Bill:
>In the above cases, those subject to the speech have no costless way
>to avoid it. I feel that the freedom to avoid the speech must also be
>present to grant protection to the speaker.
You see, you are not defending the freedom of racist speech _absolutely_.
Education of children, for instance, is more important than the freedom of
speech of racist teachers. when children in question are basically a
captive audience. When pressed, defenders of "free" speech always make
some qualifications. The only interesting point to debate is how many and,
more importantly, what kind of qualifications to make.
>But, then comes the question: who is to decide what is "racist" or
>"sexist" (etc.) speech? Is discussing the Bell Curve as a credible
>theory grounds for firing a high school teacher, a college professor?
>What about someone who says "blacks are lazy", or "blacks are gifted
>athletes because of their genes", or "homosexual men have more
>psychological problems than heterosexual men" or "lesbians are
>aggressive and ugly"?
The balance of social forces between racists and anti-racists, sexists and
anti-sexists, heterosexists and anti-heterosexists, etc., with or without
legal prohibitions of racist, sexist, heterosexist speech. The most
effective means of censorship is informal, not governmental, except in
cases of dire emergencies; the ruling class in America know this (and hence
the First Amendment & repressive tolerance), and so should we. In
practice, that's how it always has been & will be. In a socialist society,
racists, for instance, should not be allowed to teach racism (they can
think what they want to think if they don't teach their crappy ideas).
_The Bell Curve_ should be on display in a museum of capitalist horrors --
a place where socialist parents will take their kids in a moment of idle
curiosity.
Yoshie
