Everyone knows that. They may disagree that it justifies having the government ban some sorts of speech, or that doing so would even be effective.
As it happens, free speech in the US is not absolute, and we’ve arrived at the current state of free speech law through hundreds of years of legislation and court judgments (same link). In other words, reasoned judgment, not “blind ideological absolutism”. The only blind ideological absolutism I’m seeing here is coming from you, in fact, with these rants about the US.
Check out the imminent lawless action exception, calls for others to commit crimes aren’t protected speech.
Oh no, that’s perfectly fine. No arrests for that that I’m aware of. Gotta protect that free speech, it’s just high tempers, Muslims shouldn’t be so thin-skinned, it’s only words and so on and so forth.
And yet while France houses an estimated 10% Muslim population, and a 15% non-white population (hard numbers impossible to give, because the census deliberately does not feature questions relative to religion or race), out of 544 representatives and 348 senators there are only 1.4% non-whites and a grand total of zero (0) Muslims.
So we ban headscarves and burqas, and talk about “the Muslim problem”.
I wonder if anyone on this board thinks that the pope is correct, that there is some sort of right not to be offended.
He spoke as if insulting his mother were analogous to insulting his religion. And then says it’s only to be expected that either one (apparently) would logically and fairly result in a punch.
I know this is probably not controversial, at least not here, but I here go on record with the view that there is no right not to be insulted, that if I insult you or any person, thing or institution you hold dear, there are many things you may do, but you do not have the right to physical violence against me. Period.
I suspect that there is case law in the US about mitigation of penalties for an immediate attack if one is seriously provoked, but I also suspect that this has to do more with the attacker’s state of mind (e.g. lack of premeditation) than with any right to respond to verbal provocation with violence. At least I hope so.
I hope that Pope was just having a senior moment there, because what he said was monumentally stupid. Or, maybe it was taken out of context. Because otherwise, he just said that the attack on CH was “normal”.
Of course. But both are wrong, and he’s implying that CH incited to violence. And if it’s OK to go and punch them out, it’s a slippery slope to shooting them. Same church, different pew, so to speak.
Now, if there was more context to clarify the comment, then OK. But as it stands… monumentally stupid.
I don’t doubt this. But I would ask for historical examples of private-sector speech, absent government sanction, that lead to major atrocities. It is when government gets involved and defines what is acceptable that atrocities occur.
Is the Nazi episode not the finest example of why distrust of government is well-based?
Did the German people want to burn their books and proclaim absolute allegiance to the Nazi’s? Or did a small minority take control of the government and force these things?
That link does nothing to support your position – it does the opposite. The “limitations” on speech that it lists are activities that would be flagrantly criminal anywhere that had any laws at all, things like slander and libel, direct threats, etc. The only part that deals with anything like what I’m talking about is the very short section on “imminent lawless action” that you mention later, and that short little section exactly proves my point; quoting from your own link:
In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the Court struck down a criminal conviction of a Ku Klux Klan group for “advocating … violence … as a means of accomplishing political reform” because their statements at a rally did not express an immediate, or imminent intent to do violence. This rule amended a previous decision of the Court, in Schenck v. United States (1919), which simply decided that a “clear and present danger” could justify a congressional rule limiting speech. The primary distinction is that the latter test does not criminalize “mere advocacy”.
Examples abound: R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul overturned the convinction of a teenager – on the grounds of free speech – for burning a cross on the lawn of an African-American family. Virginia v. Black struck down KKK convictions on the grounds that cross-burning represented “the Ku Klux Klan’s protected messages of shared ideology”! Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist “church” harassed veterans’ funerals with grossly offensive hateful messages and nothing could be done until the guy finally had the good grace to die. Indeed that went to the Supreme Court, too, and in Snyder v. Phelps the court, citing free speech, ruled in favor of Phelps.
I’m not “ranting about the US”. I’m pointing out the salient fact, in response to a previous poster, that the vast majority of industrialized nations consider hate speech laws to be a reasonable limitation on free speech. The US does not. That’s absolutism. The US Supreme Court has pretty consistently reflected that prevailing view. Free speech absolutism has also been used to overturn campaign finance laws, in which Citizens United is just one egregious example of about half a dozen such recent cases, on the basis that billionaires apparently have a Constitutional right to spend billions of dollars to flood the airwaves with their political messages without restriction, because this is somehow equivalent to your right and mine to discuss politics on public transit. Absolutism by definition. If you like it that way who am I to argue? Just don’t say it ain’t so.
From my understanding, it’s true that Muslims have been marginalized in France, and this is certainly a Bad Thing. And it was undoubtedly a factor in the various riots that have occurred. But let’s not kid ourselves that it had anything to do with the attack on Charlie Hebdo. These were extremist lunatics engaged in terrorism and it would have happened no matter how well integrated or represented Muslims were in mainstream French society.
You’ll find some examples here. With that in mind, and some of the cases I cited in the previous post, one could argue that hate speech has been a factor in the whole history of American race relations.
Indeed. I think the second part of that quote answers the first part. No, you don’t react to the risk of tyrannical governments by crippling them to the point of dysfunction or, as Grover Norquist likes to say, reduce government to the point that you can drown it in a bathtub. Nor do you react to the risk of tyranny by stocking up on guns’n’ammo. You do it by recognizing the important principles that uphold democracy and safeguarding the processes that support them. Things like a free press and an informed and politically engaged public.
We are, however, getting rather far off topic for this thread.