>Ah yes, another leftist calling for the imprisonment of people for *thought
>crimes*. Lovely.
I have my doubts there's much *thought* going on in Chuck's head when he comes out with that nonsense. But in any case, it isn't what he thinks, but what he says, that disturbs me.
To my mind, when someone publicly advocates the necessity of dispersing people, they are as guilty as the people who actually do it. If the advocated dispersal of people is going to result in millions of deaths, it is at the level of a crime against humanity. The advocates of crimes against humanity, the advocates of genocide, mass murder, slavery, torture and other such horrendous crimes, have to take responsibility for what they advocate. The sad truth is there's some weak-minded people who might act on such nonsense.
Society has a duty to prevent such horrors. Chuck's freedom of speech is no excuse to tolerate the spread of threats against the very life of millions of people. The appropriate response to such utterances is imprisonment. The same goes for the authors of racist slurs, homophobic hatred and the like.
Fuck their freedom of speech, if it threatens to force other people to live lives of fear. A threat is a crime.
>In the real world, we have had *forced* industrialization over the past
>century in many parts of the world. It was often resisted, sometimes
>violently. Force is also used against folks in the global South to help
>maintain the comfortable modern industrial society we have in the North. If
>they walk off the job and a good number of workers in the North join them in
>solidarity, or if there is a revolution and a number of folks refuse to
>return to their demeaning jobs, are you going to jail them too since they
>then pose a threat to your precious lifestyle? Does this mean you support
>sending in the Marines to protect the *American way of life*? At what point
>do you support coercion of others in order to maintain your comfortable
>lifestyle? - Tom
Don't try to change the subject. In principle I don't support coercion, I advocate a society in which systematic coercion would be abolished. The difference between me an Chuck is that I believe people have to choose that freely, he wants to herd them to it like cattle.
Not on Chuck.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas