We have been following the steady decline of free speech in the West (here and here and here) and we have another interesting case on criminal charges for uttering prohibited thoughts. Germany has long made it a crime to deny the holocaust. Now, controversial British clergyman Richard Williamson has started a trial in Germany on Friday for his denial that the Nazis had systematically murdered millions of Jews.
Williamson, 70, was fined 12,000 euros (16,000 dollars) for comments made on a television interview during a 2008 visit to Germany. In the interview, he alleged that the Nazi gas chambers are a myth and “only 200,000 to 300,000 Jews” had been killed by the Nazis.
He caused a controversy for Pope Benedict XVI, who repealed his excommunication of Williamson.
There is no question that Germany has tried through this law to prevent the resurgence of Nazi propaganda and lies. However, the best way to fight fascism is to allow free speech, not to censor prohibited thoughts and utterances. In this case, Williamson says that he was assured that his interview would only run in Sweden, which allows free speech on the issue. Despite our personal revulsion with such accounts, it is important for civil libertarians to stand with free speech. This trial should not be over the historical fact but free speech. Williamson has a right to speak his mind as to his view of history while the rest of us have a right to denounce those views.
For the full story, click here
Tootie:
Where did you get the idea that white people are going to be rounded up and shot or gassed? Isn’t that a bit out there?
To some you are actually guilty of what you claim liberals are, in reference your belief in Jesus and religion in general. In other words you would substitute the tyranny of God for the tyranny of man. The bible has been interpreted many ways over the last few thousand years, some good, some not so good. The interpretation was based on the individual doing the interpreting. I am very leery of someone who tells me they know what God wants for people.
So you say you are for freedom and liberty yet you seem to be very religious. The 2 do not go hand in hand. You are exchanging the laws of man for the laws of God, but the problem is that no one actually knows God’s true intent. It must be gleaned from the bible. And if a man of ill intent were to claim to be the messenger of God would you follow him? And how would you know he wasn’t?
You appear to be farther down tyranny lane than some on this blog. I think you think you are for liberty but I don’t think the end result is going to work out as planed following the road you are currently traveling.
Mans rights do not extend from a creator, all that does is make him subservient. And it makes morality subjective.
Slart: The racists are those who have advocated changing America from almost 90 percent white to the soon to be less than 50 percent white BECAUSE it was too white.
I’m not one of them so don’t point a me.
When such things happen to dark people we call it genocide.
Cripes, I don’t know what you are frothing about.
It’s Carla Emery* (this lovely woman is now dead).
K. Santel,
You can find a debate about the science behind 9/11 at:
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/12/09/one-hundred-and-twenty-percent-of-people-cant-be-wrong-fox-news-shows-people-are-dubious-about-the-accuracy-of-global-warming-science-with-a-poll-showing-120-percent-of-people-are-skeptical
This thread became a discussion about 9/11 early on and I believe that I have pretty thoroughly addressed the science regarding the collapse of the World Trade Center in it. (Warning: The thread is almost 1,500 posts long.)
Tootie,
I find it amusing that you are apparently unwilling to address my critique of your inane ideas. I guess you just aren’t intellectually up to defending your ignorant smears and scientific illiteracy in this forum. If you can’t defend your small-minded bigotry, maybe you shouldn’t make such stupid statements in the first place or shovel on more of your thinly veiled racist crap.
Slartibart:
You sound like a raving lunatic and I have no idea what you are referring to.
Settle down. Please
And if you don’t like to be called a totalitarian, then stop being a liberal or stop reading my posts. It really isn’t that difficult of a thing for you to do and it might be better for your health.
Speaking of health. The health-care heist is unquestionably totalitarian and no one but liberals (who hide out these days as progressives) advocates it. Oh, and, please don’t give me an example of a republican who supports the heist because I’ll just tell you they support it BECAUSE they are liberal.
As far as the constantly moving goal post examples missing from my comments, don’t get so testy. I don’t have to tailor my comments to please you anyway. And if I’m leaving out things in my posts that don’t suit you, too bad. Get over it.
Who are you, the comment police?
But I’ll provide you examples of movable liberal goal posts.
One is this. When I was a leftist/hippie/pot smoking/rock’N roll/free-love type, I (we–me and my fellow disestablishment fellows) promoted the idea of “do your own thing”. It was even a motto common to that time period and just about everyone heard it expressed. It was a very big deal.
