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Shut Up and Play Nice: How the Western World Is Limiting Free Speech
concealment writes "In the face of the violence that frequently results from anti-religious expression, some world leaders seem to be losing their patience with free speech. After a video called 'Innocence of Muslims' appeared on YouTube and sparked violent protests in several Muslim nations last month, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned that 'when some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others' values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected.' It appears that the one thing modern society can no longer tolerate is intolerance. As Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard put it in her recent speech before the United Nations, 'Our tolerance must never extend to tolerating religious hatred.'"
but speech that triggers violent behaviour in religious whackjobs must be curtailed!
Trading our liberties for other imagined benefits will not end well. You cannot crack the door for this beast.
It's okay for these people to burn our Flag, and pictures of our president, and chant Death to America.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
The religious are stupid, and worthy of ridicule. A desire to protect them from words is a desire to suppress opposition to stupidity. Any politician who does so should rightly be called out for allowing religion to dictate his/her political views... great fun when your representatives share your own religious outlook; not so fun when you're the one being oppressed. Try to keep that last bit in mind.
Freedom of Speech should NEVER be joined with smashing people up / killing them because they got "offended" by a comment. This is the trouble with politicians, because they are attacking Free Speech by linking the two.
Cracking down on Free Speech also helps politicians cover up the crimes by them and the bankers that bankroll them.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
This is somewhat ironic considering how often these religious fundamentalists promote hate, discrimination and violence against anyone who does not subscribe to their beliefs.
Seems to me that freedom of speech is pretty useless if you can't use it to express your beliefs, or denounce someone else's beliefs.
Muzzling fascists can go fuck themselves.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Religious hate speech can be a two way street; I've heard some not-so-nice things said by them about Jews and Christians.
Every religious speech is an insult to my religion; Not-believing-in-imaginary-friends ...ism.
I guess the only way to stop religious speech is by being violent.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I expect people to treat my faith with respect because that is the civilised and enlightened thing to do.
I expect people to grow up and put faith aside because that is the civilized and enlightened thing to do. How do we reconcile these beliefs?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
'Our tolerance must never extend to tolerating religious hatred.'
Oh, and why does religion warrant such protection? If we're going to protect religion from hatred then everything should be protected from hatred. And that is a very slippery slope down the road to Hell paved with such good intentions.
If you don't like the movie, don't watch it. That is how freedom of expression works. People who can't tolerate that should be thrown in jail for their intolerance of intolerance. :) (e.g., it is the actions that matter. Sticks and stones and all that.)
when people use this freedom of expression to provoke/humiliate others' values and beliefs to provoke/humiliate others' values and beliefs, they might protest violently, so please refrain from provoking/humiliating others' values and beliefs who provoke/humiliate others' values and beliefs that might protest violently.
I have no hatred of Islam, or any other religion. I have disdain for many and fervent disagreement with several. Am I not allowed to voice my opinion?
Does Ban Ki-Moon's opinion extend to the hatred expressed and acted upon by followers of a religion who assault and murder those to leave that faith? (Apostasy)
What about the fatwa and decree of death against Salman Rushdie for his publication of The Satanic Verses? Is the call to murder what Ban Ki-Moon is referring to?
No religion is in isolation from the beliefs and practices of those who claim to be adherents. I have several friends who are Muslims, but who aren't violent extremists. They bear no resemblance to the medieval barbarians making the news in South Asia and the Middle East.
Can I simply direct my scorn and derision at the backward practices of those who are attempting to spread their beliefs with violence and sustain them with oppression?
It isn't the religion I have issues with or hatred for, it is the actions of the religious.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Islam.
In anything like this, it is about balance. Dealing in absolutes is of no benefit. The basic human right to freedom of expression is not unlimited; it is not absolute. Society must place limits. However, those limits must err on the side of offending the most easily offended, as opposed to not offending anyone.
It is no different than the burden of proof in that we must err on the side of finding "not guilty" a few guilty people in order to ensure we do not find any innocent person guilty.
I cannot and will not support unrestricted freedom of expression, for it is the nature of mankind to abuse that freedom beyond what rational people would consider acceptable to the detriment of our society.
Does that assume that we need to set limits? Yes. Well who decides those limits? Sadly, with democracies, that would mean the majority of voters. But on the positive side, most civilized countries have legal systems to balance the desires of the elected officials to prevent the tyranny of the majority (or the tyranny of popular thought).
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
Why is the party making a statement (or video) always the one being accused of intolerance, while the recipient who can't tolerate what is being said not accused of the very same thing? I don't get it...
Apparently the world's wealthy have had enough of the free speech experiment.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
It was just a video. Maybe muslims should just grow up.
Sticks and Stones, people...
Seriously... People have been mocking religion for thousands of years, you don't see the Jews or Christians rioting and killing people every time someone pokes fun at God or Jesus. I'm not counting the middle ages here either.. just the last 200 or so years..
This is absolutely ridiculous.. I think every time some country or the people of that country chant death to America, or insult our culture, we should go on a rampage and wreck their embassies, burn down neighborhoods where that particular demographic happens to call home......
Lets see how they like it.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
To the drums of "Open your mind, accept all beliefs, but only if they're the ones we choose to accept".
Freedom of speech/expression/call it what you will must be utterly open, or it doesn't exist.
Next up: Discovery of plans of some three letter org to distribute 'offending' material in order to create a basis for regulation of speech.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
To this, I call BS. We still protect filth like the Westboro Baptist Church and KKK to host their hatred in whatever form they so choose. They are allowed to do as they please citing religious pretext or freedom of speech/expression, but we're not allowed to hinder them using the same freedoms they abuse.
Personally, I say suck it up and grow a pair. If your faith is so withered and weak that a few choice words from a 'non-believer' would incite you and your extremist buddies to slaughter wholesale, you deserve more than a few choice words.
I see it as no more than an excuse since the 'true' Islamic followers would be fine slaughtering the rest of the world one piece at a time until such a time that only believers or converts remain.. .as dictated by the core of their faith. Islam IS a plague on humanity and needs to be purged. If that leads to a 'holy war' of us vs them... so be it. Humanity will be better and stronger for it in the end.
It took WW2 to see the dangers of Hitler-esque beliefs and actions, and now we're encountering what is nearly the same exact thing, but from a faceless faith as a whole. 'True' Islamists are the new Nazis, but more extreme in the fact that now it is religious based and not race based.
As a race, we have recovered and advanced since WW2, and are much better off. We have balanced ourselves so that those with power are limited in the use, and abuse, of it to prevent a M.A.D. scenario from those able. Tossing such weak minded and bipolar folks into the mix with their own nukes or other WMDs would lead to much worse than WW2. They do not seek to conquer, but to destroy for the sake of destroying. Stop it before it starts. Tough decisions for tough times.
Rag on me, down vote me, whatever... the world is on a tipping point and I fully expect to see WW3 or it's equivalent before my time is up. I would not be at all surprised to see it led by the Islamic governments or the faceless masses blindly supporting it out of fear and brainwashing. All organized religion is dangerous in extremes, due to the urge to 'spread the faith' and 'save the non-believers'... but when the core beliefs include 'death to nonbelievers' or anyone who would say anything disparaging... that's a whole new playing field. Islam must go.
World leaders find bullshit excuse to restrict the free speech that has always been a thorn in the side of those in power who want more control over the populace!
This whole concept is stupid. What they're essentially saying is that free speech can only be practiced as long as it doesn't offend anyone.
When in the hell did THAT type of speech ever need protection in the first place? The entire point of having a law in place protecting free speech is to make sure that people CAN say the things that are controversial. If we're just slapping each other on the ass saying how great everyone else is then any laws protecting it are redundant.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I thought the whole "YouTube video sparked violent protests" thing had been thoroughly debunked. Nobody had seen the video in question. The "protests" were actually coordinated terrorist attacks to coincide with 9-11. Forgive me if I'm wrong there.
So, when it's asked, "Why don't you visit the Mid-east or some other Muslim country?"
I'll shut up.
When it's asked, "Why don't you invest in the Mid-East?"
I'll shut up.
When a Muslim charity asks for money, I'll say nothing but "I can't."
When certain people scratch their heads and wonder why they're treated as outcasts of the World society and continually live in the Third World, I'll keep my mouth shut.
By all accounts, Innocence of Muslims is worthless tripe. But we cannot permit even this sort of stuff to be censored, because we know it will not stop there. The same groups of people who were rioting over Nakoula's amateurish film were also up in arms about Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, a serious work of literature. And more recently, British broadcaster Channel 4 cancelled a planned public viewing of Tom Holland's Islam: The Untold Story because of "security fears". Holland's work was a serious contribution to the study of Islamic history, and Holland is actually quite respectful of Islam, which he considers a moral advance over the polytheism that preceded it. But since he questioned the canonical story of Muhammad and the official history of Islam's origin (just as Christian scholars have been doing with the Bible and church history for centuries), far too many Muslims simply couldn't abide that.
We cannot, must not, allow the precedent that if you yell loud enough and threaten enough violence that you can silence your opponents.
"There's only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch."
~Nigel Powers~
Does he even realize that that behavior itself is intolerance?
Why the hell is the general logic of people, that when they see something utterly despicable, the first thing they want to do, is to do exactly that?
Somehow they think, that their bullshit justification is better than the other side's bullshit justification. Because we are "good" and they are "bad".
No, I'm not saying what the extremists do is right. I'm saying we shouldn't do it, exactly because it's wrong!
Appeasement didn't work with the Nazis, why would it work with Islamofascist scum?
-- Ethanol-fueled
I expect people to grow up and put faith aside because that is the civilized and enlightened thing to do. How do we reconcile these beliefs?
Usually by behaving maturely and not using part of your 'debate' or 'reconciling' as a method to use a verbal club to beat the other side in submission based on your own belief system.
...which happens all too often when you bring politics, religion, or race into any discussion.
Finally good news for the members of the Church of Scientology, probably the most ridiculed religion on earth.
So, you consider yourself enlightened because of your ignorance of anything greater than yourself? Interesting.
And we know it is with good intentions. Ultimately "restricting hate speech" will be defined in law as "restricting critical analysis". Galileo was one of the first to run afoul of such folly and I thought we had learned our lessons.
I have a crystal ball. It has shown me the future. The day that 'intolerance' is made into 'hate speech':
"Arrest that man! He doesn't tolerate my abuses of power! That's intolerant!"
There is NO latitude on this issue. We will not allow our free speech to be hindered in ANY way. ANY politician that even ATTEMPTS to negotiate a treaty or law that would be interpreted by the average citizen as infringement, will not be tolerated. Any politician even slightly entertaining this issue will be subject to removal by covert military force, and that removal would be lawful, and legal in both spirit and letter of the law.
All the chatter in the media has been nothing more than propaganda, promoting the idea.
If you are a politician... Don't touch our RIGHTS!
There is no such thing as complete freedom - of expression, or anything else; this is something we all need to bear in mind, instead of just parading all the usual, automatic responses. When one person takes more freedom, then there are others who get less, in essence. This certainly holds true when some extremist decides that he has the right to provoke violent responses; every time somebody sticks his finger up at the prophet Muhammed or some other stupid stunt, there are people who suffer, women who get oppressed a bit more etc.
Saying that "it isn't my fault that x choses to react like so and so ..." is nonsense - that is no more than another way of saying "I don't care about those people". And any way - this is about cause and effect. In other parts of life, if you cause damage, whether it is because you are careless, stupid, unlucky or malicious, then you bear part of the responsibility and may well be prosecuted.
I think it is perfectly reasonable that if you abuse your freedom of speech, then you should be held legally responsible. If you cause riots and loss of life or property, should you not be made to pay? Extremists are cowards, who hide behind laws they only regard with contempt.
We don't reconcile them. We tolerate the difference because the greater good requires it. Neither side has to release its views--they just have to accept the differences of the other side.
Just remember, though, in these debates, the progressive, enlightened ones are never tolerant. They have evolved beyond that...
crack the door ?
crack the door ??
crack the door ???
David Irving. Dozens of Muslim political prisoners (Tarek Mehanna, most recent - exclusively free speech).
The door has been cracked open long time ago, it's just this time they are coming for you, Martin.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
That video WAS NOT the trigger for anything in the Middle East. The video was on YouTube since June or July. What happened was, plain and simple, a TERRORIST ATTACK by Al Qaeda, timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. It has nothing to do with free speech, despite the White House trying to portray it as such, and which they finally, grudgingly admitted.
I never thought I'd say the US was a beacon for anything without feeling embarrassed. But if protecting free speech, even hateful, intolerant, vitriolic speech, is all the US stands for then I'm damn proud to be American.
F.U. to the cowardly countries who can't stand to hear opposing opinions that might upset someone.
Hate speech is not protected in Canada.
It's not clear to me if "Innocence of Muslims" would qualify or not since I haven't seen it.
"Even for Slashdot, that was a very obscure reference!" - Anonymous Coward
This needs to become a hot button item. Everyone needs to ask about it and it should be a polarizing issue like abortion and gay rights seems to be. This is far more important than either of those in shear number of people affected. If a politician votes to limit any of the freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights he does not get my vote. Period.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
To paraphrase those guys, it's all fair or nothing is. Free speech is really an all or nothing deal, naturally some people with it will use it to be douche-bags. It then falls to the less immoderate not to restrict or prevent offensive free speech, or even those who employ it, but simply to recognize and personally condemn it. None of this is anything new, it's simply unfortunate that so many world leaders have gotten pessimistic enough to forget it.
that is why the powerful want so desperately to get rid of it
as the person making the muslim baiting video proved, if you say something the people in power don't like you will be tracked down and the full weight of the "legal" system will be brought down on you
only when we have a distributed, anonymous communication system will we be truly free
So now we have people who are labeling individualism with hate. Orwellianism is happening right now; as we speak.
Trading our liberties for other imagined benefits will not end well. You cannot crack the door for this beast.
Well, being a reader of Slashdot, we're all familiar with that quote. I think more appropriate here is Franklin's "Apology for Printers" that contains many apt gems concerning this news including:
8. That if all Printers were determin'd not to print any thing till they were sure it would offend no body, there would be very little printed.
The first and foremost fear I have is a destruction or suppression of culture. I'm not saying "Innocence of Muslims" is a good film. Of course, I'm not saying "Manos Hands of Fate", "The Room" or "Birdemic" are spectacular films either -- but I own licensed copies of them. I also own several editions of James Joyce's "Ulysses", a book which was banned in many countries when it was written. I will tell you right now that we would be missing major cultural artifacts if those in power had succeeded at eradicating "Ulysses" and its author. Yes, I'm afraid of corrupt politicians, populations that cannot access knowledge, etc. But those are effects that UN officials won't immediately see. Effects that can be immediately felt are people who collect poorly scripted, acted and funded films will no longer have access to "Innocence of Muslims." No one's saying it's a good film -- then again what defines a "good film" is so subjective I wouldn't know a blockbuster if it hit me in the face.
Authors from Franklin to Bradbury knew this and everyone today should know this: you must resist 'trimming' (by anyone's definition of the word) culture to protect it and keep it intact lest every bit of it be an option on the chopping block for whatever fanatic that has the press as a mouthpiece each day.
My work here is dung.
Mid-life crises Harley Davidson riders
Hot Dog eating contest
Jersey Shore
Reality TV
'Innocence of Muslims'
Organised religion
However as an American i am glad i have the choice to decide if i want to take part in the stupidity or form my own onion and tell whom ever the fuck i want to about it in whatever media form i damn well please.
and if you don't like, go fuck your self and burn down your own country, that will show us.
That's all this is about. If I excercise free speech and insult someone, that person's (or group) feelings where hurt. Or religious beliefs, whatever.
If my free speech is restricted for that reason, then you might argue that likewise, only my feelings were hurt. Oh right, so I should shut up just because I might insult people? That's should be obviously ridiculous to anyone living in a free society (of sorts). And I'd argue that the 'pain' inflicted by restricting free speech is much worse than the 'pain' inflicted if someone gets insulted. Especially long-term and in the greater scheme of things. For example: a specific religion is just one group in the population, free speech affects everyone including atheists and other religions.
For more specific issues, we already have appropriate restrictions in place. For instance, if I shout things specifically meant to cause violence, claim things that damages a person's reputation / business but which are provably untrue, etc. Such exceptions should be enough... if you are insulted so easily, grow a thicker skin.
It appears that the one thing modern society can no longer tolerate is intolerance. (...) 'Our tolerance must never extend to tolerating religious hatred.'"
Best I'm aware, modern society tolerates intolerance including towards itself, and accommodates itself with the ludicrous side-effects for doing so (e.g. the TSA). The line it refuses to cross is when a lunatic blows himself up in the middle of a crowd for religious reasons. (One line it and its media arguably shouldn't have crossed, but did regardless, was to give special treatment and coverage to some criminals due to their religion.)
There are a select few religious nut jobs, by contrast, that cannot seem to tolerate anything that but their peers, and that have little to no sense of measure or humor. Enlightened societies, including the ones they live in, should make it a point to ridicule them until they become more tolerant and grow a sense of measure and humor.
There will always be someone who feels offended. Either by what we say, what we do not say, what we do, what we don't do, what we are, what we aren't ... Therefore being offended cannot ever be a justification for actions, especially for legislation. Ban Ki-Moon should shut up and think about freedom of speech and tolerance before spouting such idiocy again!
Seriously... some people just don't get it...
As for Ms. Gillard ... freedom of speech certainly includes spouting non-sense, gibberish, idiotic crap and what-not! Otherwise it would not be freedom of speech. Too bad that Australia doesn't have a reasonable form of free speech; so her comments are completely in line with that country's crappy laws :(
Ban Ki-moon is not Western, a neither is technically Australia. The article is mostly just nitpicking, while it's true that freedom of speech is nowhere achieved perfectly we still have orders of magnitude more of it than the Muslims.
If they were calling out to a specific individual, and belittling them, that's bullying. If calling out an entire race, that's racism.
Calling out choices, such as a particular religion or cult in general, well, that's opinion, and fully 100% protected under freedom of speech and should be.
If someone wants to feel upset because of it, again, that's their choice. Most people are taught (properly) to ignore people who belittle their choices.
There's one main rule I can state that is 100% true.
"You do NOT have the right to not be offended." Take your lumps like the rest of the human race and get over yourself.
> In the face of the violence that frequently results from anti-religious expression
No. No, no, no.
The violence that frequently results from religious agitation. The violence that frequently results from clear, overt advocacy of religious violence by individuals who teach others that doing violence is a religious duty.
Who is responsible for violence? The perpetrators. Do the perpetrators get to shift that blame onto the victims of violence? No. Violence results from the decision to do violence, from the decision to teach and praise violence.
'Our tolerance must never extend to tolerating religious hatred.' It's the inverse, this is exactly the first thing that get laughed at.
European governments have never embraced the concept of absolute Freedom of Speech. It is a peculiarly (U.S.) American idea, which never caught on, elsewhere. Not even in Canada, as a matter of fact.
"If you haven't got anything good to say about anybody, come sit next to me."
There, Alice Roosevelt (1884-1980, Theodore Roosevelt's daughter) finished it for you.
bullshit
Usually by behaving maturely and not using part of your 'debate' or 'reconciling' as a method to use a verbal club to beat the other side in submission based on your own belief system.
But that's very much the point. I believe that it is inherently immature to rely on faith for explanations when no explanation will do. Each side finds the other immature, and one side seeks to control the actions of the other. There can be no peace as long as this is true.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
People who are confident in their position do not fear criticism. I interpret all the lashback as an announcement that they are terrified of discovering that they have been wrong all along.
if i want to post pictures of mohammad and allah tag teaming a goat and a pig that is my freedom of speech, they dont have to like it but it does not give them the right to go on a psycho murder spree while burning down buildings and looting,
who is the primitive violent heathen now
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Hurt feelings != killing people, and freedom of expression doesn't work when it only applies to expression you agree with.
...Our Aunties. They have been farting in our general direction far too long.
Gently reply
There's a difference between banning speech you don't like, and trying to talk people out of it.
The correct response to hateful, bad, wrong speech is good speech.
Let's just preserve everyone's freedom to say it!
"Our tolerance must never extend to tolerating religious hatred"
Sorry, but religion should be as open to criticism and ridicule as anything else. Granted, in many contexts it is important to be respectful. But ban "religious hatred" in all its guises? Well, I've got bad news for you, because that would mean you've just advocated banning religion itself, half of which is about telling the rest of the world that everyone else (including other religions) is damned, blasphemous, heretical, apostate, or whatever other religious insult people of different religions hurl at each other. And then there's the hate that religious people heap on anyone who isn't religious at all. I'd dearly like it if all religions respected every other religion and the right of people to believe what they want, but the reality is, some religions practically define themselves by how much they hate other religions and people who think differently from the way that they do.
Incitement to violence? Encouraging people to be violent? Just say no. Of course that should be illegal. IF that's the kind of "hatred" being discussed, then the law already covers that. But if all people are doing is insulting and ridiculing each other, no, sorry, that right to speak freely should be protected. The fact that some people might take offence is A) the point of free speech, B) not equivalent to calling on people to act violently in reaction to the perceived insult. People who speak their mind, how ever crudely, should not be held accountable for the actions of the religious nutbars of the world who think violence is the solution to their hurt feelings.
I applaud Gillard for standing up and speaking her mind in parliament recently on the matter of intolerance, but the respect I have for her blunt statements would end the moment she endorses shutting down other people's free speech because it might be offensive. People, religious people, must understand that their violence will not be tolerated merely because it's religious people being insulted. Religion does not excuse violence, and religious people should get used to being offended from time to time instead of thinking they should murder people because of it.
A web site affected with viruses, trojans, and all other sorts of malicious software - would you not like it to be taken off the internet? Or would you want users to be beware and not accidentally step on it?
People with communicable diseases - wouldn't you want them to sufficiently isolate themselves, or roam about freely among the rest of the society?
On the same lines, if there's a piece of literature, song, movie - whatever - that grossly misrepresents facts, tries to create hatred, and pollutes minds of its audience, should probably be isolated too from the peaceful society.
I can hardly wait.
Each party is acting very consistently, without double standard.
Ah, but it's only ok to us, for them to do that. That's why it doesn't accomplish anything; we don't care. "Oh, they're burning our flag. That's so cute. At least no one got hurt."
But it's not ok to them to do that; they think it's the ultimate insult or something and ought to really hurt our feelings, which is why they do it. "Ha ha! Take that!" and they're probably mystified that nobody gives a fuck.
From that, both parties reactions to a movie about religion should actually be fairly predictable. Us: "What's the big deal?" Them: "!!!"
Agreed. In fact it's quite important to note that freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences if your speech pisses people off. It just means the government can't stop you from speaking just because they don't like what you're saying. That said, the government has been actively (IMHO) violating the first amendment for a while now, the most stark example being the emergence of "Free Speech Zones" when George W. Bush would travel.
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The one difference between this video and typical hate crimes is that nobody is forced to watch it (at least not forced to by the people who manufacture or distribute it). Perhaps the middle eastern communities should do what American's do in this type of situation, socially shun those who proliferate the behavior they find distasteful. At most, I could see Google putting this under their adult section to protect Islamic children from being able to view the video, though that really is primarily the job of the parents to regulate.
" U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned that 'when some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others' values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected.'
No, acting like an idiot because someone hurt your feewings cannot be protected.
I agree with OP's principle but am still willing to make some special allowance for Germany. If any circumstance can be called justifying to say that some things shall not be discussed, it's probably theirs.
In so much as religion is useless (scientifically speaking) there are good sides and bad sides to it. It brings people together and helps them deal with challenges of life. That is good. To the degree that religion separated us into groups of ideological factions (also scientifically useless) religion cannot be tolerated. The best way to resolve this isn't to preserve someone's ability to be offended when criticized, but to wear it down. There is no good to come from preserving someone's ability to be offended, as being offended is an emotional reaction to an attack on non-scientific beliefs. This amounts to criticizing someone's belief in the tooth fairy. Tooth fairy can't be offended because tooth fairy didn't ever exist, and is wholly irrelevant to the world.
I hope that one day soon we can put all this religious stuff behind us because every day science is making religion irrelevant. And that's nothing to be offended by. The sooner we give up the crutches of false beliefs the sooner we can be to realizing one real humanity and not countries or religious factions.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Incitement to riot not good!!
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Everything you just said offended me. I'm going to riot and destroy things. You should go to jail because you are responsible because you offended me.
Freedom of speech is not tested by statements that you agree with, freedom of speech is tested by defending those things that make your blood boil.
Really, watch "The people vs Larry Flint", if you believe in free speech you got to defend a rather obnoxious pervert.
