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InsaneApache
09-07-2011, 12:35
In such a climate, time-honored national characteristics are easily extinguished. A generation ago, even Britain’s polytechnic Trots and Marxists were sufficiently residually English to feel the industrial-scale snitching by family and friends that went on in Communist Eastern Europe was not quite cricket, old boy. Now England is Little Stasi-on-Avon, a land where, even if you’re well out of earshot of the gay-outreach officer, an infelicitous remark in the presence of a co-worker or even co-playmate is more than sufficient. Fourteen-year-old Codie Stott asked her teacher at Harrop Fold High School whether she could sit with another group to do her science project as in hers the other five pupils spoke Urdu and she didn’t understand what they were saying. The teacher called the police, who took her to the station, photographed her, fingerprinted her, took DNA samples, removed her jewelry and shoelaces, put her in a cell for three and a half hours, and questioned her on suspicion of committing a Section Five “racial public-order offence.” “An allegation of a serious nature was made concerning a racially motivated remark,” declared the headmaster, Antony Edkins. The school would “not stand for racism in any form.” In a statement, Greater Manchester Police said they took “hate crime” very seriously, and their treatment of Miss Stott was in line with “normal procedure.”


In this anniversary week, it's sobering to reflect that one of the more perverse consequences of 9/11 has been a remorseless assault on free speech throughout the west. I regret to say that, in my new book, I predect this trend will only accelerate in the years ahead. The essay below was written as last week's National Review cover story:

To be honest, I didn’t really think much about “freedom of speech” until I found myself the subject of three “hate speech” complaints in Canada in 2007. I mean I was philosophically in favor of it, and I’d been consistently opposed to the Dominion’s ghastly “human rights” commissions and their equivalents elsewhere my entire adult life, and from time to time when an especially choice example of politically correct enforcement came up I’d whack it around for a column or two.

But I don’t think I really understood how advanced the Left’s assault on this core Western liberty actually was. In 2008, shortly before my writing was put on trial for “flagrant Islamophobia” in British Columbia, several National Review readers e-mailed from the U.S. to query what the big deal was. C’mon, lighten up, what could some “human rights” pseudo-court do? And I replied that the statutory penalty under the British Columbia “Human Rights” Code was that Maclean’s, Canada’s biggest-selling news weekly, and by extension any other publication, would be forbidden henceforth to publish anything by me about Islam, Europe, terrorism, demography, welfare, multiculturalism, and various related subjects. And that this prohibition would last forever, and was deemed to have the force of a supreme-court decision. I would in effect be rendered unpublishable in the land of my birth. In theory, if a job opened up for dance critic or gardening correspondent, I could apply for it, although if the Royal Winnipeg Ballet decided to offer Jihad: The Ballet for its Christmas season I’d probably have to recuse myself.

And what I found odd about this was that very few other people found it odd at all. Indeed, the Canadian establishment seems to think it entirely natural that the Canadian state should be in the business of lifetime publication bans, just as the Dutch establishment thinks it entirely natural that the Dutch state should put elected leaders of parliamentary opposition parties on trial for their political platforms, and the French establishment thinks it appropriate for the French state to put novelists on trial for sentiments expressed by fictional characters. Across almost all the Western world apart from America, the state grows ever more comfortable with micro-regulating public discourse—and, in fact, not-so-public discourse: Lars Hedegaard, head of the Danish Free Press Society, has been tried, been acquitted, had his acquittal overruled, and been convicted of “racism” for some remarks about Islam’s treatment of women made (so he thought) in private but taped and released to the world. The Rev. Stephen Boissoin was convicted of the heinous crime of writing a homophobic letter to his local newspaper and was sentenced by Lori Andreachuk, the aggressive social engineer who serves as Alberta’s “human rights” commissar, to a lifetime prohibition on uttering anything “disparaging” about homosexuality ever again in sermons, in newspapers, on radio—or in private e-mails. Note that legal concept: not “illegal” or “hateful,” but merely “disparaging.” Dale McAlpine, a practicing (wait for it) Christian, was handing out leaflets in the English town of Workington and chit-chatting with shoppers when he was arrested on a “public order” charge by Constable Adams, a gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community-outreach officer. Mr. McAlpine had been overheard by the officer to observe that homosexuality is a sin. “I’m gay,” said Constable Adams. Well, it’s still a sin, said Mr. McAlpine. So Constable Adams arrested him for causing distress to Constable Adams.

In fairness, I should add that Mr. McAlpine was also arrested for causing distress to members of the public more generally, and not just to the aggrieved gay copper. No member of the public actually complained, but, as Constable Adams pointed out, Mr. McAlpine was talking “in a loud voice” that might theoretically have been “overheard by others.” And we can’t have that, can we? So he was fingerprinted, DNA-sampled, and tossed in the cells for seven hours. When I was a lad, the old joke about the public toilets at Piccadilly Circus was that one should never make eye contact with anyone in there because the place was crawling with laughably unconvincing undercover policemen in white polonecks itching to arrest you for soliciting gay sex. Now they’re itching to arrest you for not soliciting it.

In such a climate, time-honored national characteristics are easily extinguished. A generation ago, even Britain’s polytechnic Trots and Marxists were sufficiently residually English to feel the industrial-scale snitching by family and friends that went on in Communist Eastern Europe was not quite cricket, old boy. Now England is Little Stasi-on-Avon, a land where, even if you’re well out of earshot of the gay-outreach officer, an infelicitous remark in the presence of a co-worker or even co-playmate is more than sufficient. Fourteen-year-old Codie Stott asked her teacher at Harrop Fold High School whether she could sit with another group to do her science project as in hers the other five pupils spoke Urdu and she didn’t understand what they were saying. The teacher called the police, who took her to the station, photographed her, fingerprinted her, took DNA samples, removed her jewelry and shoelaces, put her in a cell for three and a half hours, and questioned her on suspicion of committing a Section Five “racial public-order offence.” “An allegation of a serious nature was made concerning a racially motivated remark,” declared the headmaster, Antony Edkins. The school would “not stand for racism in any form.” In a statement, Greater Manchester Police said they took “hate crime” very seriously, and their treatment of Miss Stott was in line with “normal procedure.”

