Should The US Make Speech That's Critical or Disparaging of Muhammed a Crime? [W:636]

ashurbanipal · Sep 18, 2012

Quag said:
Fair enough, my point is thread is:
Should The US Make Speech That's Critical or Disparaging of Muhammed a Crime?
And the answer has to be NO a resounding un equivocal NO!
If the thread was "should incitement to violence be a crime" the answer is yes, There are limits on free speech. Yelling fire in a crowded theatre is the famous example people like to use. I do not see insulting someone as incitement to violence but saying so and so doesn't deserve to live and should be massacred ASAP, isn't an insult it is more of a threat and or incitement. Yes labguage can be used in Hyperbole so context has to be regarded. Example watchign a football game and yelling at your side to "rip his head off" (Waterboy refernce) is not really gonna be taken as a serious incitemnt to kill someone.

My original comment in the thread was I also did not, and do not, believe that it should be a crime to disparage Mohammed, Islam, or anything else. I did, however, say there should be a few commonsense exceptions (which would apply evenly to every subject and every person), one of which was incitement to violence. A couple people disagreed that even that should be a crime, and I've been arguing that position.

ashurbanipal · Sep 18, 2012

Zyphilin said:
One massively problematic issue with your analogy.

A bullet is not capable of making it's own judgements. A bullet does not control it's own actions. A bullet does not have conciousness and decision making ability. The bullet is under the control and direction of the individual firing it. The BULLET is doing the harm.
In the case of the movie, that is not the case.

In your analogy the film maker would be the shooter.

The bullet would be the movie.

However, the issue is, the move did not kill anyone. The movie did not force a riot. The movie simply spoke words and showed pictures.

PEOPLE, viewing the movie, made a concious CHOICE to act in an uncivilized at best, and dispicable at worst, manner.
The film maker did not force them, did not coerce them, did not make them act in that manner. They viewed something or simply HEARD about something...again, on their own accord...and then on their own accord decided to act in a harmful way.

Your analogy does not fit the situation one bit, because it hinges on the notion that the action directly taken by the individual....firing the bullet / making the video....is directly responsable for the negative action that occurs next....killing someone. That's a false analogy because the bullet simply acts in a defined manner due to the law of physics and the action of the individual...PEOPLE make their own choices.

It's not meant to be an analogy, as I had explained just previously in the thread. Rather, it was going to show that we can and should try to establish intent in some types of outcomes in order to determine whether a crime had been committed.

I think there are other reasons why incitement to violence should be a crime that have to do with how human beings spread knowledge.

Fisher · Sep 18, 2012

Krhazy said:
Speech that is directed to inciting violence and likely to incite violence can already subject the speaker to criminal penalties, under a case decided over 40 years ago. Whether this video and those like it qualify is questionable, but at the same time it wouldn't be such a huge leap to extend that precedent to cases like this one. The freedom of speech is one of our most cherished protections, but like all other constitutional rights, there are limits which come into play when the safety of innocent third parties is put at risk.

Yeah but I think the SCOTUS would have a very different interpretation here in not seeing the situation analogous to things like use of the N word. It is almost impossible to get them to infringe upon speech or the press and they certainly wouldn't likely do it to benefit a bunch of foreigners who killed our diplomats overseas.

Gardener · Sep 18, 2012

Krhazy said:
Balancing the rights of individuals doesn't make us more like third-world religious dictatorships. That is indeed complete bull. What would make us more like them is championing the instigation of violence over practicality, reason, and human life.

You are proposing that it would not be any sort of leap to surrender our principle of free speech in order to appease Islamists because of THEIR savagery and not anything intrinsic to the actual movie. Whatever specious rationalizations you might whip up to defend your attack upon our rights by making us more like them does not detract in the least from that fact that what you are proposing does just that.

The Islamist agenda above all else, is to make Islam inviolate. You are acting as a useful idiot to their agenda by agreeing.

Quag · Sep 18, 2012

ashurbanipal said:
My original comment in the thread was I also did not, and do not, believe that it should be a crime to disparage Mohammed, Islam, or anything else. I did, however, say there should be a few commonsense exceptions (which would apply evenly to every subject and every person), one of which was incitement to violence. A couple people disagreed that even that should be a crime, and I've been arguing that position.