Those who were my “colleagues” back then and are now in power throughout the country are these days often the authors of the “do MY thing or else”.
Totally moved goal post, man.
That goal was once for freedom, and now it is for their freedom only. Often, these same people are the new totalitarians.
Bill Clinton, for example.
Of course, leftist CAN conserve bad stuff when they want to. No doubt. But over time liberalism (or the flitting from one thing to another) dies a slow death by morphing into something else, only to be revived again by some knew hysteria or crusade meant to fill the empty God-space in their hearts. The hysteria is always new, the flitting about, I suppose, could be said to be a “conserving” feature of liberalism.
All of it eventually leads to abandonment of old principles.
Your problem is that you think conservatives are not interested in justice and goodness. I cannot help you with your misconceptions. Indulge in them if you want. I’m not your mommy.
Another example of the movable goal post is the nature movement. I was a Mother Earth News type. I was SO into it that I learned how to spin wool and create garments from yarn, grind wheat- berries and bake bread from it (in a fire pit if I have to), can foods, make candles, make soap, and do so many other things learned about from Carla Emory and the Fox Fire Books.
I was the consummate back-to nature freak. I even met Robert Rodale and sat in a lecture he gave.
Yes, there were nuts like Paul Erhlich, but the whole thrust of the Mother Earth culture was an INDEPENDENT sustainable life-style for INDIVIDUALS. There was a distrust of government. Government was the bad guy (they were and still are!).
Now the focus of my contemporaries from those days is DEPENDENCE on the state for obtaining sustainable life-styles. Of course, the trick is that the state cannot DO this for us without our losing the independence we so greatly once coveted more than just about anything.
Now we are FORCED to be Mother Earth News types by bureaucrats who don’t care that we will be financially ruined in order to be Mother Earth News compliant according to their trumped-up standards.
This is a goal post moved: from indepdence to dependence on the state. It is sickening.
For example, I won’t be able to sell my house because I cannot afford to make all the appliances Cap and Trade “compliant” (should that law be passed).
This is appalling to those of us who still cherish independent values and desire to live free from state control over everything in our lives.
Have I changed? Not really. I’m still into sustainable living. I still wear a peace sign on my t-shirts, and I still covet doing my own thing. The main thing I don’t do is the sexual freedom stuff (it ain’t freedom) and the drugs. I also don’t do alcohol and I love Jesus Christ.
That is ALL still the same because in Christ we are Free indeed (according to the Bible).
My goal post for freedom has never changed even though LIBERALS have clearly lost their way.
The leftists and liberals in the White House and Congress and those who support them have abandoned their love of liberty and independence.
They did so because they didn’t conserve it.
mespo:
The reason you say I’m closed minded is because you have closed your mind and refuse embrace my viewpoints. What you say? Closed mindedness is good only when it belongs to you?
The pursuit of truth and virtue are not “the good old days”. They are now and the future.
There is only one really unique feature of American liberalism: the belief that people have the right to pull down their pants in public via film and print media. Outside of that, everything else liberals stand for is OLD FASHIONED and retrograde: homosexuality (Sodom and Gomorrah), Theft by the state (Marxism), and elimination of white folks from America (genocide–again, an old fashioned idea).
Apparently, to a leftist/lib/progressive, it is fine to MAKE America brown, but evil to keep her white. And this in relation to one of the smallest racial groups in the world: white folks, a minority group worldwide.
KSantel: 😮
Tootie:
“In American terms I’m a staunch conservative. It is only conservatism that can preserve liberty because the whole purpose of conservation is…well…to conserving things. The idea is to conserve the correct things.”
********************
Problem is, they “conserve” all the wrong things like racism, elitism, and jingoism, and just about every lamebrain idea that sparkles before their tiny closed mind. Their is the philosophy of fear … of others, of the unknown, of new things .. all of which might possibly,in some infinitesimal way, change the comfortable illusion they have created. They are forever nostalgic and lamenting the “good, old days” of the past, blissfully ignorant that for most, it wasn’t the “good old days” at all. There is nothing wrong in principle with conserving things, it’s just that arch-conservatives don’t get the irony of life, which is, of course, when you stop something from growing under your selfish notion of preservation – it inevitably rebels or dies.
Tootie,
You’re an ignorant, scientifically illiterate reactionary.
You may think that harsh, but I don’t take kindly to being insulted by you – especially when you are too gutless to respond to my debunking of your post on the ‘unnatural selection’ thread.
