Oh wow, those are really good cites. Opinion pieces by someone who posted this:
She was either working as a cleaner, or she’s a liar. Or maybe she thought the only place you could buy meat was Fortnum and Masons.
This statement is part lie, and part deception.
The minister claimed that homosexuality was a “cancer on society”, not just that it was a sin. Actually, this is what he said when speaking about homosexuality, after inviting both press and TV to the sermon:
He sent a quote of his own sermon to the lokal news media as well.
He was sued then tried and at first convicted in Tingsrätten, but after appeal he was aquitted in Hovrätten.
Your example was frankly one of the most dishonest arguments I have seen here on the board. Not just that the example and presentation itself was fraudulent, but there is also a huge double standard. Or are we now deciding the measure of free speech in a society by the things that goes to court, instead of what the court system decides?
Most, if not all, of the “far-right wing” parties in Europe would fall to the left of the Republican party if you compared policies. If the Republican party moved to a European country it would be considered a far-far-right party.
So your solution is what? Make people have more babies? Doesn’t seem like a conservative govt role to me. Caring only about your self and the immediate future sounds like a perfect example of the current American right.
I think the OP should study his OP very carefully and report back to us the instances of strawmanning, logical fallacies, and outright propaganda.
Violence and gore in film/games are heavily censored in Australia.
“Hate speech” is illegal in France.
Holocaust denial is illegal in Germany, as is the ownership of objects marked with Swastikas.
In UK there is no legal separation of church and state, with daily worship required by law in public schools.
In Canada it is illegal to “incite hatred.”
All of those things might look good at a glance, but think about it.
Curtis, I applaud your looking outside your local sphere to find out more about the big world we live in, but you start off with many assumptions instead of starting by questioning your assumptions. I’ll agree that Canada has different Free Speech laws than the US does, but the average person finds no constriction by them (“heavily curtailed” is quite the exaggeration). Canada has a constitutional provision that guarantees freedom of expression (in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms), but it also has a limitation clause -
The way I interpret this is that you’re free to express yourself, and other Canadians are free to live without me being hateful to them. I don’t have a problem living under these constraints.
So what? Are you saying the America is advanced compared to Europe?
Well, what about 17,000 murders per year in the US? If the US is so good, why do you LIKE having so many murders?
The answer, of course, is that just because someone admires something, doesn’t mean they have to accept any of its flaws. I love my country, but I don’t like the poverty, crime and racism that exists here.
I’ve been up all night, working.
What does “SWPL” stand for?
In the US we only have 2 viable political parties, whereas in Europe you can find 5 or 6 in some nations. So there are more than enough Americans willing to vote for a far right party, but since it is a choice of GOP vs. democratic they vote GOP.
The agenda of LePen, who was considered far right in France, is fairly milquetoast by GOP standards.
Traditional values, anti-abortion, law and order, xenophobia, anti-immigration, nationalism. Those aren’t really extreme views by US standards. Here in the US you have GOP politicians claiming the president is an Al Qaeda double agent, (subtly) calling for armed insurrection, lying incessantly, etc. LePen is arguably a moderate right winger by US right wing standards.
I remember an interview Obama was doing a few months ago, where he said when he meets political leaders in Europe they are confused as to why people in the US call him a socialist, by European standards Obama is a conservative (according to the unnamed European leaders Obama talked to).
And authoritarianism is something both parties do. On the left people may support authoritarian policy about free speech, but the right supports authoritarian policies too. Persecution of gays, opposition to the ACLU, opposition to criticism of the military, etc.
How about, in relationship to many of the countries of Europe, America is still in its teen-aged years?
Those aren’t really “riots”-it’s more of protests gone a bit nasty. They did not even make the top twenty national news stories of the year nor did the President or Governor have to declare a “state of emergency”.
I mean roughly the political paragidm endorsed by people like John McCain or George W. Bush.
So than Singapore is a utopia for you?
I once had a debate on an another forum about the death penalty and a French social democrat showed a map of the nations where the death penalty was legal and where it was illegal and of course he cited about how the US is there with Saudi Arabia, China, and etc. Heck the argument is made in one of the posts below here? There were similar arguments over the Landmine banning treaty which the US hasn’t signed and UHC.
Hmm…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_US_Presidential_Election
Pat Buchanan won 0.4% of the popular vote (and that includes Palm Beach liberals with bad ballots).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_French_Presidential_Election
In the first round Jean Marie Le-Pen won 16.9 % of the vote and he ended up being in the run-off election.
So your argument in nonsense.
Japan also has the death penalty.
In European nations labour unions dominate excessively. For instance in Greece which is in massive debt and thus had to institute paycuts and layoffs civil servants went on massive strikes and protests and some even rioted as a result.
