I asked if I should defend the free speech of people I like and attack the free speech of people I dont like. Thats what Tim advocates, do you? That isn't a straw man, thats the ideology put forward by 'antifa' and being defended in this thread by opponents of fascism lol. Now if you're looking for a straw man, you compared defending free speech to defending rape, cheating and murder - Cosby, Patriots and OJ.
That's another strawman. You asked me about my position not Tim's. You asked me
if I was suggesting you should:
1.defend the free speech of people I like; and
2. attack the free speech of people I dont like
My response was quite clear. Yes to #1. I never suggested you do #2 so asking me to defend that position is strawmanning me. You say "but Tim said!"... I'm not Tim. Take it up with him... or don't. I fully acknowledge the rights of scummers. I'm not carrying their water (unless I'm being paid to do so). My suggestion to you was just that... don't carry scummer's water. Let them carry their own water for their own scummines. The OJ/Cosby/Bellichek/Brady analogy was an illustration of that point and you know it, so it is very intellectually dishonest of you to try to characterize it as a strawman.
I used to do exactly what you are doing, and like you, I thought that it gave me some moral high ground/made me more "fair minded" or some other such nonsense... but I discovered a long time ago that defending positions you don't agree with is pointless, as it puts winds in the sails of things you don't support and it just gets you lumped in with the unsavory position even though you feel you're trying to protect some high-minded abstract ideal. I would defend all the conservative positions in class and it made all the Republican guys like me and want to sit next to me and hang out with me
because they thought I was Republican, since I was "defending free speech" and so forth... but then when they would eventually find out that I was an Obama supporter, most of them grew cold towards me, and would stop talking to me, stopped sitting with me in class, etc.
Meanwhile all the liberals in class who I would have more common ground with ideologically, were wary and suspicious of me because,
they thought I was Republican. So I basically needlessly isolated myself and had to then go build new relationships from scratch... I then realized that the whole exercise was just a bunch of virtue signalling on my part. But worst of all... and I have to admit that I didn't realize this on my own, one of my Deans/Professors had to point this out... what I was doing in class by always playing devil's advocate, taking the conservative/Republican/ etc, side... was giving positions that I actually opposed, propaganda to justify them. Basically I was supplying a "See the black guy agrees with this so it can't possibly be racially prejudiced, etc" to the numerous people
who love to use this type of argument to defend their prejudiced positions. When she told me that, I realized that my virtue signaling just wasn't worth it.