| Author |
 Topic Search  Topic Options
|
Equality 7-2521 
Forum Senior Member
Joined: August 11 2005
Location: Philly
Status: Offline
Points: 15784
|
 Posted: September 13 2010 at 17:35 |
 Rabid wrote:
Equality 7-2521 wrote:
Rabid wrote:
Equality 7-2521 wrote:
Rabid wrote:
Equality 7-2521 wrote:
It will. You eating pork will upset some Muslims.
Upsetting someone is not causing them harm. We don't restrict actions because they upset someone. We do it when it harms someone.
Either way, I'm not upsetting anyone. |
But eating pork is not exactly the same as burning a Qu'ran, and rubbing it in peoples faces, by world-wide distribution, through the Internet.
The reality of the situation is this.
Muslim extrememists WILL attack you if you offend their religion. Have'nt you learned anything from the 9/11 attacks? Surely, there must be a point where Freedom of Speech/Expression gives in to common sense.
|
The principle doesn't change in the two examples. If you can curtail speech because it can upset someone and incite them into murder, then you can curtail eating habits. You can also demand all women wear burqas if bikini clad women would incite violence. You're paving the way to tyranny.
I'm aware of the lessons of the 9/11 attacks. For one, like I said the main reason for the attacks was our foreign policy, not our domestic embrace of freedoms.
Who decides where freedom of speech ends? Do you? What's the criteria?
Why are you passing the blame from the ones who initiate violence to the ones who express their freedoms? You're trying to blame people who committ innoculous acts for the actions of those who committ atrocities. |
The criteria ends at not losing another two friends in a bus-bomb attack and keeping my mouth shut, and giving yet more reason for Muslims to hate me.
|
Thanks for responding to my reasoned questions with an appeal to emotion. More of your airtight logic. |
No problem. When you, personally, are affected by a terrorist attack, maybe you'll be more inclined to dissuade others from promoting religous intolerence, by publicly burning Qu'rans.
What's innocous to YOU is downright offensive to some people. You might take that on board, at some point, although I very much doubt that you will.
Btw, I don't deal on an emotive level, I deal in facts. I don't expect the USA to give a sh*t about my dead friends any more than I expect it to give a sh*t about anything other than the USA.
Apologies to any USA citizens that's offended by the last remark. I know it's wrong to generalize. I'm not Anti-USA.....I'm Anti-assh*le, especially the assh*le type who have been attacked, in the past, but still insist on inflaming a situation, and then whining, when they're attacked again.
|
If my friends are killed in a terrorist attack, I will blame those who committed the violence. I will not blame people who had nothing to do with the violence like you want to do.
Nothing justifies initiating violence.
|
|
"One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn't fall. "
|
 |
Rabid
Forum Senior Member
Joined: May 20 2008
Location: Bridge of Knows
Status: Offline
Points: 512
|
Posted: September 13 2010 at 17:36 |
aginor wrote:
well my theorie is that this pastor is just "jealous" for the spotlight others have got for angering the muslim socciety, he is jealous at Salman Rushdie for the publication he got with Satanic Verses by all the fuzz and the fatwa he got out if it (which made him rich and the book a bestseller), It made me read the book as well.
he is also jealous at the Jyllands-Posten and the guy who drew those Mohammed cartoons(so he not can go out now without security and lifegards surounding he's apartment,
or the success of life of Brien (even though it did not anger any musslims, it created a fuzz in public sphere)
my thoughts are I just think it is a stunt to atract attention for attention-hungery fanatics who will go to use radical "tools" to get the eyse of the world to be held at them, and to qoute those muslims who defends Islam as not a warrior religion, "this is not the true face of our christian or muslim etc, fate, those are not true muslims/christian"
I doubt that Jesus would encourage to such action (which is aginst he's philosophi) |
I agree with this.....it's like the Christian Pastors who denounce Rock music as 'the work of the Devil', because they'll never have any involvement with Rock music, due to the fact that they're 70 years old and wretched. Hardly a role-model for teenagers, is it?
Personally, I thought Midnights Children was much better than the Satanic Verses, while being even more immflamatory, racially. But no fatwah.....  I guess they did'nt read that one 
|
|
"...the thing IS, to put a motor in yourself..."
|
|
Rabid
Forum Senior Member
Joined: May 20 2008
Location: Bridge of Knows
Status: Offline
Points: 512
|
Posted: September 13 2010 at 17:39 |
Equality 7-2521 wrote:
Rabid wrote:
Equality 7-2521 wrote:
Rabid wrote:
Equality 7-2521 wrote:
Rabid wrote:
Equality 7-2521 wrote:
It will. You eating pork will upset some Muslims.
