I think our discussion fails to take into account that Canada has a very different history with respect to crushing minorities than the U. S. Our laws have come out of a completely different practical reality, and I think Canada simply deals with the problem differently because their history is completely different than ours in this respect. I think they (and many other first world nations) take a firmer line against bigotry, because they don't want their societies to become as terrible as ours was toward minorities. Perhaps some form of these laws, more appropriate to our history, could have a valid role in the U. S., but that's not in danger of happening anytime soon. As I see it, the empirical evidence shows very little harm in them, not that there isn't abuse, because like all laws there are some that will abuse them for a variety of reasons, and I think you are over stating this whole thing
I really doubt Canadians are afraid that their culture will become something like the antebellum south. Canadian acceptance of hate speech laws is probably helped by the general Canadian cultural emphasis on avoiding conflict and general cultural passive-aggresiveness.
I can sort of accept the argument that some European countries are legitimately worried that hate speech could lead to awfulness, given their fairly recent history of shoveling Jews into ovens in the 1940's and setting up rape camps during the dismemberment of Yugoslavia.
So, I think Europeans might need to get off their high horse on this issue. The US doesn't really need hate speech laws because we haven't tried to genocide anyone since we cleared up the Indian problem during our march to the Pacific.
Aetian Jupiter - 41 Gunslinger - The Old Republic
Rigorous Scholarship
Frankly, I don't see a functional difference between hate speech laws protecting religious groups and anti-blasphemy laws.
Hate speech laws would restrict the kinds of things one can say about the groups and their members. Anti-blasphemy laws would restrict the kinds of things (e.g. criticism of, or derision towards) one can say about the groups' beliefs and belief structures. They don't really cover the same ground at all. The blood libel stories about Jews would be hate speech, because they make some claims about Jews as a group. Calling Yahweh a cruel, vindictive sky-man would be blasphemy, because it insults an object that Jews revere.
I think this is a problematic distinction for you to draw here, for the following reason: as I see it, the strongest argument for anti-hate speech laws draws on our increasing knowledge of human psychology to show how hate speech does, in fact, cause direct harm. For instance, it points to priming effects, where people reliably perform worse on tests where they are reminded beforehand that they are not expected to succeed; or, for instance, it points to elevated suicide and substance abuse rates among subjects of bullying. The idea here is that some words really do wound us, and that this is just a fact about the type of organism the human being is. Classical liberals were wrong to conceive of us as essentially solitary and self-sufficient, and were thus wrong in restricting what counted as a harm accordingly. It turns out it is easy to harm people with mere words.
This argument, and arguments like it, however, do not seem to support the distinction you draw. I haven't researched this specifically (so you can correct me if this is actually false), but I'm sure that it's easy to induce the sorts of psychological effects mentioned above by 'just' going after a person's beliefs and behaviors. So, for instance, anti-gay bullying is often carried out under the ostensible banner of loving the sinner and hating the sin; many gays are convinced that god loves them, it is just their gay thoughts and behavior that he hates. They nonetheless suffer the sorts of psychological ills that go hand in hand with a culture in which they are viewed as perverse. Similarly, I imagine that a Jewish student whose religion was regularly ridiculed by her classmates would suffer similar ills, or, at least, be significantly statistically more likely to so suffer. So if our goal is to prevent these sorts of harms, then that goal is going to equally well support anti-blasphemy laws (of a sort) as it will anti-hate-speech laws. In fact, if we take the state to have free reign to regulate speech in attempts to prevent these sorts of harms, then it's going to attain truly awesome power--for instance, generalized psychological harm arguments like these are going to apply just as well e.g. to commercial speech practiced by cosmetics manufactures, conservative or traditional op ed writers in major publications, and so on.
So I'm not sure what rationale for anti-hate speech laws is consistent with drawing the distinction you do, and focusing only on what is claimed about persons, rather than the worth of their actions or the quality of their beliefs. But if there aren't any meaningful distinctions to be drawn here, it's hard to separate out the rationale for banning hate speech from a much broader mandate to shape society for the better.
But putting that aside: suppose for a moment that the distinction really does work out, and we thus have a principled reason for restricting hate speech to things one says about a group, rather than about its beliefs or behavior (which remain fair game). I would nonetheless worry that this would have a chilling effect on our best efforts to figure out what's true of various groups. For instance, would such a proposal allow for scientific research into racial and gender differences across various measures of intelligence? If no, then that seems like a problem--it is better to know the truth than to bury it, even when that truth is in some way unpleasant. But if the answer is yes, then how do we distinguish the science of race differences from plain old hate speech? There is, as I see it, no bright line separating science from ordinary inquiry; all there are are arguments, which employ various tools--science is more likely to employ mathematical ones, but that doesn't in principle distinguish it from anything else. In any case, the question of a demarkation criterion for science is famously fraught: falsification, while still deemed somehow central, seems to have more or less been abandoned as a single deciding feature, and nothing in its wake enjoys nearly universal support. So even if there is a demarkation criterion for what counts as science, it's still the case that no one can agree on what it is, and thus it seems that it couldn't play the public policy role of separating the race science from the hate speech.
