John Ransom wrote:
I respect your opinion and your reasoning on this matter, but dissent from
it. I think society has a compelling interest, one that overrides the
right of free speech, in stopping the dissemination of such views. The
right of free speech should be allowed to operate within very broad and
very generous parameters, but it should not (in my view) be absolute.
You mention the universalization problem: if we censor Nazis and white
power groups, what's to keep others from trying to silence socialists and
Islamic fundamentalists? But I think this is a logical dead end. In fact,
*nothing* keeps others from trying to silence socialists and Islamic
fundamentalists. Let them try. They will lose.
But groups who unapologetically celebrate and hope to recreate regimes
that systematically murder millions upon millions of individuals are not
worthy of *citizens'* right to free speech.
And now it is I who will shut up.
--John
I write:
Why would you suppress arguments made on the behalf of Nazism? If these
arguments are as self-evidently wrong as you seem to imply, then we
citizens will be able to recognise them as such. Why would we need a
censor to tell us if something is self-evidently wrong?
Paul S. Rhodes
____________________________________________________________________________
Quae facie praesignis erit, resupina iaceto
I respect your opinion and your reasoning on this matter, but dissent from
it. I think society has a compelling interest, one that overrides the
right of free speech, in stopping the dissemination of such views. The
right of free speech should be allowed to operate within very broad and
very generous parameters, but it should not (in my view) be absolute.
You mention the universalization problem: if we censor Nazis and white
power groups, what's to keep others from trying to silence socialists and
Islamic fundamentalists? But I think this is a logical dead end. In fact,
*nothing* keeps others from trying to silence socialists and Islamic
fundamentalists. Let them try. They will lose.
But groups who unapologetically celebrate and hope to recreate regimes
that systematically murder millions upon millions of individuals are not
worthy of *citizens'* right to free speech.
And now it is I who will shut up.
--John
I write:
Why would you suppress arguments made on the behalf of Nazism? If these
arguments are as self-evidently wrong as you seem to imply, then we
citizens will be able to recognise them as such. Why would we need a
censor to tell us if something is self-evidently wrong?
Paul S. Rhodes
____________________________________________________________________________
Quae facie praesignis erit, resupina iaceto