Again Fair enough, It DID sound like you were trying to make the analogy and I wasn't the only one who thought so. Misunderstandings happen, good to set record straight.

ashurbanipal · Sep 18, 2012

Quag,

No worries.

lizzie · Sep 18, 2012

ashurbanipal said:
My original comment in the thread was I also did not, and do not, believe that it should be a crime to disparage Mohammed, Islam, or anything else. I did, however, say there should be a few commonsense exceptions (which would apply evenly to every subject and every person), one of which was incitement to violence. A couple people disagreed that even that should be a crime, and I've been arguing that position.

Intent to incite people to violence would have to be proven based on the outcome, and would be a subjective judgement on the individual being accused, so that would make the entire process unjust. Regardless of intent by someone who says something hateful, it is the responsibility of those offended to control their impulses to take violent action. They could respond in the same manner as the original offense was offered, but resorting to violence, in response to a non-violent action, regardless of whether or not the intent was to inflame, is an unreasonable response by the offended.

Cameron · Sep 18, 2012

Fisher said:
Yeah but I think the SCOTUS would have a very different interpretation here in not seeing the situation analogous to things like use of the N word. It is almost impossible to get them to infringe upon speech or the press and they certainly wouldn't likely do it to benefit a bunch of foreigners who killed our diplomats overseas.

But it's not for the benefit of terrorist foreigners, its for the benefit of our soldiers and diplomats, and US tourists traveling overseas.

The insulting hackery of this thread is the "appeasing muslims" strawman argument. Nobody on the left has any desire to appease muslims, only to safeguard American lives and American interests abroad.

Cameron · Sep 18, 2012

Gardener said:
You are proposing that it would not be any sort of leap to surrender our principle of free speech in order to appease Islamists because of THEIR savagery and not anything intrinsic to the actual movie.

Nobody is proposing surrendering free speech. This type of limitation would be no more of a surrender than defamation law or obscenity legislation. You just can't get over the idea of "appeasing muslims" -- or what rational people would refer to as dealing in a practical manner with the reality of islamic extremism. You are placing your sheer hatred for these extremists and the interest of juvenile filmmakers over the lives of Americans. And you are acting as a useful idiot by encouraging behavior which extremists can use as propaganda to recruit new members for generations to come. That, to me, is worrisome.

Donahue · Sep 18, 2012

Re: Should The US Make Speech That's Critical or Disparaging of Mohammed a Crime?

Dragonfly said:
However, when one's free speech is directly responsible for violence towards innocent people all over the world I do wonder if some responsibility for that rests with the "speaker"?

Is one's free speech ever really directly responsible for violence towards anyone though?

I haven't seen the film nor do I have any real desire to but I feel like liberals and the media would be treating this story very differently if a Christian went on a shooting rampage because an artist smeared feces on a portrait of Jesus Christ.

lizzie · Sep 18, 2012

Krhazy said:
Nobody is proposing surrendering free speech. This type of limitation would be no more of a surrender than defamation law or obscenity legislation. You just can't get over the idea of "appeasing muslims" -- or what rational people would refer to as dealing in a practical manner with the reality of islamic extremism. You are placing your sheer hatred for these extremists over the lives of Americans and the interest of juvenile filmmakers. And you are acting as a useful idiot by encouraging behavior which extremists can use as propaganda to recruit new members for generations to come. That, to me, is worrisome.

They can recruit new members all they want, for as long as they want, as long as they keep their crap in their own part of the world. As for the lives of Americans, we shouldn't be in that ****hole in the first place, as far as I am concerned. If they want to make war and kill each other, because they can't figure out how to co-exist peacefully with each other, I don't really care. I refuse to bow to the coercion of extremist babies who can't handle someone hurting their feelings. They need to grow up and get a clue that not everyone agrees with them, or fears their God.

Donahue · Sep 18, 2012

Krhazy said:
But it's not for the benefit of terrorist foreigners, its for the benefit of our soldiers and diplomats, and US tourists traveling overseas.

The insulting hackery of this thread is the "appeasing muslims" strawman argument. Nobody on the left has any desire to appease muslims, only to safeguard American lives and American interests abroad.

I don't see much of a difference between banning free speech and blaming free speech but I also just don't see how censorship would be much of a solution for the violence emanating from people willing to use airplanes as weapons or bomb a high school because they disagree with a movie, cartoon, op-ed, etc.

Lines have to be drawn and what is "critical" or "disparaging" is awfully subjective. It's not exactly uncommon for an Islamist group to kidnap a journalist then televise his execution in Allah's name. I don't know if you would consider denouncing that critical or disparaging but it's not exactly unreasonable to believe those nutjobs who kidnapped someone then executed him on television would be angry about that denunciation. So do we cheer for the executed journalist just so the executioners aren't offended enough to bomb an embassy?