I'm not saying that there is nothing that distinguishes your average insane Klan pamphlet from the best work done at the Hallowed Halls of Harvard. Even thought both the pamphlet and the Best Research are both instances of arguments, and have that in common, it is nonetheless often obvious that one of them is a much better argument than the other. But it seems that is something we figure out by doing science itself, not as a public policy decree we issue at the outset. It is precisely by comparing the strength of the claims of the Klansman with the researcher that we come to see how weak the case for racism is. But we cannot do that without letting the scientist and the Klansman both produce their arguments in the first place.
I think our discussion fails to take into account that Canada has a very different history with respect to crushing minorities than the U. S. Our laws have come out of a completely different practical reality, and I think Canada simply deals with the problem differently because their history is completely different than ours in this respect. I think they (and many other first world nations) take a firmer line against bigotry, because they don't want their societies to become as terrible as ours was toward minorities. Perhaps some form of these laws, more appropriate to our history, could have a valid role in the U. S., but that's not in danger of happening anytime soon. As I see it, the empirical evidence shows very little harm in them, not that there isn't abuse, because like all laws there are some that will abuse them for a variety of reasons, and I think you are over stating this whole thing
I really doubt Canadians are afraid that their culture will become something like the antebellum south. Canadian acceptance of hate speech laws is probably helped by the general Canadian cultural emphasis on avoiding conflict and general cultural passive-aggresiveness.
I can sort of accept the argument that some European countries are legitimately worried that hate speech could lead to awfulness, given their fairly recent history of shoveling Jews into ovens in the 1940's and setting up rape camps during the dismemberment of Yugoslavia.
So, I think Europeans might need to get off their high horse on this issue. The US doesn't really need hate speech laws because we haven't tried to genocide anyone since we cleared up the Indian problem during our march to the Pacific.
Not a completely unthoughtful response, but that's a really dick way to characterize what happened on the Trail Of Tears. Hopefully, you are just trying to get a rise out of someone, because otherwise you are are very sloppy about how you present things and come off tone deaf at least.
Everything you just said applies to your own statements.
Isn't that usually the case?
You vastly oversimplify the need and reasons against hate speech because of the social dogma of your area.
Perhaps. Perhaps we both are pretty immersed in how these things are playing out locally and that heavily informs our opinions? Perhaps my position has shifted slightly thanks to listening and reading careful what others have said. Perhaps a reading of my posts subsequent to my infraction reflect this. Perhaps not.
Not a completely unthoughtful response, but that's a really dick way to characterize what happened on the Trail Of Tears. Hopefully, you are just trying to get a rise out of someone, because otherwise you are are very sloppy about how you present things and come off tone deaf at least.
I'm not worried that Indians are going to get mad at me, since we wiped most of them out and made the rest of them open up casinos.
Aetian Jupiter - 41 Gunslinger - The Old Republic
Rigorous Scholarship
Not a completely unthoughtful response, but that's a really dick way to characterize what happened on the Trail Of Tears. Hopefully, you are just trying to get a rise out of someone, because otherwise you are are very sloppy about how you present things and come off tone deaf at least.
I'm not worried that Indians are going to get mad at me, since we wiped most of them out and made the rest of them open up casinos.
I mean this is funny but it's still pretty despicable.
...The US doesn't really need hate speech laws because we haven't tried to genocide anyone since we cleared up the Indian problem during our march to the Pacific.
that's a really dick way to characterize what happened on the Trail Of Tears. Hopefully, you are just trying to get a rise out of someone, because otherwise you are are very sloppy about how you present things and come off tone deaf at least.
I'm not worried that Indians are going to get mad at me, since we wiped most of them out and made the rest of them open up casinos.
I mean this is funny but it's still pretty despicable.
...The US doesn't really need hate speech laws because we haven't tried to genocide anyone since we cleared up the Indian problem during our march to the Pacific.
that's a really dick way to characterize what happened on the Trail Of Tears. Hopefully, you are just trying to get a rise out of someone, because otherwise you are are very sloppy about how you present things and come off tone deaf at least.
I'm not worried that Indians are going to get mad at me, since we wiped most of them out and made the rest of them open up casinos.
I mean this is funny but it's still pretty despicable.
I'm not laughing. Not at all.
I'd take more offense to answering a cell phone in a movie during Ramadan to be honest.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
I think our discussion fails to take into account that Canada has a very different history with respect to crushing minorities than the U. S. Our laws have come out of a completely different practical reality, and I think Canada simply deals with the problem differently because their history is completely different than ours in this respect. I think they (and many other first world nations) take a firmer line against bigotry, because they don't want their societies to become as terrible as ours was toward minorities. Perhaps some form of these laws, more appropriate to our history, could have a valid role in the U. S., but that's not in danger of happening anytime soon. As I see it, the empirical evidence shows very little harm in them, not that there isn't abuse, because like all laws there are some that will abuse them for a variety of reasons, and I think you are over stating this whole thing
I really doubt Canadians are afraid that their culture will become something like the antebellum south. Canadian acceptance of hate speech laws is probably helped by the general Canadian cultural emphasis on avoiding conflict and general cultural passive-aggresiveness.
