Sure, like screaming “fire” in a theater or “hijack” on an airplane.
But I loathe the idea of a government bureaucrat combing through published works, looking for words which may “offend, belittle, or humiliate any ethnic group, race, or class”, then declaring the work censored and opening the author to criminal and civil actions. Shudder
Sure, like screaming “fire” in a theater or “hijack” on an airplane.
But I loathe the idea of a government bureaucrat combing through published works, looking for words which may “offend, belittle, or humiliate any ethnic group, race, or class”, then declaring the work censored and opening the author to criminal and civil actions. Shudder[/quote]
Given the little people read these days, I think authors are pretty safe. My god man, you’ve offended the entire audience of the Times Sunday Supplement. 
Sure, like screaming “fire” in a theater or “hijack” on an airplane.
But I loathe the idea of a government bureaucrat combing through published works, looking for words which may “offend, belittle, or humiliate any ethnic group, race, or class”, then declaring the work censored and opening the author to criminal and civil actions. Shudder[/quote]
Yeah, that sounds like a bad idea to me too.
Then one wonders how you would enforce your banning of “pure hate speech”.
I don’t know how. There are hate laws on the books in many jurisdictions with strong traditions of individual freedom and the rule of law. A survey of what they’ve done would be a good place to start. I doubt it would prove untenable, particularly if it were applied rarely and there were high thresholds and stringent tests that had to be met at the outset.
So you’d be in favor of curtailing the freedom of speech, but you don’t know for what exactly, or what the policy would actually be, or how it would be implemented. Good work. 
I find it repugnant that anyone should be prevented by the government from expressing any emotion, including hate. Or prevented from burning a Quran, or prevented from building a mosque. Utter nonsense.
Again, I think the key to this issue is not what some crazy person in a country of 300 million is doing, every society has crazy people, just saw the news Another US minister plans Koran burning to mark 9/11 anniversary if its not this wacko, it will be another.
The issue is how leaders and responsible people react, and Im reading of people calling for expelling US diplomats and so on, I dont know how Islam expects the west to attribute actions of 911 to extremists if it considers all Americans (or whoever does it, UK or some other country) collectively responsible for the actions of someone who perhaps would be well suited in a padded cell.
[quote]Mohammed Mursi, spokesman for Egypt’s influential Muslim Brotherhood, said the organization was calling for pressure on all Muslim governments to expel U.S. ambassadors.
“The American government must realize the danger,” Mursi said.
“If the (U.S.) government does not stop it, then it will become a partner. We are calling on all in the Muslim world to pressure their governments into expelling American ambassadors,” Mursi added.[/quote]
Worldwide outrage at planned Quran burning
Good work? I think so. It’d be arrogant to think I had all the answers before even having a look at the facts, past and present practices. Under my idealism, there’s a deep and wide realist and conservative streak. Check the facts first, then recheck your ideals, ideas and goals, then rethink action. I would have thought you’d appreciate that.
Btw, I did a search to check on what I’d posted on the Danish cartoon thing and yep, there I am making an argument (maybe not the one you were attributing to me) on ‘basic respect’. Here’s the link. Gets clarified and qualified in subsequent pages. Haven’t yet had a chance to re-read or re-think my argument, and now I’m going to bed. So, feel free to take your time crafting a killer argument with which to make/ruin my morning. 
Sorry I can’t let this go (it might be against the rules to carry converations across threads like this but if this could be allowed it would be appreciated. I think it goes to the heart of something a lot of people are wondering about…
[quote]bob wrote:
I’ve read things that purport to lay out the moderate philosophy but nowhere have I ever seen a single referance to any muslim ever saying anything other than that The Koran is the final word of God. There is a very good chance of course that they are afraid that they will be killed if they do so that might explain it. I dunno.
Jaboney:Oh Bob, reading your views on religion, it’s a trial.
Not good of me.
Let me ask, have you ever come across anything, not put forward by a wide-eyed fundamentalist, that suggests anyone might fully understand that ‘final word’? You ought to know that it’s quite possible – even popular and doctrinal – to say something along the lines of: “He has spoken: now if only we could understand what it all means,” and to affirm that the understood meaning of scripture is intended to evolve through time.
Your assertions that it’s all cut and dry, and that believers are tied to the text, as though by laying on tefillin… it’s very much the same as listening to talk radio pundits ‘explain’ the platforms of opposing political parties.[/quote]
Again, sorry, but you just helped prove my point. There might be some discussion within Islam about how to interpret the Koran (though a lot of it seems pretty unequivocal so even that argument is less than reassuring) but so far we still haven’t seen any indication that msulim “believers” (as distinguihed from ethnicity) believe anything other than that the book is the final word of god.
Why utter nonsense? Burning a Quran is an act of intimidation. In a small town it can be enough to terrify a minority into silence. It can make daily life rife with anxiety as they legitimately wonder what greater threats may come if they dare to speak out or practise their faith in public.
If you can guarantee that minorities will not face discrimination from law enforcement agencies when they bring up safety concerns then your point is valid. Otherwise, not so much.
The flip side of freedom of expression has to be equal protection under the law.
Maybe a bit OT here but interesting to me. It’s absolutely amazing that one seemingly insignificant, previously unknown man, could in the space of a few days raise such a shitstorm of worldwide concern and reaction. It’s like something out of a James Bond movie, but there’s no megabomb and no billion dollar ransom. I’ve never seen anything like it.
He says that he doesn’t mean the book burning to be a message to regular Muslims but only to extremists. What a fucking lunatic.
Burning a Quran is not an act of intimidation. As Tigerman already explained, the relevance in American law is whether a person’s speech would cause a reasonable person to believe they are in imminent danger of physical bodily harm. If so, then the crime of assault may have occurred and would be prosecutable, even without actual physical harm (battery).
The pastor is threatening to burn Qurans on his own property. He is not threatening anyone with harm, much less local Muslims (assuming there are any). Similar cases have occurred with the KKK burning crosses on their own property. As long as they aren’t violating burn bans etc., courts have consistently upheld their rights.
You’re all over the map with this. You go from one guy burning Qurans on his own property to intimidating others to causing discrimination from law enforcement.
My point, that freedom of speech should not be abridged because someone, somewhere, at some point in time may be offended and become violent, is valid in a democratic society. Discrimination from law enforcement is a separate issue, and there is no evidence that is going on here.
Burning a Quran is not an act of intimidation. As Tigerman already explained, the relevance in American law is whether a person’s speech would cause a reasonable person to believe they are in imminent danger of physical bodily harm. If so, then the crime of assault may have occurred and would be prosecutable, even without actual physical harm (battery).
The pastor is threatening to burn Qurans on his own property. He is not threatening anyone with harm, much less local Muslims (assuming there are any). Similar cases have occurred with the KKK burning crosses on their own property. As long as they aren’t violating burn bans etc., courts have consistently upheld their rights.
You’re all over the map with this. You go from one guy burning Qurans on his own property to intimidating others to causing discrimination from law enforcement.
My point, that freedom of speech should not be abridged because someone, somewhere, at some point in time may be offended and become violent, is valid in a democratic society. Discrimination from law enforcement is a separate issue, and there is no evidence that is going on here.[/quote]
Not all over the map. You’re conflating my example with the pastor who has threatened to burn a few Qurans on his own property. I didn’t make the analogy and you weren’t referring to it either in the post I commented on.
You want to argue broadly and defend yourself narrowly. And in a fine huff I might add. Do it without me. 
I believe that freedom of speech should not be abridged except in a very specific, narrow set of circumstances, such as assault or causing a panic in an enclosed space. I don’t see how any serious discussion of restricting a fundamental human right can take place without circumspection.
President Obama weighed in today, urging the pastor not to burn the Qurans. The pastor has announced he’s going ahead with his plans.