Upsetting someone is not causing them harm. We don't restrict actions because they upset someone. We do it when it harms someone.
Either way, I'm not upsetting anyone. |
But eating pork is not exactly the same as burning a Qu'ran, and rubbing it in peoples faces, by world-wide distribution, through the Internet.
The reality of the situation is this.
Muslim extrememists WILL attack you if you offend their religion. Have'nt you learned anything from the 9/11 attacks? Surely, there must be a point where Freedom of Speech/Expression gives in to common sense.
|
The principle doesn't change in the two examples. If you can curtail speech because it can upset someone and incite them into murder, then you can curtail eating habits. You can also demand all women wear burqas if bikini clad women would incite violence. You're paving the way to tyranny.
I'm aware of the lessons of the 9/11 attacks. For one, like I said the main reason for the attacks was our foreign policy, not our domestic embrace of freedoms.
Who decides where freedom of speech ends? Do you? What's the criteria?
Why are you passing the blame from the ones who initiate violence to the ones who express their freedoms? You're trying to blame people who committ innoculous acts for the actions of those who committ atrocities. |
The criteria ends at not losing another two friends in a bus-bomb attack and keeping my mouth shut, and giving yet more reason for Muslims to hate me.
|
Thanks for responding to my reasoned questions with an appeal to emotion. More of your airtight logic. |
No problem. When you, personally, are affected by a terrorist attack, maybe you'll be more inclined to dissuade others from promoting religous intolerence, by publicly burning Qu'rans.
What's innocous to YOU is downright offensive to some people. You might take that on board, at some point, although I very much doubt that you will.
Btw, I don't deal on an emotive level, I deal in facts. I don't expect the USA to give a sh*t about my dead friends any more than I expect it to give a sh*t about anything other than the USA.
Apologies to any USA citizens that's offended by the last remark. I know it's wrong to generalize. I'm not Anti-USA.....I'm Anti-assh*le, especially the assh*le type who have been attacked, in the past, but still insist on inflaming a situation, and then whining, when they're attacked again.
|
If my friends are killed in a terrorist attack, I will blame those who committed the violence. I will not blame people who had nothing to do with the violence like you want to do.
Nothing justifies initiating violence. |
Fair enough. Just get on with it.
|
|
"...the thing IS, to put a motor in yourself..."
|
|
JLocke
Prog Reviewer
Joined: November 18 2007
Status: Offline
Points: 4900
|
Posted: September 13 2010 at 18:31 |
Paravion wrote:
I never said religion and sensitive persons' feelings are more important than everything else, but they are aspects that I think need to be taken into account in an issue like this.
|
Then yes, you ARE giving those aspects more importance than everything else. How can you not see the contradiction?
| Neither is 'freedom of expression' more important than everything else
|
Yes it is. Without the freedom to express ourselves openly and honestly, you and I wouldn't even be able to have a conversation like the one we are having now. That matters a whole lot to me. Too bad it doesn't seem to matter much in your world.
. . . and in cases like this tend to use it as an exuse to insult other people.
|
Yes. And many more people use it as a reason to defend and protect the freedoms of their fellow human beings. It's like you're saying that because some people use their freedom to do and say stupid things, the freedoms themselves should be restricted. It stops becoming freedom altogether one you've silenced anyone who you disagree with. That's the problem.
| Freedom of expression has limits (in many countrys at least). In Denmark you are not allowed to utter racist or homophobic expressions - and that is legislation I support fully.
|
Fine. But I would personally much rather people be completely honest about who they are in public. That way, I'll be able to recognize the homophobes and the racists right away and distance myself from them. The beauty of free speech is that not only can the idiots spout hate speech, but I can turn around and tell them how big of idiots I think they are. It's fair. They aren't restricted from saying their opinions, and I'm not restricted from speaking out against them.
I don't see how such limits threatens "my fellow mans right to speak" in a manner that ultimately threatens my or mankinds freedom. |
Well, you should. Because there may come a time when enough people deem your opinion on something to be too offensive, and then you could very well be prohibited just as easily. The right to speak freely is absolutely a freedom of mankind. The fact that you don't seem to recognize it as such makes me think of you as more than a little naive on the subject of freedom. Either that, or you're just refusing to recognize how large a role freedom of speech obviously plays in all of our lives.
You have to have a very dark, distrustful and paranoid viewpoint to assume this to be the case. |
Oh yes, because our governments and law-makers have always known what was best for us, and we've never had to fight to keep our freedoms alive in the past, or anything. Like, that's just totally unrealistic! We should just assume that everything will remain justified and even without our involvement. Let's just forget about freedom of expression. I'm sure the restrictions will be applied only to those who need it done.