I can sort of accept the argument that some European countries are legitimately worried that hate speech could lead to awfulness, given their fairly recent history of shoveling Jews into ovens in the 1940's and setting up rape camps during the dismemberment of Yugoslavia.
So, I think Europeans might need to get off their high horse on this issue. The US doesn't really need hate speech laws because we haven't tried to genocide anyone since we cleared up the Indian problem during our march to the Pacific.
Of course, it's not a great argument because it's not like one guy got everyone to start blaming the Jews. Hitler was peddling what the entirety of Christendom was already thinking.
Frankly, I don't see a functional difference between hate speech laws protecting religious groups and anti-blasphemy laws.
Hate speech laws would restrict the kinds of things one can say about the groups and their members. Anti-blasphemy laws would restrict the kinds of things (e.g. criticism of, or derision towards) one can say about the groups' beliefs and belief structures. They don't really cover the same ground at all. The blood libel stories about Jews would be hate speech, because they make some claims about Jews as a group. Calling Yahweh a cruel, vindictive sky-man would be blasphemy, because it insults an object that Jews revere.
I think this is a problematic distinction for you to draw here, for the following reason: as I see it, the strongest argument for anti-hate speech laws draws on our increasing knowledge of human psychology to show how hate speech does, in fact, cause direct harm. For instance, it points to priming effects, where people reliably perform worse on tests where they are reminded beforehand that they are not expected to succeed; or, for instance, it points to elevated suicide and substance abuse rates among subjects of bullying. The idea here is that some words really do wound us, and that this is just a fact about the type of organism the human being is. Classical liberals were wrong to conceive of us as essentially solitary and self-sufficient, and were thus wrong in restricting what counted as a harm accordingly. It turns out it is easy to harm people with mere words.
This argument, and arguments like it, however, do not seem to support the distinction you draw. I haven't researched this specifically (so you can correct me if this is actually false), but I'm sure that it's easy to induce the sorts of psychological effects mentioned above by 'just' going after a person's beliefs and behaviors. So, for instance, anti-gay bullying is often carried out under the ostensible banner of loving the sinner and hating the sin; many gays are convinced that god loves them, it is just their gay thoughts and behavior that he hates. They nonetheless suffer the sorts of psychological ills that go hand in hand with a culture in which they are viewed as perverse. Similarly, I imagine that a Jewish student whose religion was regularly ridiculed by her classmates would suffer similar ills, or, at least, be significantly statistically more likely to so suffer. So if our goal is to prevent these sorts of harms, then that goal is going to equally well support anti-blasphemy laws (of a sort) as it will anti-hate-speech laws. In fact, if we take the state to have free reign to regulate speech in attempts to prevent these sorts of harms, then it's going to attain truly awesome power--for instance, generalized psychological harm arguments like these are going to apply just as well e.g. to commercial speech practiced by cosmetics manufactures, conservative or traditional op ed writers in major publications, and so on.
So I'm not sure what rationale for anti-hate speech laws is consistent with drawing the distinction you do, and focusing only on what is claimed about persons, rather than the worth of their actions or the quality of their beliefs. But if there aren't any meaningful distinctions to be drawn here, it's hard to separate out the rationale for banning hate speech from a much broader mandate to shape society for the better.
But putting that aside: suppose for a moment that the distinction really does work out, and we thus have a principled reason for restricting hate speech to things one says about a group, rather than about its beliefs or behavior (which remain fair game). I would nonetheless worry that this would have a chilling effect on our best efforts to figure out what's true of various groups. For instance, would such a proposal allow for scientific research into racial and gender differences across various measures of intelligence? If no, then that seems like a problem--it is better to know the truth than to bury it, even when that truth is in some way unpleasant. But if the answer is yes, then how do we distinguish the science of race differences from plain old hate speech? There is, as I see it, no bright line separating science from ordinary inquiry; all there are are arguments, which employ various tools--science is more likely to employ mathematical ones, but that doesn't in principle distinguish it from anything else. In any case, the question of a demarkation criterion for science is famously fraught: falsification, while still deemed somehow central, seems to have more or less been abandoned as a single deciding feature, and nothing in its wake enjoys nearly universal support. So even if there is a demarkation criterion for what counts as science, it's still the case that no one can agree on what it is, and thus it seems that it couldn't play the public policy role of separating the race science from the hate speech.
I'm not saying that there is nothing that distinguishes your average insane Klan pamphlet from the best work done at the Hallowed Halls of Harvard. Even thought both the pamphlet and the Best Research are both instances of arguments, and have that in common, it is nonetheless often obvious that one of them is a much better argument than the other. But it seems that is something we figure out by doing science itself, not as a public policy decree we issue at the outset. It is precisely by comparing the strength of the claims of the Klansman with the researcher that we come to see how weak the case for racism is. But we cannot do that without letting the scientist and the Klansman both produce their arguments in the first place.