Indeed it was. And that’s the problem. When I ran into my troubles up north, a very few principled members of Canada’s bien-pensants stood up to argue that the thought police were out of control and the law needed to be reined in. Among them was Keith Martin, a Liberal MP and himself a member of a visible minority—or, as he put it, a “brown guy.” For his pains, he and a few other principled liberals were mocked by Warren Kinsella, a third-rate spin-doctor for the Liberal party and a chap who fancies himself Canada’s James Carville. As Kinsella taunted these lonely defenders of freedom of speech, how did it feel to be on the same side as Steyn . . . and anti-Semites . . . and white supremacists? Eh, eh, how’d ya feel about that, eh?

Mr. Kinsella was subsequently forced to make a groveling apology to “the Chinese community” after making a joke about ordering the cat at his favorite Chinese restaurant in Ottawa: Even the most censorious of politically correct enforcers occasionally forget themselves and accidentally behave like normal human beings. But, before the Chinese cat got his tongue, the Liberal hack was, like so many of his ilk, missing the point: “Free speech” doesn’t mean “the brown guy” is on the same side as the “white supremacists.” It means he recognizes that the other fellow is entitled to have a side. By contrast, Canada’s “human rights” commissions and Britain’s gay-outreach officer and Europe’s various public prosecutors seem to think there should be only one side of the debate, and they’re ever more comfortable in arguing for that quite openly.

Thus, after Anders Breivik gunned down dozens of his fellow Norwegians, just about the only angle on the story that got the Western Left’s juices going was the opportunity it afforded to narrow the parameters of public discourse even more. They gleefully fell on his 1,500-page “manifesto,” wherein he cites me, John Derbyshire, Bernard Lewis, Theodore Dalrymple, and various other names familiar round these parts. He also cites Winston Churchill, Thomas Jefferson, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Twain, Hans Christian Andersen, and my leftie compatriot Naomi Klein, the “No Logo” gal and a columnist for The Nation in the U.S. and the Guardian in Britain. Just for the record, my name appears four times, Miss Klein’s appears four times.

Yet the British, Canadian, Australian, European, and American Left—and more than a few likeminded Americans—rose as one to demand restraints on a very narrow sliver of Anders Breivik’s remarkably—what’s the word?—diverse reading material.

“I cannot understand that you think that it is fine for people to go out and say we should kill all Muslims,” sighed Tanya Plibersek, the Australian minister for human services, on a panel discussion, “and that that has no real effect in the world.” Because, after all, calling for the killing of all Muslims is what I and Bernard Lewis and Theodore Dalrymple and Naomi Klein and Hans Christian Andersen do all day long.

She was addressing Brendan O’Neill, a beleaguered defender of free speech on a show where the host, the guests, the studio audience, and the post-broadcast tweeters were all lustily in favor of state regulation, and not of human acts but of opinions. And not just for inciters of Norwegian nutters, but for Rupert Murdoch, too. To one degree or another, they were also in favor of the government’s taking action to whip the media into line. Into line with what? Well, with the government, presumably. Whether or not they’ll get their way Down Under, in London the British state is being actively urged to regulate the content of the press for the first time in four centuries.

How did we get to this state of affairs? When my travails in Canada began, somebody reminded me of an observation by the American writer Heywood Broun: “Everybody favors free speech in the slack moments when no axes are being ground.” I think that gets it exactly backwards. It was precisely at the moment when no axes were being ground that the West decided it could afford to forgo free speech. There was a moment 40 or so years ago when it appeared as if all the great questions had been settled: There would be no more Third Reichs, no more fascist regimes, no more anti-Semitism; advanced social democracies were heading inevitably down a one-way sunlit avenue into the peaceable kingdom of multiculturalism; and so it seemed to a certain mindset entirely reasonable to introduce speech codes and thought crimes essentially as a kind of mopping-up operation. Canada’s “human rights” tribunals were originally created to deal with employment and housing discrimination, but Canadians aren’t terribly hateful and there wasn’t a lot of that, so they advanced to prosecuting “hate speech.” It was an illiberal notion harnessed supposedly in the cause of liberalism: A handful of neo-Nazi losers in rented rooms in basements are leaving Xeroxed white-supremacist flyers in payphones? Hey, relax, we’ll hunt down the extremist fringe losers and ensure they’ll trouble you no further. Just a few recalcitrant knuckledraggers who decline to get with the beat. Don’t give ’em a thought. Nothing to see here, folks.

When you accept that the state has the right to criminalize Holocaust denial, you are conceding an awful lot. I don’t just mean on the specific point: The Weimar Republic was a veritable proto-Trudeaupia of “hate speech” laws. In the 15 years before the Nazis came to power, there were over 200 prosecutions for “anti-Semitic speech” in Germany—and a fat lot of good it did. But more important than the practical uselessness of such laws is the assumption you’re making: You’re accepting that the state, in ruling one opinion out of bounds, will be content to stop there.

As is now clear, it isn’t. Restrictions on freedom of speech undermine the foundations of justice, including the bedrock principle: equality before the law. When it comes to free expression, Britain, Canada, Australia, and Europe are ever less lands of laws and instead lands of men—and women, straights and gays, Muslims and infidels—whose rights before the law vary according to which combination of these various identity groups they belong to.

