Judge Greer

>Ooohhhh, scary. Canadians can be so intimidating when they

>make threats like this.

Come on, new best friend. This isn't South Park! It's a serious discussion, and you're starting to omit parts of the truth. American persecution of Communists didn't end 50 years ago. Some of those laws are still on the books, and people can STILL be excluded from entering the U.S. if they check "yes" to the immigration form question asking if they're Communists. We still prevent Americans from traveling freely to Cuba because it's a Communist country, even though for some reason we no longer give a shit if Americans travel to equally Communist China, North Korea or Vietnam. You can still be denied a government job if you're a Communist supporter.

Also, even though it's undeniable that millions of people died under Communism (and not just in Russia, but also in China and other Communist countries) there's a significant difference between Communism and Nazism: Exterminating people isn't a part of Communist ideology (even though it turned out to be a convenient tool for the totalitarian dictators in the Communist countries to wipe out political opposition and control the rest of the populace). Exterminating people was a central idea of Nazi ideology. In fact, it was THE central idea of Nazism. That's a big reason why many countries don't worry about speech supporting Communism, but do worry about speech supporting Nazism.

You've also just glided over some of the examples of currently restricted speech in the U.S. that I cited in my earlier post (rhetorical threats against the President, jokes in airports, a variety of kinds of speech if you're unfortunate enough to be an Arab-American after 9/11). The fact is, we live in a glass house and we therefore should not be throwing stones!

Your righteous indignation and energy would be better spent fighting the very real threats to American democracy you mentioned in some of your earlier postings. The Canadians and the Europeans will work out things in their countries to their own satisfaction. We're facing some new and unique dangers at home from the frighteningly large segment of American society that wants the U.S. to be a fundamentalist Christian theocracy and isn't the least bit hesitant to use any means to achieve their ends while the rest of us continue playing by the rules of the game. If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, we Americans who aren't theocrats ALL need to start being extremely vigilant and active, because the liberties we have largely taken for granted are under unprecedented attack. The Bush crowd, by courting the theocrats in order to get and stay in power so they can carry out their own "Everything for the rich, bubkes for everyone else" agenda, have let out a genie that will be very hard, if not impossible, to put back into the bottle.

All the cases you cited concerning free speech deal with hatred expressed towards gays, not political discussion. This language is designed to demean and dehumanize people like you, Doug. It's meant to say "it's OK to bash a fag, even kill him, he's not fit to live in society". That's the message and that's what happens when this sort of thing is tolerated.

For many years when homosexuality was outlawed in our country, gays suffered silently and had no recourse to the law if they were attacked. We have emerged from this "dark ages" and as gay people, rejoice in our freedom from discrimination. You appear to want to thrust us back into these dark ages. You don't have the same rights and freedoms we have in Canada and yet you denigrate our laws. You're a gay man, I would assume. I must say you are a hard person to figure out! x(

>All the cases you cited concerning free speech deal with

>hatred expressed towards gays, not political discussion.

Do you really think you can just call political opinions with which you disagree "hatred" and then expect people to believe the falsehood that the opinions that you just labelled "hatred" are somehow not opinoins? You're just engaging in primitive, transparent Orwellian games of manipulating language in order to justify the authoritarian power you want to ban opinions that you dislike.

Guess what? I think a lot of what YOU write here is quite hateful. You obviously have at least as much animus and hostility towards Americans and towards Christians as the people who have been criminally prosecuted in your country have towards gays.

Indeed, all that one bumper sticker did was illustrate the widely-held belief among Christians, Jews and Muslims that homosexuality is immoral. If you believe that anyone who expresses THAT view is a criminal and should be imprisoned - and that's obviously exactly what you believe - then you seek to criminalize the expression of religious beliefs and imprison anyone who believes in those religions. It's hard to imagine anything more "hateful" and tryannical than that.

But like all people with authoritarian desires, you think that what you think is so Good, so Right, so Just, that you are justified in having the government criminally prosecute people who have different views than you do. You can call those opinions that you seek to suppress "hatred" or anything else you want to call it, but there's no denying the fact that you have the attribute which is the hallmark of all fascists: a desire to use the power of the State to punish people who have different views than you do.