I was about to blow up after the bold above because of its loose use of "harm" but luckily I allowed for a full airing of your claims before attempting to shout you down. I'm not certain if I would frame it the same way but the parallels between the scientific method and the marketplace of ideas is very valid
I do think "harm" here is too broadly defined because psychological "harm" is largely subjective. If a child is told his pet went upstate to live on a farm, is that more or less "harmful" than saying the dog was hit by a car because the child left the door open? The latter will cause discomfort and sadness but may lead to greater strength and responsibility (hell, even if the dog really is upstate). The former will preserve innocence and encourage the idea of a safe home. In order to define psychological harm in a statutory way, it would require a framework of what mental and emotional states are "unhealthy" or "damaged." The problems with such should be obvious.
I really doubt Canadians are afraid that their culture will become something like the antebellum south. Canadian acceptance of hate speech laws is probably helped by the general Canadian cultural emphasis on avoiding conflict and general cultural passive-aggresiveness.
it is truly remarkable how rapidly you oscillate between being reasonable and being an arse
canadians aren't averse to conflict. it's more that canadians see freedom as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. canadian culture, both politically and in general, has historically placed greater value on compassion and community, seeing them as means of equal or greater importance.
I think this is a problematic distinction for you to draw here, for the following reason: as I see it, the strongest argument for anti-hate speech laws draws on our increasing knowledge of human psychology to show how hate speech does, in fact, cause direct harm. For instance, it points to priming effects, where people reliably perform worse on tests where they are reminded beforehand that they are not expected to succeed; or, for instance, it points to elevated suicide and substance abuse rates among subjects of bullying. The idea here is that some words really do wound us, and that this is just a fact about the type of organism the human being is. Classical liberals were wrong to conceive of us as essentially solitary and self-sufficient, and were thus wrong in restricting what counted as a harm accordingly. It turns out it is easy to harm people with mere words.
This argument, and arguments like it, however, do not seem to support the distinction you draw. I haven't researched this specifically (so you can correct me if this is actually false), but I'm sure that it's easy to induce the sorts of psychological effects mentioned above by 'just' going after a person's beliefs and behaviors.
I'm going to need to dig around a bit more, but I seem to recall some discussion related to the "New Atheists vs. Accommodationists" debate that suggested that attacking people's beliefs tended to strengthen their convictions. Now, it's certainly possible that they may have their convictions strengthened while suffering other, negative psychological effects. Maybe it's a defense mechanism against or compensation for the sorts of priming effects you noted.
So, for instance, anti-gay bullying is often carried out under the ostensible banner of loving the sinner and hating the sin; many gays are convinced that god loves them, it is just their gay thoughts and behavior that he hates. They nonetheless suffer the sorts of psychological ills that go hand in hand with a culture in which they are viewed as perverse. Similarly, I imagine that a Jewish student whose religion was regularly ridiculed by her classmates would suffer similar ills, or, at least, be significantly statistically more likely to so suffer. So if our goal is to prevent these sorts of harms, then that goal is going to equally well support anti-blasphemy laws (of a sort) as it will anti-hate-speech laws. In fact, if we take the state to have free reign to regulate speech in attempts to prevent these sorts of harms, then it's going to attain truly awesome power--for instance, generalized psychological harm arguments like these are going to apply just as well e.g. to commercial speech practiced by cosmetics manufactures, conservative or traditional op ed writers in major publications, and so on.
So I'm not sure what rationale for anti-hate speech laws is consistent with drawing the distinction you do, and focusing only on what is claimed about persons, rather than the worth of their actions or the quality of their beliefs. But if there aren't any meaningful distinctions to be drawn here, it's hard to separate out the rationale for banning hate speech from a much broader mandate to shape society for the better.
I think it's a bit over the top to say that the state should have free rein to regulate speech for this or any reason. There has to be a balance of competing interests, and we have to look carefully at the principles that underlie them. When we're balancing the right to free speech and the right to be protected from harm, we shouldn't find ourselves throwing one out wholesale in favour of the other. I don't think the ideal behind protecting people from harm needs much discussion beyond "harm sucks, and the less of it people suffer, the better". Free speech has more going for it, because you have notions of the marketplace of ideas, protection of unpopular viewpoints, and that unnecessary government interference is oppressive (i.e. harmful). We could go on trying to work out the exact balance that needs to be struck based on these ideals, but that's probably beyond the scope of this thread, and certainly more than I want to get into right now. Instead, I'll take a rough-and-ready approach. Three is more than one, and since there are more reasons to protect speech, when it comes down to it we should prefer protecting speech, even if it might mean some harm.
There will be some kinds of speech, however, that don't conform to the ideals that underlie our desire to protect free speech. To take an uncontroversial example, yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre doesn't really contribute to the marketplace of ideas; it's not something that generates useful debate. It's not a viewpoint either, so there's no issue regarding popularity. Finally, it can cause harm in itself. What we're left with is no real reason to protect that speech, and some risk of harm, so government interference is probably not oppressive.
What about blasphemy? Being critical or dismissive of an idea or object of reverence would seem to contribute to the marketplace of ideas. This is certainly true of criticizing an idea. Blasphemy may also present an unpopular viewpoint. So we seem to have compelling reasons to protect it.
