Here's a question I've never been able to answer to my own satisfaction. At what point should speech should become an offense? Charles Manson told his followers to kill people and they did.
Was meant to be Charles Manson, had a brain fart. Ted Bundy was another US serial killer, but he did all his own killing.
Who was it, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said "Freedom of Speech does not give you the right to yell 'FIRE!' in a crowded theater"? Yeah, that dodges answering the question, but it is a pithy quote nonetheless. Sorta like "I can't define 'obscenity', but I know it when I see it."
Which is why that second one in particular gets challenged a lot, and which is why pornography is covered under the first amendment these days. But comparing yelling "fire" in a crowded room or ordering followers to commit murder to saying something someone else just finds offensive is intellectually dishonest to say the least, particularly since nothing more than feelings have been hurt in the latter case.
Maybe you should stop making that comparison, then. Or have the courts in Canada been convicting people of hate speech for "saying something someone else just finds offensive" and I just didn't notice? You've yet to provide proof that the slope is as slippery as you claim it is.
Uh, I haven't been. That's what hate speech laws are all about. It isn't directed at speech that actually harms anything more than peoples' feelings because it is considered hateful speech. Nah, I just provided the evidence you wanted and then you decided that wasn't good enough. But go ahead and keep being an apologist for anti-hate speech laws. If you really hate free speech that much, who am I to change your mind.
You're the one suggesting hate speech laws are going to be used to criminalize such things, so yeah, you are. That sounds like a "no" to me. Evidence that Canadian hate speech laws are being abused to punish people for saying things that hurt other peoples feelings? Really? You provided that? Time for me to see an optometrist then, cuz I sure didn't see it.
Have you actually read the law? Here, I'll help you. The short version is that it has nothing to do with "hurting anyone's feelings". It has everything to do with advocating or promoting "genocide", meaning the destruction of all or part of an identifiable group. It is legally defensible if it can be shown that what has been written or said is demonstrably true.
Apparently you didn't read what that was actually in reply to, which was the suggestion that yelling "fire" in a crowded room was equivalent to hate speech. Why do you hate free speech? I provided evidence of a trial you didn't believe took place. And since it actually was brought to trial, I'd say that it was a case of those laws being used to punish people for saying things that hurt other peoples feelings, even if it did end up getting dismissed. Actually that "Willful promotion of hatred" part would be. And to be frank, even the bits about just "advocating genocide" is already treading on free speech. Who cares what some jackass says as long as they don't act on it? And why do anything that would keep them from outing themselves so you can see what jackasses they are. And again, there is still plenty of room for abuse there, which is shown by the fact that that trial against that magazine took place at all, rather than being dismissed outright. Sorry, but defense of anti-hate speech laws is simply defense of something that is anti-free speech. This should be pretty obvious, and I'm going to guess that you truly believe in this blatant violation of free speech to defend it as much as you are. You sure as hell don't see me defending the censorship that takes place in my country.
By that logic, laws against murder are used to punish people for not murdering anyone, since sometimes there are murder trials that get dismissed. You think so, but every judge in Canada has disagreed. Who do you think I take more seriously? Ask a Tutsi what happens when you ignore people that advocate genocide. If you can find one, that is.
Or kind of like how rape trials ruin the lives of the accused even if they're found innocent, for example. Every judge? Really? Evidence? And why is it still on the books then? Nice straw man. Apparently differentiating between speech and action is too hard for you to comprehend.
So what's the answer there? You in favour of legalizing rape? You're the one that interpreted the law as criminalizing "hurt feelings." Not one judge in Canada has interpreted the law the same way and convicted someone for "hurt feelings." What's that tell you about your interpretation? One tends to lead to another. Are you against criminalizing death threats as well?
Since that yelling "fire" example keeps getting brought up, do you know where it originally came from? It was from a 1917 US Supreme Court judgment where the court unanimously ruled that it was illegal for people to distribute pamphlets opposing the draft in WWI. I wasn't directly comparing either, I was questioning exactly where the line lies. Let's say there is a fundamentalist Islamic cleric who every day preaches to his followers that suicide bombing is the right thing to do and that non-Muslims all deserve to die, however he is careful to never directly instruct anyone to go and carry out an act. One of his followers then goes out and commits a terrorist act. Does the cleric hold any responsibility?
Seems to me that's actually been brought up before. So, in a similar vein, what about that video game that was brought up in another thread that encourages the player to gun down Tea Party members. Would that fall under hate speech laws? What if, instead of Tea Party members, it was members of an ethnic minority? Would it then? But really, at the end of the day, if you are pro-anti-hate speech laws, you are anti-free speech.
Only by your definition. There is no such thing as absolute free speech in any country that I'm aware of. You just choose to delude yourself that there is.
Hey, if you have to tell yourself that to feel better about being anti-free speech, that's your problem, not mine.
And the difference is that I don't support it, which means that I'm not anti-free speech the way people who support anti-hate speech laws are.
Which is all well and good, but pretty much meaningless considering that "free speech" as you appear to be defining it does not exist anywhere. Should slander and libel not be illegal? Very similar to the anti-hate propaganda laws in Canada.
libel and slander are about more than hurt feelings though, or simply spreading one's opinion, no matter how disgusting and/or hateful they might be. You know, the stuff ant-hate speech laws are meant to punish. But none of that changes my pro-free speech stance or the anti-free speech stance of anti-hate speech laws and the people who support them.
Except you don't seem to be understanding that the anti-hate propaganda is about more than "hurt feelings" exactly in the same way as the libel and slander laws. I think your perception of them as being somehow anti-free-speech is flawed. That's the point.
