It wasn't an opinion but rather an outpouring of racist bile.If he is a product of our universities then god help us as clowns like this will most likely be the next generation of politicians.
Well I didn't mean freedom of speech means the person has any intelligence. Most of what we hear is just crap. Whether we like it or not we have to defend the freedom of speech for those we disagree with just as much as those we agree with.
All freedoms have limits. If someone's speech causes injury to another person, it is not unreasonable to look at whether that person stepped outside that limit.
Why exactly? I don't believe I ever signed up to the idea that all speech should be free and protected. It irritates me that people seem to think that being able to be rude, obnoxious, offensive, deceptive, hateful and so on is somehow deserving of protection through an innate rule.
Because those things are subjective. Every opinion is offensive to someone with the opposite opinion. I find the opposite position more appealing - the law has no business enforcing anyone's right not to be offended. If race is sacred, what about culture? If culture is sacred, what about religion? If religion is sacred what about political conviction? If political conviction is sacred, what about opinion? Where exactly is the line?
We used to have a lot more freedom to say what we liked, regardless of what offense or harm it caused. So why did that change? Because people abused that freedom. If no-one had ever put up signs saying things like "Room to let - no blacks or Irish" then there would never have been a Race Relations Act, because we wouldn't have needed one. And the same goes for legislation outlawing hate speech.
I'm offended by someone calling for my death. I take it the law has no business then enforcing my right not to be threatened or intimidated? We used to be able to challenge someone to a duel for what they said as well. I suspect a lot of the current fashion for obnoxiousness is people were to be allowed this again - words should have consequences. They reflect thought and attitude, and those lead to actions. Exactly - if people weren't obnoxious prats and actually thought before speaking, there'd be no need to try and prevent them being obnoxious prats who don't think before speaking.
It's a bit like the way that some people (and some sections of the media) drone on and on about 'health and safety' as though it was some massive denial of our human rights! The original Health and Safety at Work Act was only introduced because many workplaces were very hazerdous places, and it took legislation to force mnay employers to provide basic safety precautions to protect their employees.
I used to get a lot of insults a school due to being the only kid in the class with a foreign name.Most of the time I just brushed it off but one or two wanted to take things a little further and get physical.If it came to a fight I always won,not due to being a better fighter,but rather due to being full of hate and wanting to hurt them more than they wanted to hurt me.Personally I enjoyed dealing with these sort of people but not everyone is like that and in some cases it can lead to suicides.That is why we need legislation,to protect those who are too vulnerable to protect themselves. Johnno wrote I remember seeing one of these signs on a house that was for sale-"For sale to White Family only,Blacks and Pakistanis not welcome" It was still for sale a year later when property prices had peaked and were on a downward trend but this time it was for sale to anyone who had got the money. It was in 1975,around the time of "race rebel" Robert Relf,the NF poster boy.
You're not "offended" by it, you're endangered by it. The law doesn't protect your sensibilities, it protects your safety. The fact that you are also offended by it is irrelevant. I think the Conservative Party is pretty much uniformly offensive and just about every word that David Cameron says is obnoxious. Ban plz?
It wouldn't take much to link the fact that dehumanising language is actually endangering people. If you speak of people as if they are lesser, or inhuman, then you and people who hear you will have a tendency to think of them that way as well (humans are very impressionable). Yes, it's a stretch to extend that into genocides and purges, but not as much of one as it would be nice to think. I knew you'd come around to my way of thinking eventually.
I don't think that's entirely relevant to the discussion to be honest. I don't think the fact that people like that are teased at school is what causes them to shoot up the school, that's just an interesting angle for the media to report. People like that have much deeper issues than having just been teased at school.
Ever gone through it yourself? Hate can leave you wanting to do some pretty nasty things to people.When you feel like that the last thing you need is easy access to guns.
I've gone through a lot of stuff, but that's never made me go on a mass killing spree, or the vast majority of the population for that matter. Perhaps if he hadn't been teased, this guy wouldn't have gone shooting up that school. But I'd be willing to bet that he would have snapped at some other place, in some other circumstance. By the sounds of that article, the teasing was the last straw, and not the impetus of his killing spree.
It's dangerous to assume that a person who turns violent was always going to crack at one time or another. We are products of our environment. How often do the popular kids crack and go shooting up the school? It's a tricky cause and effect question that hasn't been answered by a long shot.
I agree, thus the 'fire in a theater' example. Also if someone calls for the death of someone else; that person can be charged if someone follows through with the murder. But to answer Bunny; here in the US its just a basic part of our constitution to have freedom of speech. Like the follow-up poster said, there will always be someone who agrees with even the most disgusting things said. One of the most famous lawsuits involving the ACLU was having a jewish liberal lawyer defending the klu klux klan's right to protest in a predominantly jewish town in Illinois. Most people were disgusted with what they preached but supported their right to free speech.
The US uses the Constitution to justify a lot of things that shouldn't be legal, in my opinion. That's the problem with running your lives by an archaic document.
One of many reasons I am glad not to live in the US. I still don't understand the assumption that others should automatically and irrationally defend free speech for all - and the idea that there must be something morally wrong with those who disagree with it. Idiocy.