As for hate speech? It is different. I would argue that it doesn't contribute to the marketplace of ideas, and in fact weakens the marketplace of ideas by introducing claims that are patently false and that may colour the impression of reasonable positions. So, not only does the importance of the marketplace of ideas not support hate speech, it might provide a reason to oppose it. On the other hand, hate speech may be unpopular, and it's important to protect unpopular speech. But then, we also have the harm that hate speech risks doing. By my count, that's either two strikes against hate speech and one for, or an even split. If you accept the two strikes against, then there's good reason to have government restrictions. If you take the position that it's an even split, I guess it could co either way. In that case, I'd break the tie in favour of harm prevention, but I'm not going to argue that preferring free speech is wrong.
But putting that aside: suppose for a moment that the distinction really does work out, and we thus have a principled reason for restricting hate speech to things one says about a group, rather than about its beliefs or behavior (which remain fair game). I would nonetheless worry that this would have a chilling effect on our best efforts to figure out what's true of various groups. For instance, would such a proposal allow for scientific research into racial and gender differences across various measures of intelligence? If no, then that seems like a problem--it is better to know the truth than to bury it, even when that truth is in some way unpleasant. But if the answer is yes, then how do we distinguish the science of race differences from plain old hate speech? There is, as I see it, no bright line separating science from ordinary inquiry; all there are are arguments, which employ various tools--science is more likely to employ mathematical ones, but that doesn't in principle distinguish it from anything else. In any case, the question of a demarkation criterion for science is famously fraught: falsification, while still deemed somehow central, seems to have more or less been abandoned as a single deciding feature, and nothing in its wake enjoys nearly universal support. So even if there is a demarkation criterion for what counts as science, it's still the case that no one can agree on what it is, and thus it seems that it couldn't play the public policy role of separating the race science from the hate speech.
I'm not saying that there is nothing that distinguishes your average insane Klan pamphlet from the best work done at the Hallowed Halls of Harvard. Even thought both the pamphlet and the Best Research are both instances of arguments, and have that in common, it is nonetheless often obvious that one of them is a much better argument than the other. But it seems that is something we figure out by doing science itself, not as a public policy decree we issue at the outset. It is precisely by comparing the strength of the claims of the Klansman with the researcher that we come to see how weak the case for racism is. But we cannot do that without letting the scientist and the Klansman both produce their arguments in the first place.
As to this, I think true or truth-seeking statements should be fully defensible. Investigating something contentious in good faith would need to be protected, because that's the kind of thing that would contribute to the marketplace of ideas. What separates a Harvard study from the KKK is that the KKK isn't (or wouldn't appear to be) investigating their claims in good faith to determine what is, in fact, true, while Harvard at least ought to be conducting any studies in that way. Granted, "good faith" is a nebulous sort of criterion, and I wouldn't fault you for feeling a bit dubious that it could be applied well and consistently. I'm optimistic though. And, I would take the inevitable care that race researchers might have to demonstrate while conducting their studies and publishing their results as a feature, not a bug, considering some of the more unfortunate examples, like phrenology, of race research in the past.
I'm not sure how convincing any of this is. But you certainly got me thinking!
I think our discussion fails to take into account that Canada has a very different history with respect to crushing minorities than the U. S. Our laws have come out of a completely different practical reality, and I think Canada simply deals with the problem differently because their history is completely different than ours in this respect. I think they (and many other first world nations) take a firmer line against bigotry, because they don't want their societies to become as terrible as ours was toward minorities. Perhaps some form of these laws, more appropriate to our history, could have a valid role in the U. S., but that's not in danger of happening anytime soon. As I see it, the empirical evidence shows very little harm in them, not that there isn't abuse, because like all laws there are some that will abuse them for a variety of reasons, and I think you are over stating this whole thing
I really doubt Canadians are afraid that their culture will become something like the antebellum south. Canadian acceptance of hate speech laws is probably helped by the general Canadian cultural emphasis on avoiding conflict and general cultural passive-aggresiveness.
I can sort of accept the argument that some European countries are legitimately worried that hate speech could lead to awfulness, given their fairly recent history of shoveling Jews into ovens in the 1940's and setting up rape camps during the dismemberment of Yugoslavia.
So, I think Europeans might need to get off their high horse on this issue. The US doesn't really need hate speech laws because we haven't tried to genocide anyone since we cleared up the Indian problem during our march to the Pacific.
Not a completely unthoughtful response, but that's a really dick way to characterize what happened on the Trail Of Tears. Hopefully, you are just trying to get a rise out of someone, because otherwise you are are very sloppy about how you present things and come off tone deaf at least.
Genocide is a bad thing. I mean, rape as a weapon of war is bad too. And so is genocide against the Jews and attempted genocide of the Slavs. But genocide of Amerinidians? Yeah, still really fucked up, even by comparison.
