I originally set up a blog so that I could write down how I felt about particular issues and arguments. One of the reasons for moving from LiveJournal was because it seemed to be being passed around from company to company, each of them having different rules on what could get you banned. I’d never say my views were radical, but if I ever had a radical view on something I’d hate to get banned for it. Having my own server for my content pretty much makes me safe from that.
Anyway, of the years of blogging I tried to writing down my views on random issues, stretching from how I feel about people leeching bandwidth by hot linking images, to what I think about TV licensing, or global warming. Fairly random things that I can write down my opinions for exhaustively and then just link back to a post when the topic comes up. Unfortunately most the time I just tangent and end up deleting the post.
In fact, sometimes I’ll tangent because I may not even have a complete idea on how I feel about things. Writing them down lets me formulate these stances, looking at all the sides of the arguments.
Free speech is one of those topics. A post just came up on LiveJournal about it, and I disagree with a lot of what people think typically. I haven’t even answered that poll because I couldn’t figure out what I’d consider to be crossing the line.
Disclaimer: Because I don’t know it, I’m going to ignore the law here and just go with morals. I’d obviously always stick to the law, so just because I say an act is morally acceptable here doesn’t mean I’d go out and immediately start murdering kittens.
The first part of that poll deals with situation in which you think someone should be banned for if they air a particular opinion. I’m just going to ignore the option for “thing’s I disagree with should be banned”, that was clearly there to weed out the idiots.
The problem with banning people for corrupting morals is whose morals do you use as a guideline? For fundamentalist Christians, being gay is immoral. If a moderator from Facebook took that view, they could ban someone for just talking about it positively. The morals of another person could be quite different. That causes a constant change of rules, which leads to confusion.
“Offensive to certain groups” is a stupid one to rule on too. Some people are overly sensitive. If we’re too moderated in this respect then conversation and healthy arguments really gets limited. If I said “Israel needs to just stay away from Gaza, they’ve no business there,” Israelites are likely to be offended by that. But I obviously shouldn’t be banned from a community for saying that. [This isn't an Israel/Gaza discussion. Shush.] And if my voice was muted by an entire country because I spoke out about their wasteful censorship everyone’d be quite pissed. Just upsetting someone shouldn’t be a reason for humanity to be silenced. The offended group should just man up, and do their best to disprove or fix the allegation.
I place a whole lot of responsibility upon people in my head. I expect them to read something, and then immediately challenge it in their head. Why is the person writing this? What are the other arguments for and against what I’ve just read? And then after asking those questions, seek out other sources on the topic and then make up their own damn mind. That’s what I expect people to do. If I can assume that, then I’d say that inciting hatred is perfectly acceptable. Of course, I’d be really angry if I read a piece on why black people are disgusting, and why they should be all slaughtered, but I definitely think it shouldn’t be banned outright.
Unfortunately, people apparently don’t think like that. I’ve never heard of any extreme cases locally, but I do know that news papers and media can easily sway people’s views on almost anything. For instance, many members of my family strongly dislike how Polish people “have come to our country taken our jobs, claimed our benefits and health care, and then gone back home all the richer”. That’s not my family’s words, my dad really wouldn’t know the first thing about our economy, and my uncle has no idea how our benefits system works, so they can’t be their words. They’re just the words they’ve been given by The Sun which they’re blindly following.
If my family can be swayed by something as off hand as a few news paper articles, I’m a little worried to find out how many people can be corrupted by organised “hatred”. When I read that CPS article my first thoughts were “uh, really? He’s being prosecuted for making a few leaflets?” I would never be swayed by such stupid, and yes, offensive shit. But if it does lead people to start actively hating Jewish people, then I guess something should be done about it. Treat the disease not the symptoms.
Those leaflets were just stupid remarks, expressing his opinion, I guess. I’m okay with that. If he signed off with “Save the world, kill a Jew,” then I’d be a bit more torn on how far free speech should go. I suppose Sheppard could be seen as, well, a sheppard gathering his flock with his literature. If he tells them to jump, they’re bloody likely to jump. In my assumptive, make-your-own-mind-up world, then he should be allowed to order his sheep to do whatever. But we’re not in a world like that, so I guess there needs to be some restrictions there.
It really annoys me that there are these people with so little sense that they need to just absorb whatever principles are thrusted upon them. Because of those people I’ll also have to say that the Anarchist Cookbooks that’re floating around should probably have some vetting to them. The thought of a book being censored, or even banned, angers me so much. But whilst there are stupid people around that actually go out and create bombs and stuff, instead of just being intriged and enjoying the works, I really dispair as to what to do…