Appearing at a Vancouver comedy club, Guy Earle found himself obliged to put down a couple of drunken hecklers. Had he said what he said to me or to Jonah Goldberg, we would have had no legal redress. Alas for him, he said it to two drunken hecklers of the lesbian persuasion, so they accused him of putting them down homophobically and he was fined $15,000. Had John O’Sullivan and Kathryn Lopez chanced to be strolling by the Driftwood Beach Bar on the Isle of Wight when, in the course of oldies night, Simon Ledger performed “Kung Fu Fighting,” they would have had no grounds for complaint, even if he’d done the extended dance remix. However, the passersby in question were Chinese, and so Mr. Ledger was arrested for racism.

In such a world, words have no agreed meaning. “There were funky Chinamen from funky Chinatown” is legal or illegal according to whosoever happens to hear it. Indeed, in my very favorite example of this kind of thinking, the very same words can be proof of two entirely different hate crimes. Iqbal Sacranie is a Muslim of such exemplary “moderation” he’s been knighted by the Queen. The head of the Muslim Council of Britain, Sir Iqbal was interviewed on the BBC and expressed the view that homosexuality was “immoral,” was “not acceptable,” “spreads disease,” and “damaged the very foundations of society.” A gay group complained and Sir Iqbal was investigated by Scotland Yard’s “community safety unit” for “hate crimes” and “homophobia.”

Independently but simultaneously, the magazine of GALHA (the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association) called Islam a “barmy doctrine” growing “like a canker” and deeply “homophobic.” In return, the London Race Hate Crime Forum asked Scotland Yard to investigate GALHA for “Islamophobia.”

Got that? If a Muslim says that Islam is opposed to homosexuality, Scotland Yard will investigate him for homophobia; but if a gay says that Islam is opposed to homosexuality, Scotland Yard will investigate him for Islamophobia.

Two men say exactly the same thing and they’re investigated for different hate crimes. On the other hand, they could have sung “Kung Fu Fighting” back and forth to each other all day long and it wouldn’t have been a crime unless a couple of Chinese passersby walked in the room.

If you’re not gay or Muslim or Chinese, you’re maybe wondering to yourself: How can I get a piece of the action? After all, if the state creates a human right to be offended and extends it only to members of certain interest groups, it is quite naturally incentivizing membership in those interest groups. Andrew Bolt, Australia’s leading columnist, was struck by the very noticeable non-blackness of so many prominent Aussie “blacks” and wrote a couple of columns on the theme of identity-group opportunism. He’s now been dragged into court and denounced as a “racist”—“racism” having degenerated into a term for anyone who so much as broaches the subject. But, if the law confers particular privileges on members of approved identity groups, how we define the criteria for membership of those groups is surely a legitimate subject for public debate.

One of the great strengths of common law has been its general antipathy toward group rights—because the ultimate minority is the individual. The minute you have collective rights, you require dramatically enhanced state power to mediate the hierarchy of different victim groups. In a world of Islamophobic gays, homophobic Muslims, and white blacks, it is tempting to assume the whole racket will collapse under the weight of its own absurdity.

Instead, the law increasingly bends to those who mean it the most. In some of the oldest free societies in the world, the state is not mediating speech in order to assure social tranquility, but rather torturing logic and law and liberty in ever more inane ways in order to accommodate those who might be tempted to express their grievances in non-speechy ways. Consider the case of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a Viennese housewife who has lived in several Muslim countries. She was hauled into an Austrian court for calling Mohammed a pedophile on the grounds that he consummated his marriage when his bride, Aisha, was nine years old. Mrs. Sabbaditsch-Wolff was found guilty and fined 480 euros. The judge’s reasoning was fascinating: “Pedophilia is factually incorrect, since paedophilia is a sexual preference which solely or mainly is directed towards children. Nevertheless, it does not apply to Mohammad. He was still married to Aisha when she was 18.”

Ah, gotcha. So, under Austrian law, you’re not a pedophile if you deflower the kid in fourth grade but keep her around till high school. There’s a useful tip if you’re planning a hiking holiday in the Alps this fall. Or is this another of those dispensations that is not of universal application?

Western governments have gone far too far down this path already. “The lofty idea of ‘the war on racism’ is gradually turning into a hideously false ideology,” the French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut said in 2005. “And this anti-racism will be for the 21st century what Communism was for the 20th century: a source of violence.” Just so. Let us accept for the sake of argument that racism is bad, that homophobia is bad, that Islamophobia is bad, that offensive utterances are bad, that mean-spirited thoughts are bad. So what?

As bad as they are, the government’s criminalizing all of them and setting up an enforcement regime in the interests of micro-regulating us into compliance is a thousand times worse. If that’s the alternative, give me “Kung Fu Fighting” sung by Mohammed’s nine-year-old bride while putting down two lesbian hecklers sending back the Cat of the Day in a Chinese restaurant.

As John Milton wrote in his Areopagitica of 1644, “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”

Or as an ordinary Canadian citizen said to me, after I testified in defense of free speech to the Ontario parliament at Queen’s Park, “Give me the right to free speech, and I will use it to claim all my other rights.”