Not according to the premier expert on Chick tracts (and no the site is not pro-Chick nor is it anti-Chick) and it includes a *Washington Post *article: http://monsterwax.tripod.com/chicklaws.html
Cite? Plus unlike say Canada or Sweden, America’s population includes significantly poor minority groups while the other nations are most homogeneous.
Banning of the practices you cited are sane and most reasonable regulations by the government.
The district court actually sentenced him to a month in prison according to Wiki before he was acquitted in the higher courts.
Are you really saying that John McCain is more extreme than Jean Marie Le-Pen?
I do because unlike you I think everyone including racists and bigots should say what they want to say, write what they want to write, publish what they want to publish. For instance the law you cited has a double standard. Why not ban inciting class hatred too-especially when communists attack the upper class?
For those of you wondering about freedom of speech in Europe, the Irish Constitution says:
So you can see while we have freedom of speech, it is far more open to the government to restrict it in certain circumstances.
We have 17,000 murders a year here primarily as the result of drugs and gangsta culture, both of which are constantly defended by the liberal contingent in this country.
And, as is typical of government once they have the power to make such decisions, “hate speech” can amount to nothing more than complaint, as shown by the Bardot case I cited upthread.
[quote=athelas]
I’d wager this is true for virtually every other European country as well. That’s certainly been my impression from any documentary or profile I’ve seen having to do with people living in Europe.
Exactly. And what is the reason for their slow economic growth? High tax rates and quasi-socialistic income redistribution.
Also liberals in general won’t care as long as no particular group has more than any other. “Mediocrity for all!” could be their battle cry.
Plus liberals at large care far less about affluence than does your average acheiver. They’re perfectly happy to walk, ride buses, carpool, wear sandals and live in small, cheap spaces. To do otherwise strikes them as wasteful. And they love to rail against people who drive SUVs, wear nice clothing and jewelry, and live in large houses. To them the money spent on these things is money that should rightfully be going to government to spend on everyone else. And they’re quite happy to live with little as long as the government takes care of them and they don’t have to worry about taking care of themselves.
I’d say more like in its productive adult years, having not yet reached old age and infirmity where its population’s needs have to be taken care of by everyone else.
Indeed in the West America is the only vigourous and rising power left. The world is leaving Europe to irrelevance-the future will see a Pacific oriented world in a Sino-America-Indian dominance rather than the current Atlantic oriented Euro-American one.
That’s right. And why? Because entreprenurialism and a strong work ethic prevail in the East, whereas shorter hours, union interference and government-provided care is the order of the day in Europe.
Not too long ago a friend of mine from France and I were sitting having a beer when a single mother we both knew came up to join us. Soon the subject of her kids came up. He said “You have two kids, right?” She said yes. He said, “Then you should move to France. In France the government will pay you $2,600 a month and you wouldn’t even have to work.”
I didn’t say anything but I knew that people can’t simply immigrate to France on a whim. You have to meet certain criteria in terms of employment and providing your own health care and doing work that most French people can’t do and so forth. But still, it shows the mentality that comes from entitlement programs, and it explains why Europe is becoming an increasingly insignificant player on the world stage.
We are, as usual, stunned by the prodigious research that informs your all-encompassing world view.
Read this article carefully, and tell me; where does it actually provide an example of a law, order in council, or case law that has ever actually existed in Canada that made Chick tracts illegal?
It doesn’t, of course, because there are no such things. It does claim the Attorney General somehow single handedly banned two Chick tracts. But he didn’t, since that would be quite impossible (he did CALL for it, just as many American politicians have called for restrictions on free speech. But politicians can say anything they want; it doesn’t make it law.)
You need to acquaint yourself with facts before making claims. Be careful about unsupported claims, because on the Internet they tend to multiply; you can find 500 sites that say Chick tracts were “banned” in some unspecified way in Canada, but if you actually examine them you’ll notice it’s always a variation of one of three or four versions of the story, and there is no actual reference to a primary source. The site you’re using there is ridiculously ignorant.
You’ll find Chick tracts here and there in Canada, especially in and around fundamentalist churches. They’re not illegal.
Canada is probably the most racially heterogenous country in the Western world. One in every six residents was not born here.
You did note that the citation for the ‘banning’ is a link to a reprint of a statement in the Oct 1983 edition of Battlecry, Chick’s newspaper. The Washington post article made no mention of it.
Oh! and here’s a link to buy em in Canada, from an address not 15 minutes from my house.
If that’s your idea of an non-pro-Chick website I really don’t know what to say.
Canada counts as homogeneous? Dude, have you ever been here.