A judgement for what counts as free speech should NEVER include, doesn't offend anyone. If it doesn't offend anyone there isn't even a point to free speech, I can go to North Korea and say ANYTHING at all by that standard, can say ANYTHING I WANT in worsed dictatorshop in the world, as long as I don't upset anyone.
Free speech only has value when I am allowed to say things that someone somewhere finds upsetting. The only reason after all to limit free speech is because someone is offended.
Test case:
I, a non-american visit the US and want to test how the US treats Free Speech for foreigners, can I test that by saying on say ground zero:
Wow, what an amazing building, really show how the US spirit cannot be destroyed by those who hate freedom.
It is speech and I am free to say it, but it is not free speech.
If it doesn't offend anyone, it does not need free speech protection. If it does offend, it does.
Beware any politician who seeks to limit free speech for the sake of convenience. They need watching, preferably through a snipers scope.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
We have an elected government, and a free speech law, and just a few little 'extra' laws. One protects *****, but that's misused by politicians who accuse each other of breaking it. One law was introduced by the last **** backed govt, and that stops you saying anything bad about the country or the then leadership, and was used to cover up ******. Then there's the court law, you can't criticize a court, which is used by the **** who have pet courts they use to prosecute for *** which you ... You know what I can't continue with this line of commenting.
Once it starts, it never stops, you'll end up never able to fix a problem, because some slimey politician will prevent you ever talking about it. It always starts off well meaning, protecting vulnerable people and such like, and it always ends up with politicians misusing the laws to control what can be discussed.
USA: Did you see the RNC? How they silenced the mic when people mentioned Ron Paul, and wouldn't read out votes for him? Only the votes for Mitt Romney. Imagine what would happen if you let that lot define what is OK to say? He's entitled to a vote, and they wouldn't even read out the vote count for him:
http://youtu.be/B39W91O-rUg?t=6m21s
Or perhaps they'd cover up this up too, incredible:
http://youtu.be/pKaXqoC4DjE?t=3m3s
UK is, well, remember this from only a few days ago?
"What's the difference between Mark Bridger and Santa Claus? Mark Bridger comes in April."
Be careful what you say in the UK.
Maybe each time devout Americans see people burning their flag and chanting "death to America" on TV, they should feel deeply offended by it and start rioting, killing and burning on the streets all over the world, just as devout Muslims like to do. What is good for the goose is good for the gander, no?
I watched it, to see what the fuss was about. Well, actually, I started watching it a couple of times because it is so bad. I did finally reach the end. However, now I have to watch it again and again! And I have to have parties and invite people over and make sure they watch it. I have to do this for two reasons, one is up the hit count on that stupid film and so that everyone knows the TRUTH about Mohammed.
what would you? Could this be how they felt?
As a born-and-bred American, I thought that the general idea was that one could say absolutely anything they wanted as long as it wasn't an explicit threat or somehow in violation of commercial regulations. I can say anything I want, except as a business person, where all customers are equal (subject to various laws and regulations, etc). People can respond as they wish to me in kind, but as long as no violence or above-and-beyond stalker behavior or such occurs, no reason to get excited.
Religious intolerance would seem to fall under that same system, as long as it doesn't interfere with commerce or the operation of various services.
The KKK can't be legally persecuted for calling for the death of blacks, they can be legally persecuted for murder, violating firecodes, harassment, etc.
Basically - you can say or do anything you wish, but when you start presenting a defined threat against someone or take violent actions in such fashion, you cross the line. Innocent until proven guilty - just because someone says or portrays something doesn't mean they intend to cause physical harm - they could simply be misinformed or insane, but one can't simply group everyone one disagrees with into that category or you run the risk of becoming such yourself because you ignore their arguments might have merit in some fashion.
That's because abortion and gay rights are issues that amoral people use to make themselves look moral. That's why the same group of people are fine if the baby dies because of malnutrition or bad healthcare as long as it isn't aborted.
In other words, it's a bullshit issue. Most people fighting against gay rights and abortion actually have no morals at all. Emphasize most...
There can be no peace as long as this is true.
I think you hit part of it, but not the full issue. I believe that the majority of people who say they are 'religious' or 'political' or 'racial' or any other 'label' tends to hide behind that label and peek around its protection while attacking the other people who are 'against' what they believe.
So the problem isn't really religion, or politics, or race, or even faith or belief. The problem is the person themselves and their refusal to accept responsibility for their own actions.
It apparently is much easier to live day by day when one doesn't have to look into the mirror and can devote most of their energy into attacking perceived faults in others.
'when some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others' values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected.' How wrong this idiot is... When beliefs are so insane as to be inhuman, they deserve, nay, require mockery. Hiding behind the veneer of religion is even less of an excuse. Light, truth, knowledge and freedom is the only remedy here.
The Supreme Court has held for a long, long time that mere "time, place, and manner" restrictions on free speech are not prohibited by the First Amendment.
It never caught up in US either until Colt retired as a peacemaker.
American culture remains largely a culture of cowboys: decency of speech is based on the threat of violence if you spoke offensively. That's why Texans are still very polite.
I like this part of the culture. I wish liberals understand that if they have retain the right to insult me, I am retaining the right to respond in a manner suitable for a man.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Obama made it worse.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
'Our tolerance must never extend to tolerating religious hatred.'
I don't really know what "religious hatred" means; hatred stemming from your own religious beliefs, or directed at a particular religious belief? And since when are we intolerant of thoughts and emotions? Last I checked, we already had plenty of laws against violent acts stemming from hatred.
'when some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others' values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected.'
Ah, I see, so we have to limit freedom of expression so as not to provoke people who are looking for an excuse for provocation. How about this instead; I will tolerate your fundamentalist religious nonsense and hold my tongue when you tell me that I'm going to Hell or are an infidel, or that Jesus loves me anyway, or whatever and in exchange--oh, wait there is no bargaining with crazy people. Ok, new plan: we all get to say whatever we want because everyone should be secure enough with their own beliefs to espouse them in a deliberate and rational manner and to welcome criticisms in kind. And if a handful of people do do something violent in the name of the flying spaghetti monster, let us not lump in all the millions of non-violent pastafarians and instead just blame the nut-jobs for their actions and not validate them by listening to what they have to say.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
To prevent people from saying "BULLSHIT" to something that is not supported by reality is the most irrational approach I have ever heard.
We are lost as a civilization if we are not allowed to challenge assumptions, especially baseless assumptions.
This can be out in the open, where we all can see it, or it can be underground where it can fester and brew until it is too late to respond to it.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
This reasoning is taking root in the US. Local high school student got in trouble for a Confederate Flag on his car. Told to remove it as it "would disrupt the school", i.e. there would be protests. There are other examples involving T-shirts, Facebook posts, etc.
Also interesting to me, the owner of a shop or restaurant has the right. as the owner, to refuse admission to someone that is somehow offensive to him, such as wearing a shirt with a swastika. However, he may not refuse a cripple, no matter how offensive he may find a wheelchair.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Of course the problem here is that your right not to be offended might prevent meaningful discourse. If you try to ban what is basically just blasphemy, then you eventually eliminate any meaningful discussion of religious doctrine.
If you can't be a jackass then you can't be a blasphemer and you can't have any freedom of religion.
The right to be offensive is also the right to be something other than a Puritan.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Seriously.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned that 'when some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others' values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected.' It appears that the one thing modern society can no longer tolerate is intolerance. As Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard put it in her recent speech before the United Nations, 'Our tolerance must never extend to tolerating religious hatred.'"
These people obviously just didn't think their statements through very well.
Here's the problem with "cracking the door": who decides what constitutes "provocation or humiliation of some another's values and beliefs"? No matter who makes that decision, it is a problem, because the decision will be based on that person's or body's ideals. For example, that crazy Florida pastor's hateful speech against gay rights would be certainly be censored by Ki-moon and Gillard as an attack on the values and beliefs of gay people. But censoring this guy is equivalent to an attack on the values and beliefs of the crazy pastor.
No one has the right to not be offended. We'd all end up in jail for "provoking or humiliating someone's values and beliefs" simply be not tiptoeing very carefully in everything we say and do. And even then, many people will even get offended by the tiptoers, because people are idiots.
This is one of the few points I agree with Scalia on. More speech is preferable to banning speech that you don't like.
He makes this argument in the context of "money is speech," however, and I don't go that far.
Need I say more?
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
If you think that using a gun makes you a man, you're a very small man indeed.
Using firearms is a response in a manner suitable for a coward. If you call yourself a man, use your fists.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
We need to be quite clear here. It is the right of every american to criticize the Islamic religion however we see fit and we need a government that will defend this right and never apologize for it. We will never allow any form of censorship of such criticisms. I find the attacks on free speech to be especially outrageous considering that Muslims repeatedly threaten to kill and destroy the US and yell death to America among other things.
What I found particularly upsetting that was while Muslims were burning down our embassy and so on, Obamas administration could not stop itself from insulting Americans and their free speech rights and apologizing to Muslims. The US government should never dare tell its citizens what to say, apologize for Americans rights and so on. The liberal media predictably went along and helped propogandize on behalf of the Administration and furthermore help cover up the crimes that were occuring. Romney was correct from the beginning to criticize the administrations response. Simply fact that you have a gathering of threatening looking hoards in front of an embassy in a foreign country should be alarming and this situation is not and never should be a situation where its okay for the US government to go about Insulting americans. Romney was right in criticizing the administrations outrageous responses, even while the protests were still just a gathering outside the embassy, that instead of defending Americans free speech rights, the Administration insulted us and our liberties. However, it is now well know that before Mitt Romney criticized the anti-American rubbish coming from the Obama administration, The administration was aware that there was an actual violent attack occuring on the embassy in Libya.
After Obama's response to the events in the middle east, I am convinced that Romney is the right choice for President and we are not safe with Obama who has too many connections to Islam to be trusted.
I would also add that Americans often have signficant difficulty in understanding the real nature of Islam, Muslim populations and the very real danger they pose to western civilisations. Basically the behaviour patterns, ideas about what is reasonable, are completely different, and they are generally incompatable with western values. In Islam, killing your children if they question Islam, stoning apostates to death, destroying christian churches, are all mainstream. It is hard for Americans to understand that these people do not share our values of respecting others religious beliefs or the limits of what religion would drive people to do. Many americans have a rose glasses tinted view of the world filled with peace loving populations filled with love and kindness. they think that everyone in the world is like them. This is not true! The fact there is no common interest between the west and islam, they are totally incompatable. This idea they do is naive and it is wrong. The fact is the world is an extremely dangerous place filled with people that would love to destroy Western Civilisation, christianity and steal the US away from US and attempt to bring it under Islam. The goal of Islam is not only to dominate the Middle East, it is to eventually dominate and take over the entire planet. Muslims will not be satisfied until all non Muslims have been eliminated. Islam has long history of invading and conquering vast areas from West Africa to Indonesia, destroying every religion and civilisation along the way, spreading Islam with the sword and violence. This has not stopped. They have changed their tactics some but there is a continued burning desire for them to take over the world. Muslims are great liars and are great at playing the wolf in sheeps clothing, in wearing a fake facade of pretty words and lying and smiling in your face, they laugh behind your back when they know you are gullible enough to believe their act. They put on a fake facade of smiles and tolerance but in their hearts they know and hope for the day that they can destroy anyone who questions their religi
Yeah any hope I had that Obama would improve things (I did hope so, though I did not vote for him) has been quashed.
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the right to bear arms doesn't include the right to shoot anyone who pisses you off.
The ancient creed of the "pro-lifer" : "Life is sacred, from conception until natural birth. Then fuck 'em."
I understand, and IANAL. I just feel like the Free Speech Zone thing violates the spirit of the First Amendment, even if the courts have decided that doesn't violate the letter of the law.
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To quote Robert A. Heinlein "An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life"
You are correct that the right is limited - but it is ONLY limited by that speech which might create a public panic, etc. Yelling FIRE! in a crowed room is against the law. However - saying something that is hurtful to someone else is NOT and CANNOT be illegal, for within that realm comes ALL political speech which is fundamental to the operating of a democratic form of government.
As soon as you start limiting such speech you manage to disenfranchise some segment of the population to the vagaries of the majority. If the offended minority can't stand up and defend themselves VERBALLY - what is left? It becomes a two way street.
What CAN NOT be allowed is for the minority's offense to itself become illegal, or for that minority to cause violence to the person causing the offense. THAT is where we draw the line in the US. Mr. Ban Ki-Moon can jump off of the UN building if he doesn't like it.
I agree with you 100%. However, observe recent laws regarding "bullying" both physical and online as well as other laws dealing with offensive and hate speech and you see a very troubling trend. An accelerating move toward strictly limiting freedoms of speech within the United States, let alone the rest of the world.
Freedom of speech is rapidly erroding.
Blatant stupidity should be mocked if the stupid want to impose their nonsensical beliefs on the rest of us.
Middle East violence isn't caused by speech. It's caused by stupid religious people (redundant, I know) wanting to kill anyone who isn't stupid. Then they want to imprison or kill anyone who points out how absurd their fantasies are.
Why on Earth should that be tolerated? We should be striving to eliminate idiocy from the Free world, not encouraging it, and mocking it is a perfectly valid means of exposing it.
Baghdad was the center of scientific progress over a 300-year period, until religion took over. Then a once-great civilization was destroyed, and ignorance and superstition flourished. That is the worse possible outcome, yet some people want to do that very same thing to the rest of the world.
Religion/Stupidity should be ridiculed. There is no place for it in a civilization.
Straw man arguments like yours are part of the problem.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
India is a democracy and a free country. But you can be fine or imprisoned for making statements that may offend one of the many religions there.
India found it necessary to codify how groups of different religions may interact with one another, rather than the live and let live policy you find in the United States.
In my opinion, relgion is an individual's choice and therefor open to criticism. Violence as a response to free speech is unacceptable and illegal. No matter how riled up you get over what someone says, you must focus your anger in a more constructive manner.
How long should I tolerate your hurtful intolerance with respect to my personal value to tolerate every one's opinion regardless of how intolerant it is?
If my religion has a value of tolerating everyone, doesn't that mean, given the summary, my tolerance should not extend to hatred directed at my religion's tolerance?
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
"It appears that the one thing modern society can no longer tolerate is intolerance"
You clearly did not mean that. It seems western societies are leaning towards NOT tolerating tolerance, which would be free speech.
See, it is getting twisted, deliberately, to marginalize free speech and enable the State to manage their populations. And primarily because some groups USE VIOLENCE to suppress speech they do not like.
And that alone is reason enough to oppose such restraint.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Bullshit! Instead we must categorically reject censorship.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is a would-be tyrant.
Any tool worth having can be used positively or negatively. Its up to society to learn how to wield it properly. Part of free speech is to allow others to say things which another might consider distasteful. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon can suck my cock.
To suggest free speech should be arbitrarily limited is the same as suggesting critical thinking should be limited. In short, there would be no such thing as free speech. Its certainly no accident critical thinking and free speech are both significantly limited in the Middle East. Meaning, neither exist. In the few cases where it raises its head, they are usually murdered by brainless mobs or executed by the state.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is the antithesis of liberty; be it based in ignorance or malice.
Is there a difference between "religious hatred" and "mocking religion", or "criticism of religion", or "discussion of religion"? Assuming even the Aussie PM would allow for discussion of religion, what if this discussion includes pointing out the superstitious, non-rational nature of religion or of a particular religion?
How do rules against "religious hatred" differ from rules against blasphemy, insofar as a prohibition against blasphemy is clearly a weapon to be applied arbitrarily by those in power against their enemies?
I like this part of the culture. I wish liberals understand that if they have retain the right to insult me, I am retaining the right to respond in a manner suitable for a man.
You are an immature fool. Your "creedo" is fundamental to the very problem that is causing adherents of a certain offshoot of islam to believe they have the right to retaliate to insults, real or percieved, with terminal, capital, effort. You, like they, are children, and developmentally stunted. It takes a man, or woman, of real character, to shrug off insults. Calling you an idiot makes you feel bad for a minute. Responding with terminal violence changes the entire landscape forever. Only an immature fool believes that they should change other people's lives to protect their own petty feelings. Censorship is a foolish, culturally immature feel-good band-aid on what is a much deeper psychological problem. You tell people who you disagree with to shut up and you feel good for a second but you're simply compensating for a much deeper psychological wound you're not willing to deal with. With Islam, its that plus power and control. Its much easier to control a populace by quieting dissent, so you make alternative opinions anti-religious. This is cultural 101, I'm frankly shocked that so many "modern" people are completely unaware of their own complicity in turning the clutural clock back to the middle ages.
Free speech is based on the threat of violence indeed. You know NOTHING about modern American culture. Nothing.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Tyranny cannot be appeased.
The answer to speech you do not like is more speech, not violence.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
If you're are so pathetically thin-skinned that someone taunting you leads you to take out your gun to defend your "honor", then you have no honor. You're a cowardly worthless piece of freedom-hating shit.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yes it does. That's what arms are for: for protection what is dear to you.
If you decided that the life is the only thing worth protecting, that's you. There things that are dear to me more than life, so I am protecting them by violence.
I do not care what you think of my rights. My rights are guaranteed by my resolution to use them no matter what is the threat from your government.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Why are people giving up on free speech as an absolute in the U.S. and why hasn't it spread throughout the world? People have fought hard against the Christian right to earn free speech, and now people are looking to yield it to Islam? Why? They are bred of the same monster, you can't back down and pussy out just because some psychopath is threatening to bomb your newspaper. It's the silence of the people they threaten that is really curtailing free speech, the government doesn't have to make a law...people are being bullied into submission, and we can't keep doing this and expecting our society of ideas to flourish. The free speech allowed around Nazism and other terrible ideas in the U.S. have never brought about Nazism in the U.S. Free speech is a deterrent of these ideas, if your idea is so bad then society will shame it. It takes time...I 100% support absolute free speech, unless the person is found to actually be plotting harm or death, it should be protected. There are other curtails that make sense like blackmailing, etc, but near limitless free speech is what American culture is all about. We bitch about the FCC bleeping and censoring a bunch of nonsense, but are all to willing to let a bunch of people overseas dictate what we can say or do. Fuck them, they're the ones being intolerant, if they are being portrayed as a violent group...and in retaliations they are a violent group then they are hurting their own cause. Islam needs a Ghandi moment, resistance through peace. Radical Islam is Islam's biggest problem right now, and they need to stand up to them. The U.S. foreign policy does breed some terrorists out for revenge, but generally if one side would stop retaliating and the community would stand up to their nutroots, a more peaceable society could be founded. Free speech has nothing to do with it.
I agree with OP's principle but am still willing to make some special allowance for Germany. If any circumstance can be called justifying to say that some things shall not be discussed, it's probably theirs.
If any circumstances can be called justifying to say that some things shall not be discussed, then all censorship can be justified eventually; it's just a matter of organizing a sufficient majority of voters/protesters/terrorists.
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
Heinlein became a grade A fascist. I prefer Asimov, who kept his senses and his fundamental decency.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Religions are naturally hateful. The violence of islam is hate, pure and simple. The other faiths are infected too, but islam is acting out especially harshly.
The only way to remove the intolerance inherent in religion is to remove the existence of religion.
Is the Minister referring the the Muslims' hatred of us, our our hatred of them? I truly don't care what they think and will continue to speak my mind. They have said that they want to kill all of us many times. That's why this is an anonymous post....
If you're prepared to shoot someone over a perceived insult, you are too irresponsible to own a gun. And I say that as a gun-owning, conservative, free-speech advocate.
Anyone who owns and carries a firearm has a responsibility to demonstrate iron-clad self-discipline and sound judgment. Shooting people over insults? Not sound judgement.
Yes, you must tolerate hatred. Because you also hate. If you are going to silence one person's hatred while defending your own, then you hardly have the moral high ground.
Rather than silencing opinions (misconstrued or otherwise), you ought to remove the reason for that "hatred", otherwise it will only beget more of it.
Worst of all is exalting someone's inane opinion to consider it as hate speech. That is the tactic of the coward who is unwilling to change themselves, and wants the rest of the world to change instead.
I wish liberals understand that if they have retain the right to insult me, I am retaining the right to respond in a manner suitable for a man.
I retain the right to giggle and roll around on the ground laughing my ass off at you. You'd pull a gun for an insult? I'd laugh in their face at their ignorance.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
spoken like an anonymous coward.
FTFY.
No, thinking you have the right to commit violence on another person over words you don't like makes you an idiot, and a savage...
I find the Abrahamic religions, all of them, offensive. Emotional blackmail should not be used as a legitimate method of propagation.
So using the religious/world leaders own logic, we can also restrict religious speech as well.
Actually I find that to be an all around win.
I hope you see where this is going. Too many "things" would go unchecked without free speech. Of course no fanatic religious group would want critisism. What better way to get rid of it than to squash free speech because it is hate speech or because it is offensive to someone.
Obviously in some christan circles, there were unwritten rules that you could abuse little boys and people would look the other way. If people would not have spoken up and raised awareness, this would have happened unchecked for much longer. Is that hete speech to talk about it? Should that information have been repressed? People damn sure tried in the name of the church.
Here is where I see this going, people want to limit free speech related to groups that use voilence to fight back when they are offended. Maybe Scientology should start getting voilent with the volcel opposition and then claim they were offended.
Freedom ends on the day that people are no longer willing to fight and die to defend it. The Islamists are willing to kill to suppress our freedoms. The only question for us is what will we do to protect them? If the answer is "not much" then we may yet witness the deaths of many freedoms that our fathers and grandfathers fought and died to preserve. We should stand up to these Islamists as we did with Fascists and the Communists before them, persuading where possible and killing when necessary to protect the freedoms that we all hold dear.
SCOTUS says a lot of things, I would wager less than half of their decisions follow the letter of the law (IE how they are supposed to rule), and even fewer follow the spirit of the law.
So how to limit the religions when their doctrines directly contradict another? Atheism is NO gods, Christianity that the Jewish Messiah already came, and Islam that Jesus was an ordinary man. All 3 of these could be considered blasphemy to the other 2.
Did you even read up on of the stuff you posted?
You did not. All but the last one were overturned, and many of the victims were awarded money. The last link was for protesters, who weren't arrested for speaking poorly about Bush, but for breaking the laws regarding the actions that protesters can take.
Freedom of speech is still working in the USA.
> Most people fighting against issue X, Y, Z have no morals at all. Emphasize most... /sarcasm Right, How _dare_ people stand up for an issue that they believe in!
Oh wait, this is a person who thinks life has no value and thus justifies it is moral to kill a human simply because it is inconvenient.
After you die you will realize the fallacy of your ignorance and see how ALL life has a divine purpose.
Not only can freedom to provoke and humiliate others' values and beliefs be protected, I'll raise it one notch and affirm it *must* be protected, for the sake of mankind's mind health.
I'm constantly amazed to see so many "famous" or "influent" people devise that being famous or influent implies, somehow, that they more than anyone else should not tread onto other people's convictions, offend or openly criticize the many widespread values and beliefs held all over the world. Quite the opposite, I would have thought the more people lend an ear to you, the higher your moral duty to voice out your mind and dish out demolition of common reality-walls, for the sake of human thought.
At every level of being, opinions and decisions are formed through constant dissent, even down to the individual neuron's level, war of words and contradicting thoughts stamping each other out, fighting again and again with reason, passion, humor, eck even contempt or guilt, all this for a flimsy supremacy: this is how our minds work. Dissent is our natural mode of operation. And as a corollary, political correctness, by suppressing initiative and blunting internal dissent so as not to confront other people's own thoughts is a double mistake: it throws a wrench into your own gears of thinking, and leaves your fellow humans wading in what you earnestly believe is wrong - not a nice thing to do, when you think about it. This is what mankind has been doing so intently as of late, and it needs to stop (bashing itself on the mind so hard).
Maybe we deserve this world ?
There's plenty of off-color humor on TV and in movies and even advertising. I choose not to watch those types of television. If enough people stop watching, that stuff will go away. If people keep watching it, then I guess there's a market for it. I'm not going to waste my time trying to get people to stop watching this stuff, else I'm inviting people to ask me to stop watching stuff that *they* don't agree with. Who am I to say? Personally, I'd rather try and be a good example than tell people what I think they should and shouldn't be doing. Heck, even in my own lifetime what I think is 'good' or 'bad' changes with new experiences, insights, feedback, etc.
Heinlein was never a fascist. It's an accusation that keeps getting thrown out occasionally by the same people who claim that libertarianism is fascist because they don't want to actually examine their own preferences for various forms of strong government.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
There is only one sensible reaction to this violent reaction and it is to stand up and say, "You have no right to commit acts of violence in defense of religion", then arrest those who are committing acts of violence and try them. That is it. There should be no discussion whatsoever of "maybe we should say nicer things". Absolute bullshit.