I think our discussion fails to take into account that Canada has a very different history with respect to crushing minorities than the U. S. Our laws have come out of a completely different practical reality, and I think Canada simply deals with the problem differently because their history is completely different than ours in this respect. I think they (and many other first world nations) take a firmer line against bigotry, because they don't want their societies to become as terrible as ours was toward minorities. Perhaps some form of these laws, more appropriate to our history, could have a valid role in the U. S., but that's not in danger of happening anytime soon. As I see it, the empirical evidence shows very little harm in them, not that there isn't abuse, because like all laws there are some that will abuse them for a variety of reasons, and I think you are over stating this whole thing
I really doubt Canadians are afraid that their culture will become something like the antebellum south. Canadian acceptance of hate speech laws is probably helped by the general Canadian cultural emphasis on avoiding conflict and general cultural passive-aggresiveness.
I can sort of accept the argument that some European countries are legitimately worried that hate speech could lead to awfulness, given their fairly recent history of shoveling Jews into ovens in the 1940's and setting up rape camps during the dismemberment of Yugoslavia.
So, I think Europeans might need to get off their high horse on this issue. The US doesn't really need hate speech laws because we haven't tried to genocide anyone since we cleared up the Indian problem during our march to the Pacific.
Not a completely unthoughtful response, but that's a really dick way to characterize what happened on the Trail Of Tears. Hopefully, you are just trying to get a rise out of someone, because otherwise you are are very sloppy about how you present things and come off tone deaf at least.
Genocide is a bad thing. I mean, rape as a weapon of war is bad too. And so is genocide against the Jews and attempted genocide of the Slavs. But genocide of Amerinidians? Yeah, still really fucked up, even by comparison.
Oh, I thought he had said 'cleared out' the Indian problem, and I could not for the life of me firgure out where all this outrage was coming from. I mean saying you 'cleared out' an ethnic group from a region is a bit gentle of a euphimism, but nothing to get into a tizzy over.
And then I noticed it was 'cleared up' as in 'solved that problem' and that is pretty bad....
but "honest injun" was kind of comedy gold, in that horrible racism way.
Its essentially - "You're allowed freedom of expression...as long as its not too objectionable."
I think this point is getting rather glossed over. There appears to be an assumption that the people enforcing these laws will always be reasonable (defined in all political debates as, "inclined to generally agree with me"). We are a people that can't come to an agreement on when someone should be considered alive; what chance do we have to reach a consensus on something so completely subjective as "hate"? Don't any of you remember the discussions we had with Ege02 over the Armenian genocide? By his view, even suggesting that it occured would be hate speech against the Turks (as it essentially is under Turkish law).
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
- John Stuart Mill
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
To drag this on topic, would we be arrested under Canadian laws for this?
Prolly not, even though Canadians could get all crazy with this Canada is a pretty chill place, and there can't possibly be any chance that they would change as a nation and adopt more extremist policies.
If you were being a jew you would have gotten it. Those people do a lot of comedy.
And by the way, another thing that makes me glad we don't have hate speech laws. I sure as hell don't want to have to rely on whether someone in government can tell if I'm being ironic or not.
Nope. I don't like racists, I'd just never discriminate against them. Being morally clean is a slippery slope. Which negative consequences on society make things worse.
Really? So you'd totally hang out with someone who occasionally points out that blacks really should go back where they came from? Hell son, the government discriminates against racists by not allowing them to exercise their views in a variety of settings. Discrimination in and of itself is not a bad thing. It's why it's being done that determines whether or not it's bad.
No, I'd never refuse serving them for my job, not hanging around with them.
Discrrimination is a bad practice, and it should only and it used under the worse circumstances like the military, police or government denying anyone that's an active gang member or racism/gang tatoos from service. The public shouldn't do it since there is no way for the innocent people to protect themselves. There is no board they can go to appeal their "sentence" for one thing.
If you were being a jew you would have gotten it. Those people do a lot of comedy.
And by the way, another thing that makes me glad we don't have hate speech laws. I sure as hell don't want to have to rely on whether someone in government can tell if I'm being ironic or not.
I am a Jew. So certainly I am of the quality of "being a jew" constantly.
If you were being a jew you would have gotten it. Those people do a lot of comedy.
And by the way, another thing that makes me glad we don't have hate speech laws. I sure as hell don't want to have to rely on whether someone in government can tell if I'm being ironic or not.
I am a Jew. So certainly I am of the quality of "being a jew" constantly.
This is why the racists jokes are only funny to white male assholes. way to be a goose mental. Do you think at all before you post or are you trying to get banned? Great use of your free speech -> keep it in the chat thread, or better yet, stop thinking things that aren't funny are.
Posts
I can sort of accept the argument that some European countries are legitimately worried that hate speech could lead to awfulness, given their fairly recent history of shoveling Jews into ovens in the 1940's and setting up rape camps during the dismemberment of Yugoslavia.
So, I think Europeans might need to get off their high horse on this issue. The US doesn't really need hate speech laws because we haven't tried to genocide anyone since we cleared up the Indian problem during our march to the Pacific.
Rigorous Scholarship
You vastly oversimplify the need and reasons against hate speech because of the social dogma of your area.
