--- billbartlett at dodo.com.au wrote:
> At 4:35 PM -0800 8/11/02, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> >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?
Never mind just now. I guess I think it odd that you worried about the economic threat to free speech of an incentive structure that encouraged efficiency by allowing firms to be put out of business, which is pretty attenuated in my view, but it doesan't bother yout to allow the state to lock up people for saying bad things.
> >>
> >> 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.
In the US, it is,
You can think it of
> course, it isn't a thought crime.
Punishing people for saying things is what is normally meant by thought crime. There's no act in the legally relavant sense.
But you can't
> incite racial hatred with impunity.
Yah, well, I don't know Austrial law, but that's not incitement for the reasons explained.
What exactly do you see as the benefits of
> permitting people to go around inciting hatred and
> crime?
None. But I do see benefit in protecting abstract advocacy of ideas others might find hateful, including, e.g., communist ideas. US law says that you can't pick and choose on the basis of content as long it's abstract advocacy, which gets the state out of the business of censoring the content of pepople's thought. That means freedom of speech is for those whose ideas we hate, which is really the key thing.
>
> If someone says they intend to commit genocide you
> don't wait around until they start carrying out the
> threat.
If somesone says they intend to overthrow the capitalist state, you don't wait until they make good on the threat, likewise? Ho do you argue for the protection of socialist ideas, or irreligious ideas, etc.? Do you trust the state to sort out good content from bad content? In AMerica, we don't.
> >
> >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,
Well, there is hate CRIMES legislation in many states. If yoy commit what is independently a crime because of bigotry, you have committed a further crime, under those statutes. But mere hate speech is protected, yes. In that respect, the US is freer than OZ.
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.
It's possible to have a relatively free society that bans some expression on the basis of content. Many countries in Europe do. I didn't know about Australia. I think it's a bad idea. If I could afford to do it, I'd work full time for the ACLU defending the right of scumbags to spout their rubbish, as wella s therights of reds and rads to rail against the existing order.
>
> And of course Nazi Germany was a police state,
> despite the unlimited freedom to espouse hatred of
> minority groups.
Totally specioous. There there was content regulation as you well know. You were NOT free to espouse tolerance or criticise the the govt.
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 proper response to expression of dumb and hateful ideas is to refute them, not to jail the people who express them. Sheesh.
A police state can have the sort rule of law you mention, that is, apply repressive laws even-handedly. that doesn't make it less than a police state.
jks
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