I refuse to stop calling religious people crazy just because they decide to express their craziness with violence.
If you believe in things that are not real and communicate with people who don't exist then you are fucking crazy and no amount of violent reaction is going to make you less crazy -- quite the opposite actually.
But you know what, I'm not unreasonable. How about we compromise? You can curtail my right to say negative things about religion if the right of theists to say positive things about religion is equally curtailed. That way, only bland, nuetral statements could ever be spoken about religion. Deal?
And why not go further? Why not make it the same way for sports teams? After all, we don't want a bunch of soccer riots breaking out. And don't forget language and accents, so intrinsically tied to a people's culture, we wouldn't want to start a fight over insulting the way someone speaks. And certainly you would never make fun of one culture's form of artistic expression so be sure to give no empassioned review or critique of a play, movie, book, opera, or performance of any kind. In fact, don't even tell someone that their hair looks messy because that could be a grave insult in their particular culture.
Those didn't originate with Bush. The phrase is strongly associated with campus speech codes.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
It's not true that money is speech. It is true that restricting you abitily to purchase air time to make speech is a restriction on speech though.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
...Fuck the U.N. The United States should have pulled out of that shit bag organization a long time ago! We need to slam the door in their faces bolt it shut and never look back. I'll keep my individualism thank you very much! Oh and all you Muslims that were offended by that video well you can suck it! I don't necessarily agree with everything that was said in the video but it was his constitutional right to be able to spew his craziness all he wants! Oh and have a nice day. :P
it should be a polarizing issue
I find this attitude to be unsettling. The fact that abortion and 'gay rights' happen to be polarizing issues is one of the problems with the American political system. Of course, if the U.S. had more than two parties with clout then this effect probably wouldn't be so damaging. I find it very troubling that an anti-abortion Catholic who believes in a more liberal form of distributive justice would vote Republican because somehow they prioritize the abortion issue above economic issues. Likewise, it angers me to see a homosexual who believes in a more libertarian form of distributive justice vote Democrat because he prioritizes gay marriage over economic issues.
Very rare is there an issue important enough to prioritize over the fundamental economic policies of a candidate. This appeal to morality is usually done by those who have a shaky, at best, understanding of ethics. Distributive justice is an moral issue. It trumps almost any other issue including free speech, which changes from generation to generation depending on how certain judges decide to interpret the U.S. Constitution, but is never wholly endangered. The freedom of speech in the U.S. was enacted by a bunch of cutthroat politicians who libeled one another in publications (often under pseudonyms), slandered one another on the floor of congress, and in general sought to defame one another through lies and rumors. Is it any wonder that the democratic countries that came about after the U.S. were hesitant to have such a broad protection of speech and that none of them do?
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Starship Troopers was Heinlein's Dianetics. He may have been a Libertarian at one point, but he became much worse than that (and Libertarianism is bad enough).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If you think that using a gun makes you a man, you're a very small man indeed.
My wife has and uses one. She has remained female. I think your premise of gender-bending fire arms is flawed.
The right to be offensive is also the right to be a Puritan [among Anglicans].
FTFY, for historical accuracy.
In the face of the violence that frequently results from anti-religious expression, some world leaders seem to be losing their patience with free speech.
No, they don't like trash talk about themselves, because they are amoral, petulant hyper-narcissists, and they see the religion angle as a way to snuff out criticism of themselves.
In addition to the Free Speech Zones on federally-funded college campuses? If you have an alternative opinion than the pro-gay, pro-abortion, pro-promiscuous socialist agenda watch out!
Would you feel the same way if the courts applied 'money is speech' to being able to make contributions to the pirate bay or wikileaks?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
you totally missed the point
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Free speech does not support hate speech. Anyone mocking Islam spreading hate and is a racist.
A Korean general serving in the U.N. is "the western world?"
Oh, good argument. You win. I hereby convert to Islam because we sided with Russia in WWII against the greater evil.
“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.”
-- Robert E. Howard
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
We all know of the dividing line for free speech where you maybe don't allow people to yell "fire" in a crowded theater because it causes panic and someone might get hurt.
Well, if people weren't stupid, they wouldn't panic, and this situation wouldn't arise, right? You could yell "fire" in every crowded theater in the country and people would simply stand up and file out in an orderly fashion and then get annoyed that their movie was interrupted.
But that's not how people work, even in a highly civilized and educated country, so we use the law to help accommodate the ignorant behavior people are prone to.
No one seems willing to admit that maybe there's a corollary here. We know full well that some ignorant people will do bad things when you yell "Allah rapes babies in the name of Muhammad" and put it all over the internet. Does that mean people shouldn't be allowed to do so?
I don't know. It's a slippery slope. But maybe even free speech purists like myself need to look at the fact that we don't live in a perfect world where everyone can be expected to behave rationally, and we need to make adjustments for that fact.
So what you are saying is your a thin-skinned weenie with a tiny dick. Woooooeeeee you're such a MAN by making threats og shooting people on the Internet.
They were far away from being really that much religious. In fact there is a lot of evidence that America was a nation funded by deist, and not by christian.
The only speech that should be curtailed is lying. Religions are the bloated carcass of a cult started by someone lying that they spoke to god in order to get others to serve them.
In me, anyway.
I'm a live and let live kind of guy, and I don't care what imaginary phantasms people want to worship. It doesn't affect me, doesn't harm me, and is often mildly amusing.
However, when these people promote legislation that forces me to adhere to any aspect of their delusions, including telling me what I can or cannot say about them, my tolerance comes to and end.
So much hatred towards Islamist jihadists in these comments. They are exercising THEIR right to free speech. Good for them.
Please re-direct you hatred to the U.N.! The Secretary of the UN is telling Americans to shut up! Where are the protests in front of the UN? Why do we still allow them to have their HQ in the USA? Why are we paying them dues money? Down with the UN!!!
You're not fooling anyone with the tough talk, geek.
That the GGP waves his gun around as a way to feel better about his microcock? No, I think we all caught that.
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
--B Franklin
I don't agree at all that Germany should get some kind of special censorship allowance. I've long thought that their laws in this respect were beyond the pale.
Not judging the specific "Free Speech Zones" you speak about, but in general I think the government can regulate, within limits, the manner, place and time of speech.
Otherwise I could go to your street at 3 AM and express my political views with a megaphone.
Or I could put an outdoor in front of a public playground, featuring a woman having sex with a goat.
Florida disagrees
First, the content of this post isn't interesting as it's been upvoted.
Second, 'sand ninjas' is racist - it's a derivative of the pejorative 'sand niggers.'
Third, imagining how awesome it would be to have a world conflict more bloody than any in history just b/c the U.S. would win and people we disagree with would die in the millions is just immature. Yeah, genocide would be so fucking awesome, wouldn't it? That would show everyone how much better we are!
I can't believe three people stupid enough to upvote this post got mod points. Grow the fuck up.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Damn, I didn't know that the Unabomber's cabin just got internet access.
And that's limited to Muslim extremism in what way exactly? How are they even more laughable and pitiful than the dimwits that seriously claim the world's some 6,000 years old and that Adam and Eve frolicked amongst dinosaurs under the watchful eye of a bearded guy on a fluffy cloud who first of all created the universe in less than a week?
You really think the virgin thing is supposed to cause a bigger giggle fit in me than that bull?
Religious extremism is a disease. In all its forms. Don't get me wrong, if you want to live in a makebelieve world, by all means, be free to do it. Just keep it away from impressionable children and most of all out of laws that may affect me. I prefer education and legal system to be rooted in reality.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Do you have any evidence of this great racism in America, or you were just throwing accusations around?
That goes towards hate speech towards Christians too; I see an awful lot of bigoted comments about Christians and religion in general on Slashdot and most of it is blatant and incorrect stereotypes and could be considered hate speech.
Okay, so what is next? You question authority and you are fined or worse jailed? Listen, freedom of speech is fundamental to the tolerance that is required. As a global community we are never, or at least for the time period most of us, our children and their children are around, going to agree on everything, share *exact* beliefs, or practice the same religious exercises. That's one of the key elements of the American notion of the separation of church and state. I have to say I saw something like this comining since the social notion of Zero Tolerance came about here in the States. In order for things to function correctly you have to allow for a degree of disorder, chaos, mistakes or summed up: TOLERANCE. We are certainly all imprefect and to claim otherwise is simply wrong. I respect my neighbor just as long as they respect me no matter where they come from, what they believe, or what they practice. Further I have a right to disagree, not associate, and not accept any one else's imposition on my structure. In other words, mind your own business. It has worked here for a long time and will continue just as long as we, collectively, refuse to acquiesce.
After you die you will realize...
imaginary friends, imaginary friends! come out, come out, wherever you are.
this is about as funny as the phrase 'waking up, dead'.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I think I understand what Libertarianism is all about.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I find it funny that your post has been labeled as a troll and misunderstood in its meaning.
In general, all face-to-face meetings in the south (coming from an Alabama background family) are very civil. They are a community and family based society. There is a reason why the idea of a Southern Gentile or Southern Bell are well known even today. The South is a community and they treat their neighbors as such, at least culturally. This does not include outliers or the people immigrating to these areas because they are so peaceful, of which changes the community and makes my grandparents complain in ever colorful language. Talking historical context here.
One of the key reasons for this is that each family did have a gun or some sort of arm and if not them a friend of the family does. There was a balance between everyone and everyone knew that if they did something reprehensible to another family, there would be trouble. The most extreme cases of this turned into something like the Hatfields and McCoys.
The most simple terms for this is, "If you give a threat, you need to back it up. If you are a threat, prepare for consequences."
If you want the right to criticize religion, then, to be consistent, you should be fighting against the "hate speech" bills that intend to "criminalize homophobia" around the world.
If you defend free speech, do it consistently.
Tune your crystal ball, it shows the present, not the future.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
He didn't say that. I don't believe in a God either, but you don't have to believe in a higher power "being" to realize that you are basically insignificant when it comes to the workings of the Universe, your galaxy, the solar system, or even the planet you live on. You are basically insignificant; the only place where things are "all about you" is in your own head.
I personally look at religion as being a coping mechanism for people who need to feel as though there is something in control that can help them understand life. I don't have a problem with it, but when people use it to try and force their own values or ideas on others, it's annoying to say the least.
Indeed, there's an oddly fundamentalist note to setting up any political principle as an absolute.
It's a peculiar quality that the United States has of having, on one hand, an abundance of sacred absolutes (right to bear arms, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion; all wonderful things), but on the other hand living within a highly-militarized police state. I wonder if all this talk of sacred absolutes hasn't proven useful as a kind of smoke screen to let politicians and big business set themselves up with judicial and extrajudicial powers that quite effectively bypass these same absolutes.
There's nothing quite like the love of rhetoric for derailing reasonable discussion. Political absolutes make ideal fuel for rhetoric. It's much easier to reach for an absolute than it is to reflectively ask, "Oh, what is it about this particular situation that is problematic, and what shall we do about it?" If, in fact, we must learn to navigate through various shades of grey, then let's admit that and get on with the work. In Canada, for example, we have laws that restrict hate speech. They were written in response to a particular situation. They do not address absolutes. They're probably flawed, and we'll discover those flaws as we encounter edge cases. It's all a bit grey, but does that mean that Canada is thereby at risk of becoming a police state? Hardly. The main movement in Canada toward bigger prisons, harsher jail sentences, and less funding of science by government is coming from - guess who? - the fundamentalists.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
"See what you made me do?" --Every violent religious extremist ever offended by anything, anywhere
That's the part I don't get, how does a gun protect? Unless you happen to be able to hit the bullet the aggressor fires at you, it's not really a good item for defense.
Hint: Shooting someone is an offensive action.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ok, so these Muslim nations want the Internet to be free of anything that criticizes Islam. Does this mean they're willing to take down anything that criticizes Judaism or Christianity? Somehow, I doubt their radical groups will scrub their websites of calls for "driving the Jews into the sea."
There is no fundamental right to not be offended. When it comes to religion, I can guarantee that I completely disagree with probably about 95% of the people posting here (and this is just a self-selected group of geeks with similar interests). The difference is that 95% of the people here will discuss matters rationally. I'll give my viewpoint, they'll give theirs, and at some point we'll accept that we have differing opinions. At this point, we go our separate ways peacefully. Very rarely will someone respond to a differing opinion with a horrible insult. Those are easily ignored (and/or moderated down by the 95% that respect civil discussions of matters).
It is completely possible to calmly discuss issues with someone you disagree with without resorting to shouting, name-calling, or threats. Sadly, too many people (in politics or certain religious communities) see any differing opinion as a direct assault on their own opinion. The fact that someone disagrees with them seems to cast doubt on the "fact" that they are right and their response is to lash out and attempt to silence the dissenter.
If you don't agree with someone and don't want to engage them in debate, ignore them or organize some sort of counter-protest. Others have mentioned the Westboro Baptist Church. I'd love to silence them, but they do have freedom of speech. The best means of "shutting them up" that I've seen are the counter-protests. Things like the ComicCon counter-protest with people dressed in costume displaying humorous signs or the Hell's Angels who go to WBC protests at funerals and form a human wall blocking them from being seen. It drowns out their message in a peaceful manner with another message. (Right to protest doesn't mean Right to be heard.)
If someone offends your religious sensibilities, go protest peacefully. I'll support you in that. But calling for them to be yanked off the Internet because they're offensive is going too far.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
"I may not agree with what you say, sir. But I will defend, to my death, your right to say it". Period. End of discussion.
Hope is for fools.
Not judging the specific "Free Speech Zones" you speak about, but in general I think the government can regulate, within limits, the manner, place and time of speech.
Otherwise I could go to your street at 3 AM and express my political views with a megaphone. Or I could put an outdoor in front of a public playground, featuring a woman having sex with a goat.
Well, this is a good point. So, can that apply to the Internet as a 'place'?
Error 404 - Sig Not Found
Ok.
with all due respect, I think your faith is stupid, ignorant and a disgrace to the growth of humanity. I respect the fact that you hold your particular faith, even if I think you're a moron for believing what you believe.
Your arrogant certainty knows no bounds. If there *did* turn out to be an afterlife I bet you'd be well punished for that.
Sorry Julia, but various groups, individuals, etc. Christians and other dignified religions have been tolerating religious hatred for decades, but we don't gang up and murder people or set buildings on fire because of it. All freedom loving people should not let people like you use the excuse of "religious hatred" to destroy free speech.
That depends on whether or not those words activate robo, laser-eyed attack dogs.
When did we get a right to not be offended in the US?
Fuck Islam. Allah is a myth, and those who follow that misogynistic, hateful religion which supports conversion by the sword deserves all the discrimination and hatred they get in return.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Instead of spending money on limiting free speech - let's encourage countries to EDUCATE their citizens. We shouldn't have to moderate everything and anything for fear of inciting violence among the uneducated. Many of these uneducated violent scum are from countries which are very wealthy but don't provide basic, open access to information and education. Therein lies the problem.
. Have you ever died? How did that go? No? Then what the hell are you talking about??
You make a terrible assumption too, inconvenience is not the only possibility. There are real life barriers that prevent some individuals from being able to provide any sort of environment for the child. How moral is it to bring that same human being into a life of neglect and dysfunction? Funny how the irresponsible parenting cycle happens most often to children brought up that way to begin with. Generation upon generation of dysfunction and suffering (which can lead to crimes against people far worse than in your imagination).
It's not a black and white issue. It will never be a black and white issue. It doesn't matter how much you think it is a black and white issue, it's not. And that's why you never get anywhere with your argument. It's not just the forest, it's the trees too.
What AC said, but not anonymously.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
Or, indeed, even shoot me dead, YOU would be arrested for a much harsher crime than merely "inciting violence". There is milder lawbreaking if you get me arrested for trying to get you to assault me than if they wait until you assault me then arrest YOU.
Also look at how many people here complain about the Imams saying that the video should be banned.
Apparently they are not allowed to ask that.
Some free speech is freeer than other free speech.
What a lame copout you fucking pussy.
Don't outrage the fucktard Muslims who wake up everyday thinking of someone new to set on fire, rape murder, and pillage. Don't kill us and we'll appreciate the fuck out of Sharia.
Sadly, yes. If you give into people who believe that something such as 'blasphemy' exists, very soon their stated adversaries will make use of the same laws to silence them. Imagine how many religions would fall apart if they couldn't criticize other religions?
I am John Hurt.
I like this part of the culture. I wish liberals understand that if they have retain the right to insult me, I am retaining the right to respond in a manner suitable for a man.
In a manner suitable for a child perhaps. As long as the only activities have been speaking, then responding with violence paints the violent person as an ogre, not as a gentleman. Now, that is not to be confused with both parties recognizing that they wish to have it out and agreeing to a bout of fisticuffs (probably illegal but not necessarily immoral). Or in another situation, if for example, a guest is being rude and has been asked by the host to leave but refuses to do so, then violence can be used to forcibly remove a person from the premises. But make no mistake, in this case the violence is in response to an invasion of physical space, not in response to words.
In most cases, people have the option to be left alone by an offensive speaker by not listening, leaving the area, or if the speaker is being persistent enough to constitute harassment, involving the police. You need not be violent to avoid someone speaking to you.
Particularly in the case of YouTube videos, no one is making anyone else watch them. If you're offended by something that you sought out to view, especially knowing ahead of time what the content was, it's your own damn fault.
Responding to words with fists is childish.
Responding to physical danger with physical action is rational.
Yes, fuck all religious extremists, but the Islamists are the most widespread so they get the ire today.
and that if you believe that a god does exist you are deluded, and your skills at using your brain properly are in question.
is that classified as religious hatred?
In other words, can speaking the truth be rightfully equated with religious hatred ?
I am not so much hating you if you are in that believing position as saying why don't you wake up from your crazy dream.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
If you don't want to hear it don't listen
If you don't want to read it don't read it
One mans opinion is just that One Man's opinion, some agree with it, some don't
Religion is man made. Humans wrote the based on people that were perceived to be something special.
It seems to me that in the last 30 years, people have become so overly sensitive to words that they don't like the sound of that tempers are flaring feverishly.
For instance, if you were born in the USA, you're an American, not Irish American, not African American. etc... If you claim two nations as your citizenship then those type of titles are reasonable. But if you're ancestors are Irish and you're born in the US you have one citizenship, American. For goodness sake stop complaining Political correctness.
When it comes time to religious beliefs, tolerance is gone. Almost every religion believes in one-god, thus with that very line of thought there is NO Tolerance for any belief other than your own. This level of stupidity just makes me laugh at all religions that teach narrow-mindedness. Religion is a way of thinking and following a moral standard, but it forces conformity in humans.
The beauty about people is that we are all so very different. Why, can't people accept this fact and move on? If your religion teaches you that we have the freedom to choose our path, then stop complaining that we didn't follow your path. And if your religion teaches you "it's God's will" then you're a drone and you have no right to judge anyone or speak out against anyone else, for it's "God's Will" that someone else is not on your same religious path.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
...that their favorite deity is all powerful. That he would sort it out once the bad guy is dead. But noooo, the deity is not powerful enough. He needs this puny follower to do it. If only they really believed their deity was all powerful, they could rest assured that justice would be done in the end.
What religion needs to be defended? Only very weak ones, I can only assume. One without a real god behind it, otherwise they'd pray the desired results into reality instead of having to pick up a gun.
Bert
There's rather a huge difference between hate speech and parody or satire. It's one thing to say "my FSM can beat the crap out of your Jesus-Dad," and another to say "I want all the Jesus-lovers to die die die."
The other problem is that many, if not all, religious sects react to reality as a personal affront to their entire way of life. I certainly hope Ms. Prime Minister is not suggesting that saying "All Muslims are just plain wrong, because there is no Prophet or God" constitutes hate speech. Note that not matter what you call it, that sentence can get you put to death in some countries. Here in the USA, saying the same thing about the wrong (right?) version of monotheism will ensure you're never elected president, but you're unlikely to be jailed over it. So far, anyway.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Of course you do.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Anti-theists accuse religious people of feeling superior to others because they believe in the right religion.
Then they add: "actually, WE are superior*, because we have the correct materialist belief".
Hypocrisy.
* In Dawkins' own words atheists are "brighter" than theists.
** If you want to reply to point out that "not all atheists are greedy", think again. "Materialist" here is about philosophy, not attachment to money.
> why would it work with Islamofascist scum?
Don't be too quick to say that. After generations of violence in the Philippines the Muslims were recently granted an autonomous region of their own. In another generation, the bombings and murders in the Philippines will start up again, for more territory. Perhaps the U.S. Catholics could bomb and murder to get Massachusetts under a Sharia-equivalent system, or perhaps the Mormons in Utah, or Scientologists in Hollywood?
Our tolerance must never extend to tolerating religions hatreds. Any version of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddism, Atheism, Animism, Shamanism, or any other damned ism that says "You may/must kill / mutilate / subjugate " ANYTHING should not be tolerated. At that point the whole thing is just a disease that needs stamped out.
They have the tiny slice that the governments allow. If you're American, try blabbing classified secrets. On the more ridiculous side, see how far you get reciting passages from "Fifty Shades of Grey" in a classroom of grade 7 studies. Maybe engage in some hate speech. How about slander and libel? Basically, whatever the government is comfortable with you having, you can have.
Or, put more succinctly, you pay for your rights with blood.
If that someone else has shot first, or is even waving a gun threateningly at you, then it is a defensive action.
You can't seriously be that stupid. If someone breaks into your house and is threatening you with a gun, and you shoot him, that's a gun protecting you. And there's a million other examples of a gun protecting you.
Or what if you happen to shoot the asshole that's shooting at you stopping the bullets from coming out of his gun. You logic is so bad it makes me wonder how you even dress yourself in the morning.
Didn't stop the South getting its ass creamed by the Union. Your talk is cheap.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Let's be frank, some culture (not race) mainly religious zealots are offended for everything and for some COUgh..Muslim, cough cough, this is taken to a level that is incredibly crazy, we cannot tolerate this because they have - infinity tolerance about anything elses or said about them.
So i say F them, F all religions
>
I like this part of the culture. I wish liberals understand that if they have retain the right to insult me, I am retaining the right to respond in a manner suitable for a man.
The right to carry a gun is based in the right to self defense, not enforcing manners. If someone insults you, the proper response from an adult is verbal. A child resorts to violence when they get upset, not a man.
I fully support the right to carry a gun, but with that right goes the responsibility to use it properly. Immature people who think holding a weapon makes them a man, or who have such tiny egos that they can't withstand an occasional hit to it, need to grow up.
BTW, "geek" isn't an insult anymore...
No, they consider themselves enlightened because they believe in the scientific process and only believe in things that have at least a small amount of evidence to back them up.
I believe in many things greater than myself, society is greater than I am, as is nature, the universe is positively amazing. All of these are much greater than myself, and all of them are real. None of these are based soley on "someone said so and I've been told not to question them"
Much as I hate to defend the idiot, consider this:
Would you be man enough to say exactly those words with a gun pointed at you?
Claim what you like, but I'm willing to wager that all too many folks in here would not.
What Heinlien and the OP are saying is that if the Muslims who are offended went after the creator the film, and he was armed they would both consider being more polite. What the Muslims are doing is attacking and killing random people for what amounts to no fucking reason.
21st Century Renaissance Man
... or he's holding an extraordinarily large gun and standing further back than you think.
While I doubt any pro-lifer would want a baby to die of malnutrition, we tend not to see them marching with signs in the street to that effect, and they're happy to vote for politicians that cut healthcare and education spending in favor of nominal pro-life policies (while suspiciously never actually achieving them).
Pro-lifers seem believe that the state's tolerance of abortion falls morally upon everyone in the state, and if they take no act to stop it, then they are as guilty as the doctors -- this plays into the various evangelical narrative tropes of the "sick society" or "corrupt world" that tempts judgement and requires "rescuing."
However, you don't meet many pro-lifers who believe their moral obligation to heal the sick of feed the hungry extends to getting laws passed or protesting on the steps of the Supreme Court. For some reason, whenever it comes to a social issue that codes as "left wing" from a 1950s perspective, the Pray Brigade seems to forget where they put their marching shoes.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
What the hell is suitable for a man? Since when does "being a man" imply being a stupid hulking mindless asshole? Also, you're implying that women have fewer protections than men.
It never caught up in US either until Colt retired as a peacemaker.
American culture remains largely a culture of cowboys: decency of speech is based on the threat of violence if you spoke offensively. That's why Texans are still very polite.
I like this part of the culture. I wish liberals understand that if they have retain the right to insult me, I am retaining the right to respond in a manner suitable for a man.
I think you're missing something. It is an important part of American culture to say "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me". When a man is insulted, he brushes it off as something that he, as a man, can endure like water off a duck's back.
