@ pvdh

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What is "hate speech"?  The stuff you hear in many mosques?  The anti-americanism expressed on the Arab street or on the naive-left European street?  Labeling political opponents as "racist" or "communist", or what?  Hate speech is always in the 'eye of the beholder'.  And restricting freedom of speech is just as bad when it is done by islamists, or by rightists, or by leftists, or whatever t...-ists. 

In a mature democracy the proper distinction to be made is between (1) speech and (2) actions.  And only actions or deeds should be subject to possible restrictions.  Genuine 'political speech' should be free and unrestricted, because that is the ONLY way for a population to have a 'chance' to be truly informed about what is happening and about alternative courses of action.  The moment you tamper with the freedom of political speech you have lost your democracy, and you are preventing ideological power alternation, i.e. you are unduly perpetuating a specific power.

And, you are smart enough to know the difference between (a) speech and (b) actions or deeds. So, you do not need to be hiding behind sofistry and false strawmen. Not that you would, I hope.

@ pvdh

On the level of human intentions morality is "absolute" in the sense that you must seek what is 'good'.  It certainly does not involve seeking what is 'bad', NOR seeking a compromise with what is 'bad'. 

The difficulty resides in determining what is 'good' and what is 'bad' in specific concrete circumstances, especially in complicated moral dilemmas.  So, yes, on the level of practical human action one may sometimes be forced to make compromises with 'bad people', if such compromise is judged to be part of the moral 'good'. But this could ONLY be the case if all the practical alternatives are judged to be 'morally worse' (or outright 'bad').

I do NOT agree that "killing a man as such is an immoral act".  Whether the act is moral or immoral will entirely depend on the circumstances (as you know them). In other words, it wil depend on the genuine motivation behind the act and thus, implicitly, also on what the genuine alternatives are for that act (involving a consideration of all possible foreseeable consequences of different actions, including of INaction).

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@ pvdh

You posit the argument that "restricting freedom of speech" is (or would be) a "lost combat in advance".  I have two problems with that argument of yours.

First, it is an amoral/immoral argument.  Wether it is a lost cause, or not, that is not a VALID reason for not restricting free speech.  Because it suggests that you would be willing to engage "in restricting free speech" if it were not a lost cause.   The fundamental reason why you should NOT be restricting free speech has to be om moral grounds.  Other people are as much entitled to their opinions as you are.  If you are willing to consider restricting their free speech, you are not better than them when they restrict your free speech.

Second, your assertion is contra-factual and anti-historical.  Restrictions on free speech are always among the first measures taken by totalitarians and semi-totalitarians when they gain power, or they become the tool-of-preference when those long-in-power have become addicted to it and want to prolong it indefinitely.   Indeed, the coming multi-cultural nightmare in parts of Europe, and the current polarisation in society, are the direct 'fruits' of previous attempts to shut up 'early' critical voices of ongoing trends.  Restrictions on free speech prevent society from adjusting to changing circumstances and to take timely measures or adjustments. 

@ Jari

Of course, pvdh is NOT saying that "nazism does not contain hate and violence".  Nazism is an historical phenomenon from over half a century ago.   You better concern yourself with contemporary forms of "hate and violence".  Like 'sharia law', for instance, or islamism in general, or anti-globalisation 'demonstrators', or irrational Bush-bashing, or promoting anti-americanism, etc.... Those are better examples of contemporary hatred that induces actual 'violence'.

And political SPEECH about immigration policies or about social welfare policies are not "hate and violence".  If you cannot make these disctinctions then you are not honest with yourself, which is a severe from of selfdelusion.

As I agree with the final statement of the article: “One shouldn’t restrict freedom of speech”, I don’t agree with a lot of the arguments. Of course a revival of Nazism as such is no longer a risk in Europe. But we are without any doubt looking at the same mechanisms that led to the hate and violence that made Nazism possible. The polarization between Muslims and non-Muslims in our society is fueled by hate propaganda. Also the left of the political firmament is under the title of islamosocialist connected to the imagined thread of the destruction of our culture by Muslims. For people who lived in the early years of fascism in Germany, all this must sound very familiar. If not treated rightfully, what will come out of it will surely not be Nazism. Times have changed. But more humanism will surely not be the outcome. And the thread of unspeakable violence against innocent people is as real now as it was then.

We shouldn’t however try to fight this by restricting the freedom of speech. That’s a lost combat in advance, and there is always the danger of misuse of this restriction against perfectly normal opinions. Moreover, like Charlemagne states, it makes it impossible to argue against these people in the first place. Even worse, it gives them the aura of prosecuted victims.

