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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.)
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
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~
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.
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!
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.
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.
'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You can't help a society that lacks common sense and logic.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
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.
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.
'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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?
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you totally missed the point
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
A Korean general serving in the U.N. is "the western world?"
“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.
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.
Wow. Rush Limbaugh, is that you?
Seriously, how the fuck did such ignorant hateful rubbish get modded as "insightful"?
The only thing I can agree with in your narrow minded conservative diatribe is that we should not be apologizing for our freedom of speech. The rest of your nonsense is borderline racist and a whole lot of arm waiving.
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.
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?
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."
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.
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
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.
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'?
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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
. 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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"
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
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.
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?
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!
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 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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!!!
Fuck you too you Anonymous Coward if you have something to say at least post using your nick name otherwise shut up!
Your assumption. Not what was said.
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.
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.
You were saying?
Way to quote-mine Random People On The Internet, I mean, Wikipedia. Here's the next paragraph:
Yeah, right.
Oh look, it's someone who doesn't know the line at which simple criticism turns into fear-based hate.
This is a blatant lie, parroted by ignorant right-wing groups who hate Obama and Muslims.
He criticized a response never made by the administration for the purpose of scoring political points with his ultra-religious, hate-filled base.
Are you being paid to write this partisan bullshit here or something?
Go back to FreeRepublic where your batshit insane ideas can rot with the rest of the madmen.
It is only a freedom of speech if you tolerate speech that you do not agree with.
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.
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.
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.
I was reading through your post...
...Obama who has too many connections to Islam to be trusted.
...right up to there.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
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.
I was really quite amused to read this response. By the way the embassy, as the masses of angry Muslims were gathering just outside in Egyot, issued absurd press realeses asking Americans not to hurt Muslims feelings. The Embassy is under the Obama administration, who itself repeated the apologies and insults.
Look, as I said in the comment, I more than happy to see the Muslims left alone in the middle east and lets just defend our country and keep them out of here. Your comments are very ignorant abot islam and muslims. These are very dangerous and extreme people. The fact is, simply their presence impairs our freedom of speech. They have murdered Islam critics before (Theo van Gogh) and will do so again. The police cannot be everywhere to protect you from these people. they are militant and they, once again, cannot be trusted.
In fact, whereever muslims have existed in signlficant numbers, they have created problems, including the massive riots we have seen in places such as France and Denmark whenever anyone dares criticize islam. In effect, freedom of speech is already over there because no one there can even criticize the religion now without being in very real and severe danger from the violent Muslim thugs. Once again, I remind you that these muslims are liars, they see themselves as in a holy war against the west, they are the wolf in the sheeps clothing. You seem very gulluble and ignore the risks that they pose, holding onto your absurd delusional idea that they are nice people, but whereever the muslims have gone violence and riots have gone as well.
They have their own countries, and that is where they belong, Quite simple. They have every right to their own countries and that is where they belong and shall stay.
The fact is most Muslims are racists who hate Americans and want to invade the country, destroy christianity, implement sharia law and so on. They see themselves as warriors and laugh at us for how gullible we are for willingly allowing them to invade our country and take their sick, twisted, disgusting values and their absurd, filthy barbaric, war lord religion, with them.
Quite frankly, I do not feel safe living within 100 miles of one of these people and neither should you.
The fact is, There is nothing wrong with preserving our civilisation from people who do not share our values and maintaining the traditional ethnic character of our country. NO credible legal expert would suggest that the United States or any other country does not have a right to control or completely block immigration according to any rules it deems fit. It is a clear right of countries under international law to control immigration in any way they desire, including having as little immigration as they see fit. I am quite happy with the way the US is now and I have no desire to see the country ruined by importing a bunch of violent middle eastern people who think they can trash western civilisations an bring their sick little religion with them.
Since 9-11, we have spent ridiculous amounts of money on security and insulted americans in the most humiliating ways in airport checkins. We all know that Muslims are the most likely to commit an attack on a US airline and yet because we have to be nice to those who want to kill us, we cannot profile so we have to subject americans, to humiliating searches so we dont hurt the muslims feelings.
With the trillions we have spent on the war in afghanistan and insulting security in American airports, there was one simple solution that would have cost us very little and would have mostly solved our security problems without needing a police state and trillion dollar wars: simply ban foreign national Muslims from flying into the US. Costs very little, does not jeopardise the life of US soldiers, preserves the liberty and privacy of Americans, and kills no one. Yet, we have avoided this simple, clean, non violent solution at all costs, instead, we have spent trillions on wars in asia which have killed many and spent trillions of dollars and humiliated everyone in airports.
