Glad I Don't Live In America.

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I base my understandings of what motivates the far-right communities I've spent time interacting with people in on time spent hearing or reading people expressing their ideas in detail. I don't discount that on some platforms there's a lot of shitposting; I also am aware that these people are ideologically extreme and don't well represent the average likely right-wing voter.

I just take them at their word when they espouse bigotry that it's what they actually believe and not entirely just to own the libs, especially once you're in spaces where they don't face any open opposition.

Oh okay, but what's the different understanding?

Okay, I'll try a different track; even if you insist that these people are not arguing in good faith, do you not think there is a valid free speech concern regarding wokeness and people self censoring in fear of being fired or ostracized for misunderstandings or bad faith attacks? The Latino truck driver fired for absently resting his hand in the OK symbol, David Shor, fired for posting a study on Twitter showing that non violent protests work better than violent ones, and the San Francisco museum director fired for saying he would continue to display art from white artists are just 3 examples I'm going to point to, but there are many, many others I could go with as well.

I don't believe free speech or free expression are under any more threat than they were in any other period of the past century.

Cancel culture isn't a new phenomenon even if what might prompt backlash of that sort has changed. Part of the reason I don't consider reactionary types to have much credibility on this topic is how often the political right engages in the exact same actions when it's aligned with their ideals and interests.

Literalism vs. living document, for starters. At least when you're discussing why a judge might get called conservative vs. liberal.

But what is it about the constitution that is possibly being construed differently when it comes to covid?

Nothing, but it's a common canard for some folks to trot out that the people who putting public safety over what they perceive as their rights are anti-constitution even if their understandings aren't aligned with how the courts understand things.

So, you do see the problem, but you think it's no worse than it's been in the past, it's just that the pressure points have changed? I'd be more inclined to go along with that if the "cancelers" weren't the traditional guardians of liberal society, liberal academia to be precise, as I know full well the right is not to be trusted as the guarantor of free speech and expression. When I was growing up in the 90s, censorship typically came from the right, e.g. panics about rap music, violent video games, Marylin Manson, etc, with the defense of speech coming from the left, where as now it's the complete opposite; the emblematic case is the right trying to cancel J.K. Rowling in the 90s for "promoting witchcraft", and now having the left come after her for having the wrong opinions on trans stuff. As far as I'm concerned, the only people being consistent here are the libertarians, but no one pays them any mind so it doesn't really matter much in the grand scheme of anything.

What boggles my mind is that left wing academics should know in their bones that free speech and expression benefits them more than anyone, that if the right ever regains control of the whip hand it's their speech that's going to be suppressed harder than anyone's, and yet they're still the vanguard of the anti free speech movement, that's like handing your mortal enemy a loaded gun and hoping they don't use it on you.

Oh okay, but sorry, could you elaborateo on that, or what the courts think?

So, when it comes to interpreting the Constitution, there are two major schools of thought, the originalists, and the living Constitutionalitst, and they have very different ways of reading the document that produce conflicting results.

Originalists believe that what matters is the words on paper (and to some extent their original intent), that if the Constitution says something, that all you need to do is read the text (they're also called textualists for this reason) to determine what the law means, regardless of any modern concerns or evolution of language.

Living Constitutionalists believe that the document should evolve with the times, that the laws should be read in a way that allows for outcomes differing from the original meaning or intent of the authors, in accordance with how they think a modern society should be governed.

To use the 1st Amendment as an example, an originalist would argue that free speech is absolute with very narrow exceptions granted for threats or libel, because that's what's written in the document, no modern concerns about hate speech or immorality are permitted because they are not found in the original written document. Living Constitutionalists might argue differently, that the founders could not have foreseen modern issues, and that the meaning should evolve with the time to allow for certain restrictions they believe are necessary or just.

I'm an originalist in general, the Constitution was designed as a limiter on what the government is allowed to do, and that should not be up for interpretation without going through the amendment process, which requires substantial buy in from the people and is an intentionally difficult process.

How that relates to covid is people have differing opinions on what the government is legally permitted to do, particularly the federal government that is most strongly bound by the Constitution, and that even the emergency of a pandemic does not give them license to abridge certain rights, such as public assembly or protest. The American right wing tends to be originalist and currently controls the Supreme Court, so are currently more likely to prevail in certain legal matters, while the American left tends to prefer the living Constitution argument, and are less likely to succeed given the current make up of the court.

Oh okay I see. Thank you very much for explaining that. Does the Constitution say anything about whether or not people should be given vaccinations or forced to since that's become a political issue?

Allowing, or disallowing Typhoid Mary from working in restaurants should not be a "political issue" at all.

She was, rightfully, disallowed from working in restaurants because she it was obvious she was passing Typhoid Fever, a deadly disease, to patrons of those restaurants.

If we don't stop COVID in its tracks, the Pandemic will inevitably become worse. The way to stop it is to vaccinate.

If we didn't thoroughly vaccinate against polio in the 1950s, we would still have epidemics of it in the 2020s.

At least some of these "Nazi adjacent types" are indeed a terrorist threat, even if they are not a political "threat" in the sense of being likely to attain political dominance.

There are also other kinds of right wing extremists that are more influential than "Nazi adjacent types." For example, the number of Alex Jones-style grand conspiracy ideology-believers has grown quite a bit over the years. Also, John Birch Society-influenced religious right wingers have long been king-makers in the Bible Belt (though not in your neck of the woods).

Well when it came to polio in the 50s, did they still have this issue of whether or not businesses should be open, or were there 'anti-maskers' in the 50s as well?

Nope....people went for the shots lock, stock, and barrel. And, in the early 60s, they went for the liquid vaccine.

There was very little protest at all dealing with polio vaccines or with quarantines.

So in the 50s, with polio, if you had the protests back then that you did today, what would have happened back then?