The right of a man to respond is reserved not for an insult to a man, but for an insult to the man's wife, girlfriend, or female relative. Legally I'm pretty sure there is no longer such a right, but to the extent that the culture recognizes a right to respond it is for defending a woman, not for a thin-skinned selfish retaliation.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Whose hurt by distributing kiddie porn? The act of creation I could see, but the movie itself? No. But then again, the mental anguish of the child so demeaned is bad. Indeed, the only reason why we have a statutory rape is because we insist that the person make informed consent, not possible by a physically adult human who is in an unequal power relationship.
And rape should be no worse than GBH. But then again, the mental problems by such assault and the fact that this is usually the result (again) of a non-informed consent in an unequal power relationship ensures that the crime is treated far harsher.
So in both cases, the fact that the mental anguish is likely a large part of the reason for the act is why it is deemed so illegal.
And hate speech is exactly the same deal.
If you don't know if a jury of your peers will agree what you said or did was not hate speech, maybe you should reconsider saying it.
Look at the US South and Bible Belt. Christian extremism doing pretty well, too.
As I recall from my study of the Old Testement: it said *very* hateful things about non-Jews (idoloters) and what should be done to them (usually some variation on "death").
I'm not as familiar with the Quran: but I suspect there's some similarly unflattering commentary on heretics and idoloters and the like.
I suppose my point is: If we disallow speech which is disrepectful of other religions; or hateful towards their practitioners: wouldn't we be outlawing the primary books of many of those religions? Isn't the Bible calling Muslims (non-Jews) idoloters worshipping false Gods as hateful as any of the speech we are considering here? Isn't the Quranic view of (say) Hindus equally insulting?
Of course the problem here is that your right not to be offended might prevent meaningful discourse..
Your right to be a jackass is just the right of being rude. Sure you can do it. But usually its anything but beneficial. We won't physically harm you for that (but some immature demographics will).
Obviously insults should never happen in a discussion between mature people. And its perfectly possible to discuss religion with *mature* people.
The problem is that certain societies and demographics have a serious lack of secularization and tolerance.
With any luck they might yet grow out of it eventually.
The word "libertarian" has been shot to hell. The general usage of it right now means nothing more than "Corporate Anarchism". Right now "libertarians" like Ron Paul believe in free reign for corporate groups and are fine with limiting of individual rights. Libertarians used to believe just the opposite.
And how many times did the free speech laws work as they're supposed to? Especially when compared to how many times they were challenged?
What? If it's not 100% perfect it's horribly broken? Hate to ruin your world view, but no system that involves people is perfect.
Wow. Sounds like extremist Muslims would feel right at home in Texas.
After all, they were insulted by the "Innocence of Muslims" movie and "responded in a manner suitable for a man" based on your post.
There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or 'fighting' words--those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.
Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942)
It has always been part of our legal tradition that there are words capable of causing "an immediate breach of the peace" and that violence is an acceptable response to those words.
Or, as one of my friends said, right before giving me a dead arm: This is why you don't troll people in real life.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I don't think any religion needs to be protected. It's all fiction, so why care?
You've never actually examined Ron Paul's beliefs, have you?
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
I think that people should have the legal right to create their own blogs are discuss any idea about philosophy, politics or religion.
Notice I said _idea_. Child pornography is not an idea. Incitement to murder is not an idea.
So, if someone wants to say "there was no Holocaust", he should have that right (and I have the right, and even the duty, to call him a lunatic).
But if someone says "Mr David Goldstein is a filthy Jew! He lives in Park Avenue 53, and he is alone on Saturdays. The man who kills him will be an Aryan hero!", then it should be censored.
I agree with almost all of what you have written, but you are assuming speech is censored to prevent people from getting their feelings hurt. In most western, non-US countries there is limited censorship but it is not there to protect people's feelings. There exists "hate speech" laws to prevent you from instilling anger and hate in others so they go out and commit physical acts of violence for you. These idiots are tools - blind fools who are easy to control. The "hate speech" laws are a way for government to take down the ones controlling these tools. But it is a slippery slope and not everyone agrees with where to draw the line.
cannot stand up to my sense of humor, He's not all-powerful, and if your faith is shaken by what I say, your beliefs were not very strong, either.
Mapkinase is a Muslim fundie for anyone who doesn't know. One time he forgot to post anon and wrote about how he wants the western world to adopt Sharia law.
"I prefer Asimov, who kept his senses and his fundamental decency."
While he was groping women at scifi cons? Go google "asimov sexual harrassment".
Get a grip. Asimov gets my vote for the king of scifi writers and a man who did wonderful things in entertainment and popularizing science, but he was human with good points and bad. All scifi writers are human beings with good points and bad. And a lot of them have some pretty far out political leanings both left and right.
Right, he only promoted fascist ideals in nearly all of his novels and essays, but he wasn't fascist.
He was a coward.
The only author both respected and acclaimed, to not be called out on this.
He never truly called himself a fascist, but promoted it's ideals until the day he died.
I'm sorry, but I can't buy that he wasn't a fascist....walks like it, talks like it, helps those that are it....yet never claims to be it himself due to the repercussions. Died in the wool right wing nutjob coward he was.
Ridley Scott can smooth over the details in his promotional show(Masters of Science Fiction) there all he wants, but he can't change the facts of it, no matter how sanitized for TV they are.
No one has ever before mistaken the framers of the US Constitution for fundamentalists. They considered these liberties to be the natural rights of man, not dependent upon any religious belief, and, yes, they considered those rights to be absolute. Fundamentalists, on the other hand, despise the philosophical naturalism from which the rights of man are derived; they consider such irreligious philosophy "secular humanism". Fundamentalists would gladly discard the Rights of Man in favor of the Law of God.
it's hard to believe, but since obama is in office, WND has indeed become even worse.
The fact of the matter is this. The rules Muslim claim to follow. They do not follow them self. So when extremist claim that the "west" has "insulted" them. It is nonsense. The fact is that this cases and many more are just excuses by extremist to invoke violence agents people they do want to subjugate.
Here are few examples of Muhammad pictures over the past few hundred years.
http://www.hf.uib.no/religion/popularikonografi/exhib02.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depictions_of_Muhammad
Doing what extremist wants is nothing but saying that they have won. As I free person I do not accept that from anyone. That being a religion, the state, corporation or the state.
Religion often is politics. When a religion has political power, be it via guns or lobbyists, it's in the political arena. It then can, and should, be criticized as severely as politicians are.
In much the same way that even fake surveillance cameras reduce crime.
The idea, (which is now completely broken in practice due to extreme imbalance of might) was that a government would be far less willing to give the public the finger, if the public could point a gun at the government, and remind them who really owns the country. Additionally, it was also intended that should a violent aggressor arrive in the country without warning or preparation, the public will have some means of defending itself. (organized militia, et. al.)
The fact that the US military has weapons that could completely annihilate the population in seconds, and that we track pretty much everyone without cause, makes both instances seem quaint.
Rather than make the government honest, it appears we have made our government paranoid.
You can't seriously be that stupid.
You can't seriously believe he isn't that stupid.
Small men NEED big guns. Big men can use their muscle. That's why the colt 45 was called the equalizer.
I thought he renounced his fascist views and became more of a libertarian some time after writing Starship Troopers?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Killing an attacker is always considered defensive action regardless of the weapon. Loud noises and the concept/threat of death can be a defense. Don't try be so clever with your word play.
American culture remains largely a culture of cowboys: decency of speech is based on the threat of violence if you spoke offensively. That's why Texans are still very polite.
I'll see your assertion, and raise you one anecdote.
If that someone else has shot first, or is even waving a gun threateningly at you, then it is a defensive action.
He's coming right for us!
* BLAM *
(thud)
Yeah, right.
It's called a heckler's veto - "when an acting party's right to freedom of speech is curtailed or restricted by the government in order to prevent a reacting party's behavior."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler's_veto
This is brilliantly stated. Thank you sir.
Or what if you happen to shoot the asshole that's shooting at you stopping the bullets from coming out of his gun. You logic is so bad it makes me wonder how you even dress yourself in the morning.
Thank you.
You can't fire a gun and hit another bullet in mid-air? You need more practice.
Bullshit. You are welcome to walk the street at any hour and talk about anything you want. However, once you use a bullhorn or even start shouting, then you've become a nuisance. This is not an issue about free speech. No one is stopping you from expressing your thoughts or opinions, however, you do not have the right to force your speech or expressions upon anyone else.
It's okay for these people to burn some colored cloth and pictures, and chant.
FIFY.
If you ever take a constitutional law class, you'll understand the limits to free speech, and your examples aren't outside any of them.
Speech that can incite panic (e.g., yelling fire in a crowded theater) and "fighting words" (i.e., direct, immediate threats of harm) are two examples of non-protected speech.
Yeah, right.
Not even close. They're not rioting, bombing, or trying to kill people in any significant numbers. They're not making school girls afraid to go to school.
Yeah, the US has weapons that could completely annihilate the population - because the Ruling Elite will love having their land nuked until it glows, right. Face it, the "US military might" myth has been debunked in Vietnam, Somalia and Afghanistan. Even in WW2 the US only had logistics and large-scale production on its side, after it everybody ended up adopting German military thought. Auftragstaktik? German. War of movement? German. Commando tactics? German (dating back to WW1). How exactly this all-powerful military giant got humbled on a September day of 11 years ago? When exactly were the Taliban destroyed? Heck, it couldn't even find all the Serbian armour in Kosovo. The US military is an excuse to buy expensive weaponry, and that's all. Sorry for the good guys and girls in uniform who truly believe and end up on the bad side of the stick, but that's the truth. All the US military might is worth for is to terrorize other industrialized nation into compliance, but it's not going to last long. Maybe they can still scare the EU, but that's about it.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
I'm sure he doesn't need the false manhood enhancement of a handgun to do it son.
And you still claim that it is acceptable?
No, thinking you have the right to commit violence on another person over words you don't like makes you an idiot, and a savage...
I don't know. Some guy with a knife saying "I'm going to gut you, then rape your wife and daughter."?
I wouldn't like those words.
And yeah, I'd do violence unto someone saying those things to me.
It's REALLY easy to lay out a generalization.
Where most people get into trouble is in dealing with the specifics.
This is one of the reason blanket "zero tolerance" type policies are so damned stupid.
Basically things like this relieve people of the obligation to be both involved and proactive. Then they can scoot by on minimal effort being reflexive and reactionary with all sorts of travesties taking place.
Case in point.
Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger, current Pope) was a member of the Hitler Youth.
This makes him evil right?
WRONG.
Membership in the Hitler Youth, in 1941, was compulsory. It was required by German law.
Little Joe had exactly ZERO say in it. He wasn't an enthusiastic member, and by all accounts, never attended meetings.
He was later conscripted, right out of seminary, as a child soldier by the German Army. And did he fight for them?
Nope. When the allies drew near his station, he took the opportunity to desert.
But nowadays, we live in the world of the sound byte and the thought-free "fact".
It's just easier for assorted mental defectives to regurgitate simple bullet points to support their idiocies, without having to actually think their way through various exceptions.
Never mind that SPECIFIC information can result in a complete change of context.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
There is one condition to free speech: Speak with respect.
Speaking with respect reduces all forms of hatefulness. You're less likely to make people angry and, consequently, make you less likely to be attacked by angry mobs.
Proper respect seems much the same in all cultures I'm familiar with. Given that's a fairly broad variety, it seems to me that respect is part of human nature, rather than just cultural. (Not to be confused with manners, though. Manners differ greatly between cultures.)
At least in the political sense.... Freedom does not mean "being allowed to do whatever one wants". Freedom means "absence of oppression/repression".
The ability to discuss and solve social problems is crucial for a society to grow and mature. A society that does not allow that is a repressive society.
Political correctness stifles our ability to speak freely, under the guise of being polite. And so, political correctness is a path to repression. Unfortunately, too many people don't know how to speak respectfully without limiting what they say with political correctness.
Also, there will always be those who enjoy antagonising others. The solution is not easy for some, as it involves self restraint. When no-one reacts to antagonising behaviour, then antagonising behaviour loses its shine.
To live freely, we need to be allowed to say whatever we feel needs saying. But we need to say it respectfully. And we need to accept what other people say, respectfully.
Modern American culture is a toilet.
Your assumption. Not what was said.
"Peopel never cease to [amaze/annoy/disappoint] me in that they STILL somehow believe that "goodness" can only come from religion. That's nonsense. But that's part of how religion build a false sense of trust which is *ALWAYS* exploited by leadership. Religion is yet another "team affiliation" which creates a sense of Us vs Them."
That is precisely why people feel that way about goodness, there is a moral and ethical standard by which to conduct our lives. You say those people never cease to amaze you bu "those" people feel that murder is always a bad thing whereas "your" people feel sometimes murder is okay.
A fact which I point out as often as I can to show people that none of those countries deserve to be treated any differently from any other tyranical regiemes, and certainly should, under no circumstances be considered our allies.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
ALL combat is potentially mortal. A man avoids unnecessary violence whenever possible.
Good-bye
Right, so speech provoking inherently intolerant people can't be tolerated. In other words, we have to let intolerant people dictate what is tolerable speech in our societies, throwing freedom of speech and freedom of expression out the window in order to appease them. And if we don't do this, apparently, the implicit consequence is that those intolerant people will have their precious feelings hurt, and will then incite violence around the globe.
I think I know what we really shouldn't be tolerating.
-- you go ahead and find one mention of "God" in the US Constitution... I'll wait.
Sigh. Unfortunately, we have gone through a 236-year-long exercise in Religious fanatical masturbation, with no end in sight.
During the constitutional convention, there were attempts to add Christianity to the Constitution's preamble, and they were all ignored/thrown out by the core architects (Franklin, Adams, and Madison).
During the first few decades of the new republic, several amendments were proposed to add the same; none made it out of Congress.
Eventually the religious zealots gave up and went home. Until the Civil War. Recognizing the war was a direct result of "God not being mentioned in the constitution" (yes, they actually believed that) attempts to amend the constitution to add Christianity were renewed, with the same result: epic failure.
Every couple of decades, we forget and try to do the same old thing again. As always, it fails. Thank dog.
Yeah, right.
To be fair, that is generally because they believe that legislative and governmental solutions to heal the sick and feed the poor tend not to work.
Technically, appeasement could have worked. The Nazis never wanted to invade England, or go to work with the USA. Remember, we never entered the war until Japan bombed us, and then we immediately turned around and... declared war on Germany.
I don't understand the war-monger mindset, today. On the cusp of WWII the entire world was burning around us, and we _still_ were iffy about going to war. Now some sickos shoot a poor girl halfway around the world and all of sudden people start talking war strategy. Let off the gas, guys. You think the world is fscked up today? This shit was happening 50 years ago. 100 years ago. None of this crap is new. What's new is the idea that the world is America's stomping ground, or that we're somehow at war with remnants of antiquity.
Why is speech the problem? Why aren't the people overreacting the problem?
or else!
Has everyone swallowed crazy pills again?
Religious people print and distribute books they consider non-fiction which contain all kinds of statements that would be considered hate-speech in any other context, up to and including explicit calls for murder of people for their beliefs, sexual identities or perfectly legal actions.
If that is your thing, fine with me, free speech and all - but you have NO right to whine about others saying bad things about you if your own track record is quite a bit worse.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I think you agreed with me, but we used different words.
If the government prohibits me from using a megaphone in a residential street at 3 AM, or distributing child porn, or mounting pornographic outdoors, or disrupting a speech, or unreasonably blocking traffic in an important avenue, I can still reasonably express my ideas.
You can call it "regulation of speech" or "restriction of nuisance" or whatever, the idea is the same.
Reading comprehension isn't your strong suit, is it kiddo?
You were saying?
Way to quote-mine Random People On The Internet, I mean, Wikipedia. Here's the next paragraph:
Yeah, right.
Yes, but libertarians can be fascists. As long as it is fascism brought to us by the free market, right? If the free market brings it to us it can't be wrong.
Your private property starts with your body, every part of it and the entire body itself, you inherit it from your parents, who produce it for you (thus the right to leave inheritance, as a consequence of the right to private property) and you provide for your body, which cannot exist without you working to maintain it in every way.
No, your property is whatever your parents decide you can have. They produced you after all.
Maybe your parents let you keep your body, but they didn't have to. Maybe they don't want to give you self determination. This is the case in many cultures and/or religions work: parents dictate what their children will do, from when they go to bed to who they can date. They pass on (read: brainwash) values onto their children which then gets passed on further, reinforcing the culture and/or religion.
It is only a freedom of speech if you tolerate speech that you do not agree with.
Free speech and free thinking offends the stupid !
Because they can do neither.
They can only repeat and yell easy sentences.
And 80% of humanity is stupid and still wanting to argue about it.
You learn nothing with your mouth open and your ears & minds closed.
If you don't like a movie on the internet, delete the bookmark and don't visit the web site.
download free music !
support open source hardware & software !
don't feed the lawyers, priests, and other warlords....
As an Austrian; thank you for bringing this up. People from other countries are often confused or concerned about this law, so I'd like to clear a few things up. The situation is very similar in Germany, but since I'm an Austrian, and you specifically mentioned the Irving trial, I'll concentrate on that.
The Verbotsgesetz is indeed an intentional limitation on free speech. As far as I know, this is the only major difference to what is considered free speech in the US, although we may be a bit stricter concerning incitement of popular hatred against ethnic groups. Both the Verbotsgesetz and the right to free speech are part of the Austrian constitution. To understand why we have this law, and why such an obvious limitation on what we can say or publish is tolerated by the people, you need to take a look at when and why the law was instated.
The first version became law on May 8, 1945 - the very day that WWII ended in Europe with the capitulation of the Wehrmacht. Its main and largest part deals with the process of "denazification," which was an acute necessity in order to resume normal life after the war. It was also mandated by the allied forces, who continued to occupy Austria for the next ten years. This part is now dead law, because the denazification is as complete as it's ever going to be, and also because there was an amnesty for former members of the NSDAP in 1957.
The second part of the law forbids the reformation of the NSDAP and certain organizations associated with it (like the SS, SA, etc). It also - and here's where the interesting part comes in - made national-socialist activities illegal. This includes any action which "denies, belittles, condones or tries to justify the Nazi genocide or other Nazi crimes against humanity".
I'm sure you will understand why such a law was considered necessary immediately after the war. So why didn't we repeal it later? The main reason for that was to send a strong public signal that this era is once and for all over. During the time of the Third Reich, there was a significant brain drain in Germany and Austria. Many of the most important scientific minds, as well as writers, artists, lawyers, doctors, etc, were Jewish and were forced to emigrate. It was of great importance to prove to those people that it was safe to return.
Which leaves the question: how long should this law, as a special case due to historic necessity, remain in force? This point is actually debated regularly, but unfortunately the only people who are publicly advocating to repeal it are from the extreme right. They're not at all concerned about freedom of speech in general, they just want to avoid fines and prison terms after their typical antisemitic tirades. As a result, they are consistently voted down. As for me.. as long as there are Holocaust survivors living in this country, I wouldn't want the law repealed. At some point in the future, it would probably be best to put it behind us and let the normal laws handle these cases.
By the way, this Innocence of Muslims video (idiotic as it is) would not have violated any Austrian law. There's no need to be afraid about speaking your mind in Austria, as long as you don't publicly deny or condone the Nazi war crimes. Irving knew that perfectly well. He knowingly violated the Verbotsgesetz multiple times, and as a result he had to spend 13 months in prison. It was a stupid thing to do, and it appears he has learned his lesson.
CJ
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
Yeah..sure takes the fun out of free speech...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Who is a fuck ton more of a man than you are to not hide behind a gun when he spoke his mind.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Only a (soon to be deceased) moron brings fists to a gunfight.
modup
I ignore them. The worst thing that you can do to a person that is trying to get a rise out of you is to ignore them.
Way back in college a friend suddenly shouted, "Stop smiling! I insulted you!" To this day, I have no idea what he said before that. I got his goat without even trying.
When someone is trying to insult you, you have to ask yourself this question: "Does this person's opinion really matter to me?" If you are secure in yourself, then most of the times the answer to that question is "No." The only time in the last twenty years when the answer was yes and I was hurt was from my now ex-wife.
Not being tolerant to the speech and opinions of others IS hateful to my religion.
People are being prosecuted in Europe for angering muslims.
Some of us have been acutely aware of the pressure of political correctness for a long, long time now. Espouse anything other than abject surrender of the border to immigrants and see how far you get before you're made a 'racist.' It's a few years and a couple unfortunate elections before they make it criminal.
The 'Innocence of Muslims' trailer had nothing to do with Benghazi. That was a fiction invented by the White House with help from the State Department to defuse the political consequences of the slaughter of inadequately protected US diplomats by Al Qaeda terrorists. The consequence of these lies were riots and deaths in multiple muslim nations around the world. They did serve the intended purpose however; supplying Western statist punditry with something to fault other than incompetent leadership.
Heinlein was never a fascist.
No, he certainly wasn't a fascist, but he certainly was some kind or other of extremist, probably libertarian, that made me want to take a shower after reading him. I like his writing style, I love his quips, his quotes and his 'bon mots'. But the underlying ideas are just plain dirty.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
This is one of the few points I agree with Scalia on. More speech is preferable to banning speech that you don't like.
He makes this argument in the context of "money is speech," however, and I don't go that far.
Money is the ultimate speech. That old quote “put your money where your mouth is” is very much applicable here. Politicians flap their lips all the time, but they spend other peoples money rather than their own. Talk is cheap!
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
Ahh, the bliss of ignorance. You do understand the social solutions to problems have existed very intentionally for thousands of years correct? Why would that be? Why would Socrates and Plato say those things are needed for a successful Republic?
The courts don't have time, nor is it possible to legislate social behavior all of the time. Society does have the time, and is the "normal". Does this mean that I advocate dueling or shooting someone when out of line socially? No, that would be illegal. But a punch in the mouth goes a long way in reminding someone about social behavior. And long ago, but not that long ago, courts would be extremely lenient on assault cases where a person was convicted of assaulting someone that spit on an old lady or cussed out a waitress that was not happy with their verbal sexual advances (and sometimes just toss out the case).
A fat lip goes a long way toward getting an apology and different behavior from someone acting out of the societal normal. It is not always the answer and should not be the "normal", but in some cases it's the best form of justice.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Remember the Christian Whackjobs who blew themselves to bits in the middle of a marketplace? What about the widespread rioting when the state helped finance a picture of their God in a jar of urine? How about when the mormons beheaded their prisoner on film and published it? Or when the judge allowed a man to violate the law by citing the Talmud?
Of course you don't. Just like you don't remember the soldier who shouted "Praise be to Jesus" as he gunned down a roomful of soldiers on an army base.
That's because abortion and gay rights are issues that amoral people use to make themselves look moral. That's why the same group of people are fine if the baby dies because of malnutrition or bad healthcare as long as it isn't aborted.
In other words, it's a bullshit issue. Most people fighting against gay rights and abortion actually have no morals at all. Emphasize most...
When a baby dies of malnutrition or bad health care, that is a result of external circumstances. Abortion however is premeditated, deliberate murder. Last time I looked, murder was immoral as well as illegal. Homosexual behavior and abortion are both legal, but also are both immoral.
It has been a while but IIRC, JA bombed the US, JA declared war on US, US declares war on JA, DE is JA ally and declares war on US, US declares war on DE, US adopts the Europe first policy.
Those people talking in the UN about censoring freedom of speech should read this:
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml
what the world needs is common sense and a sense of humour
I'm in no way condoning being hurtful towards others. But, if you don't agree with something then don't watch, read or listen to it. I hate when people are sensitive to something then they turn right around and purposefully seek out that material to fuel their rage. Anyone who reacts violently to what someone else says should look deep inside and realize the offender did not cause you to be upset or react. We are in charge of how we react to stimuli.
Technically, appeasement could have worked. The Nazis never wanted to invade England, or go to work with the USA. Remember, we never entered the war until Japan bombed us, and then we immediately turned around and... declared war on Germany.
FWIW, I believe Germany actually declared war against the US first, although I doubt the order really made much difference in the scheme of things.
And otherwise spot on. If anything there is less war and violence now than 100 years ago. While there are plenty of things for the world to work on, we can turn down the rhetoric on being 'worst' or 'best' or end-of-theworld or whatever.
Of course the problem here is that your right not to be offended might prevent meaningful discourse. If you try to ban what is basically just blasphemy, then you eventually eliminate any meaningful discussion of religious doctrine.
Yup. Historically speaking...Christianity was considered a dangerous, blasphemous offshoot of Judaism. Islam was considered a dangerous, blasphemous offshoot of Judaism/Christianity. Shia Islam was considered a dangerous, blasphemous offshoot mainstream Islam. Protestantism was considered a dangerous, blasphemous offshoot mainstream Catholicism. The list goes on and on.
