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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.
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.
Religious hate speech can be a two way street; I've heard some not-so-nice things said by them about Jews and Christians.
'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.
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...
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.
Case-in-point: you cannot even accept the established history of your own country, let alone accept that the motivations driving beliefs 250 years ago might be just slightly different than they are today. Religious people today are decidedly more stupid than religious people of centuries past -- especially when comparing leaders of men to your average trailer-trash. Further, your founding fathers were, by-and-large, not religious -- you go ahead and find one mention of "God" in the US Constitution... I'll wait.
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.
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!
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.
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".'
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.
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...
“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.
> they STILL somehow believe that "goodness" can only come from religion. That's nonsense.
Have you ever considered, though, that for some people that is the truth though? That maybe these are people whose only motivation for good comes from religion and therefore cannot understand those who don't need religion to be decent?
People who need religion to be decent are not decent. You are not a moral person if the reason that you behave that way is because you fear the repercussions if you don't.
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.
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/