Tootie posted:
mespo: Good grief. I’m sorry I haven’t responded to you earlier.
I’m a classical European liberal, not an American leftist liberal (who is really a totalitarian).
In American terms I’m a staunch conservative. It is only conservatism that can preserve liberty because the whole purpose of conservation is…well…to conserving things. The idea is to conserve the correct things.
Whereas on the other hand, liberals (American liberals/leftists) have a constantly moving moral goal post. In such a world, nothing is sure but chaos and then tyranny (because they cannot remember what they ultimately stood for).
American Conservatives love and adore liberty (but not license).
Perhaps you confuse me with neo-cons like Bush, Hannity, McCain, or Bill Bennett. They are leftist Victorians. And leftists,in general, whether they are slutty or prudish, are all totalitarians.
I am none of that.
ishobo,
Your argument is all over the place and frankly doesn’t make much sense.
What does “You cannot accept a democracy if it is only a mirror of your views” mean?
Also, in your next to last sentence, you say that rights “are not natural,” and at the same time argue that they “are derived from people.” Here’s my question: If rights are “not natural”, then how in the world did people get them in the first place?
@George
You seem to have missed the point. Free speech does not stop facism as is evident from the 1930s. People can be manipulated to accept many things. Rights are not natural, the are derived from the people and what kind of society they wish to create. You cannot accept a democracy if it is only a mirror of your views.
George,
Now we’re on the same page. I totally agree about reasoned criticism and will raise you nuanced debate (I can’t remember the last time I saw nuance in a political debate).
Slartibartfast,
Ah, I understand. I also agree with your assessment of Fox news. Unfortunately, we, as citizens, have to start taking more responsibility for our lives, including becoming educated in the area of current events. We’ve grown intellectually lazy as a nation. We let news commentators tell us what to think about the news instead of thinking about the news for ourselves.
We have lost the ability to be critical. We do opinion JUST FINE (and in mass). But real, REASONED criticism rarely exists anymore. We pick a political side, get on that party’s political merry go round, and never question the drivel coming from the top (I’m not saying you, just in general).
Lastly, when you knowingly lie to incite war (a war you actually have the ability to start, as Bush did), you should be tried and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. A discussion of historical facts is, no matter how emotionally charged the subject, not the same thing. In the case of the Iraq War, it is false or forged evidence, and should be a felony.
George,
I was saying that speech IS an action with consequences. President Bush lied to the American people resulting in the war in Iraq. Fox News broadcasts right wing propaganda 24/7 with many deleterious consequences for our national discourse and public policy. In neither case is/was any of the appropriate responsibility taken.
Slartibartfast,
I agree. Speech is different than action. When something goes from discussion to execution, one must accept the consequences.
—
ishobo,
You sound like you would have fit in back then. Fascists don’t like free speech either.
“the best way to fight fascism is to allow free speech”
Because it worked so well in the 1930s.
George,
You are to be commended for employing logic and reason (I would suggest skepticism, too) in interpreting speech – I wish more people did that. Yet many people today employ speech to lie and propagandize from positions of trust (such as implying that Iraq was complicit in the 9/11 attacks or had weapons of mass destruction). People (especially those in public office and the news media) must be held responsible for their speech – say whatever you want as long as you are willing to stand behind it and accept the consequences of what you say.
I would say there is a difference between cultural norms (i.e. nudity in French media versus U.S. media), and the DISCUSSION or CONSIDERATION of alternative view points, ideas or norms.
That is, we may not have public nudity on general broadcast television in the United States, but we can discuss the concept.
The problem is in outlawing both the concept, in this case the German state’s right to recognize the devastation caused by the holocaust, and the ability of the populace to consider and discuss other points of views and facts. In this case, the ability of this bishop to question it.
Let everyone, FOR THEMSELVES, consider the case, the source, their arguments and conclusions. If they are loony, they are loony. But let THE INDIVIDUAL decide the foolishness or validity. Frankly, I don’t need an intermediary. College was expensive. I’d like to use my mind and its ability to employ logic and reason.
censorship is present even in the us – despite the high valued free speech : or what woiuld you call thise annoying beep-sounds when someone says cunt, penis, motherfucker on tv/radio? what would youcall the rating system of movies (actually having the same intention like the Law for the Protection of Youth from Trash and Filth Writings mentioned by mespo727272).
what do you call the the prohibition of displaying pictures of nude people in public?