Conversely, if you let them take your right to free speech, how are you going to stop them from taking all the others?

http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/4409/26

Depressing stuff. :shame:

Fragony
09-07-2011, 13:03
That with the schoolgirl was years ago, but it's what you get when you let multicultists play with the buttons, repression. It has nothing to do with 9/11 but with having to live the dream of gutmensch. It's even worse in Sweden, judge dicides who you can invite to your birthday party, everything has to be 100% OK in the eyes of gutmensch OR ELSE :stare:

Glad things aren't like that here, you can get away with a lot. Makes our society a lot more healthy there are hardly any tensions

Furunculus
09-08-2011, 22:57
good article.

incitement to racial/sexual/ethnic/sports/ginger hatred is absolute rubbish.

say what you like as long as you don't incite violence.

gaelic cowboy
09-09-2011, 01:37
good article.

incitement to racial/sexual/ethnic/sports/ginger hatred is absolute rubbish.

say what you like as long as you don't incite violence.

I dont have a porblem with that idea, my only concern is who decides what's incitement to violence then.

Basically are we not back at the same stable again.

InsaneApache
09-09-2011, 04:25
I dont have a porblem with that idea, my only concern is who decides what's incitement to violence then.

Basically are we not back at the same stable again.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJcG2C22okE&feature=player_embedded

Anti-facists at work.

Beskar
09-09-2011, 09:05
If I called a group of people or even a member a c-word on the Org, I would get punished.

Is the org the bastion of the gutmensch and the biggest opponent against free-speech or is this simply overblown nonsense?

Fragony
09-09-2011, 09:15
Anti-facists at work.

Ahhh anti-facists, always a riot. Anti-facists are an odd bunch, they see facism everywhere but don't recognise it when looking in the mirror. Rediculously violent lot, if you aren't 100% OK they will attack on sight. Gutmensch's sturmtruppe

Furunculus
09-09-2011, 09:50
If I called a group of people or even a member a c-word on the Org, I would get punished.

Is the org the bastion of the gutmensch and the biggest opponent against free-speech or is this simply overblown nonsense?

that is because you have joined an opt-in social community and must accept the house rules.

that is quite separate from the principle of free speech as codified in the wider legal jurisdiction you inhabit.

i should be free to be as offensive as i damned well like to gingers/mac-users/woman/brown-people............... just as you should be free to shun me from any opt-in social community if my rantings are offensive.

the only curb on free speech that should exist is the one against incitement to violence, which i appreciate is likewise a difficult one to police as GC said, but necessary.

Beskar
09-09-2011, 10:56
or is it a case of simply "You can do it within your own home, just don't take it outside" ?

For example, you can call me all the names under the son in front of your computer, but on the Org you have to response appropriately. Because going outside and raving c-words at everyone is being a public disturbance and it is an abuse of your freedom of free speech, not just on the Org.

Then for example in Fragony's case of "Birthday Party" it depends what occurred, did they invite the entire work place then when the black work member turned up "Oh sorry, everyone at work invited doesn't involve 'racist statement' ". If so, then it is pretty clear why hand-of-law had its input like that, as it is rather common sense.

It isn't an example of lets say, the Expenses Scandal and then the Arm of the Law being used to suppressed the public. Which would be against Freedom of Speech since the purpose of Freedom of Speech is to speak against such corruption.

Fragony
09-09-2011, 11:19
Then for example in Fragony's case of "Birthday Party" it depends what occurred, did they invite the entire work place then when the black work member turned up "Oh sorry, everyone at work invited doesn't involve 'racist statement' ". If so, then it is pretty clear why hand-of-law had its input like that, as it is rather common sense.


It does?

Furunculus
09-09-2011, 11:25
or is it a case of simply "You can do it within your own home, just don't take it outside" ?

For example, you can call me all the names under the son in front of your computer, but on the Org you have to response appropriately. Because going outside and raving c-words at everyone is being a public disturbance and it is an abuse of your freedom of free speech, not just on the Org.

Then for example in Fragony's case of "Birthday Party" it depends what occurred, did they invite the entire work place then when the black work member turned up "Oh sorry, everyone at work invited doesn't involve 'racist statement' ". If so, then it is pretty clear why hand-of-law had its input like that, as it is rather common sense.

It isn't an example of lets say, the Expenses Scandal and then the Arm of the Law being used to suppressed the public. Which would be against Freedom of Speech since the purpose of Freedom of Speech is to speak against such corruption.

quite simply; i have no time or respect for any incitement to "x" hatred legislation.

none at all, ever!

if someone is creating a public disturbance then we have laws for that, but nothing should interfere with my ability to voice a harmless* opinion, regardless of how wrong-headed it is.

* i.e. cause, or immediately lead to the cause of, actual harm as defined by law.

Beskar
09-09-2011, 13:32
It does?

Yes.

If they simply invited their friends from the workplace, it is completely different to an open invitation where person x is allowed to go, but was told no for racial reasons "No" at the door, clear unjustified discrimination.

Fragony
09-09-2011, 14:25
Yes.

If they simply invited their friends from the workplace, it is completely different to an open invitation where person x is allowed to go, but was told no for racial reasons "No" at the door, clear unjustified discrimination.

Law isn't for that, if someone doesn't like you why give a crap. In Sweden's case it were two bullies that weren't welcome, because they were tanned and because it's Sweden there was only one possible conclusion. If it was a viking who wasn't invited at a rap-battle would the same have happened, of course not you don't have to be a theologue for that. But why stop at telling who you can invite into your home, I think we should install a buddy system. Mandatory 2 hours a week, if you can't make it notify authorities at least 3 days prior or face a fine, if it was an emergency fill in the proper form and return it in 24 hours max and the commission will study the circumstances.

Slyspy
09-09-2011, 14:26
quite simply; i have no time or respect for any incitement to "x" hatred legislation.

none at all, ever!

if someone is creating a public disturbance then we have laws for that, but nothing should interfere with my ability to voice a harmless* opinion, regardless of how wrong-headed it is.

* i.e. cause, or immediately lead to the cause of, actual harm as defined by law.

