thread themes on outlawing fascistic racist speech

jf noonan jfn1 at msc.com
Thu Oct 29 12:34:36 PST 1998


On Thu, 29 Oct 1998, Charles Brown wrote:


>
>
> >>> "Nathan Newman" <nathan.newman at yale.edu> 10/29 11:54 AM >>>
>
> And your justification for this statement is...squat?
> ________
>
> Charles: Why on earth would you assume my
> justification and EVIDENCE for this is squat ?

Because your notion of "evidence" is to assert something and then say: "Hah, and you can't disprove it", while, of course, you can't prove your side either. Your "proof" that the anti-Nazi laws in Germany were effective, was to assert that things MIGHT have been worse and that I couldn't prove otherwise.

Nifty view of the dialectic, if you ask me. Very effective too.

BTW: The fact that I dropped arguing with ONE SIGNLE PERSON, hardly proves that my view on free speech is faulty, as you asserted yesterday. A sample size of 1 doen not have very good statistical properties.


> It is common
> knowledge among activists
> that the ACLU does not
> place as much emphasis on the struggle
> against racism as civil liberties issues.
> It is reflected in their literature,
> public statements and the
> cases they take. The differentiation between
> the very tems "civil libeties" and "civil
> rights" reflects this.

Rephrased: "It is common knowledge amongst the Enlightened Sect that blah, blah, blah."

Christ, I hate religion and religiosity.


> There are specific organizations in this
> country that focus on fighting the KKK
> and Nazis. You don't find a lot
> of free speech for KKKers in these
> organizations, whereas they should
> be if they think the way to fight the
> KKK is in the marketplace of ideas.
> ___________

Some of them make a handsome living doing so, don't they? Go try to get a look at Morris Dee's books sometime.


> Charles: They don't fight
> fascistic racism directly
> as their position of
> allowing the speech would
> imply. If the way to defeat
> fascistic racists is to allow
> them to speak and then battle
> their ideas, then the ACLU
> should not just defend anti-racists'
> rights to speak (which isn't
> even challenged much) , but
> to fight the racist ideas directly.
> You don't find ACLUs specializing
> in battling _The Bell Curve_,
> for example.

You would outlaw _The Bell Curve_?!?

<mind boggles>

--

Joseph Noonan jfn1 at msc.com



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