this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
290 points (98.3% liked)

politics

19120 readers
2607 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago (3 children)

In the United States, if you insult someone so that they punch you, it's your fault. As we get more non-white or openly LGBT judges and prosecutors, hopefully they will enforce the law as written.

The fighting words doctrine, in United States constitutional law, is a limitation to freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

In 1942, the U.S. Supreme Court established the doctrine by a 9–0 decision in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire.[1] It held that "insulting or 'fighting words', those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace" are among the "well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech the prevention and punishment of [which] … have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be clear, it’s not just insults in general. If you walk up to someone and say “you look like poop” and they respond by punching you square in the face, that’s on them. You need to go above and beyond in your attempted insults to raise to the level of fighting words.

[–] vaultdweller013 6 points 1 year ago

Not gonna lie if I saw someone walk up to some dude and say "you look like poop" only to get fucking decked I think id be laughing too hard to care about right or wrong.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

if you insult someone so that they punch you, it's your fault

That's not quite true. That's speech that you can be arrested for.

For use of force, or throwing a punch, here's the justifications for force in one of the states in which I've had to work with the law: https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PE/htm/PE.9.htm#9.22 Look at 9.31(b)(1). It specifically says that force is not justified based on verbal provocation alone. It doesn't matter what they say. As long as the speech doesn't constitute a threat, then you cannot swing freely and claim self-defense as a legal defense.