And to illustrate it with the usual slippery-slope 'sort-of' argument is just too speculative. I don't buy that - at all.
|
Then you're grossly unaware of how the world works, in my opinion.
| I may be a tad too naive, but that suits me fine.
|
Yes it does.
| Mostly it's a a derailing of the debate to make this an issue of 'freedom of expression'. It's not seriously treathened becuase some people think it's an immenesly stupid idea to burn books and work in favor of action not to be carried out.
|
Yes it is! What do you think freedom of expression is, if not the right to publicly display your own stupidity!? The freedom for people to express themselves was never meant exclusively for rational people. Crazy people deserve the same rights. If they abuse those rights and do something violent, then they'll be punished. But don't tell me that burning a book or speaking out against a religious group is anywhere near violent behavior. It just isn't.
JLocke wrote:
If someone chooses... |
I don't follow that way of thinking at all. It seems like you mean that people who gets offended, hurt, provoked, harmed etc. by some disrespectful action or utterance made an actual choice to be so. I really don't think so.
|
Are you kidding me? So we as human beings have no control over our own actions? If you would say something insulting or jarring to me, I may have an initial, knee-jerk reaction to it. But after that moment, I would have complete control over what action I chose to do next. Being offended and acting violently as a result of being offended are two very different things. Of course people get offended by things, but they don't all kill over it. At some point between being offended and causing physical harm to someone else, these extremists have plenty of time for the initial reaction to wear off and their cognitive thinking to begin. You cannot tell me that all the plotting, organizing and ultimate execution of these violent crimes are carried out by people still on 'auto-pilot' over an initial reaction to something that happened days, weeks, months beforehand. They know exactly what they are doing, and so it is indeed 100% their choice to take their feelings to the extreme. You're making excuses for nutjobs and blaming other people for their actions. It's ridiculous.
It's merely a fact of the world that millions of Muslims will get seriously offended by an action of Koran burning and some foolish extremist will most likely act out their frustration in a violent manner.
|
Yes, it's true. Crazy people do crazy things all the time that often leads to tragedy. But the crazy people will still be crazy, even if every expressive freedom were taken away in every fathomable regard.
I would like to aviod an incident like this.
|
Of course we all want to see these horrible things from happening. But does that mean we should just give in to lunatics and hope they won't hurt us as long as we don't step on their toes? What kind of fair justice is that? You can't start limiting one group's right to express itself and expect that to solve the problem with the other group. You're allowing the radical and the violent to win when you take that stance. It's cowardly.
| To think that it's just their fault, that they could (if they were as enlightened as you) just have made another choice, is ignoring complicated socio-cultural facts of the world and ascribing too much importance to (your own) rational capacity, that somehow tells you that this is ultimately an issue of freedom of expression? I just don't understand..
|
When somebody decides to harm someone else over nothing more than words or expression, then it is always their fault! It's nobody else's! 'Complicated socio-cultural facts of the world', my ass. If a person is evil, he's evil because of him, not because of someone across the street who openly disagreed with him. And evil people will do evil things regardless of what anybody else around them does or says. And you cannot tell me that terrorist acts, public death threats and scare tactics are anything but evil. I don't care how offended I may get over something you would say to me; I would never kill you over it. Not a chance. You might as well say that when a murder victim provokes his killer, it's the victim's fault, and we should respect the killer's pride from now on. Give me a break.
Edited by JLocke - September 13 2010 at 18:34
|
|
Equality 7-2521
Forum Senior Member
Joined: August 11 2005
Location: Philly
Status: Offline
Points: 15784
|
Posted: September 13 2010 at 19:40 |
Rabid wrote:
Fair enough. Just get on with it.
|
Get on with what?
|
|
"One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn't fall. "
|
|
Paravion
Forum Senior Member
Joined: May 01 2010
Location: Denmark
Status: Offline
Points: 470
|
Posted: September 14 2010 at 01:57 |
Dear JLocke. I appreciate you took the time to formulate your lenghty reply. I will not address all your points, as I really have no more to add than already has been written by me and others. You seem to deliberately misunderstand and misinterpret me. It suffices to say that I must have a completely different mind-set than yours - I don't agree with or follow any of your points. I'm all for diversity, so that's just a positive thing.
Though I would like to comment on your conception of contradiction.
