On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 4:48 PM, Bob W <[email protected]> wrote: > A very, very interesting video (21 minutes long) here, where Hitchens speaks > in a debate in Canada against some proposed law banning 'hate speech' > > http://nigelwarburton.typepad.com/virtualphilosopher/2008/12/free-speech-chr > istopher-hitchens-video.html >
I wish I had time to listen to it - I just don't have 20 free minutes at a time at work to digest all of it. I can tell you that "hate speech" has been illegal here for some time but there is new legislation in the works to "toughen" the law and make it more enforceable. I have lots of problems with limits on hate speech. Of course I abhor the stuff (hate speech, that is) but making it illegal is fraught with difficulties, both philosophical and pragmatic. Years ago we prosecuted a rather well known neo-nazi, who ended up turning his trial into a circus. Since "truth" was a defense, he set out to prove that the Holocaust didn't happen and that it was a fiction being used by Zionists to further their plans for World Domination. The trial ended up being a battle of expert witnesses. All the trial did, I'm afraid, was to raise doubts of the reality of that horrid event in the minds of hateful and stupid people. The only way to counter hate speech in my opinion is to debate it and prove it wrong, not to criminalize it and allow its propagators to embark in political show-trials. Thanks for the link, Bob. I hope to be able to view it in its entirety soon. cheers, frank -- "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." -Henri Cartier-Bresson -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
