See Post 99.
Imagine being a Jew 50 years from now when new generations have rebelled against believing what their elders tried to force them to believe rather than proving to them, time and again, that what their elders claimed was absolutely true and successfully defending that position against all challengers.
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Free speech brings personal responsibility with it. Holocaust denial is in many ways not free speech. Free speech means you can have an opinion, but not necessarily that you can deny a horrible fact and in doing so you in fact advocate another genocide since you do not even recognize the first one.
I know it is a fact. You know it is a fact. How will future generations know that is was a fact?
Because they will be jailed if they even raise the question?
Would raising the question that the Katyn Massacre was not a Nazi atrocity be a punishable offense?
As it turned out, the Katyn Massacre was a Soviet atrocity and even Russia belatedly admitted it.
If you jail those who question or argue a position, with time, new generations will wonder if, like the Soviets, the powers that be are trying to hide the truth.
The way to combat such lies is to prove them wrong after the fool has given his best effort. Jailing the fool only gives him the glory of martyrdom and makes young minds wonder why you must resort to forcibly silencing him rather than proving him wrong beyond the shadow of a doubt.
99 posted on 02/16/2007 6:42:04 AM PST by Polybius
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As I wrote to Veronica, "Martyrs can be extremely dangerous people even if they never utter another word. It is far less dangerous to have a proven fool than a silenced martyr".
Banning a symbol is one thing.
Banning debate can be very dangerous.
And you tell me that Germany is a totalitarian state??