Of course that would be fine if the law could turn a blind eye to the subsequent (and some might say well deserved) results of your stupidity. Unfortunately though it cannot, and no doubt you would be glad of it's protection while unwilling to accept that you brought trouble down upon yourself. Since a harmless opinion is unlikely to fall foul of incitment laws I can only suspect that you are going to use your freedoms to say something stupid?

Furunculus
09-09-2011, 15:26
Of course that would be fine if the law could turn a blind eye to the subsequent (and some might say well deserved) results of your stupidity. Unfortunately though it cannot, and no doubt you would be glad of it's protection while unwilling to accept that you brought trouble down upon yourself. Since a harmless opinion is unlikely to fall foul of incitment laws I can only suspect that you are going to use your freedoms to say something stupid?

no, we coped just fine without them before, and we'd do better to return to that position now.

given that the macpherson report defined offence as something that is taken, not given, it is up to our 'injured' party to decide whether they have been subject to racism/someotherism, so your contention is absurd that minor offence is 'unlikely' to result in a criminal charge.

understand this; i am in no way glad that we have incitement to "x" hatred laws, and have nothing but contempt for that law and those who drafted it.

Moros
09-09-2011, 17:29
Then for example in Fragony's case of "Birthday Party" it depends what occurred, did they invite the entire work place then when the black work member turned up "Oh sorry, everyone at work invited doesn't involve 'racist statement' ". If so, then it is pretty clear why hand-of-law had its input like that, as it is rather common sense.
Are you mad!?

You only illustrate how bad it has become. You actually already think its normal that a judge should evaluate what you say? That makes me feel sick.

Banquo's Ghost
09-10-2011, 11:48
no, we coped just fine without them before, and we'd do better to return to that position now.

given that the macpherson report defined offence as something that is taken, not given, it is up to our 'injured' party to decide whether they have been subject to racism/someotherism, so your contention is absurd that minor offence is 'unlikely' to result in a criminal charge.

understand this; i am in no way glad that we have incitement to "x" hatred laws, and have nothing but contempt for that law and those who drafted it.

In many of your posts on a range of subjects, you display a remarkably romanticised view of the United Kingdom and her past. This is no exception.

Not that long ago, I would have been able to have an uppity peasant arrested for voicing a view that I didn't like. A little earlier, I could have had him sabred a tad. Nowadays, the constabulary can arrest almost anyone for voicing opinions "contrary to public order" or "likely to cause a breach of Her Majesty's Peace". Entirely in their opinion, you understand. These are largely the same laws that have given authorities power to control free speech for centuries and entirely dependent on the goodwill of those authorities. The extraordinary stubbornness of the British subject has mean that the law has been and is constantly challenged, broken and ridiculed by malcontents, so that free speech continues to be available on sufferance to a wider group than the elite which has always had it.

The incitement laws strike me as simply a further codification of the age-old breach of the peace power, clarifying what is permissible in relation to some new societal groups. I don't much like these laws, but primarily because they arise from this very source, instead of a constitutional bill of rights. Such a bill should give a clear right to all, rather than piecemeal, narrow descriptions that diminish the principle through quibbling.

That's an appeal to the future rather than harking back to an imagined and thoroughly flawed past.

Furunculus
09-10-2011, 12:29
The incitement laws strike me as simply a further codification of the age-old breach of the peace power, clarifying what is permissible in relation to some new societal groups. I don't much like these laws, but primarily because they arise from this very source, instead of a constitutional bill of rights. Such a bill should give a clear right to all, rather than piecemeal, narrow descriptions that diminish the principle through quibbling.


i'd be happy to see a british bill of rights that provides a clear right to all of free speech, it would indeed be an improvement over the victim-group mentality that presides today.

but regardless, i can accept a incitement to violence law but not a incitement to hatred law.

regarding my rose tinted spectacles; i really don't believe things were so much better when you could give a peasant a damned good thrashing, but i have read isiah berlin's "two concepts of liberty" and firmly lean towards the view that this kind of nonsense is a pernicious infringement of personal liberty, whose 'benefit' in no way compensates for the ill it creates.

contempt.

Fragony
09-10-2011, 13:04
Are you mad!?

being the shorter version

Banquo's Ghost
09-10-2011, 13:09
i'd be happy to see a british bill of rights that provides a clear right to all of free speech, it would indeed be an improvement over the victim-group mentality that presides today.

but regardless, i can accept a incitement to violence law but not a incitement to hatred law.

I think we probably agree then, save that I think lawmakers find it difficult to place a line on the spectrum between incitement to hatred and that hatred developing into violence. There is also the concept of psychological violence; no-one should be placed in a position where another spouts unpleasantness to the extent that the target feels terrified. As all victims of bullying know, that doesn't have to mean threatened violence. It is not enough to say they can move away - in a civilised society, the boor should be the one to be moved on.

Where I'm sure we agree is the current legal definition of the word "hatred". Criticism is not hate.


regarding my rose tinted spectacles; i really don't believe things were so much better when you could give a peasant a damned good thrashing, but i have read isiah berlin's "two concepts of liberty" and firmly lean towards the view that this kind of nonsense is a pernicious infringement of personal liberty, whose 'benefit' in no way compensates for the ill it creates.

If I may borrow the spectacles for a moment (I am as prone to nostalgic solutions as anyone) I would venture that a lot of this legal nonsense attempts to replace the concept of manners for this self-obsessed modern society. Of course, manners were also largely a code of conduct available to the elite rather than the common man with more pressing concerns, but if we could regulate societal interactions through better manners, we wouldn't need the law. In other words, I might have the right to express a hurtful opinion wherever and to whomever I please, but good manners ensure I would never so do.