Who gets to decide which dangerous blasphemies are okay today? Furthermore, the squeaky wheels getting the oil seems like it will get us ever more squeaky wheels, not fewer.
If one is easily offended, that is just fine: but do not read or watch anything that has not be vetted by a trusted source. Problem solved.
Finish the logic. Ability to purchase air time is what, if not money?
As long as the goat isn't a kid
Their laws were largely dictated to them by the winners occupying their country post-WW2.
What do a non-jewish person and a phone company have to do with anything?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What filth slashdot has degraded too.
It's a well established fact that this was merely an excuse. This was really a planned attack on 9/11. No one bothered to notice a 3-month old video hardly anyone has heard of, someone randomly incited violence on 9/11. What bullshit.
Really, does anyone fall for this?
Man I hope the feds have an eye on you. They don't slack when it comes to Muslim extremists, I'm sure they do.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Speech can really be abusive, so people naturally think that the government should take steps to prevent that abuse. The problem is actually the way people think of government. People don't feel it's their responsibility to deal with abusive speech, the same way people think the government should protect them from violent criminals. In reality, the government can protect you from neither, but giving up power to them diminishes your personal sovereignty all the same.
I wonder if it has dawned on any one that religious intolerance is more than just people speaking badly of ones religious views. Religious intolerance also includes forcing others to abide by your views and/or attacking others who do not share your views. In short, all parties to the "Innocence of Muslims" debacle are guilty in fact of religious intolerance. Certainly it's a fools task to deliberately provoke extremists, there can be no others words to describe the extremists reaction than religious intolerance.
Free speech is based on the threat of violence indeed. You know NOTHING about modern American culture. Nothing.
Define "American" culture.
In the South, um....actually, yes, the politeness is due to the threat of violence. I'm from north Alabama and in my culture you don't run your mouth to people and act like a complete asshole (for long) because you will get popped in the mouth sooner or later. I have been to other parts of the country (living in Michigan now) and I've seen and heard things go down as commonplace that would have somebody outright get the shit kicked out of them if they said it to somebody where I'm from.
I recently read a book whose name and author escapes me but it actually explained this phenomenon quite well. It described how my part of the country was mostly settled by Scots (I'm about half-Scot myself) who are largely a herding culture, which the theory indicates vary from agricultural cultures in significant ways.
There was a study conducted which analyzed how southerners and northerners responded to insults, and aggravating/annoying people, etc. Basically they found that northerners are quick to make a wisecrack to the annoying person or to roll their eyes, etc. When insulted they tend to shrug it off or deflect it, not showing outward signs of stress and not acting aggressively, but in reality the insult did add to their stress levels.
Southerners on the other hand were very polite up to a point, in both words and manner, but then at a certain point when somebody pushed the line too far, they would just snap and go off on somebody, which actually reduced their stress. When insulted, the study found they tended to act more aggressively and be more confrontational, in subtle ways even like body language and mannerisms. All of this totally jives with my own experience and observations, both of my own feelings and how I've observed others of my culture acting.
So the theory is, in herding cultures the different clans will sometimes attack and steal other's animals property, or commit other acts against them, and when insulted in such a way it's important to show a strong response, otherwise it marks one as weak and likely to be victimized further. The side effect of this mentality is people tend to be a lot more polite in general, more respectful in how they address other, etc.
There are some things you see in other parts of the country that just don't happen back home, and things back home you'd never see anywhere else, like how complete strangers will wave at you when you pass them on the highway. In my town you can leave your car unlocked in a parking lot all day, or all week even, and nobody will bother it. I've seen cars break down on the side of the road and sit there for days or even a week or two untouched. You can buy something at a store and not count your change, cause people rarely ever steal it, though they might miscount. You rarely ever hear about somebody being robbed. Being an armed robber in those parts is a dangerous hobby, cause even if you get away with it for a bit sooner or later some little old lady will put a slug through your chest, and nobody but your mama will mourn you. Etc. So the theory fits and makes a lot of sense to me.
How about just mind our own buisiness?
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
...of why the United States has a First Amendment. Governments will always try to intimidate the citizenry into submission and compliance. It makes their jobs so much easier. Likewise, the Second Amendment was created to protect the First Amendment, in case the government decides to go beyond intimidation.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
It's the "within limits" part that makes the "Free Speech Zones" so bad.
The key issue is that the "Free Speech Zones" have always been designated far away from where the event that the protesters are protesting is happening, and the mainstream media is discouraged from actually covering anything the protesters are doing. The goal of the zones is and has always been to silence protesters who's views fall outside the realm of what's deemed acceptable by the political establishment. For instance, I went to a VP debate back in 2004, and what was clearly allowed were signs saying "Kerry / Edwards" or "Bush / Cheney", but what was not allowed anywhere near a TV camera were signs saying "End the Fed" or "Leave Iraq Now".
I am officially gone from
If you make a non casual demand that someone must kill _____, then yes. Since this is criminal you can demand a jury of your peers. If they agree you were trying to get someone killed in fact, then you will go to jail and should.
Otherwise I could go to your street at 3 AM and express my political views with a megaphone.
Or I could put an outdoor in front of a public playground, featuring a woman having sex with a goat.
Don't be an idiot. The first example would have you violating noise ordinances in most places, the latter would see you violating so-called 'indecency/obscenity' standards.
In neither of those instances would you be accosted by the police because of 'free speech'.
Given your examples, I suspect you don't actually know the legal definition of protected speech.
There's no need to embellish this story. She was shot in the neck, which is shocking enough.
If you think that using a gun makes you a man, you're a very small man indeed.
Let me confirm, you are saying a man who protects and defends the lives of his wife and children is "a very small man indeed"? I don't know, I guess I work on a different definition.
For who can argue with the wisdom of 'stupid is as stupid does'?
Praise be unto Forest Gump! Let Gumpians everywhere rise up, unite, and kill anyone who defiles His Name!
Why should they respect copyrights? Or 18 age restrictions on the internet. Or WikiLeaks being curtailed, internet gambling being quashed, the primacy of Free Speech(tm) or any other social mores of the USA?
Well, they do.
Here's something to consider.
The muslim faith requires they do not disparage YOUR faith.
Apparently you do not care if they do or not (actually many care loudly and continuously).
So you do not care about their faith either.
Apparently you care deeply about Free Speech. They don't give a shit. So why not agree to let you worry about it and them not to give a monkeys.
But then again, the same xtians will insist, if they have failed to convince an atheist of god's existence, will end with "I will pray for you". Apparently telling someone who says that to fuck the hell off is considered to have "lost the plot" and be an "extremist atheist" and otherwise dismissed, ensuring that the free speech is not respected. There's a high need of "faith in faith" enshrined in the USA.You won't be killed, but you WILL be ostracised and thrown on the street.
That's the part I don't get, how does a gun protect?
If guns can't help protect you then why do cops carry them? Why do soldiers need to carry them?
Unless you happen to be able to hit the bullet the aggressor fires at you, it's not really a good item for defense.
Here are just a small subset of people who are only alive today because a gun is a good item for defense: http://www.cato.org/guns-and-self-defense/ .. maybe you can ask them.
Question for you, if you have a daughter someday, would you insist and prefer that she walk around unarmed and defenseless against rapists and other attackers?
I'll agree that maybe (under many circumstances), it isn't RIGHT to blaspheme someone else's religion. However, there's no way in hell it should ever be made illegal. No one is being physically harmed, and no individual person is being defamed.
The fact is, all organizations need to be able to handle criticism. And blasphemy is a form of criticism. Some people need to thicken their skin and do some self-examination as to why this "blasphemy" might be going on on such a scale. Hmmm Maybe some people are doing some bad things, and this is how others criticize them for it.
If your God has been blasphemed, you may be able to make a CIVIL case, IF you can demonstrate that you've been emotionally harmed by someone who specifically targeted you with the intent of causing you emotional duress. But this should NEVER be a criminal matter. Any time a criminal court would get involved, some other tangible harm must have been caused, and blashphemy would only be used as an indicator of intent, not as a criminal charge in and of itself.
An analogous situation I can think of is a case where a teen committed suicide over the treatment she got after "sexting." Ultimately, she couldn't handle the ridicule from her peers and killed herself. This is very sad, and I think that the other students who tormented her should be punished. If those other kids are to be put up on criminal charges, then it would have to be for specific things that are illegal, so that's a separate matter. However, I do think that this is a clear-cut civil case, where it can be shown that harm was intended and harm was caused, and damages should be sought. Plus, the burden of proof in a civil case is not as rigorous as in criminal cases. (BTW, I think that most copyright violation cases should be civil too. Law enforcement should only get involved if the violation is on a massive scale AND profit is being made.)
The UN can take their anti-blasphemy laws and shove it where their gods are afraid to look. I'm not going to have my freedoms abridged just to mollify some religious nut who tries to claim they've been harmed just because someone made an insensitive statement. First it's anti-religion statements, then it's 100 other things. Just wait until it becomes illegal to criticize politicians! You think the US Congress is corrupt NOW? Slippery slope.
Otherwise I could go to your street at 3 AM and express my political views with a megaphone.
Or I could put an outdoor in front of a public playground, featuring a woman having sex with a goat.
Except there are other laws in place specifically to prevent those sorts of nuisances without restricting speech.
Shouting through a megaphone at 3 am will get you a citation for disturbing the peace, same as running a diesel generator at 3 am. The content doesn't matter. A live sex show in front of a playground will get you arrested for public indecency and corruption of minors.
(Sure, public sex could be considered a form of speech, and yes, indecency/obscenity laws are problematic. But there's strong precedent for making some acts illegal without also criminalizing the opinions they may represent. You can't kill a stockbroker and argue that murder is legal speech within the scope of your right to protest financial crimes.)
the right to "free speech" as it applies to the United States is not the right to get away with saying anything you want. its not the "right to offend people."
it means you have the right to say anything you want against the government without fear of it kicking in the door at 2 am and silencing you. And honestly since mcarthyism we've pretty much ignored it.
Walk up to the secret service and call the president an asshole, and you can expect to be monitored or detained as punishment. Read the quran aloud in a public square and you might find a tracking device under your car the next day. Bitch about US foreign policy at the pulpit, and as Anwar Al Awlaki found out, you'll be killed.
Good people go to bed earlier.
On the October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed on the door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg the paper with 85 theses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther
Just one paper.
It started the Reformation and the most destructive war in Europe, the Thirty Years' War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years'_War
Up to 75% of the population of Germany was killed in this war. Immeasurable suffering and desolation. Armies were annihilated. All because of one piece of paper written by a countryside monk.
When you take offense at someone who insults you it is not they that harm you, but your judgement of what they said that harms you. You are in effect harming yourself. Any action you take reflects on your own character, not theirs. Do not give others power over you by taking to heart what they say. However, consider what others say - learn when others are critical - examine whether they make valid statements.
Well, there are some crazy Christians, but not nearly as many, and the truly crazy ones are few and far between.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-one-murdered-because-of-this-image,29553/
He's enlightened because he realizes that the local snake oil salesman doesn't have any answers either. Trying to latch onto some cult in an effort to avoid thinking for yourself is not helpful even if you are a "spiritual" type.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Just because a Volkswagen is a car, doesn't mean that all cars are Volkswagens.
Understanding all the above I would vote to let them speak. They would be condemned by their own words. Better we know of their positions so we might avoid them than have them fester in the dark.
For offence, you numbnut.
Considering the ever incoming scandals with catholics abusing the kids in schools and orphanages, I'd say quite a few take that creed literally.
Matthew
Jesus says that he has come to destroy families by making family members hate each other. He has "come not to send peace, but a sword." 10:34-36
Jesus condemns entire cities to dreadful deaths and to the eternal torment of hell because they didn't care for his preaching. 11:20-24
Jesus is criticized by the Pharisees for not washing his hands before eating. He defends himself by attacking them for not killing disobedient children according to the commandment: "He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death." (See Ex.21:15, Lev.20:9, Dt.21:18-21) So, does Jesus think that children who curse their parents should be killed? It sure sounds like it. 15:4-7
Jesus had no problem with the idea of drowning everyone on earth in the flood. It'll be just like that when he returns. 24:37
Jesus tells us what he has planned for those that he dislikes. They will be cast into an "everlasting fire." 25:41
Mark
Jesus explains why he speaks in parables: to confuse people so they will go to hell. 4:11-12
Any city that doesn't "receive" the followers of Jesus will be destroyed in a manner even more savage than that of Sodom and Gomorrah. 6:11
Jesus says that those that believe and are baptized will be saved, while those who don't will be damned. 16:16
Luke
Jesus says that we should fear God since he has the power to kill us and then torture us forever in hell. 12:5
Jesus says that God is like a slave-owner who beats his slaves "with many stripes." 12:46-47
Jesus also believes the story about Sodom's destruction. He says, "even thus shall it be in the day the son of man is revealed ... Remember Lot's wife." This tells us about Jesus' knowledge of science and history, and his sense of justice. 17:29-32
In the parable of the talents, Jesus says that God takes what is not rightly his, and reaps what he didn't sow. The parable ends with the words: "bring them [those who preferred not to be ruled by him] hither, and slay them before me." 19:22-27
John
"God so loved the world, that he gave his His only begotten Son."
As an example to parents everywhere and to save the world (from himself), God had his own son tortured and killed. 3:16
The "wrath of God" is on all unbelievers. 3:36
Jesus believes people are crippled by God as a punishment for sin. He tells a crippled man, after healing him, to "sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee." 5:14
Acts
Peter claims that Deuteronomy 18:18-19 refers to Jesus, saying that those who refuse to follow him (all non-Christians) must be killed. 3:23
Peter and God scare Ananias and his wife to death for not forking over all of the money that they made when selling their land. 5:1-10
The "angel of the Lord" killed Herod by having him "eaten of worms" because "he gave not God the glory." 12:23
Paul and the Holy Ghost conspire together to make Elymas (the sorcerer) blind. 13:8-11
Romans
Homosexuals (those "without natural affection") and their supporters (those "that have pleasure in them") are "worthy of death." 1:31-32
The guilty are "justified" and "saved from wrath" by the blood of an innocent victim. 5:9
1 Corinthians
If you defile the temple of God, God will destroy you. 3:17
Galatians
If anyone dares to disagree with Paul on religious matters, "let him be accursed." 1:8-9
2 Thessalonians
Jesus will take "vengeance on them that know not God" by burning them forever "in flaming fire." 1:7-9
God will cause us to believe lies so that he can damn our souls to hell. 2:11-12
Hebrews
God will not forgive anyone unless something is killed for him in a bloody manner. 9:13-22
Those who disobeyed the Old Testament law were killed without mercy. It will be much worse for those who displease Jesus. 10:28-29
"Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord." 10:30
"It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." 10:31
They're not at all concerned about freedom of speech in general, they just want to avoid fines and prison terms after their typical antisemitic tirades
You do realize that the whole point of Free Speech is to allow and protect antisemitic tirades? That is exactly the kind of speech that the U.S. Constitution is designed to protect. We don't need fancy laws to protect inoffensive speech.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
They teach military and law enforcement that someone has to have capability, intent, and opportunity to hurt you before you can use deadly force. I've heard civilians state they used a similar model but sometimes with the added condition that other options are fairly unreasonable. If someone has a gun and indicates they intend to use it on me, if I can disable them I'd be smart to jump at the chance.
...not until they're legal.
Nah, they only make them afraid to get rid of their parasites.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
To be fair, that is generally because they believe that legislative and governmental solutions to heal the sick and feed the poor tend not to work.
No, I don't think so. That is just their justification for being unwilling to pay taxes to actually do what their religion says they should be doing.
Religion in and by itself, in whatever form it may rear its head, is contemptible and to be overcome as a relic from the Bronze Age.. I say with Richard Dawkins: "No, I am not going to respect other people's religion. I may and will respect other people - but religion, no way".
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
When you shoot 14 yr old girls for what they say or burn people alive for what other people said, then you are hateful and repulsive and no longer deserve to be part of the dialog or enjoy the protection of society, PERIOD.
As soon as it becomes OK to tell people what they can and cannot say we are ALL effectively enslaved. Those who cannot see that fall into Mr Franklin's "those would would give up their freedom for a little security" who "deserve neither".
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
that would be covered under such laws as public nuisance or harassment. just because you're not being prosecuted for what you said doesn't mean you can't be prosecuted for how you said it...
I find this attitude to be unsettling. The fact that abortion and 'gay rights' happen to be polarizing issues is one of the problems with the American political system. ... it angers me to see a homosexual who believes in a more libertarian form of distributive justice vote Democrat because he prioritizes gay marriage over economic issues.
Perhaps if you were that gay man, you would understand. Were economic issues also more important than civil rights for blacks?
If that someone else has shot first, or is even waving a gun threateningly at you, then it is a defensive action.
> You can't prove life is important.
That is _your_ _assumption_.
> Have you ever died? How did that go? No? Then what the hell are you talking about??
Again, it is foolish to make assumptions you know _nothing_ about.
> How moral is it to bring that same human being into a life of neglect and dysfunction?
Those are _human_ judgments. By judging any actions as moral (or immoral) you've already limited yourself and your understanding. If you are unable to see BOTH the positive and negative in EVERY act then you will NEVER understand life to any significant depth.
Will that said, that doesn't negate the fact that there are always consequences, and obviously that doesn't mean I embrace every act; I will neither praise nor condone other people's choices. Free-Will is the greatest gift (and curse) this planet has.
> It's not a black and white issue.
Only those without knowledge and facts say that.
I understand that, and I agree with you in principle. But as I said, this is a special case. This isn't about being offended, it's about fearing for your life. The typical arrests for violations of this law are Neo-Nazis running around with their right hands raised and shouting "Heil Hitler". This isn't a big deal in most of the world, but it's taken very seriously here. The Third Reich and the war were the single most important and terrifying episode in our country's recent history. You can't take two steps in Vienna without seeing a monument or a plaque commemorating the victims of that time. And there are still survivors around. As a consequence, people can be arrested for standing outside a synagogue and shouting Heil Hitler. You could see it as a voluntary surrender of part of our right to Free Speech, as a special courtesy and insurance for the former victims.
Like you, I disagree about the "denying the Holocaust" part; this should be legal. But at the present time, it's not possible to have a rational political discussion about it. No serious politician wants to be perceived as agreeing with the extreme right parties. Politicians without backbones are a global phenomenon...
CJ
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
See http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3186197&cid=41659991 and http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3186197&cid=41660253.
The downward spiral begins. Just a little over 230 years of freedom. It's a shame. I expected it to last at least as long as the Roman Empire.
It's a peculiar quality that the United States has of having, on one hand, an abundance of sacred absolutes (right to bear arms, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion; all wonderful things), but on the other hand living within a highly-militarized police state.
I don't find it terribly odd myself. Freedom is an ideal, something we strive towards. We haven't fully overcome our fear of the implications. People's thoughts terrify us, so we try to limit the "bad" ones. Entrusting the individual with the power to kill and to oppose authority is nerve wracking, so we limit the types of weapons and locations one can bring them. You're free to practice any religion, but if it's not Christianity then good luck gaining a political office or living without proselytization.
Our individualism has also been eroded by fierce nationalism and urbanization. Until the last hundred years or so you could live a mostly self-sufficient life without bothering anybody or being much bothered by anyone (including the government). Now that most of us live a stone's throw from our neighbors we have difficulty isolating ourselves from anti-social behavior. Sure, most Americans support freedom of speech and such, but that support wanes when we have no choice but to see/listen/be wary of it. If you live 2 miles from your neighbor and he wants to play with a Gatling Gun, you probably don't care. If you live 20 feet from him, then you likely do.
Note: I think the American military is a function of our culture and unique political position. We're a nation of immigrants, people who weren't satisfied with the status quo and wanted to make a better life for themselves through their own hard work. We conquered most of a continent and build our nation basically from scratch just a few hundred years ago. Until recently, our government wasn't strong enough in rural areas to enforce a great deal of power, so people had to fend for themselves (e.g. food and personal defense). So Americans, stereotypically, are ambitious and have few qualms about using violence to achieve our goals (an oversimplification, obviously). Combine that with the amount of power gain after WWI, WWII, and the Cold War and it becomes obvious why we want to turn our near-hegemony into a true one.
With all due respect, YES the laws aren't just flawed they are down right abhorrent to a 'free culture'...the premise that speech, regardless of how hateful & vile it may be can be curtailed is based on the premise that YOU won't be the next one 'against the wall' where 'YOU' is meant to imply anyone who feels hard done by due to some comment or other that they took offense to or anyone who supports such laws...and it's clearly FAR easier simply to restrict a right then it is to fight for that right & spend time arguing against the speech you don't like, it's easier to get the state to do your difficult work for you...when they come for you I will MIGHT just fight to keep your freedom but since you are clearly part of the problem not the solution I probably won't fight too hard.
Freedom of speech is not the same thing as freedom to jump in front of someone else's TV camera.
Good god man, i will have to memorize your post and quote it verbatim. I have not read a better rebuttal for the "i'm insulted" idea in ages.
Muslim countries, political groups and terrorist organizations have killed thousands of westerners in the last couple decades.
In the same time period, the US government has killed millions of Muslims.
But yes, all the problems in the middle east are caused by some video that requires high-speed internet to watch.
Changa hates change.
Most governments of the world were democratically contracted by the people to imprison those responsible for the violence, and protect those who are merely exercising their freedom of speech to challenge superstition.
Protecting violent superstitious people while jailing/censoring those speaking about it would be gross violation of the social contract.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
They already do. Just try to contribute to Hamas. See how well that goes over.
.
How should one mind his/her own business when you just posted in a public forum on a public website for all the world to see? Just wondering. What has been seen cannot be unseen.
What a miserable world to live in.
Stick Men
"Remember, we never entered the war until Japan bombed us, and then we immediately turned around and... declared war on Germany."
In fact, Germany declared war on the U.S. after the Japanese attack, and before the U.S.'s declaration. It was a foolish idea for the Germans.
Osama?! You're back! Praise be to Allah, we love you Sheik Osama!
Yes it does. That's what arms are for: for protection what is dear to you.
If you decided that the life is the only thing worth protecting, that's you. There things that are dear to me more than life, so I am protecting them by violence.
I do not care what you think of my rights. My rights are guaranteed by my resolution to use them no matter what is the threat from your government.
So you wont mind if someone hunts you down and murders you for your post. Hey, they are just exercising their right to kill indiscriminately.
1. some asshole made a lame video about mohammad
2. somebody else waged violent protest and promised violence
#1 and #2 do not have anything to do with each other
I repeat: #1 and #2 do not have anything to with each other
but as soon as we say that #1 caused #2, we remove accountability and responsibility for personal actions. as soon as we do that, we can no longer adhere to morality, since morality (of ANY moral system in ANY culture in the world) pretty much requires personal accountability and personal responsibility in order to work
if we begin to say that a stupid lame video is a cause for someone's violent behavior, and not the person themselves, we get to say all sorts of outrageous things:
1. the wife beater is ok because it's the wife's fault for wearing that dress.
2. the hothead who shot up the disco is ok because it's the fault of the other man who insulted his manhood
3. the sicko who murdered the ten year girl old is ok because the ten year girl should not have smiled at him
4. the road rage perp who rammed your car is ok because it's your fault for cutting him off at the last light
etc., etc.
many things can set off an ignorant unstable hothead. the fault for what that hothead does still remains with the hothead, not the stimuli that set him off. it is required, REQUIRED, in all systems of human morality that your RESPONSE to a stimuli is entirely your fault, and not the fault to a stimuli
if some guy on halloween throws an egg out his car window and hits me in the face, i could respond a number of ways
1. wipe it off, move on
2. write down the license plate, report it to police
3. pull out a gun and shoot up his car
#3 as a response is what? without my fault? without my responsibility?
in a just and moral society, the kid in the car would be punished for throwing eggs at people. and the guy who responds by pulling a gun is punished much more severely for succumbing to lame provocation
what provokes you to commit a terrible act has no bearing on the fact you committed a terrible act
this statement is the only way we can ever talk about morality in this world, in any culture, at any time. this is absolute, not relative. no cultural relativistic mumbo jumbo that just amounts to lame patronization please
how you respond to provocation in life defines your maturity and morality. and as soon as we start making excuses for the immature and the immoral, this basically says moral behavior is not something we need to hold people accountable to
and then what kind of society do we have?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
People should not be punished for speaking out against the insanity of theologically charged violent acts. The death and strife that these religious sycophants are causing in our world should be punished. The worship of men in the sky should be treated like any other mental disorder.
What I find most offensive is the asinine belief that physical violence is morally worse than verbal violence. We have so much information showing us that stress and mental health as a result of verbal abuse, bullying and other non-violence are just as destructive (or more so) than actual violence and yet we defend free speech of all forms as some supreme ideal?
