made great points, Obama did, about, look, if we can child-proof aspirin, if we can require fingerprints to open a phone, if we have an app to locate a lost, you know, tablet, why can't we apply those same things to guns, why we can't, you, we could make it. The fact is the lobby just goes so hard, balls to the wall, probably literally because it's just a bunch of men who love guns.

0:25:27 Thomas: No, I don't know. I shouldn't say that. They go so hard on anything that resembles gun control, anything that they think that the ultimate slippery slope artists are the NRA, that just anything, any measure is a slippery slope for them. Oh, well, next you know, Obama will be personally coming and stealing your weapon. I mean, I hate to say it, but that's not necessarily a straw man. Like, it's a little bit of a joke, but not really. I mean any, any reasonable effort they label as, as well, what's next, what after that? And it's like, well that'll come when it comes. How about for now we support this, this legislation. So that I thought was really good. It seems to me we could live in a world, hypothetically, just using, you know magic here. This is not going to become a reality anytime soon, but we could live in a country where the only gun ownership was by people with permits, with background checks, with training whose guns will not fire unless their fingerprint is on it.

0:26:26 Thomas: So a toddler cannot fire their gun. I mean, that is just the most, if there's anything that points to the flaw in the "only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" argument, it's the toddler thing. I mean, that was a great meme or, uh, who knows who thought of it. I'm sure a lot of people thought of it, but you know, when, how many toddlers have been killed or killed their parents, actually toddlers that just shot their brother, their sister, their mom, their dad, because they got ahold of a weapon. I mean, what should we have had a good guy with a gun to shoot that toddler ahead of time? No, that's insane. That's nonsense. So anyway, basic stuff like that, I think is really good. And overall it was a good speech. I just am really curious about that crying thing. I wonder if anyone will have any idea what I'm talking about or if I will just get nothing but hate emails over that.

0:27:22 Thomas: Next, I want to turn to the realm of free speech. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in that arena at all times, actually, but particularly now, Bangs Naughty Bits, my great friend and friend of the show, supporter, I consider personal friend, Bangz, I don't want to use your real name, I'll just use your, your, uh, your moniker there, but anyway, I, he reminded me that this, today, or whatever, again, who knows when you're listening to this. Some sort of day around now is the year anniversary since Charlie Hebdo, which first off, that blows my mind. I can't believe it's been a year. That's insane to me. And secondly, yeah, I'm not one for anniversaries.

0:28:08 Thomas: I don't normally keep track of anything like that. I understand probably just saw it in the news. But anyway, interesting. That something that should be on our minds. It's something that should always be on our minds, the ability to express oneself and to draw a cartoon should never result in your death. As the great Sam Harris meme goes, people have been murdered over cartoons. End of moral argument or moral discussion, I think, is something like that. Anyway, I wanted to point that out. And also, something else interesting, you might not immediately see the connection, But it's very tragic, very awful, just yuck kind of news in Germany over New Year's. Perhaps you've heard of it, but there were sort of a massive, like, almost looks like a coordinated sort of attack on women, like a sexual assault.

0:29:04 Thomas: So it really seems to me, I mean, I'm not even getting all conspiracy theory about it. It looks as though a group of men, a large group of men, I mean, maybe this is the kind of thing that just happens by chance, but it doesn't really seem like it. It seems like there's a history of it in this area in Cologne.

0:29:23 Thomas: Just after New Year, just after midnight, there was something like a hundred women have come forward to say that they were attacked, groped. I think there was one charge of rape, but overall it was mainly insanely groping, like multiple, over and over and over, not just like one. And again, I'm not putting any, I don't mean to put any sort of judgment on what's worse than anything else, but just to fully illustrate the extent of what happened. Awful, awful attack. And man, this just, this blew my mind. And how, I just want to encourage people now, because I do think attacks on women online line or in person is something that I think a lot of men maybe don't pay proper enough attention to, and I don't want to fall into that.

0:30:19 Thomas: And I, I, and it, I'll even go so far as to say, I want to do the opposite of that. Like I want to call attention. I just want to imagine, can you imagine a loved one or you, if you were a woman or, or, or a loved woman, a relative or girlfriend, wife, whoever it is coming out of a new year's party and being almost systematically groped and sexually assaulted by a large group of men. It's just awful. I mean, it's awful to even think about it. And I just think it's worth reflecting very briefly on what that might be like and the kinds of trauma that would cause. But anyway, apart from that, how this relates to free speech, you might wonder. Her. So the rough thing about this and why this is just a total just mess of an issue for multiple reasons.

