How Far should Freedom of Expression go?

[Kralizec]

I submit that the Nazi flag has not done this - it retains its evil symbolism, and is routinely used for that symbolism to perpetuate hurt and a celebrate a message of unspoken violence. There are people alive whose families went to their deaths under that flag, and whose menfolk died to liberate us from that wickedness. That flag symbolises everything that the United States abhors, everything that the Stars and Stripes rejects - and her wielders have bled to protect the world from it and its symbolism.

It has no place being flown in that country, to insult the memory and the living. Maybe in a thousand years that evil, jagged thing will mean nothing more than a footnote to history - but not now. Not now.

The reaction wouldn't have been so mild if this guy had lived Tel Aviv. Likewise, wearing a shirt with the hammer and sickle would produce an occasional frown in western Europe, but I wouldn't try it in most eastern European countries even if it's legal in most of them.

Wilders argued last year that it should be prohibited to freely distrubute the Qu'ran and one of his arguments was that Mein Kampf, too, was prohibited. I think that comparing the two books is hyperbolic and unfair, but it does show that banning one book or one symbol is going to raise this sort of questions. Wich is why we shouldn't bother trying to make exceptions to free expression on these grounds.