Last edited Sun Feb 10, 2013, 04:20 PM - Edit history (1)

is speech that counters the haters, not a restriction on speech, so my answer would be a resounding NO.

And who would decide what the restrictions are? Do we really want this?

The you get to STFU.

Cheers!

true threats, "fire" in a crowded theatre, fraudulent advertising (though this standard is getting lower everyday due to business friendly courts), hate speech when coupled with other criminal action (= hate crime), incitement (again only in extreme cases), child pornography, certain types of obscenities over the airwaves, etc.

As I personally believe: freedom does not equal license (in the "lack of restraint" sense), so it is people who should restrain themselves to make a better world, not push the limit of what is allowable. I think there is too much gratuitous sex and violence in US media. I don't want the government to censor it. I want those who make the content to have more respect for developing children and adolescents and stop degrading women (etc.) just because it is legal to do so. But that is just me.

Last edited Sun Feb 10, 2013, 07:09 PM - Edit history (1)

That's not to denigrate the point the columnist is making about the sheer effrontery, mass, and volume of communication surrounding us all. But the best cure for a bad idea is still a good idea; the best cure for lies -- the truth.

I think the cynicism required to think that bad ideas win out in the end is exactly the fallacy that drives rightwingers rationalizing torture and extra-judicial killing. That if you are "right" enough, you are entitled to do anything, no matter how vile or cowardly.

This is a weakness a dismaying percentage of liberals are willing to buy into in one way or another, because liberals are idealists, and it pains us to see all the lunacy and bad faith in even our mainstream discussions.

But you never really win an argument that ends with some fined or imprisoned for thinking or saying the wrong thing. You just continue the argument to a later date, and lose all credibility in the process.

"You can't yell 'fire' in a crowded theater" being but one example. (Others: you can't shout hateful things to women entering a clinic from closer than X feet.)

Some years ago I opposed the laws in some European countries (Germany, France) regarding anti-Semitic speech, etc., even though I understood why the rules were put into place. Now I'm not so sure. And I'm not so sure about us either. I've never been a rabid, fundamentalist First Amendment interpreter, but I've never been a censor either. I'm grappling the question of where the lines to be crossed on free speech are in today's hateful environment. I ponder history to consider these questions, and wonder how certain historical events might have been avoided had there not been a certain freedom of the press to spread incendiary and hateful ideas.

It is really, really easy and lazy to write an article about "should we limit free speech?" by making a big list of the mean, horrible things that free speech allows people to say.

Lots of this kind of thinking. Once government's responsible for granting your "inalienable" rights, it's all a question of how much of a given right you "need"--with somebody else, of course, wiser and more mature, deciding "need" versus "want."

Usually the person making the claim that others don't "need" the right thinks s/he'll somehow be in charge of deciding, or that the decider will be just like them.

Seldom works out that way.

Particularly if they're framing it in terms of "you may only have this right if it's absolutely necessary," at which point they're turning rights into a whitelist of things they want instead of a blacklist of things which are forbidden.

Your limit is 10 words.

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't kick someone's ass when they ask for it.

The social pressure that people who don't hate put on those that do. It is happening, very slowly I admit, but we are winning. We have a black President and gays are becoming more and more accepted, I know it isn't happening over night but no one said it would be easy.