The ideal list of these virtues would mean that were you to get any sample of peoples and task them with building a town, as long as they were to follow those core virtues above their own prejudices, then it'd be as close to a social Utopia as we could get.
Indeed, I do not think any country embraces the core ideals I'm trying to hammer into this thread right now.
That is an obvious difference, the circumstance. And that is what I believe to be the duty of civic law and society to work against. By making such inflammatory statements illegal, you only serve to turn bigots into criminals who will return to society from imprisonment as criminals, nor will you stop the careless from making these statements and the most important thing of all - you will only worsen their opinions.
But you are not stopping criminals, you are making people into criminals. If you want to prevent crime like that, make the punishment capital or for life, or you're only hiding bad words away for another day and progressively making the situation worse and worse.
It's important because 'remove kebab' is a euphemism for 'remove middle-Easterners,' and not exactly with the friendliest intent. The quote there: “If someone puts their hands on you make sure they never put their hands on anybody else again.” Was from Malcom X, openly racist and yet still an important humanist in US history. So many social movements would have died so quickly had they been emerging under our censorship policies.
As is observed, even when drawing the line at violent sounding phrases, it's so incredibly easy for people who do seek to incite hatred, slay sacred cows, be expressive, be funny or edgy or whatever using euphemisms, while you've only succeeded in constricting freedom of expression, giving clear distinction also against 'known-to-be-violent' organisations.
And I remember arguing against this notion of 'stopping a crime,' unless a declaration that the crime is going to begin - it is not a declaration of crimes to begin.
You throw away needlessly an inviolable right to express yourself, and you'd kill even the most innocent of persons who made shocking statements made with the intentions of humour under the bus, merely because they made - to borrow from Neonivek's coinage, parody cake.
Charlie Chaplin was hardly advocating Nazism was he now?
You demonstrated my intended point rather well, what was to you a simple boycott of certain products was also used as an offensive slang term. Would you also make illegal 'remove kebab' despite its legitimate meaning? And even if you would say yes, anyone who actually was organizing actual crime would simply use another term, and you would be falling deeper down the slope of gagged language.
Secondly it's not counter-racism, it is just racism. Malcom was racist in his advocacy for black supremacy and his remarks against all white people, and it was a way for him to gain audience, express exactly how he felt and also speak out against racism against black people. And then we also go down into the political correctness part, where racism is viable for minorities and the censorship applies only to the majorities of any social group, creating an inequality of the rights to expression. And it is one thing to be against racism in the spoken word, but then it is also another thing to have the state make it the ultimate thought crime. For example, if one of your acquaintances were to say something bigoted, would you begin saying to them the reasons why they are wrong, or would you call the police?
I'm very much for full freedom of expression in the arts, my concerns probaly are related to crime prevention, as there are in my eyes expressions from certain people that more or less are declarations that a crime is going to begin. As I said before, context is important here, a nazi-educated grandma who says somehing racist can only be partially faulted IMO, while a leader of a neo-nazi group who openly calls for violent actions clearly is likely to just declare that a crime is going to be committed, which should warrant some sort of investigation.
Currently the idea of investigation is 'go to court.' There is a fine line between saying 'kill all x' and 'I am going to kill all x.'
And frankly, I would still support people's rights to say 'I am going to kill all x' because it makes crime so much easier to prevent, whilst also not outlawing humour, especially where textual mediums are concerned and tones of voice cannot be heard.
And last of all you don't fall into viewing people as these groups where 'you won't be sent to prison for x, but not you other people, you certainly will.' You view everyone as equals, following the same laws under the same principles.
Author
Topic: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread (Read 1291341 times)