Should people have the right to verbally bully and tease until a child commits suicide? Should I have the right to verbally harass you at work? Should anyone have the right to berate and belittle you in public? Not all speech is worth defending.
Unfortunately people latch onto individual cases. Is shooting a girl for defending her beliefs wrong? Certainly, in my culture, where I live. Can I speak for others? I probably shouldn't. Colonialism hasn't died though, and the west still insists and telling other cultures how to treat people.
Do I think we're right to be offended, to think this girl shouldn't have been shot? Yes.
Do I think we have the right to impose our views on others? No.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
There is one thing happening here, and it's a shame. Free speech must be protected even if you have to go to war to protect it. That's it. The idea that just because a group of people is large enough to destroy free speech is not acceptable. They're dumb as rocks too you know. Savages really. So, the minute you give the savages an inch, they'll slit your throat and dance around your tolerant dead ass. Stand your ground freedom lovers. You have no choice.
The culture most radically opposed to our own just accepted one of our core tennants: Fairness.
Or as David Brin said the year he was GoH at MiniCon, "Accept our dogma of tolerance or we will crush you"
He's probably talking about sending soldiers into a war to free a people, and then hand them over to a worse government. It would be like all the world powers fighting to free you, and then handing you over to Islamic rule.
testing out my trending skills
As a fellow Austrian I completely disagree. To use history as a excuse to curtail freedoms is absurd at best. Neither, is the law there to "send a strong signal". We have started down this road and now it comes as no surprise that we don't honor freedom of speech in other areas. I think Austria is the country in the EU most often condemned by the European court of human rights. And this court doesn't even recognize that the "Verbotsgesetz" is a clear violation of the declaration of human rights. But there are so many others. Incitement to religious hatred is one of them. Probably the most often abused is the libel law in general. In the state of Salzburg for example it is forbidden to demonstrate against abortion clinics (at least in their vicinity).
>> There's no need to be afraid about speaking your mind in Austria, as long as you don't publicly deny or condone the Nazi war crimes.
This is simply not true. Take for example the case of a (yes right wing) political figure who said among other things that judged by today's standard the prophet would have been considered a child molester. She was convicted on the charge of incitement to religious hatred.
Also a number of (usually left leaning) comedians have been convicted both under incitement to religious hatred as well as under libel law. Most of the cases have been rejected by the European high court on human rights in the end.
Actually there was a very famous case where someone called the president a swear word I have no translation for. That case went to court; however, I'm at the moment not sure if he was actually convicted.
So you say denying the holocaust is by no means the only speech that can get you in trouble with the law.
>> By the way, this Innocence of Muslims video (idiotic as it is) would not have violated any Austrian law.
I'm not a lawyer. But conceivable it could be interpreted as incitement to religious hatred which is against Austrian law. Especially with all this hysteria about making the Muslim world feel good that is happening in Europe at the moment.
Shooting to wound is enough to prevent a successful attack. That still allows for justice according to the law. That seems pretty defensive to me.
testing out my trending skills
+10!
"I like this part of the culture. I wish liberals understand that if they have retain the right to insult me, I am retaining the right to respond in a manner suitable for a man."
If you mean to respond with insults in kind, I'm quite fine with that. If you mean you have the right to haul off and punch me or pull a gun and shoot me for insulting you, no, sorry, you're going to jail. If you're stupid enough to respond to an insult by acting with violence, then you are not a fully-developed, self-confident adult who can handle insulting words for what they are: harmless. It betrays deeper insecurities if you think you *must* respond with a brutal escalation because your feelings are hurt. IF I'm threatening you with violence, then perhaps a stronger response might be deserved, but it's still words until there are actions.
If that's not what you were talking about, then I politely apologize.
Pacifying a region after a war is serious business, generally recognized as operating under separate rules from typical administration of a nation.
And, you know, looking at effectiveness...gotta say, I think America has got it wrong here. Compare Austria and Germany's denazification to America's Reconstruction in the South, or our current screwups in Iraq and Afghanistan. We emphasized tolerance, and they kept gleefully shooting us. And because our soldiers are not (And would not, and SHOULD not) stand there and just let themselves be shot without fighting back, they will always have enough approval to continue their little guerilla wars.
If we want to stop them, we need to use the boot. If you don't, they just never go away. Finish the job, the way Austria and Germany did - and we haven't.
I vaguely remember reading about the topic. There was some honour to protect, and they literally had a measurable physical response to bad behaviour. The author of the book that I read mentioned a story, where a mother told her son to be a man and fight, or something like that, even after he was wounded.
If I recall correctly, the author also mentioned that an outside could leave a bike unlocked, and it would still be there, a week later. Also, there was very little theft.
It would explain why gun control would do very little in that society. There would always be blunt rocks.
On an interesting note, in western Canada, and I assume most other parts of Canada, it is very common for strangers to nod or wave at each other, as they pass each other on a sidewalk or in a hallway. A Quebecer asked me about this once. I found it odd that she felt no need to wave back.
testing out my trending skills
as a left wing american i hear a lot of fucking retard shit about guns, abortion, evolution, etc. every day and it's all fucking ridiculous but i'll be damned if some fanatical dickheads on the other side of the planet are going to interfere with it. america is a big diverse country and quite frankly we love to argue about shit, if you can't handle it, go the fuck back where you came from.
By the way, I think that you and I read it in Malcom Gladwell's book, "The Tipping Point" or "Blink".
testing out my trending skills
Since your main sock puppet hadn't posted anything in more than 24 hours, we were wondering what happened to you. Is there another sock puppet we should be watching as well?
We thought maybe you went to Sunday church and then didn't come back. Religious sects such as yours are known for having long and intense meetings.
Nonetheless, thank you for reaffirming yet again that for you, rights are extended only to those who own things. Whether they own land, property, or other people, owners are the only ones who in your world get rights. People who aren't capable of ownership are not worthy of having rights, no sir.
Wait, not practicing appeasement is now considered war-mongering?
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
And the answer to violence you don't like is even more violence, not suppression of speech.
1. Western powers spend over 10 years bombing the shit out of predominantly Muslim nations, torture Muslims, drone bomb their countries without declarations of war, impose economy-ruining sanctions, and talk a lot about how much they like freedom and Democracy while simultaneously supporting brutal, but western-friendly, dictators. Case in point: when the U.S. was helping to "liberate" Libya from Gaddafi because he was "attacking his own people", it didn't even bother to stop arms shipments to the governments of Yemen and Bahrain, who were using them to brutally crackdown on their opposition.
2. Muslims get sick of western imperialism, riots ensue.
3. Western media and politicians pretend it's all about a Youtube clip.
Yeah, it was Tipping Point. Great author.
Congratulations on being an example to hold up for why some people shouldn't have access to guns.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Threats of violence are different from "Your god sucks!" But nice try bub
If we start banning all speech that someone threatens to respond to violently, that only gives those who would resort to violence the ability to silence their opposition. I for one would prefer that those who are opposed to the advancement of groups who use violence as a political tool not have their voice taken away. Also, jokes are jokes, and humor is universal. People need to realize that offensive jokes are not a war on their beliefs. I don't think there is anyone who hasn't made a joke that was offensive to someone else, and probably wouldn't like if if the reaction of those people offended was to commit acts of violence against them or people who have the misfortune to share ethnic traits with them which make them a target for such overreaction.
No, violence over words is the sign of an ignorant, cro-magnon idiot. It's the "might-makes-right" mentality that betrays the sociopathic lunatic. Punchng someone because you don't like what they say is the asshole-without-a-brain's way of conducting life...
After you die you will realize the fallacy of your ignorance and see how ALL life has a divine purpose.
Threats that can only be realized after the recipient is already dead ... somehow those just ring hollow.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
"John Rosenthal, an independent journalist based in Europe, wrote early on that the Libyan rebellion wasn't led only by al-Qaida commanders. This anti-Gadhafi movement was symbolically also an Islamic jihad on Western liberty itself. We know this because, as Rosenthal reported, the "Day of Rage" called for Feb. 17, 2011, to kick off the Libyan civil war was the fifth anniversary of another assault on the West, also in Benghazi.
Following Friday prayers on Feb. 17, 2006, thousands of Benghazians attacked the Italian Consulate to punish the temerity of an Italian minister, Roberto Calderoli, who several days earlier had publicly defended free speech in the West. The world was then experiencing another cycle of Islamic violence, this one orchestrated to punish a tiny Danish newspaper for publishing a sheet of Muhammad cartoons and, in turn, Denmark itself for refusing to punish the journalist-transgressors of Islamic law, which outlaws any critiques and all depictions of Muhammad.
Calderoli didn't merely defend free speech. During his TV interview, he dramatically unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a T-shirt featuring a cartoon of Muhammad. Referring to Islamic rioters worldwide, he added: "When they recognize our rights, I'll take off this shirt." He was forced to resign from his post the next day, a sacrifice on the altar of Shariah (Islamic law) by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. It wasn't enough.
"We feared for our lives," the wife of the Italian consul later told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, describing the attack in which the consulate was set on fire. All personnel were safely evacuated. Libyan police used tear gas to try to disperse the rioters, later opening fire and killing 11 attackers.
These are the "martyrs" who serve as role models for the security team that was defending the U.S. Consulate. Symbolically, they figure into the wider war in Libya, which is often called the February 17 Revolution. With this in mind, it becomes clear that the Islamic war on free speech, the basis of our liberty, was an inspiration of "regime change" in Libya. And we supported it."
The whole "it was because of a video on youtube" excuse that the Obama administration was touting for two weeks following the attack and murder of our ambassador is flat out wrong. Obama supports the U.N. resolution that would make any insult to Islam or the prophet a crime, and this attack would have been just the thing to push that Islamic agenda he harbors deep down in his evil soul.
You nincompoops have put the enemy in the White House. He may not be an openly practicing Muslim, but I can assure you he's no Christian. Remember when the secular Iranian revolution was going to overthrow the Islamic government back in 2009? Obama refused to lift a finger to help them and the revolution failed. Then he was quick to support the "Arab Spring" revolutions because his friends (the Muslim Brotherhood) were the ones revolting.
Connect the dots, ye fools!
A country that automatically designates all men and adolescent boys as "militants" when they are killed by drones has no business calling a strike on a government official in a CIA front "terrorism".
"the right to bear arms doesn't include the right to shoot anyone who pisses you off."
"Yes it does."
Holy fucking hell, are you serious? If you truly believe that it's ok to physically maim or kill someone because they hurt your feelings then you are a psychopath, not a "man".
Sounds like you are the poster boy for stricter gun control to me.
Intolerance will continue as long as we keep dividing humans into groups based on geological location.
It won't. Lest I be accuse of Godwinning, have some Himmler inspecting Muslim SS volunteers and a nice pic of Uncle Adolf with his buddy the Grand Mufti:
http://1389blog.com/pix/Hanjar-photo-400x241.jpg
http://serbianna.com/blogs/savich/archives/1205
http://serbianna.com/analysis/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Mufti-meets-Hitler.jpg
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
It is amazing how many people read only the first words before replying. The replies to this comment are filled with excellent examples of people who need to get their finger off the button.
Taking offense is a deliberate choice!
A person or group can CHOOSE to be offended at anything they wish to censor.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I find this attitude to be unsettling. The fact that abortion and 'gay rights' happen to be polarizing issues is one of the problems with the American political system. ... it angers me to see a homosexual who believes in a more libertarian form of distributive justice vote Democrat because he prioritizes gay marriage over economic issues.
Perhaps if you were that gay man, you would understand. Were economic issues also more important than civil rights for blacks?
It makes sense in the context of civil rights for blacks, because that movement actually went somewhere. Mysteriously, though, the polarizing issues of gay rights, abortion, and gun regulation (I feel like I'm forgetting another one) never seem to get anywhere... ever. It's almost as though they're always left on the table to be used as polarizing issues.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
I find this attitude to be unsettling. The fact that abortion and 'gay rights' happen to be polarizing issues is one of the problems with the American political system. ... it angers me to see a homosexual who believes in a more libertarian form of distributive justice vote Democrat because he prioritizes gay marriage over economic issues.
Perhaps if you were that gay man, you would understand. Were economic issues also more important than civil rights for blacks?
It makes sense in the context of civil rights for blacks, because that movement actually went somewhere. Mysteriously, though, the polarizing issues of gay rights, abortion, and gun regulation (I feel like I'm forgetting another one) never seem to get anywhere... ever. It's almost as though they're always left on the table to be used as polarizing issues.
It also took a mighty long time for civil rights for blacks, we just didn't live through those times.
Yep. That's why "pro-lifers" oppose the prohibition of murder.
Er...
You do understand the social solutions to problems have existed very intentionally for thousands of years correct? Why would that be? Why would Socrates and Plato say those things are needed for a successful Republic?
Ah, Plato. The rich slave-owner who advocated kidnapping children at birth and forcibly separating them into brainwashed castes? Yes, his advice would be relevant to a modern democracy, indeed.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
In some situations it does.
Look up "castle doctrine". A large portion of the USA (where that whole "right to bear arms" thing exists in law) has a castle doctrine. It goes back to the "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" thing. If you're threatening me, my life is in danger, my liberty is being actively curtailed, and I am definitely not happy. You might even say I'd be rather "pissed off". The law provides a way for me to end your threats without the further threat of legal action against me.
Also, the 2nd amendment was meant to keep a citizens' militia with boots on the ground in any state or territory into which the USA expanded, thus providing day-to-day defense even on the frontier. A secondary effect was the threat of an armed populace to keep the politicians in check, but that wasn't the main focus. But it has come in handy in a few instances. (Just not recently.) A "pissed off", armed populace is not something the nancy-boys in D.C. really want. A civil war would even be preferable, as horrible as that would be.
I would go so far as to say that the right to bear arms is specifically to shoot anyone who pisses you off, as long as you get pissed off for a valid reason. Someone exercising their right to freedom of speech or religion is just not a valid reason.
We do see pro-lifers also being active with charity to care for the starving.
But to the extent that your depiction is true, it's not inconsistency--it's an outworking of a common conservative perspective on the role or effectiveness of government. Opposing the legality of abortion is in the same category as opposing the legality of letting someone in your care starve to death: Prohibiting people from harming others. That is seen as definitely part of the government's job; requiring people to give money for charitable purposes is seen as questionable.
And that perspective is held both by people who use it as a self-serving excuse to avoid paying higher taxes, and by people who actually give sacrificially.
Ultimate Freedom requires Ultimate responsibility.
Then screw you and the horse ( camel? ) you rode in on. If i want to say allah is a scum sucking prick that should be flushed down the toilet after being wrapped in bacon while burning a koran on the back of toilet, its MY RIGHT.
If you are offended, its your own problem, not mine.
Furthermore, the solution to this problem would be to eradicate anyone that doesnt support my free speech, starting with towel heads. Every last one of them.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I've had my life threatened, point-blank, to my face.. and nothing came of it. Words are words. If you see a person reaching for a knife, or they are harassing you, then these are behaviors to worry about. Not words.
It's fine to assume that such a threat will be carried out, for self-defense. But it's quite another to jump to the conclusion that a threat will be carried out, and retaliate with deadly force. I doubt that's what you were talking about, but if it was, then you're no better than your assailant.
Moreover, it's a far cry from the example that we ought to shut people up for not believing in our particular vision of the all-powerful space-daddy. That kind of silencing is called cowardice, not self-defense.
Yeah, thanks for the "lesson" on my culture. Interestingly, your petty little dissertation is completely off point but since you felt the need to effort an opinion on the subject I'll honor you with some attention, BRIEFLY. Met few common europeans who smelled good, and I've been all over Europe. Before you teach me ANYTHING about ANYTHING, take a shower I refuse to take heed of the wisdom of a group of people who have yet to take part in the sacrament of common decency that I've practiced all my life.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
I believe _you_ are the ignorant one here, attempting to paint the world in an exactly black and white fashion. The world operates in numerous colors, and your deficiency in realizing such is sad though not surprising. It's been brainwashed in to you, but I can assure you that it's not reality.
Sometimes, though not often, corporal punishment is the _only_ way to get a message across to someone.
Look, I'm sure you don't believe corporal punishment is ever required. The best example is with children, though not the only example. Perhaps you believe that you have a child that never refused their other forms of punishment or never did anything wrong. The reality is that children will test boundaries and tell you "no" refusing other forms of punishment. It's their job as children, it's how they grow up and learn what boundaries are. You can go with option A and teach them the boundaries, or go with option B and let them have a free for all making them egocentric social degenerates. Of course you can use option C and medicate the shit out of them taking away their ability to learn and become functional mature members of society as many people do today.
Kids grow up very well using option A, and historically it's not harmful (don't mistake a swat on the ass with abuse, there is a big big difference). If all other forms of punishment are refused, a swat on the fanny is all it takes to get them to choose better forms of punishment in the future.
Stop trying to paint a world full of so many colors in a simple black and white. It does not work.
Since you will probably "but.. but.. but.." the reason for a pop in the mouth is not simply an issue of might makes right. You are failing to realize both the psychological impact as well as the chemical reactions that occur during the act for both the perpetrator and recipient. Since the chemistry goes way beyond what I'm willing to type here, lets look at the simple psychological impact. Using my previous example of the guy harassing the girl.. why would he not do so in a public forum? Obviously the implication that he would go to jail, so he fears punishment correct? What is the impact of a few guys punching him a few times? Obviously he would realize that he can't do what ever he wants, and would have fear about repeating those actions. The same as the fear that prevents him from doing things publicly where he could be prosecuted.
So again, it's occasionally the only answer. Would it be better to have him found guilty in court? Of course, but the lack of evidence does not make him innocent does it? And if he is known to society to be a harmful person, society needs to keep tabs on him and make sure society is safe.
Lastly, to your might-makes-right statement.. what the hell do you think enforcing any law is? If I rob a bank, the cops (might) arrest me and take me to court correct? Then I'm locked in jail (might) and serving my punishment. You used a poor prefixing statement since enforcing laws is _always_ might. If you are assuming that everyone that has been, is being, or will be punished by society is "incorrect" you are extremely gullible.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The idea, (which is now completely broken in practice due to extreme imbalance of might) was that a government would be far less willing to give the public the finger, if the public could point a gun at the government, and remind them who really owns the country. Additionally, it was also intended that should a violent aggressor arrive in the country without warning or preparation, the public will have some means of defending itself. (organized militia, et. al.)
I suspect that the real reason behind the post-WW2 popularity of this idea was the Cold War. Specifically, the belief on the US right wing that a Soviet takeover - either by invasion or by internal "fifth column" coup - was a possibility. Therefore, the reasoning went, the ForcesofFreedom'n'Capitalism (tm) needed the ability to rapidly mobilise a home militia to take back the country. And so, deliberate sponsorship began of a chain of linked anticommunist causes that included a wide group of "strange bedfellows" rangong fom the NRA to arms manufacturers to the John Birch society to libertarian militant atheist small government conservatism to evangelical Christian churches preaching end-times paranoia, to external nonstate actors like Moon's Unification Church in Korea, the P2 in Italy - and, by the 1970s, the Islamic jihadis in Afghanistan. All with the intention of creating a standing underground militia-funding-ideology complex that could be mobilised as a last-ditch stand against a Soviet-backed Communist takeover.
Yes, mass distribution of small arms were never going to work for a random "the people vs the government" rebellion in the USA. But if the feared Communist takeover and subsequent right-wing rebellion had occurred, it wouldn't have been just "the people" waving their M-16s and Constitutions. It would have been the popular militias plus whatever factions of the US military remained loyal, versus the insurgents and foreign military advisors, and that would have evened the odds a lot more.
At least that's my theory. I'm not sure how much of this was actually implemented, and how much it evolved as the Cold War progressed, but if I were in the covert world in the 1950s USA and frightened by Communism I would have begun organising something similar. And it's the only way I can explain the otherwise strange political connections on the US right wing: often, the only cause they share is Cold War era anticommunism. And why there's such passion for handguns "to fight the government" by the same people who support increased military budgets and secrecy for that same government.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
That asshole's bullets are a form of free speech. What right do you have to prevent him from showering you in a hail of "speech"?
This is the most self-flattering example of rose-colored glasses I've seen in a long time. I live in a no-guns area in a society that frowns upon threats or physical violence for settling verbal or mental disputes. Crime isn't an issue here either, and people don't just wave at you - they offer to help you, too. Stop trying to sound thoughtful and intelligent when you're really just trying to rationalize something that's entirely unnecessary and simply a custom.
what you have to say - but I'll fight to the death for your RIGHT to say it. The 1st Amendment specifically says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
" or abridging the freedom of speech"
Tell me WHERE it says what is or is not FREE SPEECH! Sorry but if I want to say death to all radical musleums I can (I bet the republicans will love this) - my FIRST AMENDMENT rights guarantee i.t I can say Allah is a homosexual child molester too! (it may not be politically correct but so what - I can still say it!) If the UN and the radical musleums don't like it they can go FUCK THEMSELVES - see how I have the freedom to say that too!
Sorry but as soon as you take away one persons right to free speech - it becomes a slippery slope to take away EVERYONE'S right to free speech. We must remember in the United States we have FREE SPEECH - those radical islamic countries do not - that is their problem not ours. If they want free speech let them fight for it! How many countries don't because they are controlled by communistic dictators, or radical nut jobs.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
You keep using this word 'threat' but I don't think it means what you think it means. If you perceive of something as a threat that means you are afraid. Now if you want to live in fear that is your choice but you _do_ have a choice on how to view things.
i.e. It is a _fact_ that everyone will die. That is not a threat, nor an empty promise. It just is what it is
If you are unable to use _every_ opportunity (including death itself!) as a learning experience then the fault lies in your own inability to learn about the true nature of reality. A wise man would explore all opportunities as they are presented; not only while alive but also after in the death-review-state as well.
Instead of shooting the messenger it would be more prudent to listen to the message even if you disagree with it. Who knows, you might even learn a different perspective. ;-)
Very interesting remarks, especially about the Scots with their sheep-herding background. The great British military historian John Keegan, in his History of Warfare, argued that it was probably pastoralists (semi-nomadic, horse-riding animal herders) who invented some important forms of modern all-out warfare, rather than the more settled and "civilized" farmers and town dwellers.
> Your arrogance certainty knows no bounds.
If you'll indulge me for a moment, How do you even _measure_ that in the first place? (Yes, I'm being serious.)
> If there *did* turn out to be an afterlife I bet you'd be well punished for that. :-/
Well the Deists and Gnostics would argue that we _already_ are being punished and I find I must reluctantly agree with them some-what.
The Buddhist's philosophy is "Life is Suffering" but I would argue that is incomplete as that is only _one_ _perspective_. The actual truth is "One only suffers if they _choose_ it" but this thread is quickly becoming OT ...
The reality is that I HATE greenies and dislike yuppies, and would not consider changing that no matter what. Oh I suppose I might claim to change under physical torture, but I really will die before I really will change any of my opinions, unless I feel like making an exception on grounds of loving the person who asks me to change an particular opinion. Then, it is possible; not otherwise. So I really don't care if this attitude is hated or tolerated, it makes no difference to me.
But I think it is INSANE to have opinions about other people's opinions and then try to use rewards, punishments, or indeed anything at all to enforce them. How can wishing it were so make it so? I don't really care what anyone else wants thinks says or does - that is their freedom. And so is the same for me, my freedom. I DO care how others feel, and I like convenience (for convenience sake, I usually don't mid rules nor mind observing them, but not if there were something especially inconvenient in so doing).
Please show me in _where_ in my post I mentioned anything about "imaginary friends". Thanks.
Fascism: the merger of corporate and state interests.
What exact part of libertarianism, and US policy for the last 30 years, is that not applicable to?
If you think that a cheap shot, try this: without government, what exactly is supposed to stop corporations and the rich from assuming control of everything? These days it's bad enough WITH government, which the brainwashed sheeple have allowed to be taken over by monied interests. Now what was that word again...?
The Bible never seemed clear to me on the exact when of the start of life.
So this debate may be an interpretation thing from fundamentalist angles.
Regardless, I don't see it as a strawman - the argument is represented somewhat correctly. I do see it as dishonest, however - there's a lot more to the argument from the pro-life side than just what was said (both in and out of the quote).
You're right, you need your ass kicked shithead Laws are made to protect people, not "might makes right". "Might makes right" is one person making the descisions for everyone. Quit hiding behind "shades of gray" to justify barbarism and brutality. The world isn't black and white, but it's not "kill or be killed" either ( at least among civilized people it isn't)... Quit treating it like the only answer, rather than a last resort.
The answer to violence you do not like is more violence.
I like you brother. I'm a northerner but consider myself an honorary southerner. And I can make damn fine bbq to prove it.