I think this is a problematic distinction for you to draw here, for the following reason: as I see it, the strongest argument for anti-hate speech laws draws on our increasing knowledge of human psychology to show how hate speech does, in fact, cause direct harm. For instance, it points to priming effects, where people reliably perform worse on tests where they are reminded beforehand that they are not expected to succeed; or, for instance, it points to elevated suicide and substance abuse rates among subjects of bullying. The idea here is that some words really do wound us, and that this is just a fact about the type of organism the human being is. Classical liberals were wrong to conceive of us as essentially solitary and self-sufficient, and were thus wrong in restricting what counted as a harm accordingly. It turns out it is easy to harm people with mere words.
This argument, and arguments like it, however, do not seem to support the distinction you draw. I haven't researched this specifically (so you can correct me if this is actually false), but I'm sure that it's easy to induce the sorts of psychological effects mentioned above by 'just' going after a person's beliefs and behaviors. So, for instance, anti-gay bullying is often carried out under the ostensible banner of loving the sinner and hating the sin; many gays are convinced that god loves them, it is just their gay thoughts and behavior that he hates. They nonetheless suffer the sorts of psychological ills that go hand in hand with a culture in which they are viewed as perverse. Similarly, I imagine that a Jewish student whose religion was regularly ridiculed by her classmates would suffer similar ills, or, at least, be significantly statistically more likely to so suffer. So if our goal is to prevent these sorts of harms, then that goal is going to equally well support anti-blasphemy laws (of a sort) as it will anti-hate-speech laws. In fact, if we take the state to have free reign to regulate speech in attempts to prevent these sorts of harms, then it's going to attain truly awesome power--for instance, generalized psychological harm arguments like these are going to apply just as well e.g. to commercial speech practiced by cosmetics manufactures, conservative or traditional op ed writers in major publications, and so on.
So I'm not sure what rationale for anti-hate speech laws is consistent with drawing the distinction you do, and focusing only on what is claimed about persons, rather than the worth of their actions or the quality of their beliefs. But if there aren't any meaningful distinctions to be drawn here, it's hard to separate out the rationale for banning hate speech from a much broader mandate to shape society for the better.
But putting that aside: suppose for a moment that the distinction really does work out, and we thus have a principled reason for restricting hate speech to things one says about a group, rather than about its beliefs or behavior (which remain fair game). I would nonetheless worry that this would have a chilling effect on our best efforts to figure out what's true of various groups. For instance, would such a proposal allow for scientific research into racial and gender differences across various measures of intelligence? If no, then that seems like a problem--it is better to know the truth than to bury it, even when that truth is in some way unpleasant. But if the answer is yes, then how do we distinguish the science of race differences from plain old hate speech? There is, as I see it, no bright line separating science from ordinary inquiry; all there are are arguments, which employ various tools--science is more likely to employ mathematical ones, but that doesn't in principle distinguish it from anything else. In any case, the question of a demarkation criterion for science is famously fraught: falsification, while still deemed somehow central, seems to have more or less been abandoned as a single deciding feature, and nothing in its wake enjoys nearly universal support. So even if there is a demarkation criterion for what counts as science, it's still the case that no one can agree on what it is, and thus it seems that it couldn't play the public policy role of separating the race science from the hate speech.
I'm not saying that there is nothing that distinguishes your average insane Klan pamphlet from the best work done at the Hallowed Halls of Harvard. Even thought both the pamphlet and the Best Research are both instances of arguments, and have that in common, it is nonetheless often obvious that one of them is a much better argument than the other. But it seems that is something we figure out by doing science itself, not as a public policy decree we issue at the outset. It is precisely by comparing the strength of the claims of the Klansman with the researcher that we come to see how weak the case for racism is. But we cannot do that without letting the scientist and the Klansman both produce their arguments in the first place.
Rigorous Scholarship
I mean this is funny but it's still pretty despicable.
How dare you slight the proud history of african americans.
I'd take more offense to answering a cell phone in a movie during Ramadan to be honest.
Rigorous Scholarship
Rigorous Scholarship
Really? Cause he does so in the very same post.
Of course, it's not a great argument because it's not like one guy got everyone to start blaming the Jews. Hitler was peddling what the entirety of Christendom was already thinking.
Difference between making a valid point about exterminating a nationality and joking about it.
I was about to blow up after the bold above because of its loose use of "harm" but luckily I allowed for a full airing of your claims before attempting to shout you down. I'm not certain if I would frame it the same way but the parallels between the scientific method and the marketplace of ideas is very valid
I do think "harm" here is too broadly defined because psychological "harm" is largely subjective. If a child is told his pet went upstate to live on a farm, is that more or less "harmful" than saying the dog was hit by a car because the child left the door open? The latter will cause discomfort and sadness but may lead to greater strength and responsibility (hell, even if the dog really is upstate). The former will preserve innocence and encourage the idea of a safe home. In order to define psychological harm in a statutory way, it would require a framework of what mental and emotional states are "unhealthy" or "damaged." The problems with such should be obvious.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Fucking really....
it is truly remarkable how rapidly you oscillate between being reasonable and being an arse
canadians aren't averse to conflict. it's more that canadians see freedom as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. canadian culture, both politically and in general, has historically placed greater value on compassion and community, seeing them as means of equal or greater importance.
