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Comment by miked85 | Hacker News Reader

The framers of the First Amendment understood and accepted the tort of defamation.

Yes indeed. They would have been very pleased with someone being charged 1 billion dollars for saying that a single event didn't happen. Clearly they would have agreed that Jones is liable for the actions of his viewers. It's all right there in the founding documents.

Defamation law at the time of the framers was even harsher than it is today. Truth wasn't a defense, and there was no "actual malice" standard. You were as likely to be arrested and imprisoned for these kinds of statements as you were to be sued for damages. The founders would have been fine with this outcome.

The bigger debate would have been whether the matter should be pursued through the courts or if the defamer should be challenged to a duel.

Honestly not against restoration of the code duello.

That's an extremely Jones-adjacent opinion to have.

Feel free to support that claim in some way.

Most of Jones' opinions seem to revolve around the idea that cabals of conspirators are trying to trick people into accepting exploitation or tyranny. I don't keep up with all his different ideas, though.

You're asking me to support the claim that Alex Jones would rather try controversies with violence than in a court of law?

You claimed my opinion was adjacent to his. I would not 'rather try controversies with violence than in court' but nor am I completely opposed to people mutually agreeing to settle them directly (with formalities) rather than submitting them to a third party.

It seems like you dislike this idea, and are just associating with Jones who you also dislike. I don't see how you get from his conspiracy worldview to my opinion that an archaic social institution might be worth another look. I don't see duelling as incompatible with having a functional legal system.

I do in fact oppose the idea of settling controversies with violence.

That's fine, but it's not responsive to the question I asked you.

What does this opinion of mine have to do with Alex Jones? If you're suggesting that all unusual ideas are somehow adjacent to each other, I don't think much of your categorical skills.

No, that's a particular unusual idea that I think Alex Jones would find very congenial, was the point I'm making. There are unusual ideas that he would find loathsome; that isn't one of them. I'm not saying anything more than that: it's a thread about Alex Jones, and you expressed a very Alex Jonesian unusual view. Seemed notable, that's all!

So you keep saying, but I am no wiser as to why you think so and I don't care to deepen my acquaintance with Alex Jones.

Did Alex jones only say that an event didn’t happen? Or is that perhaps skipping over the numerous other defamatory claims he made? Regardless this was a self own business jones refusing to defend himself and not continue to perjure himself repeatedly. He likely could have made all the same claims and walked away with a settlement or judgment in the low seven figures if he merely stopped lieing when caught and told to stop.

Oh no! The Founders would be displeased! I'm so tired of this kind of argument, as if we should forever substitute our own judgement with games of "what would The Founders want?" They were men, some were even great men, but men nonetheless. Don't worship them like gods. If there's something particularly great about the founders of the USA, it was that, one, they understood human imperfection, including their own, and two, they knew human societies change over time and so must their laws. They therefore built checks and balances into our system of government, and they put in mechanisms for change into the Constitution. So let's argue about the merits of laws or societal standards, but let's stop using the putative preferences of the founders like they mean anything. It's no better than when charlatans say "God wants this, God wants that" in order to legitimize their own opinions and actions.

The real issue here is that the founders would simply not agree with the parent comment. You don't have to reach the issue of whether the argument is persuasive; it's simply not accurate.

It's worth digging into this stuff, because it's kind of fascinating. It's a reason to go look up what the largest fortunes were at the time of the founders, or what the major defamation cases where at the turn of the 19th century, or how defamation law differs now from the time of the framers (hint: it got a lot more favorable to defendants).

If you use dumb-seeming arguments as an excuse to speed-research weird historical facts, these threads get a lot more fun, and also you tend to end up with more compelling arguments.

First amendment has limitations. Saying fire in a movie theater, for example. Multiple courts in a number of separate jurisdictions have ruled that the first amendment does not protect Jones in these cases

Just so we’re on the same page, “fire in a crowded theater” was coined as part of the Supreme Court’s upholding of a conviction for protesting the draft during WW1. The decision is no longer really relevant, having been replaced in a later case with a revised test that requires that the speech in question is intended to, and likely to cause, imminent lawless action. Which is for the best, because the Schenck decision hails from an era of the Supreme Court that was decidedly less tolerant of individual speech.

None of that is relevant here, because defamation is an established exception to the 1st amendment, totally separate from incitement of lawless action.

Oh I agree, it doesn't apply to this particular case but it is the textbook definition of a reasonable limit on free speech. The poster I was replying to seemed to be under the impression that the first amendment protected all forms of speech. As you said, the courts have carved out many exceptions to the first amendment.

Except it’s not the textbook definition. Shouting fire in a crowded theater is protected by the 1st amendment, and the case where the phrase was coined has been replaced by better 1st amendment tests for whether speech can be punished by the government.

That's actually a kind of poor example. The tort of defamation is much more clearly outside of constitutional protection.

The first amendment is not a free pass to say statements that are dangerous or harmful to others.

The first amendment binds only the government, not private torts. It has never applied to libel, slander, fraud, or a host of other things either. Bringing it up in this context, especially as a one-line throwaway, is an act of extreme bad faith. No sane definition of "free speech" precludes accountability for one's words or their tangible effects.

Don’t attribute to bad faith what is easily explained by stupidity! Commenter almost certainly wasn’t writing in malice.

Sorry, can't read minds. What I can read is the many other sub-threads where the "first amendment" point had already been addressed. Maybe if some new argument had been presented it would be easier to consider good faith, but not even an old one was. Just a casual dismissal, which is almost as bad as someone making meta comments more often than substantive ones.

The fact that we can’t read minds and operate on limited information is precisely why we rely on heuristics.

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