| Subject: Interestingly enough, in recent years the left is often been more guilty of curtailing free speech than the right, especially in academic settings. Both a city council member and a teacher have been suspended for the correct use of the word "niggardly." |
Author:
The Town Clown
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Date Posted: 18:05:00 11/27/02 Wed
In reply to:
Mr. Moose and Company
's message, "We don't contend that there should be free speech without reservations! But the fact that there should be limits does not preclude humanity from the right to express an opinion! Who will be the gatekeeper of what constitutes valid criticism?" on 17:03:41 11/27/02 Wed
And it is the left that promotes idea of "hate crimes" legislation. That is, you shall be prosecuted not only for criminal acts but additionally penalized for harboring a prejudice that ostensibly spawned your crime (but only prejudices from the usual laundry list: race, sexuality, etc. If you have a demonstrated animosity for bunnies who drop ping-pong balls, for example, and kill a bunny on the basis of the hatred, your crime is not considered one of hate and the penalty is presumably mitigated.) Once we start criminalizing people's biases--no matter how wrong-headed these biases are--we are suppressing expression and ideas. Falwell and Robertson have the right to spout any hateful nonsense they choose--the Puritans we celebrate tomorrow probably held far more corrosive beliefs. However, when Falwell or Robertson run around stabbing people and burning down houses, their rights are suspended.
(What the Bunny-Kangaroo argues is this: free expression--such as advertising cigarettes--should be curtailed because people don't know what's best for themselves. It assumes someone else--in this case, the Government, in other times, someone's version of God--knows best and must make decisions for them: everyone is victim--no one is really responsible for their actions. By this logic the cigarette smoker [the perpetrator] is not at fault: the advertiser [society] is, despite all those warnings. Thus, we have the most litigious society in the history of the world--I stick my hand in a fire and I sue the match stick company.)
To return to the original point after a windy parenthetical (all on Chadi's board! Amazing!): when people go on a killing rampage in Nigeria because they are angry about a newspaper article, who is responsible for the ensuing deaths? The killers or the article? Let's not be so patronizing and patriarchal. These killers are not children seduced into action beyond their control: they are adults, consciously committing violence. There's no cultural or moral relativity involved: they had a choice about how to react to a newspaper article. They made the wrong one.
Woo-woo, the beauty pageant had to move and now all those babes are in London! Man, oh man, I wish I were in Picadilly Circus! Woo-woo!
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