I think it's a bit over the top to say that the state should have free rein to regulate speech for this or any reason. There has to be a balance of competing interests, and we have to look carefully at the principles that underlie them. When we're balancing the right to free speech and the right to be protected from harm, we shouldn't find ourselves throwing one out wholesale in favour of the other. I don't think the ideal behind protecting people from harm needs much discussion beyond "harm sucks, and the less of it people suffer, the better". Free speech has more going for it, because you have notions of the marketplace of ideas, protection of unpopular viewpoints, and that unnecessary government interference is oppressive (i.e. harmful). We could go on trying to work out the exact balance that needs to be struck based on these ideals, but that's probably beyond the scope of this thread, and certainly more than I want to get into right now. Instead, I'll take a rough-and-ready approach. Three is more than one, and since there are more reasons to protect speech, when it comes down to it we should prefer protecting speech, even if it might mean some harm.
There will be some kinds of speech, however, that don't conform to the ideals that underlie our desire to protect free speech. To take an uncontroversial example, yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre doesn't really contribute to the marketplace of ideas; it's not something that generates useful debate. It's not a viewpoint either, so there's no issue regarding popularity. Finally, it can cause harm in itself. What we're left with is no real reason to protect that speech, and some risk of harm, so government interference is probably not oppressive.
What about blasphemy? Being critical or dismissive of an idea or object of reverence would seem to contribute to the marketplace of ideas. This is certainly true of criticizing an idea. Blasphemy may also present an unpopular viewpoint. So we seem to have compelling reasons to protect it.
As for hate speech? It is different. I would argue that it doesn't contribute to the marketplace of ideas, and in fact weakens the marketplace of ideas by introducing claims that are patently false and that may colour the impression of reasonable positions. So, not only does the importance of the marketplace of ideas not support hate speech, it might provide a reason to oppose it. On the other hand, hate speech may be unpopular, and it's important to protect unpopular speech. But then, we also have the harm that hate speech risks doing. By my count, that's either two strikes against hate speech and one for, or an even split. If you accept the two strikes against, then there's good reason to have government restrictions. If you take the position that it's an even split, I guess it could co either way. In that case, I'd break the tie in favour of harm prevention, but I'm not going to argue that preferring free speech is wrong.
As to this, I think true or truth-seeking statements should be fully defensible. Investigating something contentious in good faith would need to be protected, because that's the kind of thing that would contribute to the marketplace of ideas. What separates a Harvard study from the KKK is that the KKK isn't (or wouldn't appear to be) investigating their claims in good faith to determine what is, in fact, true, while Harvard at least ought to be conducting any studies in that way. Granted, "good faith" is a nebulous sort of criterion, and I wouldn't fault you for feeling a bit dubious that it could be applied well and consistently. I'm optimistic though. And, I would take the inevitable care that race researchers might have to demonstrate while conducting their studies and publishing their results as a feature, not a bug, considering some of the more unfortunate examples, like phrenology, of race research in the past.
I'm not sure how convincing any of this is. But you certainly got me thinking!
Genocide is a bad thing. I mean, rape as a weapon of war is bad too. And so is genocide against the Jews and attempted genocide of the Slavs. But genocide of Amerinidians? Yeah, still really fucked up, even by comparison.
Oh, I thought he had said 'cleared out' the Indian problem, and I could not for the life of me firgure out where all this outrage was coming from. I mean saying you 'cleared out' an ethnic group from a region is a bit gentle of a euphimism, but nothing to get into a tizzy over.
And then I noticed it was 'cleared up' as in 'solved that problem' and that is pretty bad....
but "honest injun" was kind of comedy gold, in that horrible racism way.
--LeVar Burton
I think this point is getting rather glossed over. There appears to be an assumption that the people enforcing these laws will always be reasonable (defined in all political debates as, "inclined to generally agree with me"). We are a people that can't come to an agreement on when someone should be considered alive; what chance do we have to reach a consensus on something so completely subjective as "hate"? Don't any of you remember the discussions we had with Ege02 over the Armenian genocide? By his view, even suggesting that it occured would be hate speech against the Turks (as it essentially is under Turkish law).
- John Stuart Mill
I felt so horrible for laughing at it. Good to know I'm not the only terrible person here.
Honestly I don't why I had to be such a jew
....
To drag this on topic, would we be arrested under Canadian laws for this?
This is was not meant to be a joke.
These are real expressions people have used to me. They are just as inappropriate as the phrase, "honest injun."
If you were being a jew you would have gotten it. Those people do a lot of comedy.
And by the way, another thing that makes me glad we don't have hate speech laws. I sure as hell don't want to have to rely on whether someone in government can tell if I'm being ironic or not.
--LeVar Burton
No, I'd never refuse serving them for my job, not hanging around with them.
Discrrimination is a bad practice, and it should only and it used under the worse circumstances like the military, police or government denying anyone that's an active gang member or racism/gang tatoos from service. The public shouldn't do it since there is no way for the innocent people to protect themselves. There is no board they can go to appeal their "sentence" for one thing.
I am a Jew. So certainly I am of the quality of "being a jew" constantly.