Fragony
09-10-2011, 13:19
What's wrong with hate? Not my thing but what's wrong with it. Incitement to hatred, so what.

Furunculus
09-10-2011, 13:48
I think we probably agree then, save that I think lawmakers find it difficult to place a line on the spectrum between incitement to hatred and that hatred developing into violence. There is also the concept of psychological violence; no-one should be placed in a position where another spouts unpleasantness to the extent that the target feels terrified. As all victims of bullying know, that doesn't have to mean threatened violence. It is not enough to say they can move away - in a civilised society, the boor should be the one to be moved on.

Where I'm sure we agree is the current legal definition of the word "hatred". Criticism is not hate.

If I may borrow the spectacles for a moment (I am as prone to nostalgic solutions as anyone) I would venture that a lot of this legal nonsense attempts to replace the concept of manners for this self-obsessed modern society. Of course, manners were also largely a code of conduct available to the elite rather than the common man with more pressing concerns, but if we could regulate societal interactions through better manners, we wouldn't need the law. In other words, I might have the right to express a hurtful opinion wherever and to whomever I please, but good manners ensure I would never so do.

nothing to disagree with there. :)

Slyspy
09-10-2011, 23:06
Of course back in the days of manners people were allowed to put up signs saying "No Irish" in their guesthouses.

I find the application of the incitment laws to be laughable, but not necessarily their existence.

Cecil XIX
09-12-2011, 07:18
It is a great article, and it really touches on how important free speech is to a free society. When constraints on what people say become a matter of public policy, with the resultant fines or jail time, it becomes an entirely different beast then when enforcement is through private methods like social pressure. Such laws cannot be viewed as legitimate; the right to free speech must be viewed as sacred. The logic of giving the government the right to do this has a clear endpoint, which we see in this quote from Jules Margoline, a victim of the Soviet Gulags. I hate to bring up something so extreme, but otherwise reasonable people may not realize how serious this is.


The main difference between the Soviet camps and detention camps in the rest of the world is not their huge, unimaginable size or the murderous conditions found there, but something else altogether. It's the need to tell an endless series of lies to save your own life, to lie every day, to wear a mask for years and never say what you really think. In Soviet Russia, free citizens have to do the same thing. Dissembling and lies become the only means of defense. Public meetings, business meetings, encounters on the street, conversations, even posters on the wall all get wrapped up in an official language that doesn't contain a single word of truth. People in the West can't possibley understand what it is really like to lose the right to say what you think for years on end, and the way you have to repress the tiniest "illegal" thought you might have and stay silent as the tomb. That sort of pressure breaks something inside people.

Slyspy
09-12-2011, 11:22
Of course we are currently allowed to say whatever we like about the Tory party to whoever we like without falling foul of the law.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
09-12-2011, 16:26
If I may borrow the spectacles for a moment (I am as prone to nostalgic solutions as anyone) I would venture that a lot of this legal nonsense attempts to replace the concept of manners for this self-obsessed modern society. Of course, manners were also largely a code of conduct available to the elite rather than the common man with more pressing concerns, but if we could regulate societal interactions through better manners, we wouldn't need the law. In other words, I might have the right to express a hurtful opinion wherever and to whomever I please, but good manners ensure I would never so do.

I think the "common man" still had manners, he still put on his Sunday best to go to Church, still open doors for women, still said "sir" to his boss.

Last Christmas I did a stint for Sainsbury's on the shop floor, and the most irritating thing was that everyone was a "colleague" from the manager to the 16yr old checkout girl. That was risible, because it denied the poor bastards at the bottom, me included, the right to define ourselves by our work, instead we had to be part of some "equal but not equal" collective.

If I have a boss I'd much rather call him "boss" "chief" "sir" "M'Lord" "Master" or even "Your Holiness" than Kevin.

Manners are not reserved to a social class, but they are about managing social situations, and they require people to have an identifiable station. Classlessness, or rather the lie of classlessness, is what destroyed manners in Britain.

That, and preventing parents from diciplining their children and encouraging children to ask "why" when given the most simple of instructions.

Tellos Athenaios
09-12-2011, 17:22
I think the "common man" still had manners, he still put on his Sunday best to go to Church, still open doors for women, still said "sir" to his boss.

Last Christmas I did a stint for Sainsbury's on the shop floor, and the most irritating thing was that everyone was a "colleague" from the manager to the 16yr old checkout girl. That was risible, because it denied the poor bastards at the bottom, me included, the right to define ourselves by our work, instead we had to be part of some "equal but not equal" collective.

If I have a boss I'd much rather call him "boss" "chief" "sir" "M'Lord" "Master" or even "Your Holiness" than Kevin.


But why do you need the affirmation that you rank “below” your boss by calling him by his “title”, rather than by his name?
I mean he's just some poor sod managing a bunch of disinterested employees (including, quite possibly himself) at the local Sainsbury's and you see him pretty much every day at work, and maybe when you do your shopping.



Manners are not reserved to a social class, but they are about managing social situations, and they require people to have an identifiable station. Classlessness, or rather the lie of classlessness, is what destroyed manners in Britain. But still, calling your boss Kevin doesn't change the fact of the work situation one bit, does it? So the right manners are obvious (modulo being an expat from a completely different work environment).


That, and preventing parents from diciplining their children and encouraging children to ask "why" when given the most simple of instructions.

Why? How does that help, in any meaningful way? I've not actually bettered any of my behaviour by my mother telling me off for it. I have however learned to appreciate the value of proper hygiene without too much persuasion by simple explanation. Just treating children as too stupid to know doesn't really beget you much in the way of respect or obedience if they're of the intelligent (and therefore) inquisitive kind to begin with.