>For many years when homosexuality was outlawed in our country,

>gays suffered silently and had no recourse to the law if they

>were attacked. We have emerged from this "dark ages" and as

>gay people, rejoice in our freedom from discrimination. You

>appear to want to thrust us back into these dark ages. You

>don't have the same rights and freedoms we have in Canada and

>yet you denigrate our laws. You're a gay man, I would assume

>I must say you are a hard person to figure out! x(

I purposely picked examples in which people in your country were criminally prosecuted for expressing anti-gay OPINIONS because I knew doing so would expose your wretched hypocrisy and desire for tryanny.

Here, you tell me: "Doug, you are gay and so you should disagree with these anti-gay opinions; THEREFORE, you should be in favor of having people who express those opinions put in prison."

That is disgusting and dangerous. Unlike you, I don't believe that people who have different opinions than I do should be criminally prosecuted for expression those opinions. If I did believe that, I'd be advocating YOUR imprisonment, just like you advocated the imprisonment of the Spokesman for the Schindler family.

I think YOU are just as dangerous and odioius as people who express anti-gay opinions - even more so, since you want to silence people you disagree with by force. History shows that there is no more dangerous or destructive poison than people like you who want to enforce orthodoxy of thought to ensure that you don't have to be exposed to different opinions.

Check out EVERY tryanny ever to exist - they all have laws making it criminal to express views that the majority dislikes - laws just like the ones you love in Canada.

I ultimately think this comes down to a psychological problem. Some people - especially those who want to be identified as VICTIMS - are so weak, so frightened, so sensitive, so fragile, so pathologically weepy that they actually are too afraid and pained to hear any views that they disagree with, and so they crawl to the state and beg it - like their daddy - to protect them by not allowing those views to be expressed.

What do you expect from countries filled with people like THAT to be other than passive, irrelevant, unproductive wastelands of victim groups?

>Come on, new best friend. This isn't South Park!

Boa dia, meu amigo novo o mehlor. Estou muito feliz que eu tive um mensagem de voce! Muito sol hoje! Depois uma semana com mutia chuva e nuvem, esta otimo que temos muito sol hoje, sim?

> American persecution of Communists didn't end 50 years

>ago. Some of those laws are still on the books, and people

>can STILL be excluded from entering the U.S. if they check

>"yes" to the immigration form question asking if they're

>Communists. We still prevent Americans from traveling freely

>to Cuba because it's a Communist country, even though for some

>reason we no longer give a shit if Americans travel to equally

>Communist China, North Korea or Vietnam. You can still be

>denied a government job if you're a Communist supporter.

We are discussing whether the government criminally prosecutes people for expressing certain views. You and Luv2Play keep bringing up topics other than that in order to prove that the U.S. is not really superior to Canada and Western Europe GENERALLY, rather than IN THIS REGARD.

Why not just acknowledge: "Even though I believe that the U.S. is far worse than Canada and Western Europe generally, it is the case that American citizens enjoy greater protections against criminal punishment based on expression of their political views than do citizens of Canada and Europe?"

I promise, you won't lose your leftist credentials, nor will you forfeit the right to continue to depict the U.S. as a fascist regime, if you simply acknowledge that which is undeniable: the U.S. does not criminally punish citizens for expressing their views wheres the EU and Canada do.

None of the examples you give here contradict that. The U.S. Supreme Court has again and again upheld the right of people to express support for Communism, or even advocate Communist revolution, without being punished by the Government. What you're talking about is the fact that the U.S. Government doesn't allow foreign nationals to enter the country or allow people to work in sensitive Governmental positions if they vow that they are actively working to overthrow the Government of the U.S. - something every country does and has to do to survive, and something which is a very, very far cry from criminally prosecuting people for having those views.

>Also, even though it's undeniable that millions of people died

>under Communism (and not just in Russia, but also in China and

>other Communist countries) there's a significant difference

>between Communism and Nazism: Exterminating people isn't a

>part of Communist ideology (even though it turned out to be a

>convenient tool for the totalitarian dictators in the

>Communist countries to wipe out political opposition and

>control the rest of the populace). Exterminating people was a

>central idea of Nazi ideology. In fact, it was THE central

>idea of Nazism. That's a big reason why many countries don't

>worry about speech supporting Communism, but do worry about

>speech supporting Nazism.

Sorry, but this is nonsense. Everywhere communism has appeared on the planet, human beings have been suffocated and slaughtered en masse. If a country is truly worried about banning dangerous ideas, there is simply no justification whatsoever to exclude Communism from the list.

