Posted on 02/02/2006 7:11:45 AM PST by Cornpone
Market boycotts are different: that's freedom of association. I draw a bright-line distinction between threatening to refuse to buy a product and threatening to kill those who disagree.
Remember Voltaire? Something like "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
No, abrogating one's civilization begets terror. I am not concerned about Islam, I am concerned about the western values. They took a dive with these cartoons.
Censoring them is exactly what a civilized society whould be doing.
Does anyone have a pic of this cartoon mentioned above?
In every country in Europe, including France, you can go to jail for politically incorrect speech and press. Look at Bridgette Bardot.
Freedom of speech has nothing to do with ugly cartoons. The newspapers should apologize and laws should be passed in Europe reinstituting censorship of blasphemous or sacrilegious material regardless of subject matter. They had such laws for centuries, -- it is not rocket science.
The same applies to the US of course. Let us recall that Judge Bork called for reinstitution of censorship in America. As always, he is right.
Madness.
Let us recall that Judge Bork called for reinstitution of censorship in America. As always, he is right.
No. He's not. He's something of a gun-grabber too.
You might relish the idea of licking authoritarian boots, but I do not.
Sometimes all I can say is wow.
yet another essay on islam. Peaceful religion my a$$
http://www.islamreview.com/articles/saveamerica.shtml
What boots? What "wow"? Censorship has been an attribute of our civilization for centuries. When it lapsed in the 60's, a rule of yahoo thugs ensued. You think "Piss Christ" and "Dung Madonna" just randomly happened? Pretty soon we'll have no civilization worth defending, folks.
The boots of the men who arrest those who voice "illegal speech."
What "wow"?
The "Wow, you have no idea what totalitarianism is like . . . you have no sense of history and folks like you would doom us all to repeat it."
The penalty for defiance of censorship in the West has always been a fine, with closing the newspaper a sanction of last resort. No boots.
I have a very good idea of what totalitarianism is like: I grew up in the Soviet Union. I remember sneaking around with typewritten copies of Gulag Archipelago very well. We understood freedom of speech because we knew why it matters. To ridicule the faith, however misplaced, of a religious minority from under the protection of an atheist state is very much akin to what the Soviet propaganda machine was doing; it has zero relevance to freedom of speech. Are you seriously comparing the uber-establishmentarian Le Monde to a dissident publication?
Decency in the public space is what safeguards freedom of speech.
You want government-enforced speech codes. Someday that government might decide it doesn't like your speech, and that it doesn't feel bound by what the penalties for such have "always been."
You didn't learn very much from Soviet totalitarianism.
The cartoons are so offensive because they reflect facets of the truth, and this is what they do not want revealed.
>>EXACTLY!!
Kudos to you, Sir!
WTF?
It isn't the NIGHT guard who would need to worry. If the Islamofascists were going to bomb the place it would be during the day for the 'best effect'.
Plantu better get a body guard.
You continue to confuse blasphemous insults with speech. It is not, -- it is an affront to decency, nothing more. When the French government protects the newspaper that brutalizes a minority, that is exactly what totalitarianism is about.
Can the constitutional system in the US devolve into totalitarianism? It is doing so already. While Larry Flint's operation thrives under the government protection, Christian crosses are rapidly disappearing from our public space. Pretty soon pulbic religious speech will be stamped out completely, and the government is not in need of censorship to get there.
Why, what happened in 1999? I could count back much longer than that.
Of course it is. Don't be absurd.
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