Michigan is a big place and there are good and bad parts of course. But you will find lots of good people I am sure.
Cheers!
Found this petition to the Obama Administration created Sept 17 for prohibiting anything offensive of major religions: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/outlaw-offending-prophets-major-religions/94kL1tsN This is a dangerously slippery slope.
This makes him evil right?
WRONG.
Membership in the Hitler Youth, in 1941, was compulsory. It was required by German law.
Little Joe had exactly ZERO say in it. He wasn't an enthusiastic member, and by all accounts, never attended meetings.
He was later conscripted, right out of seminary, as a child soldier by the German Army. And did he fight for them?
Nope. When the allies drew near his station, he took the opportunity to desert.
It was also compulsory for Nazi's in concentration camps to kill Jews. He had the privileged of deciding whether he would live a safe life or a good life. Other's didn't get that choice because he, and many like him choose to be safe rather than ethical.
... or abridging the freedom of speech...
How do Free Speech Zones NOT violate the letter of the law?
Congress shall make no law ...; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press
How can the government regulate, within limits, the manner, place, and time of speech? Doesn't that mean making a law that abridges the freedom?
As Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard put it in her recent speech before the United Nations, “Our tolerance must never extend to tolerating religious hatred.”
Does that include the hatred that is part and parcel of religions? If the bible and the koran contain statements of religious hatred, do they get banned too?
The Hitler Youth started off being like the boy scouts, so not all bad. But after Nazi Germany, Little Joe became the head of the Office of Documents in the Vatican. Where the old title of his job was the much shorter Grand Inquisitor, made famous by the Spanish Inquisition. It's a curious coincidence.
Commando tactics actually date back to the British wars in South Africa. It's from a Boer word, the British also adopted the tactics. This was over a decade before WW 1.
You might also review the military history of Vietnam. The Americans had to pull out (and then failed to support the South) before the North could successfully invade. That was a political defeat, not a military one.
See also: Panama, Iraq, and others.
But here I am responding to a troll. Shame on me.
Shooting to wound is enough to get you killed -- as any combat shooting instructor will tell you.
If you're actually in such a situation, you're pumped so full of adrenaline it's all you can do to shoot straight at all (shakes); your best bet is to aim for the center of mass and hope you hit something that will put the guy down so that he can't return fire/stab you/bludgeon you to death with a shovel. (The latter is a risk if you're using too small a caliber -- real incident.)
Or perhaps you believed all those westerns where the good guy can shoot the villain's gun out of his hand?
-- Alastair
Such feelings are frequently held under the sentimentality of Patriotism or Religion. There is no difference.
Modern America used Patriotism to justify 'kill, crush and destroy' in Korea, Vietnam, the Russian-Afghan war. Patriotism and Corporatocracy excused a multitude of wars in South America.
Stupid American. Only a stupid American would even think the rest of the world had what it considers "Free Speech".
Giving the world "Free Speech" is like giving them guns if their mass media is to be believed. (Every channel is either Fox News, the NASA channel or Democracy Now. Most likely Democracy Now. Overthrow the bovine oppressors! But I digress.) I just watched a (Dutch?) movie "Room 304" about a guy shooting a random maid. After finding a gun. Also of which several people almost killed themselves and others with prior. (That is what popped into their heads, the movie said. That is what will pop into YOUR head, the movie says.) Imagine if a fucking Walmart opened there. LOL! Fucking abused Romanian soccer moms buying Saturday Night Specials while grocery shopping, 20s-something wannabe gangsters trying to buy all of the stock and sell them in the alleyway, ... The way European media makes it sound, it would be a straight-up midieval civil war, with fuckin cars blowing up and children crying next to their dead raped sisters and mothers and mutilated fathers. "EU DEMANDS EXTRADITION OF WALMART CEO FOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY" it will read.
Because of what happens at every local Walmart in the United States. What do you think their media tells them would happen if they were given what American considers "Free Speech"?
Stupid American.
You can't seriously be that disingenuous. A defensive action would be stopping your attacker, not using hostility as an excuse to indulge in murder. It would also have the advantage of not turning into a terrible regret if you accidentally shot your daughter trying to sneak back into her room in the middle of the night.
Not the grandparent, just to be clear.
yes, they considered those rights to be absolute.
Doesn't that very fact make them at least extremists?
Dude, you need to practice your critical reading skills. Nowhere did I speak of the US constitution. Nor did I refer to religious fundamentalism. By my repeated use of the word "political" I hoped it would be understood that I was speaking particular of political fundamentalism.
I doubt that our positions are essentially very far apart, in fact. Still, your writing helps to illustrate the point I was trying to make. You rush to defend the constitution - or its framers, I'm not sure which and perhaps the distinction is unimportant. This gesture, to me, is characteristic of American political fundamentalism. Not that there's anything wrong with the constitution, necessarily, as a document. We have one in Canada too. It's just not a big deal. Whereas, in American culture, the constitution as an symbol is elevated to such an extraordinary level that unscrupulous people can quite readily use it as a rhetorical device for "derailing reasonable discussion". If you try to wrap yourself in the flag in Canada, people will laugh at you. Personally, I think that's healthy.
When you capitalize a term, as you have done with the US Constitution and the Rights of Man, it may not seem to you that you're doing anything extraordinary. You've grown up in a culture where, as with terms like the Founding Fathers and so on, it's just part of the scenery, like saluting the flag and having a color guard at a high school graduation. But brother, you have to understand that, as seen from the world outside of the American culture, all this reverence looks just a little bit weird, not actually fetishistic but headed somewhat in that direction. That's because it's a particular characteristic of fundamentalism that certain symbols shall be above criticism. And these symbols abound in American culture.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
"...'Our tolerance must never extend to tolerating religious hatred.'...."
Fuck you Julia I'm an atheist and the whole concept of religious tolerance revolts me to my core. I do it because I don't think people are ready yet to en masse face the realities of the universe and life without religion (aka one less thing to worry about).
I don't stir the pot actively but if a religious person injects themselves in my life I have zero tolerance. Having an official state that religion is on the agenda for Australia is piss weak. We don't have an official religion.
Wealthy Canadian jews got s13.1 on the books (for their psychological security). It's been used mostly by jews and Richard Warman to target marginalized individuals expressing unpopular viewpoints. Canadian parliament has voted to delete s13.1, but the Canadian gov't is still trying to put dissidents (ex: Brad Love, Terry Tremaine) in prison for expressing their opinions.
- http://www.whitenewsnow.com/paul-fromms-cafe/33836-political-prisoner-brad-love-released-222-000-bail-pending-appeal-breach-probation-convict.html
- http://www.whitenewsnow.com/paul-fromms-cafe/34485-judge-ponders-sending-dissident-prison-not-shutting-down-his-website.html
- http://www.freedomsite.org/legal/charts/7-Number_of_complaints_referred_to_CHRT_listed_by_Complainant.jpg
No one has ever before mistaken the framers of the US Constitution for fundamentalists.
they considered those rights to be absolute.
Do you know what a fundamentalist is?
"Our tolerance must never extend to tolerating religious hatred." ...
ITT: UN Secretary-General missing the goddamn point.
Fuck tolerance. That word has horrible nuance to it's meaning. Tolerance is bearing a burden. Tolerance is accepting something unpleasant. Tolerance is bearing a load.
Tolerance has no place in our world. What we need is acceptance.
The right to free speech is simply an application of property rights. Consequently, Google's competitors are free to restrict what videos they host based on their terms of use.
Such moderation procedures are like any other features offered by online services, they are subject to competition. If your moderation rules are bad, the you lose market share to your competitors.
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
Historically it appears that it didn't.
Getting hold of Czechoslovakian industry intact was a huge bonus for Hitler. Not having to worry about defending the Rhineland (which he'd been allowed to base troops in) was another.
Appeasement generates peace the same way a credit card generates income.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Yes, but libertarians can be fascists.
That is ridiculous. Libertarianism is about reducing state power over individuals, fascisim is about increasing it. Libertarian Fascism? That is so stupid it is funny. If you honestly belive that, you have a fundamental misunderstanding of this subject. Maybe this will help.
It is a peculiarly (U.S.) American idea, which never caught on, elsewhere.
Care to unpack that? My understanding is that the main ideas in the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence came out of the European Enlightenment, the French Revolution and the development of basic rights in England and the legal principle of equality before the law beginning with Henry the 2nd and the development of the Common Law system over the better part of 1000 years. The radical idea that a commoner could take a ranking landowner to court for redress - a form of freedom of speech in open court - arose with the birth of the Common Law. The huge technical advance of the Common Law and its institutionalization owed much to academic Roman and Canon law going back a further thousand years. Jefferson was a Francophile who lived in Paris for some time and was greatly influenced there. At that time it would have been impossible to be an intellectual and not regard Paris as as a font of ideas.
I doubt you really understand what fascism is about.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Some reading for mental hygiene.
If someone were to invent the first car, and it was a Volkswagen, pretty soon there are going to be other kinds of cars.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
but on the other hand living within a highly-militarized police state.
If you think that the United Stated is a "highly-militarized police state," you have a fundamental misunderstanding of either the United States or what constitutes a "highly-militarized police state." That is quite ridiculous.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
That's not shooting someone just because you're pissed off. if you invite someone round to your house and he says god isn't real and you get pissed off that doesn't give you the right to shoot him.
if someone breaks into your house and threatens you with a knife it isn't the fact that you're pissed off which gives you the right to shoot him, it's the fact that he's threatening you or has invaded your home.
being pissed off it utterly irrelevant to the matter it neither grants nor removes rights from you or changes when you can shoot someone.
. . . King Louis XIV of France asked Blaise Pascal, the great French philosopher, to give him proof of the supernatural.
Pascal answered: "Why, the Jews, your Majesty the Jews." - - - The Miracle of Jewish History
You cant grow to take it on the chin without first growing the idea that whatever comes to your mind, others should take great care of. These religions are not some private affair but public by their actions and thier bones are intolerance and manipulation; there is reason why people scoff at those that press at them.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is exactly what the jihadist nutjobs are saying too.
"You piss me off, I kill you!"
Intersting, you've not actually made any counter points. How is it my assumption that you can't prove it? Please, by all means, if you can do so, I'd be very interested! And, I'm sorry, what do *you* know about death to speak of it with such conviction? Again, I'd be very interested. As far as seeing both positives and negatives, where do you make that distinction for yourself in your post? I fail to see why you're on that tangent, I was speaking of a specific example which is practically impossible to paint in black and white in any meaningful sense. I agree they are human judgments, we're all human here. It's all we got to go on. Also, I would contend that ones with actual knowledge know only one thing, that they know not a damn thing at all, and the ones without would insist that they know everything.
You are making no sense at all.
This is why I think training is important ... if you're serious about carrying a gun for self-defense, you should also be serious about practicing regularly (doing defensive-use gun courses if you can), and getting into the mindset, so that it's easier when you're in a situation. (Sometimes you're lucky and just drawing the gun is enough to make attackers retreat - but one shouldn't rely on luck.) Your "best bet" is also not just to aim and hope you hit "something", but to try something like the "two to the chest, one to the head" mantra.
For offence, you numbnut.
You can't really be this stupid? What about the soldiers on the receiving side of the "offense", should they best not carry guns? For every "offense" there is someone being attacked. You are surely just trolling, because nobody can be that stupid.
This is all about a reaction to the atrocities of WW2. Certain people groups were targeted for extermination. This quickened the conscience of humanity just as long for the civil rights movement some ten to twenty years later. This led to the dismantlement of the quota system for the USA and the Whites Only policy for Australia. With the dismantlement of the British Empire, the complexity of the nationality laws led to the decaucasianisation of the UK and the multiculturalism that is now Canada. Lest one think that this scourge is the exclusive premise of the Anglosphere, one need only consider France with Algierians and the imposition of insanely generous asylum laws in Germany (part of de[Godwin]ification). With such freedom of movement, those seeking restrictions of constitutionally guaranteed liberties have the wherewithal to accomplish their goals.
* Energy autarky by drilling and mining in our own hemisphere.
* Fiscal autarky by paying off the debt and white-listing who can purchase government securities so as to SOVEREIGNTIZE our affairs. Pay attention to which nations are currently prospering. Most are "ethnic" republics that do not extend citizenship of any degree to those lacking pedigree.
* Social autarky by actually controlling our borders just like other nations of the earth are accustomed to do.
The liberty-respecting world is trying to suck up to the intolerant ones of the planet by reason of hydrocarbons.
Elected officials need to understand that not everyone has the freedom gene. It usually runs parallel to the ability to metabolize ethanol.
http://www.mrctv.org/videos/muslims-burn-3-gay-men-alive-allah-and-his-minions
we both get this along with being told to be quiet.
religion is the ultimate evil.
from the depth of my heart, fuck you religion.
Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger, current Pope) was a member of the Hitler Youth. This makes him evil right?
The Hitler Youth 'thing' did him no harm - probably for the reasons you mentioned. Covering up child molestation, however, is what makes him less than perfect in my eyes. I'm not religious so I won't say he is evil but Catholicism has a lot to answer for and the child abuse issue demonstrates that fundamentalism is not limited to Muslims, The Westboro Baptist and their ilk.
Getting back on track, anybody should be able to say anything about anyone else's religion. If they take offence they can have a debate about it but responding with violence is unacceptable. It's no good saying "well, they were *really* cross" - there is no excuse.
Notice to religious fundamentalists: Do you really have to silence unbelievers with violence? Won't your god ensure that these unbelievers lead a short unhappy life and burn for eternity once their miserable unfulfilled life ends? Or do you just have a lot of time on your hands? Have you considered taking up a hobby? Knitting perhaps?
Honestly, I assumed that it was possible to shoot a gun out of a hand once in a while. I allowed it for stories like the Lone Ranger, in the same way that I just believed that Superman could fly. I didn't need the physics or anything like that.
That being said, I never thought about caliber. That should make for interesting information for novels that I hope to write.
As for shooting to wound, and resulting in a death, I think that I was speaking more of intent. Even though a bullet can kill, there is the option of shooting a limb, when the stakes aren't very high. At least, that was what I was trying to say. Now that I've read what you wrote, I think that I would need to see an expert marksman get into a high adrenaline situation to be sure.
Thanks for the info regarding the adrenaline.
testing out my trending skills
Corporatism doesn't mean what you think it means in. Note that libertarians are not anarchists. Among other things, they tend to support strong private property and liability law. A good portion would object the government created limited liability corporations. US policy for the last 30 years has vastly increased government regulation in numerous areas. Always in ways Libertarians objected to. There are very few and limited ways in which government regulation has lessend, but it's always gain in one area but losing in two others.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
The Taliban and nut jobs like Bin-Ladin have done far more to blaspheme Islam than 1000 years of insensitive cartoons ever could. 50 years ago you might disagree with Islam, but you would likely respect it. Thanks to the behavior of fools like Bin-Ladin and his Taliban monkeys this is no longer the case. Islam has become the laughing stock of world religions. It has become the religion of whiny toddlers who have to fly into a rage every time they don't get what they want. A REAL MAN would want nothing to do with such a whiny childish faith. Keep doing what you are doing you Taliban clowns, and in 200 years Islam will be a dead religion,
I find this attitude to be unsettling. The fact that abortion and 'gay rights' happen to be polarizing issues is one of the problems with the American political system. ... it angers me to see a homosexual who believes in a more libertarian form of distributive justice vote Democrat because he prioritizes gay marriage over economic issues.
Perhaps if you were that gay man, you would understand. Were economic issues also more important than civil rights for blacks?
Civil rights for blacks was a matter of distributive justice. The same civil rights protections that black enjoy today are also granted to homosexuals. It's illegal to discriminate against hiring homosexuals and it's illegal for an employer to fire someone because they find out that person is gay.
Marriage isn't a right, it's a license granted by the state. One that's already too easy to obtain. Personally, I don't think the government should legally recognize any marriage, gay or straight. Why do I need a judge or priest to officiate my love for another individual? I oppose gay marriage because I oppose marriage, not because I think that gays shouldn't be allowed to be in long term monogamous relationships. The state already sanctions that by not legally prohibiting it.
Hell, most married people don't believe in marriage, either. They just do it for the tax breaks or because of social pressure or because the whole idea's been romanticized beyond rationality. Also, claiming that if I were gay that I would understand probably isn't true because I know homosexuals who agree with everything I've written in this post. Hell, there are homosexual Republican congressmen and lobbyists who demonize gay marriage as an evil abomination - I agree with them, I just think that straight marriage is also an evil abomination. Social institutions should never be blindly accepted as just and right.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
He served honoroably in the military, so wasn't a coward. Where, precisely, did he promote fascist ideas? The only semi-plausible one I'm aware of was Starship Troopers, and even that was an extraordinarily free society. No draft, no racism, mild sexism (not in a superiority but in asserting there were different areas of strengths) and the only war they were in was a reaction to an extremely agressive species that made no attempt whatsoever at peace. The only things it did do were require that public schools offer a class on morality, which student were required to take but which wasn't graded in any way, and restrict the vote to people who had entered public service, almost always the military. Considering how many left wingers seem to consider Castro's Cuba a benign dictatorship, a benign oligarchy doesn't seem like it should bother them so much. More to the point: it was fiction. He did not himself claim such a society was optimal, although certain characters within the book did.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
If you sufficiently weaken government you enable others to manipulate it. In the case of fascism the others are corporations. The combination of "weakened" government plus corporations is more than enough to crush individual liberty.
Great point. To elaborate a bit, even if those special interest groups got what they wanted - and for the most part, they have - they would continue to exist and demand a bunch of bullshit because there are huge organizations that have spawned from them and people's livelihoods are at stake. This is why Jesse Jackson protests anything that can be interpreted as racist in even the slightest way - to stay relevant.
The best example of this is MADD. They achieved everything the group was founded to achieve, they won. But instead of disbanding, all those who depended on paychecks from the institution sought more frivolous battles to fight just to stay relevant. The issues were no longer important - sustaining the organization was all those within it cared about, purely out of self interest. The NRA is a good example, too. Do they really fight to keep automatic weapons on the streets because they're staunch defenders of freedom or because they've won practically every other battle they've fought? If the members don't feel that the NRA needs their money to fight the good fight, then they won't donate. So the NRA has to make 'the good fight' more and more extreme after every battle they win or they just won't be relevant.
When an organization loses their purpose by achieving their goals they have two choices: disband or make up new goals that are extreme extensions of the original goal. What will NORML do when pot gets legalized? Probably start advocating for the legalization of other drugs. While the initial goal is a worthy one, the extreme extensions are questionable at best.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Whether measured in absolute expenditure, relative to GDP, or in terms of total military spending worldwide, the United States is far and away the most highly militarized country in the world.
This is not a subtle or contentious matter, and it takes about ten seconds to find out. Shame on you for not bothering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Free speech that offends muslims must not be tolerated. But feel free to make fun of Jews and Christians all you want. We all know they are a bunch of intolerant whack-jobs that don't have two brain cells to rub together. At least they won't blow you up and rape and murder your wife and children if you insult their mustaches.
Cuz if you're Jewish or Christian, you're kinda throwing stones in a glass house while trying to "other" people you've never met.
I really REALLY don't want to turn this into a religion vs. religion thing, because in my mind thats not the point. Fact is, there is a group of people out there with thin skins with 0 tolerance for views outside there own. If they are criticized or someone makes a "graven image" of their prophet, they go ape shit. I know in the US, if people acted that way over The Holy Virgin Mary in dung (killing people and such), I would call them animals too. Christians have been for the most part crapped on for centuries (as well as other religions/groups of people). All I have to say is, GET OVER IT. People will always have things you disagree with and say things you don't like. Just because I say, "Your god is a poo-poo head", doesn't give you any justification to go out on the streets and kill people.
The UN pulling this stunt with "free speech should be regulated" crap is just a ploy to control the population. This is exactly why the US's founding fathers put in the free speech part in our constitution. So the government could not control our voice.
It has.
No. First, the U.S. cannot with a straight face call the embassy attack "terrorism" when it's busy bombing weddings, funerals, rescuers, and making "signature strikes" where we're making a guess that we're bombing the "right" people.
Second, the protests are because the Muslims are sick and tired of having their countries invaded based on lies, drone bombed without declarations of war, citizens kidnapped and tortured by western powers, and of course saddled with brutal, but western-friendly, dictatorships.
I find this attitude to be unsettling. The fact that abortion and 'gay rights' happen to be polarizing issues is one of the problems with the American political system. ... it angers me to see a homosexual who believes in a more libertarian form of distributive justice vote Democrat because he prioritizes gay marriage over economic issues.
Perhaps if you were that gay man, you would understand. Were economic issues also more important than civil rights for blacks?
Civil rights for blacks was a matter of distributive justice. The same civil rights protections that black enjoy today are also granted to homosexuals. It's illegal to discriminate against hiring homosexuals and it's illegal for an employer to fire someone because they find out that person is gay.
Marriage isn't a right, it's a license granted by the state. One that's already too easy to obtain. Personally, I don't think the government should legally recognize any marriage, gay or straight. Why do I need a judge or priest to officiate my love for another individual? I oppose gay marriage because I oppose marriage, not because I think that gays shouldn't be allowed to be in long term monogamous relationships. The state already sanctions that by not legally prohibiting it.
Hell, most married people don't believe in marriage, either. They just do it for the tax breaks or because of social pressure or because the whole idea's been romanticized beyond rationality. Also, claiming that if I were gay that I would understand probably isn't true because I know homosexuals who agree with everything I've written in this post. Hell, there are homosexual Republican congressmen and lobbyists who demonize gay marriage as an evil abomination - I agree with them, I just think that straight marriage is also an evil abomination. Social institutions should never be blindly accepted as just and right.
Okay, so you're anti-social. Fine. But IF an institution is accepted for straights, it also should be for gays or it's discriminatory. Oh, and some states do specifically PROHIBIT gay marriage. I'll rephrase my original statement for the special case of anti-marriage types like you, 'If you were gay and were not against marriage altogether, perhaps you'd understand why the topic is important to MANY gays.'
My religion says I must provoke and humiliate yours. Now what?
Since you will inevitably start bitching about how you trolled your way to terrible karma and now you have to use sock puppets to get your sermons out, it is worth pointing out that the right to speak does not come with the right to be heard. This important distinction might well be lost on you, particularly since you feel that your "rights" trump those of everyone else save your own personal lord and savior ron paul.
In other words, yes, you can say what you want. However, just as you cannot be forced to listen to what others say, others cannot be forced to listen to what you say, either.
...
However, you don't meet many pro-lifers who believe their moral obligation to heal the sick of feed the hungry extends to getting laws passed or protesting on the steps of the Supreme Court. For some reason, whenever it comes to a social issue that codes as "left wing" from a 1950s perspective, the Pray Brigade seems to forget where they put their marching shoes.
Ah, you see, you're missing the point. Allowing the state to do these things is competition for the churches who want to be the only place the poor and hungry can go to eat; the sick the place where they can get faith healing when they can't afford doctors. That way they can be shamed properly and then converted to whatever religion their peddling.
That manner being pseudonymous tough-guy talk over the Internet, apparently. That'll teach those gosh darn hippies.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Heck, it's not even limited to RELIGIOUS extremism.
". Just keep it away from impressionable children and most of all out of laws that may affect me. I prefer education and legal system to be rooted in reality."
The definition of reality promoted by some atheist groups is so narrow as to become fantasy. And the protection of your ears from other people's beliefs expressed in public isn't in the constitution anywhere.
A law that affects you greatly, that is based in the "fantasy" of the ten commandments: Thou shalt not murder. Do you seriously want to eliminate that law from the books?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Yep, if Malala didn't seek a right to free speech, she'd be okay. After all, she was denigrating the Taliban's belief that girls should not be educated and they were seeking the right to defend that belief by shooting a 14 year old girl in the face.
>Remember the Christian Whackjobs who blew themselves to bits in the middle of a marketplace?
I'll see your acts of terrorism and raise you using child soldiers to do it. Say hello to Uganda's Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army.
>What about the widespread rioting when the state helped finance a picture of their God in a jar of urine?
Oooh, did I mention that it's the same Uganda where legislators have repeatedly proposed making homosexuality a capital offense? Three guesses what religion those legislators follow!
>How about when the mormons beheaded their prisoner on film and published it?
Replace "beheaded" with a lynch mob raiding his home and shooting him to death, and you have a description of what *other Christians* did to the founder of Mormonism himself, Joseph Smith.
You either have free speach or you don't. I'm sure there is alot of things that one religion would call attacks, said in another religions house of worship from the preacher himself. Are we going to start putting Muslims in jail for calling Christian infedels, and saying that we are all going to hell. That's pretty offensive to me, but, I think they have every right to say it, right or wrong. In America, our consitution does not say, you have free speech as long as it doesn't piss someone else off. Cause if it did, then well... it wouldn't be free speech. Without free speech, we're screwed. Eventually you won't be able to hear the truth about corruption in our government. Then where's your democracy(which is already paling).
