Hard News: How much speech does it take?
554 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 … 10 11 12 13 14 … 23 Newer→ Last
-
giovanni tiso, in reply to
It’s the hardliners who are more prone to sharp political turncoating later in life.
Do you plan to keep saying that until it becomes magically true?
-
Rob Stowell, in reply to
As long as people use 'Marxist' to name the left-equivalents of Glen Beck or (shudder) Anders, any argument is already lost. It's a shame, since we owe so much of what makes our lives good (public health, livable wages, etc etc one could go on- and on and on) to folks inspired by Karl.
So many people chose to live without curiosity in an ahistorical world :) -
Breivik sees all Liberals (economic & social) as Marxists. It's the accepted norm, unquestioned in my world that he's attacking. I have always considered the term Liberal as including too many to be useful. But what I call Liberal he calls Marxist(multi-culturalists) & he's not wrong. It is so core to our shared beliefs we look past it. This is what he's attacking, that and scores of kids.
-
Islander, in reply to
Hit in one: "an ahistorical world."
When I am dictator of the Known Universes, all people shall learn their histories.
This shall teach them relevance, timespans, and humility - among a dozen other necessities for 'living like an informed and responsible non-exploitative rational being." -
ick
-
Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
ick
Oh, pleeeze p, go on your merry way, for your only relevance is to interrupt because your title was mentioned once. I understand that you would confirm your relevance for nothing other than being ignorant but whilst I forgive you for wanting to participate in what is an addictive blog site with forum, your contribution is wanting of abuse. How pointless must you feel to need to pop up. I realise you must lurk always. I realise that means we interest you. I truly think you are the shit stirrer. I feel sorry that you can't engage otherways. Best of luck to you with your travels and take care because you will need it as you find people in person.
Ok but I just had to..... -
Sacha, in reply to
Ok but I just had to
no
-
giovanni tiso, in reply to
No kidding.
-
Did the banhammer malfunction?
-
oh live a little :)
-
Che Tibby, in reply to
Do you plan to keep saying that until it becomes magically true?
the "marxist" label is a furphy.
i don't know if it's a pattern world-wide, but in the small church of NZL politics catholic taste in politics seems to be the norm.
-
Rich Lock, in reply to
Proud of an accident of birth? and who are the English if not a product of centuries of conquest and pillage annat?
Also of note, I found it rather pointless having to swear allegiance to the Queen to gain NZ citizenship, me being a Pom an' all.
Steve, I personally don't get why people are proud of their particular accident of birth, but there are a lot of people who just are. And what I do get is that a lot of them are, on the whole, good people who really, really don't like being lumped into the same basket as shaven-headed flag-waving neo-nazi BNP extremists.
My view is that sneering at them just tends to encourage them to think that the sneer-ee is a muesli-knitting liberal pc wet whose views can be dismissed in toto, which is not particulary helpful.
Personally, I tend to agree that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, and I'll be helping load her maj and big ears onto the tumbril when The Glorious Day of Revolution finally dawns.
-
Rich Lock, in reply to
carne folk
Sounds like you 'meat' the most interesting people....
-
Che Tibby, in reply to
nibble on the right bits, they rather enjoy it.
-
I'm not going to wade through several pages to find it, but someone, I think Sacha, mentioned constraints on broadcasting as a legitimate limit on free speech.
As I understand it, that limitation has two grounds: causing actual harm to someone (i.e. incitement to riot) and causing offence.
On the other hand, the purpose of free speech is to enable you to think freely, by enabling you to gather and exchange the information you need (i.e. pictures and words).
Let's not bother about harm. What I don't understand is why the cost of someone possibly being offended by something should outweigh the benefit of anyone else using that thing to create something new?
Could someone please explain the rationale? Or have I completely got the wrong end of the stick?
-
Sacha, in reply to
You've reduced it to personal 'offence'. There are other harms involved in denigrating groups of people. That applies in both broadcasting and other contexts.
-
About the alleged propensity of people to swing from one political extreme to another -- I feel we are confounded by the fact that such swings are more salient. When an extremist moves a few units on the political plane* towards the centre, it's not exactly noteworthy, whereas apparent flip-flops attract our attention.
* if we must simplify politics to geometry, I prefer the two dimensions of economic and social rather than the single Left vs Right.
-
DCBCauchi, in reply to
There are other harms involved in denigrating groups of people.
Could you please specify not just what those harms are but also how they outweigh the benefits of free speech?
-
Craig Ranapia, in reply to
As I understand it, that limitation has two grounds: causing actual harm to someone (i.e. incitement to riot) and causing offence.