LaMidRighter · Sep 18, 2012

Re: Should The US Make Speech That's Critical or Disparaging of Mohammed a Crime?

RadicalModerate said:
You do realize Piss Christ was about the lack of respect for Christ, right?

Doesn't excuse it. You don't show lack of respect by committing a blasphemy yourself, this was an artist placing his message above others beliefs. However it is protected.

LaMidRighter · Sep 18, 2012

Re: Should The US Make Speech That's Critical or Disparaging of Mohammed a Crime?

RadicalModerate said:
Exactly. Freedom of speech is really the closet thing to an "all or nothing" issue that we have. Censorship and the punishment of unpopular ideas is like a slowly rising ooze that needs constant vigilance to keep under control. Thank god for the ACLU, huh??

People in this country do NOT have a right to NOT be offended.

The ACLU is a little too selective of who they decide to back, but otherwise I agree with you that speech is incredibly important to protect.

Gardener · Sep 18, 2012

Krhazy said:
Nobody is proposing surrendering free speech. This type of limitation would be no more of a surrender than defamation law or obscenity legislation. You just can't get over the idea of "appeasing muslims" -- or what rational people would refer to as dealing in a practical manner with the reality of islamic extremism. You are placing your sheer hatred for these extremists and the interest of juvenile filmmakers over the lives of Americans. And you are acting as a useful idiot by encouraging behavior which extremists can use as propaganda to recruit new members for generations to come. That, to me, is worrisome.

Yes, by all means, we should sacrifice a principle to expediency and thereby establish a new principle.

Here we have a stupid movie made about a warlord who has been dead for over a thousand years. Are you advocating that films should not be allowd that mock other warlords? Of course not. This warlord cobbled together a religio-political ideology to help consolidate his power and further his conquests. Do you advocate censorship of that which mocks any other religion or political ideology? Of course not.

Son, just because you are hypocritical and incapable of anything approaching reason, that is no reason why we should sacrifice our freedom of speech. What is truly worrying is that you are so uneducated that you would so easily do the bidding of those who wish to change our culture to be more like theirs.

Gardener · Sep 18, 2012

Re: Should The US Make Speech That's Critical or Disparaging of Mohammed a Crime?

Donahue said:
?

I haven't seen the film nor do I have any real desire to but I feel like liberals

It's not a liberal thing, Donahue, merely a stupid and hypocritical thing. The very notion of freedom of speech is due to liberal idiology -- an ideology towards which many stupid leftist kids may have little actual connection thes days, but there is nothing inherently contradictory between being a liberal and respecting freedom of speech.

Donahue · Sep 18, 2012

Re: Should The US Make Speech That's Critical or Disparaging of Mohammed a Crime?

Gardener said:
It's not a liberal thing, Donahue, merely a stupid and hypocritical thing. The very notion of freedom of speech is due to liberal idiology -- an ideology towards which many stupid leftist kids may have little actual connection thes days, but there is nothing inherently contradictory between being a liberal and respecting freedom of speech.

You cut off the operative half of my quote.

What I was saying, in regard to liberals, was that I feel they and the media are treating this very differently than if Christians killed people over something negative about Christianity. I think the fact that we're actually talking about a movie driving these people to storm embassies over the world and kill several people mind boggling. Would we be talking about hypothetically banning homosexuality in public if Christians stormed the set of Modern Family and killed the actors?

Gardener · Sep 18, 2012

Re: Should The US Make Speech That's Critical or Disparaging of Mohammed a Crime?

Donahue said:
You cut off the operative half of my quote.

What I was saying, in regard to liberals, was that I feel they and the media are treating this very differently than if Christians killed people over something negative about Christianity. I think the fact that we're actually talking about a movie driving these people to storm embassies over the world and kill several people mind boggling. Would we be talking about hypothetically banning homosexuality in public if Christians stormed the set of Modern Family and killed the actors?

What is even more mind boggling is how stupid people are blaming the film, yet the majority of those rampaging like they are doing have never seen it.

Yes, these unthinking people are treating it very differently than they do anything associated with Christianity, They do so because they are dogmatic, stupid and hypocritical. What I am saying here is that these people are not treating it this way because they are liberal -- in fact, they are treating it this way because they AREN'T liberal. They are merely useful idiot leftists.