"Fascism" is any political view you happen to disagree with.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Available information indicates this to be a pre-planned co-ordinate terrorist attack on the 9-11 anniversary, not a riot over a video that no one ever saw. The video scapegoat was a way for the current administration to deflect attention away from their own security failures and point blame at their political adversaries. Free speech is the casualty or a more cynical view would be that free speech, specifically speaking out against the muslin religion, is a direct target.
Sorry, I have to interject here: The original US constitution had no absolutes. The freedoms ascribes were specifically denied to certain groups. For example, women could not vote. The absolutism in US law came much later. As politicians sought careers, they devised ways to realize this. Absolutisms resulted. However, these absolutes enshrined in law did make this large country governable. It was easier to define the "bad" in terms of these absolutes. It became possible to abolish slavery, for example.
We need absolutes as a kind of beacon. Religion played that role in earlier forms of society. In our advanced society, the judiciary mitigates the affect on society and "referee's" whenever these absolutes collide. The abortion debate is an excellent example of the latter.
The view that the image of Muhammed should never be rendered under penalty of death is not the majority belief among all the various Muhammed-based religions. The Prophet himself instructed his disciples to NOT record what became the Sayings of Muhammed, also known as the Hadith, and it is in this text that all this trouble of intolerance originates. There is no religion more intolerant of other religions than right-wing Islam. However, there are as many variations within Islam as there are in Christianity. Every village has its idiot. They are easy to find. They are usually the ones yelling and killing people.
Can't get violent...because someone discredits your beliefs. You should be secure enough in your beliefs that things like that don't matter.
On the other hand, repeated lies on media that attempt to excite hatred - either at a person, or the president - should not be tolerated. Media outlets are entrusted to be honest even while having a bias. Lies that cause violence should be prosecuted.
Yes, it makes sence in a medieval kind of way. What you describe is a version of the Sicilian Mafia Code: watch what you say, or a knife in the ribs is the result. That isn't civilized behavior, it's Gang mentality.
I have too many things to criticize Israel, Zionism and Jews of, can I do it under your free to speech sacred laws?. pls answer.
Most "pro-life" politicians I've heard support the death penalty and every war we've been in, no matter how unjustified. And lately they have been pretty vocal about allowing people to starve to death or die from lack of health care if they can't afford it. I think it's pretty clear what the "fuck 'em" comment refers to.
The problem with the argument of using "normal" social behavior which includes physical abuse, is it has been normal to:
1) Treat women as second class citizens and beat them when they 'step out of line'.
2) Beat up gays for something to do.
3) Prohibit marriage between races.
etc.
I would hope that as a society we would aspire to be better than 'normal'. As long as someone doesn't directly negatively impact another's life, they should be left to live in peace. Just to be clear, neither two men holding hands nor a woman walking nude done the street count as _direct_ impact. A punch in the face, however, does.
A battle isn't a football game, fatty.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So they can bully people for "failing to obey a lawful order".
Most rapes are committed by people who are well known to their victims - close friends and family members. I doubt your daughter would have a chance to shoot you before it's too late - more's the pity.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Shooting to wound - at least against a target who is in a position to shoot you - doesn't exist outside the movies.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
>Fascism: the merger of corporate and state interests.
Huh?
Where did you get this definition, or did you just make it up? Or did you transcribe it from the "Peoples Microphone" last summer in NYC?
See you space cowboy
Hitler could have saved himself a lot of trouble. Had he dusted off the Qur'an's War surahs, he could have dispensed with Mein Kampf . Replace Arabs with Aryans, Mecca with Munich, and prophet with fuhrer, and the rest remains the same. The "cruel God of Misery" is a more fitting title for Allah’s tormented spirit, anyway. Fear, submission, and obedience take their rightful place in both men's quest to gratify their flesh. The Qur'an and Mein Kampf were inspired by the same spirit and for the same purpose. They are equally false, intolerant, racist, hateful, and violent. While the original disciples of both men conquered much of the world, one poligious doctrine lives on. It continues to inflame terrorists everywhere.
As the beneficiary of the largest transfer of wealth in history - a billion dollars a day - Islam is on the verge of acquiring the weapons of mass destruction it needs to fulfill its destiny. Hitler, Mein Kampf , and Nazism gave us a taste of what awaits us. Unless we come to see Muhammad, the Qur'an, and Islam in the same light and eliminate their influence, the world will erupt in a war more hellish than we can imagine.
Note that moral obligation is independent of, as you say, "effectiveness." If something is immoral, you must abstain, and if something is moral, you must obey, regardless of the cost or practicality. That's why it's a moral point and not an ethical one; there are no norms involved, no question of best efforts, if it happens you've failed, end of story. If abortion is murder, then compulsory, state-enforced pregnancy must be tolerated, regardless of the "effectiveness" in regulating this. Similarly, if it is immoral for a man to die for want of money, this must be prevented, by whatever means and with whatever compulsory forces are available -- at least as much force as we apply to keep the fetal hearts beating.
On this, I wonder how many people would vote for national health insurance if we passed a law forcing everyone to work for a psychiatric services charity once a year, or to look at pictures of untreated gum disorders? These are no coercive than forced trans-vaginal ultrasounds or ritualistic, politician-dictated recitations in the doctor's office.
When someone starves, American religious conservatives don't see themselves failing their moral obligations, and they hem and haw on "the role of government" and they concern-troll on costs. But when a baby is aborted, they do see themselves as failing their moral obligations, and nothing can stand in their way to prevent it, personal liberty, the doctor-patient relationship, the integrity of the body and science be damned. Why is this?
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
You have the right to attempt to do absolutely anything you want to do and the duty to accept the consequences. Also don't think your government is going to "protect" you. The cops are not sitting outside your door 24/7 stopping people from hurting you that's your job our society cannot afford that sort of police force and if it could we wouldn't want it. We are left to protect ourselves and the government is there to punish the people we have to protect ourselves from. The more we pretend that the government is protecting us the less freedom we will have to actually live our lives.
First, I never stated violence was the only answer. If you believe I did then you should really learn how to read (and comprehend what you read). In fact in both posts, I stated very clearly that it's normally not the answer. Go back and read the history for yourself, I find it silly to quote something that is in the exact same thread.
I stated that on rare occasions, it is the best form of justice. Perhaps you should learn the difference between justice and punishment before you reply again. Learning is hard, but I'll point you to a great resource. "The Republic" by Plato. I can recommend the Cambridge translation as well.
Lastly, I'll accuse you of being completely blind to your own ignorance. I come to that conclusion based on your words "kill or be killed" as you summarize all acts of a physical nature in societal law. People expressing their first amendment rights are frequently hit by police with batons and shields. This to you is fine? This is how the law operates in the real world. The world is not always pretty, but this is reality.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
1.) You said, "When someone starves, American religious conservatives don't see themselves failing their moral obligations".
That would not be true of American religious conservatives who are among the people that I mentioned who are "active with charity to care for the starving" and who "actually give sacrificially". I don't agree with the premise of your last question. (Or rather, it only applies to some.)
You may not have caught it, but my last sentence was my anticipation and attempted preemptive response to some of what you proceeded to say.
2.) "X is a moral obligation" is not equivalent to "X is a moral obligation that should be enforced by the law".
If you think all moral obligations should be enforced by law, then that is the argument to make. It is a disagreement over the appropriate role of government in enforcing various moral issues, not necessarily a disagreement over whether a moral obligation exists in the situation.
3.) When I mentioned effectiveness, I was referring to the common idea (whether correct or incorrect) that the government getting involved will make a situation worse. In other words, the question of "will this proposed policy be a good way to meet the moral obligation?".
4.) Back to your last question. I already said I disagree with the premise of the first half. As for the second half, I would phrase it differently: We disagree over whether abortion (1) is a homicide, and (2) if so, what would legitimize treating it as a legal homicide.
spoken like an idiot
It just means he's not 8 years old playing cowboy on the playground anymore.
But the recent demands for speech restrictions have conflated the two. Radical Muslims will say that threatening the dignity of their god is just as violent an act.
The emissary from Saudi Arabia claimed it was a "terrorist act on the thoughts of 1.6 billion Muslims." That's what is so insidious about all of this.
The word "libertarian" has been shot to hell. The general usage of it right now means nothing more than "Corporate Anarchism". Right now "libertarians" like Ron Paul believe in free reign for corporate groups and are fine with limiting of individual rights. Libertarians used to believe just the opposite.
Exactly. Libertarians of today are little more than another faction of the Republican Party.
Interesting. Thanks for clarifying.
testing out my trending skills
Nice straw man.
Try asking the wizard to give it some brains.
We defeated the Ruskys without firing a shot.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Just in the last few days, an administrator at Gallaudet University was removed from her post and faces possible loss of her job simply for expressing her opinion on gay marriage. So much for free speech in the US.
Ether 'Jewish History' is proof of the supernatural or 'Jewish History' is self serving fiction.
What would Occam say?
Treating their own myths as gospel Japanese history is also 'proof of the supernatural'. I bet there are more examples.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The curious thing about the pro-life movement is that they derive their notion of morality when infanticide was the approved method of preventing unwanted children.
"If religion was based on real truth, there only would be one." -- Mark Twain
Casteism
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I don't understand why anyone offended by something can't just not look at it. These people are going out of their way to look up something they consider offensive on the internet, and then get mad when it's there. I specifically don't go around Googling "pictures of sex-change surgeries gone wrong" because it bothers me. If I decided to, why would I get mad at the people in the pictures or the doctors who did it, or for that matter the site hosting the pictures? Shouldn't I feel stupid for looking up something that I know for a fact I don't want to see?
Also, why are they so pissed at the messenger instead of the creator of the content? Google went out of its way to censor this thing in their countries, what more do they want?
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
Anyone who owns and carries a firearm has a responsibility to demonstrate iron-clad self-discipline and sound judgment.
Well said. This is why I am a staunch supporter of gun ownership, but own no guns myself. As a service to society, I have judged myself unable to bear the heavy responsibility.
But I am very happy other private citizens, who have stronger character, own guns.
It's not the words that need controlling, it's the violent protesters. Protesting becomes bad when it becomes violent, or encroaches on others rights and freedoms of others. Tolerant is strange because as you tolerate more and more that which you tolerate can easily encroach on the rights and beliefs of others. IE be intolerant. Tolerating sharia law is one such example.
Libertarianism is about reducing state power over individuals
... thus creating a power vacuum filled by corporate powers. See, Libertarians are not just about reducing state power over individuals, they want to reduce state power over those groups as well, and remove the restrictions for their behavior. See, 'regulations' seem to have become a dirty word now, but they are put into place to address past abuses and prevent future ones from occurring. You can make the claim that there are too many regulations or that they go too far, and could be correct, but they always come about thanks to abuse. They're not instated for fun, or someone's love for 'big government.'
I don't want to be "ruled" by a government, but I want to be "ruled" by private companies even less.
Yes, fuck all religious extremists, but the Islamists are the most widespread so they get the ire today.
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Islam is today where Christianity was in 1400. I guess we will have to find a way to bring that religion into the 21st century, regarding tolerance, and recognizing their prophet was a human being with a lot of baggage.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Oh yeah? I consider it my right to kill anybody whose screen name ends with "ase".
Well, they stood out among the 90% Christian SS soldiers... And it is generally agreed that the grand mufti allied with Hitler in order to gain independence from the colonial powers.
Spoken like an ivory tower academic. Humans in the real world are animals.
Way to twist it. Out of laws generally means "No laws based entirely on one religion or another"
"Don't kill people" is a law that affects and benefits everyone and is one that stays just based on the rooted in reality bit.
'when some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others' values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected.' Speech has never been free - not in the West, nor anywhere else - it always costs something. The question is; how much we are willing to pay for what we want to say.
Calling for violence or claiming you're going to do violence in aggression (as opposed to genuine self defence) is not free speech. Never has been. Self defence means only like action. A insult for an insult. A threat for a threat. Action for an action.
"you're an ass"
"you're a dick"
"I'm going to smack your head"
"if you try that I'll smack YOUR head"
"I've just pulled my loaded gun on you"
"I have shot you".
Everything else is a function of free thought not action or intended action as a result it is free speec otherwise who owns your mind and opinions? And who has the moral authority to say what is right and not?
Who strikes terror in people's hearts more than God?
It's all rooted in reality. Skepticism is irrational because it denies reality.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Islam from the beginning has been militant and intolerant. let me correct that Mohammed had some tolerance at the beginning of his "mission" but lost it by the end.
His followers for the most part followed suit. It has been under western influence that any moderation and toleration exists among them.
This is utterly insane. Limiting free speech in this way is nothing but an example of the west kowtowing to religious bullies. If you can't handle your disgustingly patriarchal religions being caricatured so much so that you engage in violence as a reaction than you are extremely immature as a religion and as a society.It's aaay-yo-kaaayyy for these bullies to refer to everyone else as infidels in the case of Muslims or as heathens in the case of Christians. No one seems to be stopping those particular form of speech. People of all religions need to keep their silly religious rules and dogma to their own members. I'm a Catholic and although I believe that during the mass the priest turns the wine and bread into the body and blood of Christ, I don't give a damn if you or Martin Luther stomp all over the blessed eucharist in front of me. I don't care if you destroy a cross. Christ is above such things and so should I be. Something tells me Allah is above all of this as well.These savage childlike religious fanatics need to grow up!!! All people have the right to free speech. I'm an artist. If I want to depict mohammed (though why I would bother don't know) I very damn well can!!!
"It appears that the one thing modern society can no longer tolerate is intolerance" Help me understand : Not tolerate 'intolerance', isn't it just 'intolerance' ? So if I understant corectly, they said they can't tolerate what they said ... Definitely, I will never understand politicals !
The problem is that especially in the USA, people are more concerned about losing their jobs than speaking their minds. The Constitution protects speech and other forms if expression from government action, but not from private action. However, this can be remedied by understanding the following:
* There still remains a distinction between natural persons and corporations.
* Corporations are governed by a set of laws that do not apply to natural persons.
* When corporations speak or act, it is presumed commercial in nature for corporations exist for the purposes of commerce.
* Commercial speech receives lesser protections than political speech by natural persons.
* Individuals acting in a corporate capacity operate under the framework of laws that govern corporations.
* Freedom of association whether in the positive (freedom to associate) or the negative (freedom from association) is political in nature for it reflects the motives in whatever choices are made.
* Freedom of association as expressed in HR decisions is an extension of commercial speech and not solely a decision based on economic factors.
* Individual political speech trumps commercial speech by corporations.
* Therefore, HR decisions must receive greater scrutiny by the courts as to whether the taint of bias leaps into existence and rises to the level of legitimate judicial attention.
Or what if you happen to shoot the asshole that's shooting at you stopping the bullets from coming out of his gun. You logic is so bad it makes me wonder how you even dress yourself in the morning.
I doubt they ever really figured out how to wear shoes or put on deodorant.
Because Nazism wasn't a "Political Philosophy of Peace"?
MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
Where most people get into trouble is in dealing with the specifics.
And isn't that a really big, HUGE, *PROBLEM* -- that *MOST* people (as opposed to less than 50%) have that trouble? What would it take to change that? To make it so that less than 50% had that trouble?
Basically things like this relieve people of the obligation to be both involved and proactive. Then they can scoot by on minimal effort being reflexive and reactionary with all sorts of travesties taking place.
But one also needs a lot of KNOWLEDGE and EXPERTISE to be "involved and proactive" in a way that will do more good than harm. Without that EDUCATION, doing so would only do more harm than good. Like having someone who knows jack s**t about medicine do brain surgery. 99.999% chance he'll kill the patient. EDUCATION is necessary.
It's remarkable how extreme and outrageous many religious people are when it comes to the statements they make about gay people, much of it is outright defamation, and most of it is just plain false and slanderous, and obviously designed to foster hate.
I say let all these religious hypocrite assholes get exactly hat they want - but they aren't going to like it applied to themselves one bit.
Money is not speech! It is merely an amplifier of speech.
In a couple of places in both the old and new testaments it implies that life begins with your first breath.
And so God confounded human kind, by giving them different languages, so they could not understand one another, different value systems, different religions, skin color and customs, and all humans grew incapable of understanding and respecting anothers value systems and beliefs. Each human was programmed with private understandings, egos and capitalist behaviour, and greatly hated restrictions on what they were socially allowed to do, and hated anybody different to them. So when actions required to take care of global warming, and ecosystem destruction threatened each individuals idea of freedom, mostly everyone denied that it was happening, and that they had no personal responsibility and should not make any contribution to the common good. As a result, there is no common Good, and without a common good, there is no God.
That's partly because of typical Nazi stupidity, but mostly because they didn't know about the Soviet agent in Tokyo and hoped to encourage Japan to move north rather than south out of Manchuko, which would have drawn off forces from the Eastern Front (not knowing that the Russians knew that they wouldn't be invaded in the east also helped mess up Barbarossa). Also, Roosevelt had been provoking Germany by pushing presidential authority to the limit in the Battle of the Atlantic.
The war was never supposed to happen in 1939: neither Britain nor France nor Germany were ready, and the Western allies hadn't been confident of their ability to oppose Germany since the re-miliarisation of the Ruhr (which was allowed to happen because France didn't want to risk another war on their borders, and Britain couldn't (or wouldn't) act alone). The war starting over Poland was a mistake: Hitler thought that the British were bluffing again, while the British thought Hitler knew they were obliged to act that time.
The reason for the Phoney War was that both sides were hurrying to bring forwards their re-arnament plans so that they could fight.
The general consensus is that so long as the decision is made without any discrimination on the basis of content, it is fair: so either everyone gets to use a megaphone or no-one does (or everyone gets to ask for days when they can use one). Likewise, you are perfectly free to have a parade down the main road, so long as you don't hold up the traffic - I hope you can run quickly enough.
In the natural world you have freedom of speech, you also have freedom of murder. historically I would believe the two have gone hand in hand on occasion. In a civil society you don't have the murder, but you do have the speech. The government should not prevent you from speaking but also protect you from retaliation from dimwits that cant understand that words are just sounds and if your are getting upset and want to kill people over them then thats your problem and not the sounds. FUCK ALAH FUCK MOSES FUCK JESUS and FUCK GOD hurrah and if your offended go fuck yourself.
... response.
Perhaps the person should be held accountable if an exceptionally violent response to their speech was obviously predictable, as in this case. Maybe a little twist on the concept of "inciting to riot", or "negligent homicide". Or whatever a person would be prosecuted for if the aftermath of their shouting "Fire!" in a theater was several deaths.
None of this should protect the terrorists / criminals from paying the price for their actions though.
I have no problem with you pursuing your right.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
If you're a "free speech advocate" you are by definiton a social liberal and not a "conservative".
That sounds like Thought Terrorism, citizen.
Free speech was designed to protect religion, the freedom of religion, the free expression of religious faith, the freedom to confess one's faith in Jesus Christ and to practice one's faith.
The first problem involved is that we have begun to treat United Nations actions as though they were binding upon the United States and its citizens, under color of the provision of our Constitution that includes treaties, ratified by the Senate, as the supreme law of the land. The clause was never intended to permit bypassing the House of Representativesâ(TM) vital role in the law-making process, nor to permit the President and the Senate to diminish any of the fundamental rights of Americans guaranteed by the Constitution. Indeed, our fundamental rights are guaranteed, but not granted, either by the Constitution or the government. The prevailing view of the Framers of the Constitution, as laid out in the Federalist papers which were the case for its ratification, was that our federal government had no powers not expressly granted in the Constitution, and they originally argued against the Bill of Rights because the prevailing view as noted there was that these fundamental rights, including those guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, were derived from what the Declaration of Independence called âoethe laws of nature and of Natureâ(TM)s God, . . our Creator.â Letâ(TM)s be completely candid about this. The impetus behind the current push to limit the free speech and press rights of Americans originates out of the fear of terrorism or war by militant Islamists, and our governmentâ(TM)s craven fear and cowardice because the Muslim world controls much of the oil and gas we depend upon for our productivity and standard of living.. If we actually got into a real, all-out war, unlike World War II which we won in part because we had the oil, we would be hard put to supply our forces with oil or manufactured goods. A minute segment of ill-informed professing Christians have abused such free speech and free exercise rights, but the brutal fact is that it is not Christians or Jews, etc, but only the resurgent militant Islamists, who ultimately seek our conquest and subjugation anyway, the powerful âoegayâ lobby, and certain militant atheists, who, and whose violent reactions, are behind this whole idea of restricting religious or other expression. The whole idea that the law should protect people from religious or political speech that they disagree with and donâ(TM)t want to hear, or want others to hear, because of some emotional reaction they choose to have to it is not only contrary to the American Constitutional scheme, but violates fundamental, God-given, human rights. Some Western countries, facing increased Islamic , âoegay,â and atheist influence, have decided to classify and prohibit as so-called âoehate speechâ the tenets of the Judeo-Christian scriptures, which believers have traditionally believed are inspired, but practically never extend the same restrictive treatment to the Quran, which Muslims believe was literally written by Allah (God) in heaven, although it contains many passages which legitimize and command, or which the militant Muslims insist legitimize and command, murder and other crimes and violations of our fundamental human rights. This is quite different from regulating incitement to commit crimes, psychological abuse of children, etc.
Freedom of speech isn't absolute in the U.S. either. Try (falsely) shouting fire in a crowded theater. Or any speech intended and likely to incite imminent lawless action. Most governments just draw the line well to the left of where the U.S. does.
No, but I want to have laws based on reality. The reality is that I enjoy living, and that I'd guess the majority of people does so, too. Hence there should exist a law that outlaws ending my life in a way that I do not approve of. Likewise, having to defend your property constantly against people wanting to take it from you is kinda inefficient, so I prefer to have a law that outlaws taking my possessions. And I tend to think that most people would agree with this, so there should be a law for it.
I dunno, but I tend to think that I, at least, don't need some imaginary friend to tell me that killing, stealing and lying is a bad idea on a general principle. If you do, by all means, have your imaginary friend tell you so!
Problem is, a lot of people that go and murder people later claim that their imaginary friend told them it's a spiffy idea, so I guess he can be a king size asshole, too...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
and the twit serving as secretary general.
If that someone else has shot first, or is even waving a gun threateningly at you, then it is a defensive action.
You can't seriously be that stupid. If someone breaks into your house and is threatening you with a gun, and you shoot him, that's a gun protecting you. And there's a million other examples of a gun protecting you.
There's a difference between protecting by defense and protecting by fighting back. Shooting someone may be allowed in some cases, but its still an offensive action.
The (US-exclusve) right to shoot people in the face cannot properly be balanced with other rights, such as the right to religious belief and the right to life. Human rights are always about balance between the opposing rights: however, if someone has shot you in the face, you can no longer balance that. Murder is murder, regardless of your justification.
"So the theory is, in herding cultures the different clans will sometimes attack and steal other's animals property, or commit other acts against them, and when insulted in such a way..."
Are you talking about insults or attacks? Pick one. Your pulled a switcheroo with the above.
Every trollism an AC posts is prefixed, in my mind, with "A. Coward whined, in a weak and cowardly voice:"
No, but I want to have laws based on reality.
The problem with that is that reality is as much based on unproven assumptions as any other philosophy.
The reality is that I enjoy living, and that I'd guess the majority of people does so, too.
Like that bad assumption right there. What you enjoy might be torture to somebody else.
Hence there should exist a law that outlaws ending my life in a way that I do not approve of.
Even if your life is based on hurting other people?
Likewise, having to defend your property constantly against people wanting to take it from you is kinda inefficient, so I prefer to have a law that outlaws taking my possessions.
But isn't that ending the life of the outlaws in a way that they don't approve of?
And I tend to think that most people would agree with this, so there should be a law for it.
Another completely unproven assumption- your reality is getting less real all the time.
I dunno, but I tend to think that I, at least, don't need some imaginary friend to tell me that killing, stealing and lying is a bad idea on a general principle. If you do, by all means, have your imaginary friend tell you so!
Well, considering what you've already written, yes, in fact, you do need some coherant philosophy- because given what you've currently written, your philosophy is extremely incoherant and, it seems, inconsistently biased towards what YOU want completely in disregard of other philosophies.
Problem is, a lot of people that go and murder people later claim that their imaginary friend told them it's a spiffy idea, so I guess he can be a king size asshole, too...
Says the guy who wants irrational property rights based merely on subjective emotion..
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I believe the book to which you refer is "Albion's Seed"
I'm from Alabama, you stupid fuck
It's human behavior. Get used to it
What's the difference?