Forty Two wrote: ↑Wed Jan 09, 2019 11:07 pm
Hermit wrote: ↑Wed Jan 09, 2019 10:44 pm
Forty Two wrote: ↑Wed Jan 09, 2019 4:44 pm
Ideas are not action.
You can have protection against the action of others, while those others still having the same right as you to express your ideas willingly.
So, abolish all hate-speech laws? I mean, what is wrong with saying: "Let's round up all Jews and gas them like the vermin they are." Or "We need to bring back the Jim Crow laws without delay. They will stop racially inferior niggers from polluting our water founts, park benches and schools." They're ideas, right, not action.
Well, yeah. We don't have them in the US. That's a good thing. People can have the opinions they like.
You just said "let's round up all the Jews and gas them like the vermin they are," didn't you? Was something wrong with that? Do you get to say it, but someone who really believes it doesn't?
Taking the position that we should bring back Jim Crow laws, etc., or that a race is inferior is just an idea - yes, it's not action. And, again, you just said it.
The liberal justices of the US Supreme Court had this figured out more 50 years ago. Brandenburg v Kentucky -- and the Nazi Party v Skokie Illinois -- speech is speech, man. In Brandenburg, the SCOTUS ruled that free speech includes the "mere" advocacy of violence. The court recognized the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
Imminent means "right now." Like - whipping up a crowd to go beat up a specific person. But, merely advocating that it would be a good idea to have a violent communist revolution, or a violent fascist uprising - or whatever, would not be illegal. It's protected speech.
Frankly, if someone has the opinions that they think it would be a good idea to gas people, I want them to say it. If they can say it, then the rest of us know who he is. Driving such people underground just makes them fester - they band together in secret - they convince each other that the government or the orthodoxy is silencing the truth. Example - if Nazis can march down the street, then everyone can laugh at and ridicule the Nazis. If the Nazis have to fight to march down the street, or if they are barred from marching down the street, that's proof to them that the Jews really are in control, and silencing them. I prefer a world where the Nazis are open, and laughed at, and where they aren't funny, law enforcement knows where to find most of them.