That's not going to change just because you make a law.
It would make it more difficult to oppress people openly, though.
are still going to be assholes to other people they don't like. You can't stop that.
It won't stop everything but it will make some of them think twice before being a racist or saying homophobic remarks.
And nevermind the fact that the method you're proposing would mean that whenever the next time some jackass like Bush has enough power that it will be a terrible blow to anyone speaking out against such things.
That's why the hate speech laws may be better left off the books until the Democrats act like competent opposition party.
If people were offended then they should be able to provide an adequate change to be more strict.
This sentence doesn't make sense. People who, quite understandably, find Chapelle's comedy offensive should do what exactly?[/quote]
Get it known to the media, politicians etc like everyone else who wants laws to change.
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
And nevermind the fact that the method you're proposing would mean that whenever the next time some jackass like Bush has enough power that it will be a terrible blow to anyone speaking out against such things.
That's why the hate speech laws may be better left off the books until the Democrats act like competent opposition party.
And for that to happen 40% of the population needs to die. Bush was a symptom of a larger problem, not the cause. Hate speech laws are a bad idea here, and really most places.
It would make it more difficult to oppress people openly, though.
It won't stop everything but it will make some of them think twice before being a racist or saying homophobic remarks.
And prevent and punish others for saying nothing of particular harm or of very little harm. But apparently you don't care about them.
That's why the hate speech laws may be better left off the books until the Democrats act like competent opposition party.
Then you're against them. Nobody here is talking about fairy land of the Democrats with spines. Everyone is talking about the real world and what would really happen if what you wanted were put in to effect. Specifically, oppression.
Get it known to the media, politicians etc like everyone else who wants laws to change.
People like you. Who think anything racist should be banned. You do realize you didn't address the point that people are offended by his jokes and assuming all racist speech were banned he'd be committing crimes, right?
They're fine to be served until they break the rules of the establishment, which Modern Man did.
So discrimination.
He did have access to PA's services. The he said something against the rules which PA was within their rights to refuse him service. He could have said racist jokes on other websites that are more lenient with that, but PA isn't one of them
Got it. Then you are definitely okay with discrimination in various forms. Glad we could get past that.
I doubt racists will have rising suicide rates were the hate speech laws to go into effect. That's what minorities & gay people have to live with every day. Not being able to say something racist or homophobic is not the equivalent to being socially bullied into committing suicide or becoming a social pariah.
I'm sorry what? The N**** Family alone would have a bunch of people foaming over how racist it was. They would be genuinely offended at the racist language in that sketch. Assuming the laws you want were put in place why would they not have the right to not be offended by that sketch?
If people were offended then they should be able to provide an adequate change to be more strict.
Of course, a large part of Chapel's routines was talking about how a certain ethnic group has and is oppressing his ethnic group and want to hold his ethnic group back. Given that one of the precedents advanced for supporting these laws is people in Rwanda saying exactly that, he'd probably be in a spot of trouble.
Are states really so effective that they can always prevent already-likely-fringe people from crossing the line of merely violent and murderous rhetoric to violent and murderous actions?
No government, state or federal, can always prevent fringe groups from committing acts of violence.
The fact that fringe groups still commit acts of violence in nations with hate speech laws seems to undermine the claim that those laws make it easier for the government to prevent hate crimes, or that censoring hate speech puts an end to hate crimes.
Interesting point of data. In 2009 (the latest year I could find compiled tables), the US had 2.4 reported hate crimes per 100,000 people; Canada had 5.0 (4.9 if we exclude public incitements of hatred or 4.8 if we also exclude advocating genocide and libel/slander). The numbers don't get any better when broken down by offense.
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.
This itself presupposes a strong state that can and will finesse all policy to any desired degree of enforcement, so that the nature of public discourse has either zero impact or at least a tolerable impact on people we would rather it not harm. To be blunt, this is almost never the case. I should probably have made this argument clearer in my earlier post...
I am certainly no more expert than you on this, I think, but I caution you about being cavalier about the predictability of genocide. We had several decades of Western reformers telling ASEAN states that the time for the heavy hand of the state against democratic ethnic flagwaving was long past, right up until the Suharto regime fell apart and the anti-Chinese pogroms started. Likewise a certain disregard toward the extent to which a five-decade-old Yugoslavia would eventually disintegrate. One does not need to desire a new German millennium to desire to remove those infidels/foreigners/etc. right next door. Ethnic tensions can remain hidden for quite a long time.
This brings up another interesting issue. As I recall, you object to the anti-communist purges in Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, and Taiwan largely on the basis of prudence. They didn't actually have the knowledge at the time required to justify said purges. You are willing to say, though, that had the South Koreans, for instance, really known that exterminating the Communists would have lead to better long-term export-lead growth, that could have justified doing it.
Wiki says that Norway prohibits hate speech against groups on the basis of their philosophy of life; political Communism, I would imagine, qualifies. Thus, it seems that the speech you yourself were engaged in earlier could qualify as hate speech by Norwegian standard--I certainly see no principled reason not to count it. Even if, in fact, Norwegian courts would not, I don't know that they have any good reason for the exemption.