Fragony
09-12-2011, 20:06
Why on earth would you call your employer sir or anything other overly respectful. What's wrong with a first name, just a job

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
09-12-2011, 20:23
But why do you need the affirmation that you rank “below” your boss by calling him by his “title”, rather than by his name?
I mean he's just some poor sod managing a bunch of disinterested employees (including, quite possibly himself) at the local Sainsbury's and you see him pretty much every day at work, and maybe when you do your shopping.

But still, calling your boss Kevin doesn't change the fact of the work situation one bit, does it? So the right manners are obvious (modulo being an expat from a completely different work environment).

I dislike the pretence, we are not all in it together, he was a lazy sod who tried to buddy up with the workers. Of the bosses I have had, I have much prefered the ones who smiled the least.


Why? How does that help, in any meaningful way? I've not actually bettered any of my behaviour by my mother telling me off for it. I have however learned to appreciate the value of proper hygiene without too much persuasion by simple explanation. Just treating children as too stupid to know doesn't really beget you much in the way of respect or obedience if they're of the intelligent (and therefore) inquisitive kind to begin with.

Obedience to authority is a learned behaviour, I learned to obey my parents at a young age. I was never punished for doing something, like not washing my hands, I would be punished for disobedience, like not washing my hands when told to do so.

This is why, at age 24, I have just spent the last week tidying my room after coming home.

I was never treted as stupid, unless I acted like it, but I was taught that "because I say so" was a sufficient explanation in certain circumstances.

People who don't learn that are a liability because later in life when someone in authority tells them "because I say so" they waste time with stupid question lie "why" which can wait until after you are out of the burning building/blast zone/way of the falling tree.

Beskar
09-12-2011, 21:01
People who don't learn that are a liability because later in life when someone in authority tells them "because I say so" they waste time with stupid question lie "why" which can wait until after you are out of the burning building/blast zone/way of the falling tree.

Philiipvs Vallindervs Calicyla touch your head with your hand!

Tellos Athenaios
09-12-2011, 22:50
I dislike the pretence, we are not all in it together, he was a lazy sod who tried to buddy up with the workers. Of the bosses I have had, I have much prefered the ones who smiled the least.

Yeah, but how's him being lazy tied to whether or not you can address the guy by his first name? I mean there are probably plenty of lazy sods who most certainly do cultivate a certain “elevation” above the subjects workers, too. :shrug:

Maybe this is something quintessentially South West England, but I really don't see how addressing your boss by his first name changes anything in role or position of you or that of your boss. It's not like you're having affair with him or something, is it?


Obedience to authority is a learned behaviour, I learned to obey my parents at a young age. I was never punished for doing something, like not washing my hands, I would be punished for disobedience, like not washing my hands when told to do so.


This is why, at age 24, I have just spent the last week tidying my room after coming home.. The cheeky response is to advise you not to let your parents hear that it took you a weak to tidy up a single room. ~;)


I was never treted as stupid, unless I acted like it, but I was taught that "because I say so" was a sufficient explanation in certain circumstances.
Sure but that is quite different from disallowing calls to back up your judgment with arguments and certainly quite removed from being disciplined.


People who don't learn that are a liability because later in life when someone in authority tells them "because I say so" they waste time with stupid question lie "why" which can wait until after you are out of the burning building/blast zone/way of the falling tree. I don't think questioning the firefighters judgment in such a situation would be the first thing on my mind. And I don't think a five year old who asks his parents why at every turn for the fun of it would need telling twice either. All without them saying “because we say so”.

Moros
09-13-2011, 00:31
I think the "common man" still had manners, he still put on his Sunday best to go to Church, still open doors for women, still said "sir" to his boss.

Last Christmas I did a stint for Sainsbury's on the shop floor, and the most irritating thing was that everyone was a "colleague" from the manager to the 16yr old checkout girl. That was risible, because it denied the poor bastards at the bottom, me included, the right to define ourselves by our work, instead we had to be part of some "equal but not equal" collective.

If I have a boss I'd much rather call him "boss" "chief" "sir" "M'Lord" "Master" or even "Your Holiness" than Kevin.

Manners are not reserved to a social class, but they are about managing social situations, and they require people to have an identifiable station. Classlessness, or rather the lie of classlessness, is what destroyed manners in Britain.

That, and preventing parents from diciplining their children and encouraging children to ask "why" when given the most simple of instructions.
I actually agree to this to a certain degree. :yes:

InsaneApache
09-13-2011, 11:07
OK going a bit off topic.

I've been an employer and an employee. I've been a worker and a manager. In all those jobs I've used my first name. Anything else would be, well, weird frankly. To me it's never been a 'us' and 'them' thingy. We're all part of a team with different tasks to perform. Can't manage without workers. Can't work without management.

Mind you I did quite like being the boss. :laugh4:

Louis VI the Fat
09-13-2011, 11:19
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJcG2C22okE&feature=player_embedded

Anti-facists at work.:wall:


What a load of *rhymes with bankers*

Viking
09-13-2011, 17:01
Relevant to bits of the thread is the sentencing of an interenet troll (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-14894576) (who looks exactly like what one would expect an internet troll to look like, by the way :book:), one of the most read stories on BBC today.



A Berkshire man has been jailed for posting abusive messages online about a schoolgirl after she committed suicide.

Sean Duffy, 25, of Reading, was handed an 18-week sentence for posts on social networking sites about Worcester teenager Natasha MacBryde.

[...]

She had thrown herself under a train in February after being bullied.

Duffy subsequently posted messages on a remembrance page set up by Miss MacBryde's friends.

In one of the posts he called the teenager a slut. He also posted a video on YouTube, entitled Tasha the Tank Engine, showing the children's character Thomas the Tank Engine with Miss MacBryde's face.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
09-13-2011, 20:25
OK going a bit off topic.