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."
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.
The fact is muslims have their own countries, that is where they belong and should stay. But, they are not happy with having their own countries, you see, the goal of the Muslims is to take over ther world, destroy all other civilisations and all other religions, and only when every other religion is destroyed, will Allah be satisfied.
I am happy with the traditional ethnic composition and culture of the US, country has a ight to stop immigration, defend its borders, for any reason, including to stop the country from being overrun by invaders who want to trash the countries culture and try to bring in their religion which they then insist no one else can criticize. Enough is enough.
Look, Muslims are extremely dangerous. They do not share our values, and out of so many countries, not a single one is really a successful democracy. Violence, killing, murder of all of those who disagree with Islam unfortunately seems to be in their blood.
I also have had personal dealings with Muslims. It is not like I am ignorant. I would not trust them to tell me the time and I did feel to be in great danger.
let them wallow in their cesspit of stupidity, in the middle east, that armpit of the world. Lets just leave them alone, but keep them the hell away from me.
If you love the Muslims soo much, please, just move to Saudi Arabia, try to set up a christian church there to see how open minded and tolerant Muslims are, and feel the love. You will come running back here squealing like a banshee and will not want to be anywhere near a muslim again.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Considering the ever incoming scandals with catholics abusing the kids in schools and orphanages, I'd say quite a few take that creed literally.
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.
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
How do you determine "casual" vs "non-casual"? and with what degree of accuracy?
It sounds like you are over complicating things. If you make killing illegal so that side of things is covered, and paying for someone to kill also illegal, why do you also need to make talking about it illegal? What purpose does it serve to add more laws to the situation when you've already made it illegal both to do the killing, and to reward someone for doing it? (that's both sides of a contract killing transaction)
The only thing that adding a communication component does is cause an increased likelihood of punishing someone who was just kidding around or some such for simple words that can cause no harm.
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
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?
This is simply not the case. The government may try to make people believe that but the Constitution clearly states that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. No where does it state "the freedom of respectful speech" which means I can say whatever I want, where ever I want, period, end of story! I can say fuck, fuck, fuckitty, fuck all I want, whenever I want. Now there may be certain circumstances where this is frowned upon, and might get me thrown out of some-place where people have a stick up their ass but that doesn't restrict my right to say it and get myself thrown out.
> 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.
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.
The fact is muslims have their own countries, that is where they belong and should stay.
We need a "-1 Racist Asshole" mod. You'd have to search hard to find a Muslim-American who hates freedom more than you.
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!
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
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)
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
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
Sure, free speach means that they can say that film is intolerant of my religion and should be banned. Just like many people can say that Islam promotes violence and intolerance and should be banned. It does not mean either will happen.
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
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
"Your people" *especially* feel that murder is okay so long as it is under "god's direction." At which point, it's no longer considered murder by the perpetrators. Also, war is murder and countless Christians advocate going to war under a variety of causes but most recently, the cause really came down to unwillingness to pay more at the pump. That's right. I said it. We sent people out to kill and be killed over prices at the gas pump and perhaps to further the interests of Israel. The WMDs story was bogus from the beginning. The persuit of the terrorist boogey-man looked like crap even on the surface.
Christianity believes deeply in murder. It just doesn't call it murder most of the time... it's "god's will" or "following the orders of our christian leaders." Sorry, but no. To me, it's murder... worse that a one-off murder -- it's systemized, mechanized and organized murder and plunder. And I have yet to hear a mainstream Christian church protest the war.
"Support the troops" is the most we hear.
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)-
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
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".
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."
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
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.
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 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
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. ;-)
> 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 ...
Please show me in _where_ in my post I mentioned anything about "imaginary friends". Thanks.
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.
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.
... 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?
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
I'm not sure what your post has to do with free speech. But the fact is muslisms are more than welcome to come to America and practice their religion. In fact, you might argue they have MORE of a right to practice their religion, than you have to free speech. Free religion was mentioned in the constitution before free speech was.
Muslims aren't the only ones trying to take over the world.
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.
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."
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
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
"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.
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.
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
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'
"If religion was based on real truth, there only would be one." -- Mark Twain
Casteism
Recently I have found a place for approaching to the millionaires, and dating with them. I think it may be useful to you. Just check LovingRich..c-om. Thank 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.
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.
,
====
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".
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.
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.
"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 !
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.
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.
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.
"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'm from Alabama, you stupid fuck
It's human behavior. Get used to it
What's the difference?