@ Pjotr

....

Then, what about you parroting nonsense 'opinions'?

  -- George Bush has many 'defects', but he has NOT "signed away habeas corpus". That is a ridiculous charge.

 --And, "torture" is still deemed torture.  Who is saying that it isn't?  Besides yourself and certain people with a particular agenda?

  -- Who is saying that the war in Irak is "going right"?. And, so what?  What are you trying to say with your assertion?  What do you want in Irak?  A genocide of 1 side over another? Or what?  You seem to want the war to go 'badly', just to embarras Bush.  Why is it his fault that Arabs want to kill other Arabs?  Would you also like to blame him for the recent Algerian civil war, or for the current 2 ongoing civil wars in Sudan, or...? 

I understand that you have been conditioned by your media to hate the Bush administration. What's new?  But, if you make ridiculous charges, then you don't embarras the Bush administration, but only yourself.  And what has any of this got to do with the preservation of the constitutional right of free political speech?

@ Pjotr

You seem to lack the ability to stick to one subject, to place it in context, to judge proportionately, to separate facts from opinions, and to separate well-grounded (well-documented) opinions from 'loose' opinions.  That is quite an indictment of a 'confused' mind.  

What has an 'incident' with 1 particular child in a school (on a continent of 300 million people) got to do with "freedom of speech" in a political system? Are you so sure you got all the facts about that particular school incident with a teenager?  And, how dare you to compare that with police intimidation of journalists?  Are you denying that there are a number of laws in several European countries that explicitly criminalise certain speech?  Do you deny that certain political parties have been banned in several west European countries, on a very selective and arbitrary basis, and that such attempts are continuing?  If you do, then you got your head in the sand.  No such things are happening in the US.  

....

Freedom in Europe being so poor in comparison with the US. Which means that in the USA a 14 year old girl gets pulled out of her school by FBI because of a picture that she put up on her MySpace pages.

Compare that to the 'horrible' ordeal that one such as Paul Belien faces in this 'undemocratic' country where he has the police calling on his door and asks him to come to the police station at his convenience so that they can hear if he perhaps has or hasn't transgressed on a law. Pleaaaasssseeeee.

There's lots wrong here in Europe, lots that can do with some improvement but is there one thing that the countries on the North-Atlantic can teach the US it is freedom of speech, of religion, of thought.

 But I know, you'll ignore it. You'll dismiss it. You'll imagine that it's all lies...just as you'll ignore the fact that George W. has signed away Habeus Corpus. As you can try to ignore the fact that the once great beacon of democracy is now the one country where torture isn't deemed torture if the 'democratic elected official' says it isn't so. And where George W. has already pardonned himself and his administration for any and all war crimes.

Perhaps some of you can still think for yourselves. Perhaps some of you can still recognize a spouter of propaganda and hate-mongering racist drivel such as Paul .... somehow I doubt it. Afterall, why face the facts when the lies are so much more comforting.

Most of you remind me of those jokers that still think that the war in Iraq is going the right way no matter that the violence keeps getting worse and worse. No matter the escalating and accellerating number of filled bodybags flown back to the States.

However, there's always a first...let's see if there any who have enough cajones to stand up to the bullies on here.

France, Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands have lost the war to keep their European culture largely because of hate speech/denial laws.

They have embraced the cult of multiculturalism and now they are just beginning to pay the price of their stupidity. A price that would break their hearts if they knew what the full price will be.

"Can you cite one speck of hard evidence of the benefits of 'diversity' that we have heard gushed about for years? Evidence of its harm can be seen - written in blood - from Iraq to India, from Serbia to Sudan, from Fiji to the Philipines. It is scary how easily so many people can be brainwashed by sheer repetition of a word." - Thomas Sowel writing for the Jewish World Review August 29, 2006

...is usually worth reading in The Economist.  He seems to be well-connected and knows what is going on in Europe and in America.

Amsterdamsky is a totally different 'kettle of fish'.  He has very strange notions about "freedom", and can't seem to observe the 'big picture' about neither Europe nor America.  The subject was legal "restrictions on free speech".  And these restrictions have been proliferating in Europe in recent years, no matter what "trends" Amsterdamsky seems to imagine there.  Last week's French law on the Armenian holocaust is just the latest example. 

Amsterdamsky is giving "libertarians" a bad name.

Under the radar, Switzerland has had Armenian Holocaust denial laws on the books for more than a decade. Germany has had some neo-nazi rapper in jail for more than three years now also. Seems pretty silly in the larger context now. Even Holland had similar laws on the books and probably still do but things are trending Libertarian here unlike the US.