<<< via P_news >>> Hate Speech: If a country does not believe in racism, it should not protect racist expression. A society that hates racism would not permit it to flourish. (Remember the NEW LEFT? Read Herbert Marcuse.) In Emma Goldman's WHAT I BELIEVE? She wrote that human ideas and institutions are human constructions and subject human error. She said "What I believe is a process rather than a finality." I too believe in the process and that means how we get to where we are going is as important as getting there. ********** How we get there is as important as getting there. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I believe in the collective wellbeing over that of the individual. Libertarians who are extremely individualistic sacrifice the good of the group for the good of the individual and that means the weakest, the most exploited among us will continue to be exploited and oppressed. To some extent this conception of freedom is a ruse, a hoax that exists only in the abstract and its quest may be one of the root causes of so much pathology in American social life. We are preoccupied with rights and taken to the extreme we have neglected values. That is what I mean by "process." Now I don't want to regulate or enforce my values on anyone and I don't want anyone's values imposed on me. That isn't my point. I'm concerned with the costs of emancipation from our past and what we need do to ensure a new and better tomorrow. A free marketplace in ideas is as ineffective as any free marketplace. They don't work because they pander to the will and greed of the strongest and most corrupt, besides which they, by their very nature are corruptable. Everything needs central planning. Hate speech needs to be planned out of a system if we don't want to have hate speech. Now if you think hate speech is the price we must pay, then so be it, but you won't like living where there is unbridled hate speech and neither will I. The system you envision where exploitation is eliminated and people are all good to each other is unrealistic. Regardless what you say about censorship and how it also impacts on us, what you have now is the unraveling of the social fabric and what we replace it with worries me. And when you allow evil to compete with good, it seems evil too often has an emotional populist appeal that wins out without good men and women to stand as a vanguard against abuse and good sensible laws to regulate. (I recommend Hannah Arendt's ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM, which very convincingly covers this topic.) The argument most used is what and who defines these things? I don't think that is a valid supposition because we define things everyday, all day long. All our laws define human relationships. These things can be codified. That is an excuse used too much by the right to justify every abuse. I think we have to look at our culture and determine what direction we wish it to take. Freedom cannont be determined by abondonment of all constraints. Some restraint is necessary for there to be a social system that functions cooperatively and imposes the least amount of harm. We should be free from legislation of laws that are arbitrary and capricious and from a social order that oppresses labor and enriches a particular social strata, while enslaving another to it's whims and fancies. However this freedom should not free us from responsibity to care for each other (as libertarians would have us do) or that which is abusive and harmful to society. Anotherwords, as Fraud implied while primordial freedom is preferred, but not living in primitive societies it becomes necessary in civilized society to pay a a price with moral restraints. Either extreme is and does have the potential for causing great harm, i.e., total freedom or imposing someone else's will. But as Aristotle said and said it best: "Every man should be responsible to others, nor should any be allowed to do just as he pleases; for where absolute freedom is allowed there is nothing to restrain the evil which is inherent in man." To reiterate, a society produces it culture and that culture must reflect it's values. If we hate racism, we should not permit it to flourish. ////*---Free Speech? The First Amendment.-----*//// These are only excuses for allowing hate speech to thrive. It isn't just a question of judgement, what is and what is not hate speech, what does and what does not cause harm, and what does and what does not threaten genocide. No matter of how much legal twisting and manipulationg one does with logic, promoting racism is still dispictable, illogical, devoid of any moral credibility and there ought to be a law to preclude it, the First Amendment, not withstanding. ///*----Free Speech is a hoax perpetrated by the ruling class while they own the printing presses and television...**///