justin wrote:
> > On this reasoning, if Jonathan Swift were still
> among us, we should be so
> > lucky, and some moron were to kill and eat a baby,
> crediting "A Modest
> > Proposal" as his inspiration, Swift might be
> subject to
> > prosecution. Don't
> > laugh: this is actually the conclusion drawn by
> the Fourth
> > Circuit Court of
> > Appeals in the "Hit Man" case. Their idea, and
> yours, is that speech is
> > dangerous, and if it inspires misconduct by fools
> and wicked people, the
> > speech--and not the fools or the wicked--ought to
> suppressed. God
> > Bless you,
> > and welcome to the land ogf the free.
Oh come off your high horse, as I find myself saying more and more these days. If "some moron" were to do what you said, or to blame a heavy metal band for his shooting a friend, or to blame NWA for his shooting a policeman, it is a fact which cannot be ignored that _we_wouldn't_believe_them_. In the case of Charles Manson, we did believe that his speech ended up with people being killed, so we put him in jail. It's not really all that difficult to separate the cases.
I'll furthermore point out that, in the backward third world monarchy which I inhabit, we have a criminal offence called "incitement to racial hatred" under which the principle that "speech is dangerous, and if it inspires misconduct by fools and wicked people, the speech [...] ought to be suppressed" is enforced with several prosecutions a year. And although we are unable to place signs at our ports and airstrips welcoming people to "the land of the free", we nevertheless manage to sustain some semblance of democracy, and even one or two anti-government newspapers.
jeez
dd
> >
> >
===== “It is necessarily part of the business of a banker to maintain appearances and to profess a conventional respectability which is more than human. Life-long practices of this kind make them the most romantic and the least realistic of men” -- JM Keynes
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