There are Junior Rifle teams all over the country where kids start at the age of 10 learning how to properly handle and shoot a rifle.

The idea is not criminal. Ideas should never be criminal. The action is.

I personally agree that Spencer’s bullshit should qualify as hate speech, and that hate speech should not be protected speech. But a lot of the more centrist people on this thread won’t accept that as an argument, since they treat the 1st Amendment the same way gun-humpers worship the Second.

Because he invites himself there and makes it a “free speech” argument that since it’s a publicly funded institution, it would be a violation of his 1st Amendment rights to deny him the platform to speak. If you notice, all of his speeches have been at state universities - MSU, UF in Gainesville, FL, UT in Austin, TX,…

Any rando sending mail to a prisoner should have no expectation of privacy, as the ACLU points out here. The only letters that are not permitted to be opened before being given to a prisoner are privileged communications - between two spouses, or between the prisoner and their clergy, doctors, or attorneys.

I feel like we can get really deep in the weeds here, so I’ll pull back and just make a couple points. First - most of the ideas you mentioned were very progressive ideas for the time and the pushback/violence came from the conservative side of the aisle; one of the main conservative ideas you mention (drinking) was…

No, there were plenty of Americans that admired Hitler prior to the last bomb falling on Berlin. There were pro-Nazi groups operating in the US before Hitler ever invaded Poland.

Roll back the clock 50 years, and think which perspectives would be getting pounded into silence.

Your map measures the number of groups since 1990 and not members of each group so it’s a little misleading in that regard.

You and I may not like what Spencer has to say but he has every right to say it.

Far-right groups in the US have always ebbed and flowed in both raw numbers claiming to belong to such groups as well as the number of such groups.

One of the “tests” for new employees at a record store I used to work at was filing away Jethro Tull/Molly Hatchet/etc records in their correct spot - out of 4 I was given my first day on the job (can’t remember the other two right now) I batted a decent .500.

holy shit with this comment.

so you’re saying it’s okay for richard spencer to have the right to speak at MSU

ah like clockwork the old “maybe anti-fascists are the *real* fascists” take arrives.

Free speech is protection from government intrusion on what you say; that’s exactly why Spencer was allowed to speak at MSU.

Belle was charged with two counts of indecent exposure and two counts of DUI.

the ease of actually learning it does nothing to take away from the massive idiocy of Santorum’s take

hey, gotta chum the waters when you’re not getting your usual bites. i respect it.

goddamn you just skipped drinking it and went straight to mainlining that kool-aid, huh?