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Comment by shadowgovt | Hacker News Reader

Ideals from ancient Greece also included how to treat one's slaves and how to tell whether a person was naturally suited for the life of slavery or freedom, so it's important to put more consideration into the nuances of the virtue of such ideals than just "The Greek philosophers were into it."

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Did you know that the guy who wrote the First Amendment also owned slaves? It seems like a nuance we might want to consider!

...and was a man. And guaranteed freedom only to men.

great reply - calling out another strawman.....

And that was a null reply, adding nothing at all!

Btw a strawman is an invented situation. I called out a real thing. So, maybe, non-sequitur, or no true Scotsman, or something like that. But Strawman? No.

And so we pick and choose which ideals to carry on and which to throw away.

Do you see anything wrong with freedom of speech?

The question is probably too broad to be useful. I see several situations where it is extremely healthy to a society and several situations where it can be harmful and even countries like the United States restrict it.

My freedom of speech (under US law) doesn't allow me to go around accusing my neighbor of pedophilia, for example, without opening me up to a hefty lawsuit if they are not, in fact, a pedophile.

Even in this forum we're using right now (founded by an organization associated with a man who once wrote an essay titled "What You Can't Say"), there are things I could transmit here which would result in a swift, merciless, and I argue just ban from our benevolent moderators.

Margaret Sanger unapologetically supported eugenics and sterilizing 'inferior' people. Does that make Planned Parenthood a bad idea?

It makes Planned Parenthood an organization one should judge in modern context separable from its origins, much like freedom of speech and ownership of other people from Greek philosophy.

It should certainly make you stop and think...

Would'nt you be suspicious if Hitler came up with some sort of program?

This kind of reasoning opens you up to the genetic fallacy. If you believe the moral status of the origin of a thing is necessarily transmitted to the thing itself, then you are liable to consider Hitler's pernicious concept of Der Volk and the Volkswagen to be equally evil.

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