The protests have begun. From the AP:
[quote]MULTAN, Pakistan — [b]A small American church’s plan to burn copies of the Quran is stirring outrage in Muslim nations, with lawyers protesting in Pakistan and Bahrain’s government calling the burning a shameful attack on interfaith relations.
About 200 lawyers and civil society members marched and burned a U.S. flag in the central Pakistani city of Multan, demanding that Washington halt the burning of the Muslim holy book.[/b]
“If Quran is burned, it would be beginning of destruction of America,” read one English-language banner held up by the protesters, who chanted “Down with America!”
The Gainesville, Florida, fire department has denied Jones a required burn permit, but he said lawyers have told him he has the right to burn the Qurans, with or without the city’s permission. The U.S. Supreme Court has made clear that speech deemed offensive to many people, even the majority of people, cannot be suppressed by the government unless it is clearly directed to intimidate or amounts to an incitement to violence, legal experts say.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has denounced the planned burning and Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has said it could lead to attacks on international troops there.
“This is a plan by Zionists to put the entire world into trouble, so it should be foiled,” Tariq Naeemullah, the head of the Joint Civic Front, a coalition of non-governmental organizations in Multan.
The foreign ministries of Pakistan and the Gulf nation of Bahrain issued some of the first official denunciations in the Muslim world, with Bahrain calling it a “shameful act which is incompatible with the principles of tolerance and coexistence.” Bahrain is home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet.
The president of Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, has also sent a letter to President Barack Obama asking him to stop the bonfire.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said images of the Quran in flames could “threaten world peace,” Heru Lelono, a special adviser to the president, told reporters Thursday.
India’s Home Ministry has asked the country’s media to “exercise restraint” in reporting on the planned burning.[/quote]
On the radio KFI is reporting that the Pastor made a deal not burn the Quran in return for moving the NY mosque to a location further away from ground zero. Here’s a link from ABC.
Oh ye of little faith in your own ideals. The fact is is if truth and virtue are put in open contest with lies and evil that truth will always prevail because truth is inherently far stronger than lies.
Look at history. The purveyors of evil – totalitarian regimes, repressive hate-filled regimes – instinctively know this and have typically been the ones historically to suppress free speech because they fear the power of truth and virtue.
You play into this when you argue that the suppression of free and open contest between lies and truth has some validity. Noted that your motives are good but the result is that you’re merely reinforcing the historical argument of evildoers that suppressing speech is somehow “good” for society. In other words you’re effectively giving aid and comfort to the one weapon evildoers have against truth and virtue which is not having to face them in an open, fair contest of ideas.
If you don’t trust your ideals enough to allow them to face off against the dark forces in society then maybe your ideals need some tweaking. You’ll know you’ve got it right when you no longer fear that they’ll be overwhelmed by evil. That’s the genius of free speech: fear no evil. Rather, it should fear you and your ideals and having to face them in the open.
[quote=“Mucha Man”]You’re conflating my example with the pastor who has threatened to burn a few Qurans on his own property. I didn’t make the analogy and you weren’t referring to it either in the post I commented on.
You want to argue broadly and defend yourself narrowly. And in a fine huff I might add. Do it without me. 
[/quote]
You just summarized the tone of this discussion perfectly.
:bravo:
[quote=“lbksig”]On the radio KFI is reporting that the Pastor made a deal not burn the Quran in return for moving the NY mosque to a location further away from ground zero. Here’s a link from ABC.
ABC News[/quote]
In that same story, it is said that the FBI had been to visit him to debrief him on how they would protect him from death threats. That’s over the line for me. The constitution may very well protect his freedom of speech, but why on earth would the FBI be obligated to protect this guy. He is doing this on his own private property, as others have mentioned. If he’s concerned about his safety, and he probably should be, then let him hire private security.
At any rate, if he has truly called it off, then it doesn’t matter. Seems like he’s making up stories to call it off, but hey…whatever makes him feel better.