So, now the citizens of other nations are to have their rights governed by the U.S. Constitution?
Interesting.
-Joe
What is your definition of “incite”.
To some it could include a preacher giving a fire & brimstone sermon reading of Leviticus 18:22.
If a member of the congregation goes out and kills some gay people do we prosecute the minister for inciting hate crimes?
And lets get away from incitement for a minute. Many of these authors make no incitement to violence. They only taught their [quite ridiculous] non-belief of the Holocaust. Why should making a speech saying that you don’t believe something happened be an arrestable offense? I say it’s better to laugh at these fools and have free speech rather than restrict it.
pkbites, yes, I suppose I would count the preacher as guilty of inciting the crime in the hypothetical you outline. Mind you, in general I don’t support these sort of measures- I just wanted to point out that there are two sides to this issue, and it isn’t nearly so cut-and-dried as the OP seemed to suggest. In general I would only prosecute when an actual offence had been committed, or when there was incitemenet to attack some specific individual or group narrower than “nasty [gays/blacks/Jews]”.
And I agree with you that there should be no limits on factually ludicrous views (such as holocaust denial) other than to subject them to the usual rigorous examinations of public and educated opinion, thus exposing them for the ridiculousness they are. I would not, for example, have prosecuted David Irving. On the other hand, we do have the luxury of being able to debate this issue without the sort of tense political and cultural situation that exists in Germany, where neo-nazism is apparently on the rise, or Spain, where as recently as 1981 a group of facist army officers were attempting to take over the government. In such situations, I can see a small limitation in free speech (after all, Nazism is not a doctrine that I think either deserves or needs extra protection) as reasonable when it removes a group from a significant risk of persecution- but only as a stop-gap and short-term solution.
—guns the engine of the Bluesmobile—