I've been an employer and an employee. I've been a worker and a manager. In all those jobs I've used my first name. Anything else would be, well, weird frankly. To me it's never been a 'us' and 'them' thingy. We're all part of a team with different tasks to perform. Can't manage without workers. Can't work without management.

Mind you I did quite like being the boss. :laugh4:

Well, you do the hiring and the firing.

For me first names are for your friends and families, and after that your equals.

I'd prefer to keep the man (or woman) who holds my livelyhood in their hands at a greater remove, especially if I have good reason to dislike him/her.

Its a form of dissassociation.

gaelic cowboy
09-14-2011, 00:09
I think the "common man" still had manners, he still put on his Sunday best to go to Church, still open doors for women, still said "sir" to his boss.

I doubt that to be honest man I would say manners were developed only after we had the time to keep them and the money to sustain them.

After all the manners/customs of the lower classes have never been held up by the quality have they, after all we wouldnt have had all those 19/20th century movements to reform the bottom rungs.


Last Christmas I did a stint for Sainsbury's on the shop floor, and the most irritating thing was that everyone was a "colleague" from the manager to the 16yr old checkout girl. That was risible, because it denied the poor bastards at the bottom, me included, the right to define ourselves by our work, instead we had to be part of some "equal but not equal" collective.

For me this is Meitheal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meitheal) and it's been around in one form or another since hunter gather times obviously.



Manners are not reserved to a social class, but they are about managing social situations, and they require people to have an identifiable station. Classlessness, or rather the lie of classlessness, is what destroyed manners in Britain.

This does not square for me at all at all, surely manners are about giving you a set of rules for handling any situation so if either party had no info on the "station" of the other then it passes off safely.

InsaneApache
09-14-2011, 02:39
You're right.

You may call me Mr. InsaneApache from now on. :disguise:

Seamus Fermanagh
09-14-2011, 03:57
Cecil, I quite liked your post. A thoughtful quotation and quite on point.

Manners?

Manners ARE civilization. The rest is food as fuel, urinating to mark territory and whelping the next set links in the genetic chain.

I LOATHE the degredation of manners begun in the 1960s by my parents younger kin and continued since. Why in heavens name did we have to get rid of good sportsmanship when it became sportspersonship? There was no need to get rid of please or thank you in order to have a sexual revolution.

Ultimately, manners are enlightened self interest.

Noncommunist
09-14-2011, 05:13
Cecil, I quite liked your post. A thoughtful quotation and quite on point.

Manners?

Manners ARE civilization. The rest is food as fuel, urinating to mark territory and whelping the next set links in the genetic chain.

I LOATHE the degredation of manners begun in the 1960s by my parents younger kin and continued since. Why in heavens name did we have to get rid of good sportsmanship when it became sportspersonship? There was no need to get rid of please or thank you in order to have a sexual revolution.

Ultimately, manners are enlightened self interest.

But wouldn't it simply be a change in manners than a "degradation"? After all, there are thousands of cultures, all with their form of manners and we'd simply be going from one set of manners to another.

Furunculus
09-14-2011, 08:09
turns out we have perfectly good mechanisms for curbing antisocial behaviour without resorting to creating victim groups:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8760504/Internet-troll-jailed-for-mocking-dead-teenagers-on-Facebook.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malicious_Communications_Act_1988

incitement to "x" hatred laws are still cretinous.

Strike For The South
09-14-2011, 18:16
But wouldn't it simply be a change in manners than a "degradation"? After all, there are thousands of cultures, all with their form of manners and we'd simply be going from one set of manners to another.

I have to disagree.

Manners are more than just benign social nicities that are thrust upon us. They are important social tools that teach empathy,compassion, and patience

Sasaki Kojiro
09-14-2011, 20:08
Relevant to bits of the thread is the sentencing of an interenet troll (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-14894576) (who looks exactly like what one would expect an internet troll to look like, by the way :book:), one of the most read stories on BBC today.

He deserves that sentence :yes:

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
09-14-2011, 22:43
Ultimately, manners are enlightened self interest.

I prefer just to think of it as enlightened.

Crazed Rabbit
09-15-2011, 05:07
turns out we have perfectly good mechanisms for curbing antisocial behaviour without resorting to creating victim groups:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8760504/Internet-troll-jailed-for-mocking-dead-teenagers-on-Facebook.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malicious_Communications_Act_1988

incitement to "x" hatred laws are still cretinous.

The death of free speech continues.

CR

Sasaki Kojiro
09-15-2011, 07:12
The death of free speech continues.

CR

How can death continue?

Catiline
09-15-2011, 09:26
The death of free speech continues.

CR

It's not the death of free speech. it's the punishment of a moron for some particularly disgusting behaviour. It's like pissing on war memorials and showing children zoo porn. These things aren't something that should be protected because people can't exercise a modicum of personal responsibility and which deserve to have consequences if some one is enough of a cretin to do them.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
09-15-2011, 15:09
The death of free speech continues.

CR

A bit different. You might as well bemoan the "death of lynching".

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus
09-15-2011, 15:23
For me this is Meitheal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meitheal) and it's been around in one form or another since hunter gather times obviously.

That would be when we did the bailing and everyone came to help, and my mum gave them tea. Not when I went to work for a multi-national corporation as a wage-slave.


This does not square for me at all at all, surely manners are about giving you a set of rules for handling any situation so if either party had no info on the "station" of the other then it passes off safely.

Part of manners is dressing appropriate to your station, making yourself identifiable within the system.


You're right.

You may call me Mr. InsaneApache from now on. :disguise:

Yes Boss.