Just as conservatives are certainly not exemplified by the Fred Phelps gang or David Duke, not all liberals are not all represented by reactive idiots sympathetic to anything Islamist. These are only the extremes of either here, so you need to distinguish between the two and develop a more accurate language for describing people.

Fisher · Sep 18, 2012

Krhazy said:
But it's not for the benefit of terrorist foreigners, its for the benefit of our soldiers and diplomats, and US tourists traveling overseas.

The insulting hackery of this thread is the "appeasing muslims" strawman argument. Nobody on the left has any desire to appease muslims, only to safeguard American lives and American interests abroad.

Then don't send people to places that hate Americans. It is really that simple.

PirateMk1 · Sep 18, 2012

Re: Should The US Make Speech That's Critical or Disparaging of Mohammed a Crime?

RadicalModerate said:
Clearly, this movie was meant to stir up more dirt between Muslims and Jews. If any piece of "art" was created to incite hate and possibly violence, it's the "Innocence of Muslims". So again, should this guy be punished?

Not only no. But hell no. If were reversed and muslims said this about whatever this dude is I would hell no too. Speacking ones opinion should not be punishable by law or the government.

Ikari · Sep 18, 2012

Re: Should The US Make Speech That's Critical or Disparaging of Mohammed a Crime?

RadicalModerate said:
Clearly, this movie was meant to stir up more dirt between Muslims and Jews. If any piece of "art" was created to incite hate and possibly violence, it's the "Innocence of Muslims". So again, should this guy be punished?

Absolutely not. The response of murder and assault is not a rational response to this movie, even if it does denigrate the Muslim faith. The individual cannot be held responsible for irrational reaction to their exercise of right. The actions of others does not excuse infringement of one's rights.

Bob Blaylock · Sep 18, 2012

Re: Should The US Make Speech That's Critical or Disparaging of Mohammed a Crime?

Zyphlin said:
If you restrict free speech because people have made it their intent to CHOOSE to commit attrocities [sic] if said speech is done, then you essentially create a situation and an acknowledgement that free speech is only free if others chooes [sic] not to be upset about it. If you ban disaparaging [sic] action towards Muhammed [sic] because Muslims on the other side of the world may CHOOSE to commit attrocities [sic] then you invite any other group to choose "We don't want [x] speech done, so if we hear it we'll riot and kill people" in hopes of getting that banned as well.

It's called a heckler's veto — allowing one group the power to force a violation of someone else's rights by threatening to behave badly if that right is exercised; subverting the authority and duty of government to protect the rights of those under its jurisdiction, by forcing that government to obey the will of a violent mob.

LaMidRighter · Sep 18, 2012

Re: Should The US Make Speech That's Critical or Disparaging of Mohammed a Crime?

Bob Blaylock said:
It's called a heckler's veto — allowing one group the power to force a violation of someone else's rights by threatening to behave badly if that right is exercised; subverting the authority and duty of government to protect the rights of those under its jurisdiction, by forcing that government to obey the will of a violent mob.

I have to admit I've never heard that term before but I like it. Thanks for sharing, though I knew about the theory I didn't realize it had been given a scholarly credential.

haymarket · Sep 18, 2012

Re: Should The US Make Speech That's Critical or Disparaging of Mohammed a Crime?

Ikari said:
Absolutely not. The response of murder and assault is not a rational response to this movie, even if it does denigrate the Muslim faith. The individual cannot be held responsible for irrational reaction to their exercise of right. The actions of others does not excuse infringement of one's rights.

What about the individual who darn wells knows what he is doing and knows that there is a good chance such a reaction will happen and hopes for it?

haymarket · Sep 18, 2012

Re: Should The US Make Speech That's Critical or Disparaging of Mohammed a Crime?

Bob Blaylock said:
It's called a heckler's veto — allowing one group the power to force a violation of someone else's rights by threatening to behave badly if that right is exercised; subverting the authority and duty of government to protect the rights of those under its jurisdiction, by forcing that government to obey the will of a violent mob.

I think a hecklers veto is more of a situation where a small minority of people - perhaps only one - can make life miserable for everybody else ala the heckler at a club who nobody paid to see and is wrecking the show for all the other customers.

Does that really apply to such massive numbers of people in the middle east?

Could it be that the real hecklers veto here is being exercised by the film maker as a protest against a US foreign policy that he wants changed?

Should The US Make Speech That's Critical or Disparaging of Muhammed a Crime? [W:636]

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