JLocke wrote:
Originally posted by Paravion
I never said religion and sensitive persons' feelings are more important than everything else, but they are aspects that I think need to be taken into account in an issue like this.
|
Then yes, you ARE giving those aspects more importance than everything else. How can you not see the contradiction? |
So, on an ultimate level, the complexities of the world are in complete accordance with binary logic, where it all comes down to an either/or issue? I don't think so. There are complex sets of interrelated issues of varying importance operating on different levels. Freedom of expression is less important and taking account of general respectful behavior is more important - this issue concerned. They don't constitute a contradiction.
Jlocke wrote:
Neither is 'freedom of expression' more important than everything else
|
Yes it is. |
You need to get your feet on the ground..
Edited by Paravion - September 14 2010 at 02:17
|
|
JLocke
Prog Reviewer
Joined: November 18 2007
Status: Offline
Points: 4900
|
Posted: September 14 2010 at 02:39 |
Paravion wrote:
So, on an ultimate level, the complexities of the world are in complete accordance with binary logic, where it all comes down to an either/or issue? I don't think so. There are complex sets of interrelated issues of varying importance operating on different levels. Freedom of expression is less important and taking account of general respectful behavior is more important - this issue concerned. They don't constitute a contradiction.
|
We are not talking about how one chooses to act morally or personably. We are talking about a freedom. A right. Whenever law comes into it, there can be no skirting the issue. It's either held up or it isn't. Especially when it comes to something like this. For me, there is no in-between, and on a fundamental level, it's the most important right we have.
You're still choosing to look at this from an emotional standpoint. I'm choosing to look at it from a practical one. If we are talking about what I would personally choose to excercize in a real setting (my right to free speech, or my respectful behavior towards another), I would of course take into account all the factors of the situation before I opened my mouth. But that's not what I'm talking about, here. Nobody is in danger of losing the right to be nice or thoughtful. In contrast, our rights to speak without censorship or dictation are threatened all the time. Surely you can see why many people like myself would indeed hold freedom of speech quite highly.
| You need to get your feet on the ground..
|
*looks down*
But . . . they already are.
Edited by JLocke - September 14 2010 at 02:41
|
|
Slartibartfast
Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator / In Memoriam
Joined: April 29 2006
Location: Atlantais
Status: Offline
Points: 29630
|
Posted: September 14 2010 at 05:06 |
I've heard you never find out till you're head over heels... By the way, to hell with burning books, you should try flooding them.  
Edited by Slartibartfast - September 14 2010 at 05:35
|
Released date are often when it it impacted you but recorded dates are when it really happened... 
|
|
Paravion
Forum Senior Member
Joined: May 01 2010
Location: Denmark
Status: Offline
Points: 470
|
Posted: September 14 2010 at 10:06 |
JLocke wrote:
We are talking about a freedom. |
You are talking about freedom. I consider it an out of place digression.
| You're still choosing to look at this from an emotional standpoint. I'm choosing to look at it from a practical one. |
Not really, as I, on a personal level, is emotionally detached. I don't have feelings for the Koran. But I take emotional issues into account. I'd say that I address the issue from a pragmatic viewpoint.
I surely don't see how narrowing this issue down to an ultimate either/or issue of either freedom of expression or 'chaos' in any sense can be seen as practical.(?)
|
|
Mr ProgFreak
Forum Senior Member
Joined: November 08 2008
Location: Sweden
Status: Offline
Points: 5195
|
Posted: September 14 2010 at 10:38 |
|
^ Do you think that people should be forbidden to burn books in public? If so, then you are talking about freedom. If you just think that it's out of place, then you're not ... and most of the people who are arguing for freedom of speech here, including myself, would agree.
|
|
Chris S
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
Joined: June 09 2004
Location: Front Range
Status: Offline
Points: 7028
|
Posted: September 14 2010 at 10:57 |
Maybe you should all have a book BBQ fest. Get it out of your system, dance around the fire, chuck in some fictional crap like Dan Brown too..
Load some vid streaming files for us all on PA to have a laugh. In a practical sense you should be allowed to burn any book you want and if those so passionate about it want to jump into the BBQ as well....go right ahead  |
|
<font color=Brown>Music - The Sound Librarian
...As I venture through the slipstream, between the viaducts in your dreams...[/COLOR]
|
|
Mr ProgFreak
Forum Senior Member
Joined: November 08 2008
Location: Sweden
Status: Offline
Points: 5195
|
Posted: September 14 2010 at 11:00 |
|
^ Did you read the part where I explained that I don't think that burning books is a particularly good idea?