We have have been introduced, right? :)
There is no fundamental inalienable human right not to be offended and I'd be the first to tell anyone who says otherwise to keep taking the "harden the fuck up" pills. Yes, it does offend me when people like Michelle Bachmann equate gays to child molesters and bestiality. Not because it makes me cry but because it's a flat out lie in the service of a political agenda to strip GLBT of civil and political freedoms. It's also a lie used to justify very real harm to real people -- up to and including murder.
-
Sacha, in reply to
Could you please specify not just what those harms are but also how they outweigh the benefits of free speech?
Sorry, but I don't have time to lay out an entire philosophical position today. Legislation like the Human Rights and Broadcasting Acts have some of what you're after, though from a different mindset it's safe to say. Maybe others can help?
-
Broadcasting channels (in the traditional radio/TV sense) are a scarce resource. It's reasonable that whoever is granted use of those resources by the community is subject to some contraints in the content delivered. As you move down the scale from a terrestrial TV channel to the Internet, those restraints become less important. (radio doesn't need to have political balance, for instance).
-
i say we just lock up anyone "we" think is saying anything we don't like.
OMG YOU DON'T LIKE KIMCHI?!!1!! - to the stocks.
WTF YOU DON'T LIKE TWILIGHT?!?!!!1!! - to the iron maiden.
ZOMG YOU LIKE REBECCA BLACK? - twenty hours of 'musical reeducation'.
for knee-jerk anarchism you get to live in the Big Brother house with Glenn Beck saying whatever the fuck he likes for two weeks.
-
heh. sorry about the misfire 'ick' But my initial post is an entirely legitimate one and, i firmly believe, most worthy of discussion, I defy anybody here to demonstrate why it is not! 'The perspective may be somewhat different from that most generally held here, but what is wrong with that? Twas also an attempt to start afresh, and who can possibly prefer, and on what ethical basis, that a person's past errors must forever shadow what that person tries to do next.? As i say, there was. within my post, plenty of room for exploration for anybody w/ the slightest intellectual curiosity (please do refer back), and i fail altogether to see the sin i committed there. 'Sofie Bribesca' is a swell name, but her comment pretty much flies in the face of all that has been said here not so long ago regarding those who don't fit in so easily, most particularly following a blogpost by Emma Hart, wherein 'twas recommended that one pause... to examine the nature of one's responses... before, well, before turning on the 'troll' like a hundred raging toucans; why, there was even - and this got me really excited - a suggestion thereabouts by Mr Brown to work more with mutually scene-resetting 'auxiliary verbs', if i may put it so.. okay, i have tried to do this, now let us see what you can do..
-
Most people have got it, thankfully, but just in case, observe typical trolling behaviour and learn to avoid falling into the trap.
(1) A cursory, disingenuous apology that really isn’t an apology. That’s been used before. Note that the contrition begins and ends there to be followed by more implied insults or challenges below.
(2) An assertion that a point raised is genuinely important and a suggestion that anyone who doesn’t answer is devoid of curiosity or integrity, which leads to the essence of trolling:
(3) The assumption that all conversation is challenge/response. A fallacy of course, as true conversation is more theme and variation along an evolutionary model, or simply jamming.
(4) Selecting a few likely individuals to bait or quotes to offer as bait. There is also in this case the passive-agressive “don’t you love me?” added.
(5) “I’m not a troll, but if you call me one, it’s your fault, not mine.” An attempt to make the bait more compelling by making it a point of honour to accept.
(6) And another challenge, with an ellipsis to reinforce its role as such.
(7) Also, throughout, awful syntax and grammar and absolutely no sense of how to construct a paragraph.
As you were.
Anyway, I’m not without intellectual curiosity myself and I’m currently fascinated by the Permian Mass Extinction. I’ve been reading this book by biologist Peter Ward, Under a Green Sky and it’s quite a page-turner. The voices in my head (which sound like African Grey Parrots and not Toucans) aren’t at all interested, so I demand that you discuss it with me…
-
L’il P- I appreciate you are trying. But what you ask is that we take seriously Anders’ ‘manifesto’- which postulates the ‘demise of the west’ due to marxism, multiculturaism, and ‘accommodating’ islam.
I cannot, however hard I try, take this seriously. We do the world (and ourselves) a disservice when we ‘take seriously’ the manifesto of a crackpot, simply because he is now a (despicable) mass-murderer.
I would ask you, in response, to take a serious look at the ethics, aspirations and inspirations of the many people (and the Norwegian Labour Party) he callously murdered. I would suggest you look at these values AT LEAST 68 times, for every consideration you give to Anders’ twisted ‘thinking’.
Then consider that they are dead, and he is alive. They have committed no crime, he is a mass-murderer. So go on, and ponder what they believed in for the rest of your life, without a backwards glance at what Anders may have to say.
If this doesn’t seem fair, go back and think about it all again.
(ps- please do not expect any further response :))
Post your response…
This topic is closed.