Moreover, as every example I posted here shows, the anti-speech laws in Europe and Canada are being used to stifle opinions that are far from advocacy of Nazism. How do you justify THAT if it's only Nazism, as the unique evil, which is an appropriate target for such laws?

>You've also just glided over some of the examples of currently

>restricted speech in the U.S. that I cited in my earlier post

>(rhetorical threats against the President, jokes in airports,

>a variety of kinds of speech if you're unfortunate enough to

>be an Arab-American after 9/11). The fact is, we live in a

>glass house and we therefore should not be throwing stones!

American courts have long drawn what is, in any event, the self-evident distinction between statements of fact and statements of opinions.

Statements of fact, which can be proscribed, include fraud (saying "I have this diamond ring worth $100,000" when it's really cubic zarconia worth $10), libel ("Person X molests children"), or any false statement intended to cause injury (such as yelling "fire" in a crowded theater or claiming that you have a gun in an airport).

It is statements of opinion, particularly opinions on political matters, which lay at the heart of free speech and which cannot be proscribed - at least not in the U.S.

All of your examples are of the former type or not about speech at all (such as visiting foreign countries); none is of the latter type.

By contrast,

>Your righteous indignation and energy would be better spent

>fighting the very real threats to American democracy you

>mentioned in some of your earlier postings.

I perceive the extremes of both the Right and the Left to be equally dangerous and actually far more similar than they are different. I agree that the extremists on the Right are the bigger threat to liberty at the moment, but only because the extreme Left has become widely marginalized and therefore powerless.

>If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, we

>Americans who aren't theocrats ALL need to start being

>extremely vigilant and active, because the liberties we have

>largely taken for granted are under unprecedented attack. The

>Bush crowd, by courting the theocrats in order to get and stay

>in power so they can carry out their own "Everything for the

>rich, bubkes for everyone else" agenda, have let out a genie

>that will be very hard, if not impossible, to put back into

>the bottle.

But I think it's also important not to go too far in the other direction. A lot of the efforts against these trends have an unmistakable anti-religious, anti-liberty tone to them as well, which is often quite hateful and repressive. In general, I root in American politics for no group to obtain excessive power. That was the primarly goal of the Founders as well: to maintain dispersed power among the competing factions, rather than concentrated power.

There is a reason for concern that the Right is obtaining too much power. The concern isn't due to the fact that it's the Right as opposed to the Left which is gaining the power, just that one group has obtained significant control over all branches of the government and seems resolute about using that power to gain even more power.

>>Come on, new best friend. This isn't South Park!

>

>Boa dia, meu amigo novo o mehlor. Estou muito feliz que eu

>tive um mensagem de voce! Muito sol hoje! Depois uma semana

>com mutia chuva e nuvem, esta otimo que temos muito sol hoje,

>sim?

Pretty good Portuguese, new best friend! A little more work and you'll be quite fluent!

I still disagree with some of your points (and we'll probably never see eye-to-eye on them) but I do largely agree with the last couple of paragraphs of your post. It's always risky for one political group to completely dominate the system, and that's the situation the U.S. is facing at the moment, with no clear change in sight. After the last few elections, I've stopped predicting results; I'll believe things have changed if and when they actually do, not before!

I don't think most of the rhetoric about the KKKristian KKKrazy takeover is anti-religious, although it may be anti-literalist fundamentalist. Many, perhaps the majority of posters who've commented on the phenomenon in this forum are believers themselves, as are most of the politicians who oppose this alarming new trend. Pointing out the fallacies and hypocrisy of the extreme religious right isn't anti-religious, unless you subscribe to the idea that Falwell-Robertsonism is the One True Church! x(

You have divided speech into two categories: statements of fact and statements of opinion. You have stated that certain statements of fact can be prosecuted, i.e. fraudulent or libelous statements. You seem to lump hate speech with statements of opinion. Do you consider a statement such as "Fags are despicable and should be killed" as a statement of political opinion. What if a political leader states it? Does it then become "political opinion"? What if a religious leader states it? Is it then "freedom of religious thought"? Where do you draw the line? Why do you criticize countries that have legislated in their criminal law that these kinds of public utterances will not be tolerated? They serve to protect people like you and me.