0:31:10 Thomas: We got a lot of things going on here. First off, it's reported that this was done by a group of possibly, possibly people of North African or Arab appearance is what the thing is.

Now, here's the issue, if you've been living in a hole, which maybe you have, no offense to any Hobbit listeners I might have, but Germany has been famously and sort of notably and maybe admirably, Angela Merkel, been accepting a vast number of refugees, far more than most countries, and so this is a whole explosive situation of Germany wanting to be very accepting of refugees and and also having very severe sort of restrictions on hate speech of any kind because of, you know, the obvious, because of World War II and everything that happened there, so it's, this is a very volatile mix of factors.

So we have unprecedented number of refugees and immigrants, you know, whose skin is different than the people who were there, a country has an awful, awful thing in their past, and pretty recent past, And has set up laws and a culture of really wanting to fight that, while at the same time, with these terror attacks and with everything that's happening in Europe, a growing group of far, far right wing, you know, anti, I guess you just say racists. I mean, far-right wing racists and anti-immigrant people. And so all those factors combined, and then you've got this horrible attack on women after New Year's, and who can trust what details, There's also allegations that the police were trying to keep a lid on it, and this goes back to the free speech issue, because it sort of looks like there's evidence to say that police were really trying to keep a lid on this because they didn't want some sort of backlash against immigrants or against refugees or whoever people perceived would be the logical backlash ease.

So, Germans have been very critical of the response and how long it took, and also, the free speech part of it, where that comes in is, now there's, they've been working, Germans had been working with Facebook and social media and stuff to really limit and crack down on far-right speech, essentially, I mean, and, and it's heinous, a lot of it is heinous. But at the same time, I, I know I have a lot, I've got a real mix, actually, in my listeners of free speech.

0:33:46 Thomas: So free speech is, that's why it's such an interesting issue to me, because I'm, I would say I'm very, very firm supporter of the right to free speech. I think that it has to be a very direct call to violence, you know, in order to violate free speech, in my mind, in my opinion, I'm happy to hear arguments and all that. But in my Mind, you would have to be essentially calling for someone's death. Death. I think calling for any violence against someone in real terms is definitely something, if that's speech, I am okay with restricting. Anything else, I'm pretty gung-ho on free speech. I think that the way to combat things, and for a simple reason, which it may, maybe people get tired of hearing it.

0:34:34 Thomas: I don't know. Maybe you haven't heard it. The simple reason is who controls, who decides, you know, that's the tough thing. Who gets to decide what is speech that qualifies as hate speech? Because Germany has really harsh hate speech laws. The UK actually, or not the UK, just Europe in general, I've gotten emails from people in Europe saying they don't really understand my gung-ho free speech attitude and they think it's an American thing. And that might be true. But it's something that I like about America.

There's a lot of things I don't like about America, but, but for now we have a right to free speech and funny Interesting side note, if you're a Hitchens fan, if your a Free Speech fan, you probably will remember a speech he made, about free speech, where he started it by saying, fire, and he just shouted fire in the, in the auditorium, and he pointed out that Oliver Wendell Holmes, who made that famous statement about shouting fire in a crowded theater, he was doing so to justify restricting people to obstruct the draft. So, he said that defendants who distributed leaflets to draft-age men urging resistance to the draft, they could be convicted of an attempt to obstruct the draft because it didn't fall under free speech in his mind. So I think it's interesting. And Obama quoted it in the speech that I just was talking about. He quoted it. The reason was he talked about limits to certain rights. And he used that to say there should be limits to the Second Amendment.

0:36:07 Thomas: And so when it comes to free speech, he said, we all accept that you can't yell fire in a crowded whatever. And it was so interesting. Hitch was the one who opened my eyes to the fact that, first off, you can, I think, shout fire in a crowded theater. I don't know that that's technically against the law. Maybe they can find you guilty of something after the fact. But that was not somebody who would be lauded as a hero. If you looked at the details of the case, the justice who made that opinion, I Think most liberals would disagree with it now. So it's weird to see Obama using it. And I don't really blame him in particular. I think everyone does. And it's odd. It's really odd. But anyway, The key is who gets to decide and it might be, I think, the impulse that I have and a lot of people have is, well, it should be, it's pretty easy, you know, we can be reasonable about it.

