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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.
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?
'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.)
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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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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.
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.
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.
If you think that using a gun makes you a man, you're a very small man indeed.
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"
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.
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.
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
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.
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...
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."
More to the point, any law outlawing religious blasphemy will be inherently self-contradictory. It is blasphemous for a Christian for someone to call Mohammed a prophet of God, and it is blasphemous for a Muslim to claim that he is not. Either way you are giving offense to 1.5 billion plus people just from that one statement. So...yeah, blasphemy laws will never work in a heterogeneous society. Basically what the Muslims want is blasphemy laws protecting Islam, and then abolishing all other world religions. This will never fly in the United States. At least not in my lifetime.
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
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!!!
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/
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
>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.