Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
We have found it useful to place certain limits on free speech in order to maintain social harmony.
Even more useful is to put everyone in a straitjacket on parenteral nutrition in an artificial coma, except maintenance personell that are prohibited from speaking to each other. It completely eliminates any traces of social disharmony, and solves the problem of population excesses very effectively in the process. Less radically, one can take away all stimuli and all input that could provoke emotion or even thought. This will probably be almost as useful, though one can't quite guarantee it, of course.
Incidentally, we have similar laws here in Norway, and even more stringent filtration processes in society and the media. As a result, we got 22/7, and a number of people looking to prepare for a repeat performance. Most cite as their main reason a single thing: the time for talk is over when you're not allowed to talk anymore. I have no counterargument to that line of reasoning on their part, and so long as it is illegal for them to voice their views, I cannot refute those, either. The sad thing being that I'm capable of the latter (and do it whenever I encounter them in private, where their views can legally be discussed and refuted).
quote:
I don't think that this inhibits the free expression or exchange of ideas at all.
I'm inclined to disagree.
If I gather my posting history here on CM in a book and publish it, even if nobody buys it, I will be eligible for up to 8 years in prison for violating §140 of the Norwegian criminal code. For the next few months, it will not be a problem, since the supreme court has ruled that the current law does not include online publication. The revised law that soon enters into effect will explicitly include blogs and forums, at which point there are a significant number of things I cannot express and many ideas I cannot exchange outside a public context. This, I would note, does not tickle my happy-spot.
Australia might not be there yet, but I tend to think it will get there if it hasn't already.
quote:
It is not unreasonable to insist that, if one wishes to express a view on any social/political issue, one does so respectfully.
I tend to think this comes down to choosing whether to listen or not. If people want to do the verbal analogue of monkeys flinging poo, I generally stop listening. I sometimes tell people they will have to be respectful if they wish to have an exchange, as well. But I would not want to deny them the right to say something in a manner that might cause me not to listen to it. In part because I make a determination on a case by case basis. Sometimes, I will address the substance of a thing in spite of its presentation.
It's not unreasonable to expect people to hold the door open for an elderly lady, either, and I may frown on those who don't, but I will not support mandating it by law.
quote:
Those who might view this limit on their speech negatively are usually those who are abusing the space others allow for the free expression/exchange of ideas to promote hate and violence.
Would you say I am abusing the internet to promote hate and violence?
Because my speech is limited by hate speech laws, and I view it negatively, indeed so much so that I suspect it might one day turn into actual hatred (though I note it hasn't yet, and I don't [I]intend[/I] for it to do so; I just point out that based on my knowledge of how the human mind works, it seems plausible that it will, despite my best intentions).
quote:
Even in the US, free speech is not without limits.
Which is lamentable, in my opinion.
For instance, I wholeheartedly support the campaign of terror waged against the Nazi occupation in Norway. Which, as a matter of simple consensus, I can do publicly even with the new laws up here. But I can't legally say I would support it again if the situation recurred, nor debate the merits and demerits, the ethics of target selection and so forth. That's consensus, not equal treatment under the law, by the way, which I find objectionable. I would actually prefer it to be illegal to revere "Kjakan" Sønsteby, recently given a state funeral here, as a simple matter of integrity and consistency, though it would be ideal for both to be legal instead.
quote:
I might add that prosecutions under these laws are very rare.
And this doesn't give you pause?
That there is a licence to act which is selectively employed without regard for right and wrong, but rather only with an eye to public opinion, political currents and pragmatism/convenience? That popular opinion becomes a standard by which to gauge what can and cannot be voiced in public?
quote:
I have never heard any one argue that there are problems around the issue of free speech, except those bigots who were prosecuted for their hate speech.
Do you consider Noam Chomsky a bigot?
He has repeatedly argued in favor of allowing hate speech, no doubt more solidly founded and better articulated than me.
Though, of course, if you have a reference to the cases that were prosecuted down there, I might argue it. As I already [I]have[I] argued it for the most recent case up here, howevermuch I think the bigot in question is a largely detestable idiot and would have loved to turn his whole worldview upside down over a pizza one day (it doesn't seem like it would be a challenge).
quote:
The US model is not universally applicable.
I actually think it's quite universally applicable. It might not be universally unproblematic, though.
The most certain way to safeguard against a slippery slope is to pin things down.
It seems to me that thought has occured to the USA.
IWYW,
— Aswad.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
|
RE: First Amendment, Hate Speech and Other Countries' A... - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread