>Weren't you worried about the free speech consequences
>of employment relations when we were discussing my
>views of cooperatives a while back? Don't you see a
>tension between this view and what you say there?
Please explain? I can recall noticing a few inconsistencies between what I was saying on one thread and something I was saying on another, but no-one seemed to notice, which I put down to poor analytical skills by other LBOers. I can't recall that particular one. It would please me to discover another one though.
>I think the SCt got
>> >that one just about right.
>>
>> So, "kill that particular Jew!" is incitement, but
>> "Kill all Jews!" is just fine.
>
>No, but it's protected.
Not in Australia it isn't. You can think it of course, it isn't a thought crime. But you can't incite racial hatred with impunity. Especially against Jews, who are well-organised and inclined to drag you into court like the aforementioned Olga Scully. What exactly do you see as the benefits of permitting people to go around inciting hatred and crime?
>
> Just "abstract
>> advocacy". Trouble is, as Hitler demonstrated, it
>> isn't necessarily just abstract, they didn't think
>> he was serious, but he WAS.
>
>The risk of suppressing all speech that might have a
>bad consequence is something you don't take into
>account. The problem wasn't Hitler's advocacy, it was
>his actions--no one stopped him even when his actions
>made clear that he was serious, until it was too late.
If someone says they intend to commit genocide you don't wait around until they start carrying out the threat.
> > I prefer to take people at their word. It might be
>> safer. If someone says that people should be
>> murdered, my feeling is that they should be taken
>> seriously and imprisoned. They might be just talking
>> "abstract", but loose talk costs lives.
>
>And jailing people fot thought crime creates a police
>state. Your pick, chum.
Australia is still a free country, in my judgement. (For example if the police breach my legal rights I know I can go to court and get them restrained.) But it has laws against hate speech. Yet the US, which you tell me has no such restrictions, is pretty much a police state by my standards. So I don't think there is any relationship between a police state and imposing reasonable restrictions on people inciting hatred and murder.
And of course Nazi Germany was a police state, despite the unlimited freedom to espouse hatred of minority groups. There seems no great benefit to permitting people who publish such rubbish to go on doing it. The proper response to the authors of the Bell Curve is to imprison them. That doesn't indicate a police state, if the law is administered impartially and with due process.
The police state threat comes from a public attitude which tolerates arbitrary and discriminatory administration of the legal system. Such as openly executing suspects or simply ignoring some laws for some people.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas