not freedom of speech

Govenor DiSantis is about to sign a law that would limit the free speech of private companies and public employers and give employees the right to sue their employers if they "feel discomfort or distress" by the way race is discussed in the workplace. I suggest that all people who value freedom of speech should feel "discomfort and distress" by this law. Florida is passing laws that now dictate the right way to think about race.

Jessica Guynn, USA TODAY

Thu, March 10, 2022, 10:03 PM

Legislation restricting how race is discussed in the workplace was approved by Florida lawmakers and sent to Gov. Ron DeSantis, paving the way for the first law of its kind in the country.

The measure takes aim at any corporate training that makes employees feel discomfort or distress by suggesting that they are responsible for actions “committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, sex or national origin.”

It is part of a nationwide push to control how issues of race and identity are taught in corporations. DeSantis has made battling "critical race theory" one of his top legislative priorities.

The state Senate on Thursday voted 24-15 along party lines to approve the measure. If signed by DeSantis, workers could sue their employers.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/florida-verge-passing-nations-first-222056340.html

 

My first thought was that I agree with you. But, then after re-reading the law, I have to agree with the law. I don't need some employer "training" me that slavery was my fault or that social injustice is my fault. Screw that. This issue would have never come up but for the CRT wokist nutjobs.

 

Wait, does this apply to state reps?

 

So free speech is conditional.

 

It will be interesting to follow the cases if any are filed. The law seems pretty narrow in that the employer would have to do or say something that makes the employee feel responsible for past racism by others.

 

It's technically a "woke" bill from the conservative viewpoint. So how do you discuss the holocaust without injecting race into it. Or how do you allow conservatives to discuss BLM without injecting race into it? After reading the bill, it is designed with two things in mind: gender identification and sexual orientation are not protected under Florida statues. It is also designed to use peer pressure to dictate how and to what extent public education teaches and does not teach on subjects such as Japanese internment camps, civil rights of the 1960s, the Holocaust, and other topics where race did play a part in the past. In other words, they don't like the way history and other topics can be discussed, so they are trying to siphon that discussion out of the classroom and college research. It will not affect private businesses that much in their sensitivity training because sensitivity training does not use the guilt trip mode to explain how to handle certain situations.

This bill is similar to the one Texas House passed in Special Session last year. Again, Holocaust came up because the law was too broad like Florida law is.

 

I disagree

 

Ummmmmm, isn't that the way lefties want it? Free speech is not allowed. They try to suppress free speech every chance they get. I am actually FOR free speech, which is why I agreed with you at first. Then I realized that lefties only want to make free speech available for one side only, their side. If you want free speech for everyone then I agree with you. But, employers don't need to be "training" their employees regarding politics and social issues. The workplace is the workplace.

 

So conservatives now are acting like lefties? How is this better or how is this fulfilling the first admendment of freedom of speech?

 

I don't know what you are talking about. Leftists have squashed free speech rights from those on the right for years. Leftists only allow free speech if it conforms to their ideology. Otherwise, it is labeled hate speech. I find it funny how Facebook has attacked the right over the last few years but are perfectly fine with allowing posts encouraging people to kill Putin.

 

And you don't need some employer teaching you that the extinction of dinosaurs was your fault either.

This "law" is a great example of how right-wing extremists are so easy to manipulate with lies. And that you have to be easy to manipulate with lies, or you won't become a right-wing extremist.

 

If we hold that lefties squash freedom of speech as an axiom, isn't what the conservative bill doing is the same thing?

Curious, you say you are for freedom of speech, yet you also support a bill that squashes freedom of speech. Is your hypothesis that freedom of speech should only include popular speech only?

 

It isn't even a part of the law. The company can say whatever it likes. The law explains that a person can sue if they feel discomfort. They could do that without the law. Stupid law but it isn't about free speech. Free speech isn't free of the consequences of what one says.

 

Actually there are some conditions that limit free spech, but disliking what someone says, disliking the person that says it or alligations that others are against it so they shouldn't have it are not included in them. Actually the amendment specifically states that government can not pass laws that abridge the right of free speech. This will become a law if it is signed.

 

Thanks for admitting that lefties aren't for freedom of speech after all, unless it just pertains to their viewpoints.

 

Of course it is better. Conservatives are the good guys. Liberalism is doomed. We are headed to either an authoritarianism of the Right or a totalitarianism of the Left. I choose the former.

 

Yes.

You have to apply the double-standard or it won't make sense.

 

I trust the institutions we have, not matter how imperfect they are, but not the party. Either way, our institutions will make sure neither option will be fulfilled in the near or distant future, except maybe on a Netflix TV series.

 

Never made such a statement or evem implied such.

 

It’s great that the state of Florida is protecting its workers from their arbitrary and capricious bosses…

 

No one has the right to make one feel responsible for the actions of others.

 

From what is in your OP, I cannot agree with you. While it is hard for me to imagine an employer suggesting that I am responsible for actions “committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, sex or national origin,” such a practice could, rightly, be seen as prejudicial harassment. Let me ask you, would it be acceptable for an employer to suggest to his black employees, that they are personally responsible for American slavery, because all African slaves were initially purchased from other Africans, of competing tribes? I am completely against bigotry, but one must recognize that, in extreme cases, such as the one you seem to be making, here, that bigotry can go the unusual way of being against the majority group.

No one is to blame for the behavior of their ancestors, regardless of their race. And an employer suggesting such a thing, to its employees, goes beyond "free speech." Would you support an employer telling all its non- Christian employees, that they are spiritually damned? How about an atheist boss, telling all his religious employees, that they are stupid? The rule applies, in both directions.

While I have noticed that we usually seem to agree on these kinds of issues, still, in this case, unless you have left out some very important parts of your argument, I think you are on the wrong side, here.

 

So, you and only you get to decide which speech is acceptable and which is not?? Dude, you don't know the concept of free speech...The foundation of free speech is allowing someone to speak and think even, er, especially if you don't agree with them.

 

Free speech is conditional. You cannot go on a airplane and yell bomb. You cannot go into a restaurant and boisterously start your rhetoric on gender, race, etc. without being asked to leave or being escorted out by police.

Limiting what can be discussed in a work place makes perfect sense to me. Religion, race, and politics have always been topics that should be avoided in the work place. Nothing to be gained by those discussions.

And I will not listen to my employer telling me how I am to live my life and what I am supposed to believe on any of those topics.

If you lean left, how would you like to listen to your employer tell you each day how Trump is great? If you lean right, how would you like to listen to your employer tell you each how Biden is great?

That's just one of thousands of examples we can put forth.

 

I am only going from the OP, which describes this as a bill focused specifically on, "corporate training," from employer's toward employees. That does not seem as if it should apply to schools, as children are not their employees. Therefore, the subjects you mention-- the Holocaust, Japanese internment camps, even BLM-- would not see to really come into play. Am I misunderstanding something?

To be clear, I am a strong advocate for schools teaching the truth about history, ugly though it can frequently be, regardless of how uncomfortable some students (and parents) may be with it; yet I am firmly against schools demonizing any race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, including heterosexual white (Christian) males. There is a world of difference between explaining that others of one's racial group, for instance, set up a discriminatory system which we all should make it a priority to dismantle, than to imply that there is something about anyone's group, which is inherently evil.