thread themes on outlawing fascistic racist speech

Charles Brown CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us
Thu Oct 29 14:41:23 PST 1998



>>> jf noonan <jfn1 at msc.com> 10/29 3:34 PM >>>
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. ________

Charles: You are a slanderer. You are also ignorant of the meaning of "evidence" and "proof" Fortunately, I have copies of my post which are full of EVIDENCE disproving your lie above. I give evidence to support my statements. Of course, some evidence is not PROOF. But I make claims of fact that are all one can do on e-mail. I don't merely state conclusions _______

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. __________ Charles: I thought you might try something like this. I didn't use the word "proof" in the case I gave. In fact it was you who tried to prove something based on evidence (yes you adduced evidence) that was inadequate. All I did was point out how the evidence you adduced could be consistent with the opposite conclusion you drew from it. I never said the German facts "proved" that there would have been more fascism there without the anti-fascist laws.I just pointed out that you couldn't use the evidence to prove that anti-fascist laws don't work just because they didn't eradicate all fascism; and that was because there COULD have been more. I never said that the evidence proved there would have been more. Your argument was neutralized.

By the way, on this I forgot to say that you have to sustain the counterintuitive argument that a law outlawing something results in more people doing it than when it is legal. That's not a proof or evidence ,by the way. It's common sense though. _______

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

Charles: I never asked you. The above is formal logic, by the way. Dialectic includes formal logic but usually doesn't refer to formal logic. ___________

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. ___________ Charles: What are you talking about ? I never said dropping arguing with one single person proved anything. You have a problem with drawing unwarranted conclusions from statements. _____


> 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. ___________

Charles: Slanderer. I am an atheist and a critical thinker. And the above is based on EVIDENCE. My direct observations on the conduct of the ACLU are evidence. There may be other evidence , even contrary evidence, but that doesn't make my direct obsevations not evidence and your claim that my drawing conclusions from material evidence is religion is willfully slanderous use of the charge of religious thought.

You are the one who hasn't introduced any evidence. What is your evidence that the ACLU places as much emphasis on civil rights and anti-racism as civil liberties ? None in this post.

As a matter of fact your cohort , Nathan Newman, said it is "tautological" that the ACLU emphasises civil liberties. He seems to think there is some evidence for it.


> 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; I'm like , SO WHAT ? What does what Morris Dees makes have to do with the issues disputed in this argument ?The staff of the National Alliance for Racist and Political Repression lives very frugally. So what ? Does this mean the ACLU isn't obligated to get into the marketplace of ideas against fascistic racism if it is going to try to free the KKK to speak ?


> 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> _____________ Charles: I'll say. Your mind is pretty boggled. Briefly, if the ACLU argues that the best way to fight fascistic speech is to allow it to enter the marketplace of ideas and then get in and fiercely fight it , then the ACLU should be vigorously involved in developing the arguments against the content of such "speeches" as _The Bell Curve_.

Get it Boggle Mind ?

Although, my thesis might not outlaw _The Bell Curve_ because it is only racist and not fascistically racist ,you are a weirdo, if you actually FEEL offense at the idea of outlawing that despicable book. This is exactly the liberal emotion that places more value on freedom of thought (it's a book with that sacred thing called "thought" in it) than freedom from racism. Of course for philosophical idealists, thought is primary and sacred, any thought.

Charles Brown

Detroit



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