Of course, I certainly don't want to censor you, because I think it's valuable for our public policy debates to seriously consider viewpoints such as your own. But it seems awkward for you to simultaneously endorse hate speech laws while being interested in conducting conversations which are, in principle, no different from what gets banned.
For reference, what I'm referring to comes here, in bold:
(to nitpick, I don't actually approve of the Indonesian or Korean purges, but my objection would be that we don't plausibly know the impact of doing so a priori, certainly not enough to justify murdering a lot of people - note that, for nearly two decades after the Korean War, American expert predictions were for the North to grow faster than the South, and so intervention was actively harmful to the South given known circumstances at the time, before "export-led growth" was a thing - but observing, after the fact, that it turned out to be arguably an improvement for the people who exist five decades later is entirely possible, and allowing for this is necessary if you want to avoid easy objections to naïve theorizing about the powers of developing would-be liberal democracies.
The extent of discretion in hate speech enforcement is because of the difficulty of distinguishing inciteful statements from textually innocuous statements that are liable to be received exactly the same way. The danger, if you like, is the escalation into a formal movement that can begin evading standard law-enforcement protections - by nature the state has difficulty perceiving the exact degree to which this is imminent and so we get a blunt instrument.
This seems to be more or less a concession that hate speech laws necessarily have a chilling effect on public discourse; after all, the state has a big hammer and an elusive nail. I see no reason why a big hammer would not, even when ideally used, also land on discussions of philosophy and politics that you and I have had--as I said, I see no in principle reason to leave the disabled off the list of protected classes, nor do I see any reason to leave off political communists; religion and political creed are remarkably similar semi-chosen semi-hereditary statuses and usually given similar protection. But the idea that you or I would be ordered to pay a substantial fine, or, worse yet, carted off to jail, seems more or less intolerable. The arguments that we are having are the heart and soul of a vibrant political community, not to be done away with.
A quick note: as murderous as the anticommunist purges and rights suppression more generally were, in the context of East Asia we do have manifold examples of societies with similar cultures going down the merry path of Stalinism or later Maoism (whilst their counterparts engaged in White purges), and it turned out to be far worse in human welfare, in both material wealth and human rights. I did not, however, say that South Korea would have been necessarily justified or unjustified in engaging in authoritarian dictatorship if it turned out better for human welfare later - the appropriate tradeoff between welfare now and welfare later is not mine to dictate, and I am satisfied doing the two-handed economist jig in this matter. It is merely the case that the "American interventionism sucks because look at all this suffering later" argument is terrible because the South Korea is not plausibly in the same ballpark of suffering as North Korea - even in this case where the intervention was wholly selfish and actively expected to leave South Korea worse off.
(Aside: as a historical curiosity there is, to my knowledge, exactly one East Asian society which the 60s CIA regarded as proto-communist state that didn't turn out brutally oppressive decades later: Singapore (the British disagreed and regarded Lee in the model of the then-Labour government*, which is probably why Singapore was let alone, even as it separated from Malaysia). The point about a priori knowledge is, I hope, understandable in this context).
(*Aside aside: which parts of the West also regarded as proto-communist... see what I said about poor judgment and lack of knowledge?)
But that aside for a variety of reasons I don't, in fact, think that the kind of hate-speech policies we are discussing are applicable here; if they have one similarity across nations, it is that they underscore past social struggles. The victors want to entrench the extent of their victory, so to speak.
Wiki says that Norway prohibits hate speech against groups on the basis of their philosophy of life; political Communism, I would imagine, qualifies. Thus, it seems that the speech you yourself were engaged in earlier could qualify as hate speech by Norwegian standard--I certainly see no principled reason not to count it. Even if, in fact, Norwegian courts would not, I don't know that they have any good reason for the exemption.
I see hate speech laws as an imperfect and blunt instrument used by states to pursue a relatively narrow purpose that cannot be easily pursued in other ways; in this light it becomes understandable why states with generally exceptionally liberal social values have hate-speech laws that they apply in this way (to shut down any possible resurrection of the movement, plus a measure of catharsis for the victims of the losers). I think it is important not to conceive of such laws as existing in an institutional vacuum, where it would become incomprehensible, as you point out, as to why the state might (e.g.) rigorously apply it to the finest letter to attack prominent local Holocaust revisionists but decline to aggressively censor international media that might say essentially the same thing. The point is not exactly the content of the speech, but the manner in which speech is used to construct social identities.
But more later. I think my worldview on this might be a little different from yours.
Ironincally, to me this means I have less of a problem with Norway having anti-hate speech laws than with the U.S. Some countries have legitimate discussions to be had out in the open, and shouldn't be afraid to work through them.