0:37:01 Thomas: If you, if you say bad things about a certain race of people, that should be restricted speech. Well, I mean, here's the thing, other people could get a hold of this apparatus. I mean if we create the laws and we create, or rather we almost obstruct the right to free speech, if we create a culture that is able to restrict free speech. And all of a sudden, imagine your political opposite getting a hold of it. Imagine if you're a liberal, a Republican getting ahold of that apparatus and saying, yeah, we can restrict speech that disparages Christianity. I could, that's almost a reality already. I mean, it really is. And it's more of a reality in Europe where religion, disparaging religion, is almost seen as hate speech.

0:37:49 Thomas: Can you imagine that? I mean, for my listeners in America, I think it's hard to imagine, but that's why I'm a very, very avid supporter of free speech. I think it should only be restricted in the most desperate of cases, like a call to actual violence. And so it's interesting, but in Germany, I mean you can really feel for them. Them, you can really sympathize with the idea that, look, we don't want to screw this up. Like, we do not want to have what happened before happen again. They want to be very sensitive. They are letting in all kinds of refugees. But people have reported that any speech sort of about the sexual attacks being linked to refugees is kind of on thin ice. But here is the thing. Also, some very awful speech was restricted.

0:38:36 Thomas: So people, some stuff has been blocked and banned from Facebook. And I don't know how much you guys support that. Here's my personal opinion. If it's not a direct call to violence, if it is, no matter how awful the speech is, and another thing that free speech advocates frequently like to say, and I think they're right, it's Not the speech that is easy, that doesn't need to be protected.

The speech we all agree with, that doesn't need to be protected, the speech that is difficult and ugly, that's the stuff that needs to be protected because one day it might be something that you think is a good idea, but the majority of people disagree with or something. It might just be a minority opinion.

I need to quickly point out, because inevitably, I will get the comments, I understand Facebook can operate under whatever user agreement they want, I get it, I guess that it's legal, I'm not saying that anything they're doing, especially in Germany, where the laws are different, I am not saying it's illegal, I just don't think it's a good idea, I think the best way to fight free speech is to have more free speech, personally, but I don't, I don't think people have a right to be free from harassment, and should be able to block whatever they want on Facebook, again, again, to the aforementioned discussion, you should have the right to block people or whatever and not follow a page or report someone who is continually is harassing you.

But when it comes to someone's personal page, if they make a statement, I think it's really, I just think it is a slippery slope, a real slippery slope. An actual slippery slope not a fake one like the NRA might say. Day.

If the government has the ability to decide this is what we don't like, which is what's happening in Germany, and then work with Facebook, Twitter, and all that to say, you need to block these things that we say you need block, that's where it becomes difficult.

0:40:26 Thomas: I, I think it should only be if someone is directly calling for, like, the deaths of immigrants, that's one thing, I mean, if they're directly a call to action for violence, that is where I stand on it, I don't know if you agree, I think a lot of people disagree with me on this, I'm curious to hear. Well, I'm just about out of time, despite, as usual, not getting to everything on my list, but that's how it goes. I'll get to more of it Monday, actually. So, lots of exciting shows coming up, by the way, and I can tell you at least a couple. So here's the thing, the abortion debate commenters I mentioned, I am going to have two of them on the show to really give me their view on things and to give us their view of things. I'm really excited about that, because we'll see what kind of understanding we can reach, and And I think that's important. And it's a critical comment I got.

0:41:13 Thomas: And this is how I'm responding. I want to have the person on and talk about it. So we'll see how that goes. I have high hopes. I think it will go well. And secondly, I think it's about time that we have the Eli and Cog Dis episode that I've kind of been waiting on. I wanted to give it a little breathing room. So I'm thinking I want to arrange that soon. So that's something I'm also very excited about. Lots of people love those episodes and lots of people wrote in saying they wanted to hear us all on one show discussing our differences on that. So that's something I'm very excited about. So that's why I'm so excited about the show. It's been great. And thank you to my supporters over on patreon.com/atheist. I'm liking the idea of giving them part two early. So that's been working.

0:41:58 Thomas: It's a model that I'm going to keep going with because it's a nice, good reward for those people. And it's And it's okay if you can't support the show financially, you get to hear the content eventually. And if you CAN'T support the the show, financially, which, again, is perfectly fine, maybe you can write a review on iTunes, or just tell someone about it, or, I don't know, tell an atheist forum about it. Any atheist you interact with. Word of mouth, I think, will help quite a bit. So, thank you so much for that. It's a free thing you can do, as always. So thank you for listening this week, I will see you guys on Monday. Day.