|
|
Icarium
Forum Senior Member
VIP Member
Joined: March 21 2008
Location: Tigerstaden
Status: Offline
Points: 34083
|
Posted: September 14 2010 at 11:48 |
it is not good for the milleu ether (and it is Unconstitutionel  ), you only get that black, ugly, smelly, toxicated smog which is baaad, but then ultra-radical-right-winged-religous-fanatics don't believe in the Ozon-layer and the enviromental crisis and probably haven't listend to this album 
the man in the beach-stool is the Pastor by-the-way
|
|
|
|
Paravion
Forum Senior Member
Joined: May 01 2010
Location: Denmark
Status: Offline
Points: 470
|
Posted: September 14 2010 at 11:49 |
Mr ProgFreak wrote:
^ Do you think that people should be forbidden to burn books in public? If so, then you are talking about freedom. If you just think that it's out of place, then you're not ... and most of the people who are arguing for freedom of speech here, including myself, would agree.
|
No, I don't think it should be forbidden. It is this whole line of discourse where it comes down to this question I oppose to. I don't oppose to freedom of expression.
|
|
Negoba
Prog Reviewer
Joined: July 24 2008
Location: Big Muddy
Status: Offline
Points: 5210
|
Posted: September 14 2010 at 11:58 |
Burning books is just another way of giving someone the finger or instigating them or whatever.
Should we be allowed to moon people in public? Spout a long line of obscenity at a stranger's funeral? or any long line of things that would predictably pi$$ other people off?
Under the law of common sense, no one is going to prevent you from doing this in this first place, but not many are going to protect you when someone comes to bloody your nose.
|
|
You are quite a fine person, and I am very fond of you. But you are only quite a little fellow, in a wide world, after all.
|
|
Ivan_Melgar_M
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
Joined: April 27 2004
Location: Peru
Status: Offline
Points: 19557
|
Posted: September 14 2010 at 12:00 |
Thanks God some countries including Spain, have created limits for the Freedom od Speech (Libertad de Expresión) to aboid Libertinage (Libertinaje de Expresión) like:
- Right to Privacy: In a famous case a plane crashed and a tabloid published that the pilot had an affaire with the stewardess, the courts decided that the allegedly affair had no transcendence in the accident, so people didn't need to know about it and forced the paper to pay millions to the family of both, the pilot and stewardess.
- Sexual or religious privacy: People are not forced top tell anybody their religion or sexua preference, in every case an editor saves his butt of a trial with the "Exceptio Veritatis" (Proving it's true), in this cases they can't use the exceptio veritatis, because thet knowledge is in the intimate sphere of the person and nobody has to know it.
- Social Interest: If a determined protest or new is going to cause risk for the life or sccurity of the citizsns, must not be informed.
- A person can go to trial if he/she caused a crime and new that his/her acts could cause them, except when talking about a crime.
So the so called absolute freedom of speech doesn't exist without limits in most parts of the world, and if this acts are going to cause desecretaion of a religious symbol against a determined religious/ethnic group and cause danger for the citizens, should be limited
Iván
|
|
|
|
thellama73
Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
Joined: May 29 2006
Location: United States
Status: Offline
Points: 8368
|
Posted: September 14 2010 at 12:18 |
|
Yeah, and most of the world is wrong. Most of the world has lower literacy rates too, but that is not an argument for illiteracy.
|
|
|
|
Mr ProgFreak
Forum Senior Member
Joined: November 08 2008
Location: Sweden
Status: Offline
Points: 5195
|
Posted: September 14 2010 at 12:25 |
|
^^ You're building up straw men arguments, Iván. Of course freedom of speech/expression doesn't mean that people have the right to say anything under any circumstances, that goes without saying. The actual legislation varies from country to country, but if you for example look at one of the most liberal countries in that respect (USA), then you'll see that there are many meaningful limitations (e.g. slander). The point is that you should be free to voice your opinion.
|
|
JLocke
Prog Reviewer
Joined: November 18 2007
Status: Offline
Points: 4900
|
Posted: September 14 2010 at 14:16 |
Paravion wrote:
No, I don't think it should be forbidden. It is this whole line of discourse where it comes down to this question I oppose to. I don't oppose to freedom of expression. |
Then I don't think you and I have any real disagreement. Although I do think you're being much too generous to the opposing side, but as long as you don't want something forbidden, you can discourage it all you want. Hell, I discourage behavior I don't like, too. But again, I was speaking about things on a different level, I suppose.
|
|
Equality 7-2521
Forum Senior Member
Joined: August 11 2005
Location: Philly
Status: Offline
Points: 15784
|
Posted: September 14 2010 at 15:15 |
|
|
|
"One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn't fall. "
|
|
/PAlogo_v2.gif "Progarchives.com Homepage")
On the burning of books ...