Yar on
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Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
I don't believe in criminalizing speech except in incitement to violence and promotion of treason, simply because it would be too risky to have it go wrong. Sure, it's illegal to yell "faggots" at gay pride parades, but it's also illegal to call rednecks a bunch of ignorant hicks, because hatespeech. I don't think it's direly needed either- the country is becoming more and more accepting of alternate lifestyles, and we're beginning to see shunning of those with intolerant viewpoints.
Posts
It would make it more difficult to oppress people openly, though.
It won't stop everything but it will make some of them think twice before being a racist or saying homophobic remarks.
That's why the hate speech laws may be better left off the books until the Democrats act like competent opposition party.
This sentence doesn't make sense. People who, quite understandably, find Chapelle's comedy offensive should do what exactly?[/quote]
Get it known to the media, politicians etc like everyone else who wants laws to change.
Then you're against them. Nobody here is talking about fairy land of the Democrats with spines. Everyone is talking about the real world and what would really happen if what you wanted were put in to effect. Specifically, oppression.
People like you. Who think anything racist should be banned. You do realize you didn't address the point that people are offended by his jokes and assuming all racist speech were banned he'd be committing crimes, right?
Of course, a large part of Chapel's routines was talking about how a certain ethnic group has and is oppressing his ethnic group and want to hold his ethnic group back. Given that one of the precedents advanced for supporting these laws is people in Rwanda saying exactly that, he'd probably be in a spot of trouble.
No government, state or federal, can always prevent fringe groups from committing acts of violence.
The fact that fringe groups still commit acts of violence in nations with hate speech laws seems to undermine the claim that those laws make it easier for the government to prevent hate crimes, or that censoring hate speech puts an end to hate crimes.
- John Stuart Mill
I don't see how this was presupposed.
This brings up another interesting issue. As I recall, you object to the anti-communist purges in Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, and Taiwan largely on the basis of prudence. They didn't actually have the knowledge at the time required to justify said purges. You are willing to say, though, that had the South Koreans, for instance, really known that exterminating the Communists would have lead to better long-term export-lead growth, that could have justified doing it.
Wiki says that Norway prohibits hate speech against groups on the basis of their philosophy of life; political Communism, I would imagine, qualifies. Thus, it seems that the speech you yourself were engaged in earlier could qualify as hate speech by Norwegian standard--I certainly see no principled reason not to count it. Even if, in fact, Norwegian courts would not, I don't know that they have any good reason for the exemption.
Of course, I certainly don't want to censor you, because I think it's valuable for our public policy debates to seriously consider viewpoints such as your own. But it seems awkward for you to simultaneously endorse hate speech laws while being interested in conducting conversations which are, in principle, no different from what gets banned.
For reference, what I'm referring to comes here, in bold:
This seems to be more or less a concession that hate speech laws necessarily have a chilling effect on public discourse; after all, the state has a big hammer and an elusive nail. I see no reason why a big hammer would not, even when ideally used, also land on discussions of philosophy and politics that you and I have had--as I said, I see no in principle reason to leave the disabled off the list of protected classes, nor do I see any reason to leave off political communists; religion and political creed are remarkably similar semi-chosen semi-hereditary statuses and usually given similar protection. But the idea that you or I would be ordered to pay a substantial fine, or, worse yet, carted off to jail, seems more or less intolerable. The arguments that we are having are the heart and soul of a vibrant political community, not to be done away with.
(Aside: as a historical curiosity there is, to my knowledge, exactly one East Asian society which the 60s CIA regarded as proto-communist state that didn't turn out brutally oppressive decades later: Singapore (the British disagreed and regarded Lee in the model of the then-Labour government*, which is probably why Singapore was let alone, even as it separated from Malaysia). The point about a priori knowledge is, I hope, understandable in this context).
(*Aside aside: which parts of the West also regarded as proto-communist... see what I said about poor judgment and lack of knowledge?)
But that aside for a variety of reasons I don't, in fact, think that the kind of hate-speech policies we are discussing are applicable here; if they have one similarity across nations, it is that they underscore past social struggles. The victors want to entrench the extent of their victory, so to speak.
I see hate speech laws as an imperfect and blunt instrument used by states to pursue a relatively narrow purpose that cannot be easily pursued in other ways; in this light it becomes understandable why states with generally exceptionally liberal social values have hate-speech laws that they apply in this way (to shut down any possible resurrection of the movement, plus a measure of catharsis for the victims of the losers). I think it is important not to conceive of such laws as existing in an institutional vacuum, where it would become incomprehensible, as you point out, as to why the state might (e.g.) rigorously apply it to the finest letter to attack prominent local Holocaust revisionists but decline to aggressively censor international media that might say essentially the same thing. The point is not exactly the content of the speech, but the manner in which speech is used to construct social identities.
But more later. I think my worldview on this might be a little different from yours.
U.S.: 4% non-Christian, 20% atheist/none, 30 - 40% non-white.
Ironincally, to me this means I have less of a problem with Norway having anti-hate speech laws than with the U.S. Some countries have legitimate discussions to be had out in the open, and shouldn't be afraid to work through them.