How should the government handle the producers of the video that sparked the ME riots?

Does anything and everything need to be said? What are we, a bunch of children who are unable to judge what speech is appropriate from that which is not? Is hateful and inflammatory discourse justifiable simply because we have the right to say it? Do we teach our children that derogatory slurs such as "nigger" "raghead" and "kike" are acceptable and rightfully theirs to express? Of course we don't. We should be taking to task those adults around us who lack the self-control to monitor their own speech, if that speech seeks only to incite through the blasphemy of another religion or the denigration of another race, culture or gender.

There is such a thing as abusing a right - ignoring it's initial intent and using it to justify all manner of sorry behavior.

I agree that no reasonable person who watches this video would react violently but the religious often lack reason. If this movie were made by Muslims and the subject had been Jesus instead of Mohammed, I have to wonder how many American mosques and Islamic communities in the US would suffer the consequences the way they have in the past following each airing of Bin Laden's speeches.

Surely the right to free speech should have applied to Osama Bin Laden if it does, as you say, apply to Sam Bacile (Nakoula Basseley Nakoula)

Or is the right to speak freely only an American right?

 

Here's a thought - do rights come with responsibilities? If so, why don't they get discussed much?

 

this is an interesting series of articles from folk who are more informed than most:

Whose Innocence?: Thoughts on Copts, Muslims, and a World Gone (Temporally) Mad

 

Since when do we need to justify something as necessary in order to do it? How infantile and thin-skinned have we become that we feel the need to silence people who might be merely offensive? Has the burden of participation trophies become so great that we can no longer shrug our shoulders and turn away? Do we need to teach our children that they have the right to grow up in the land of fairy-tales and sunshine where no one ever gets their feelings hurt? Who gets to be the arbiter of which monologues get to be a part of fairy-tale space? You? Some multi-governmental committee?

There is a huge gap between the unreasonableness, in terms of civility, of being a jerk and taking away someone's right to be a jerk and you haven't even begun to bridge it. Pointing out that they should be taken to task for being an jerk, which you have the right to do, incidentally, is still miles from justifying silencing or suppressing them.

And since you asked, Bin Laden should have the right to speak his mind. Though, that might be a bit difficult in execution for the foreseeable future.

 

That' not what it seemed like she was saying to me, but I suppose we must let Joniemack clarify that.

The rest is all well and good and I agree with you. But there is no way to get from there to removing the right of the responsible author to make a disastrously in-poor-taste film.

 

I think I used the word appropriate. If you don't understand the distinction, I can't help you.

I never said anything about a governmental silencing of people. I'm more interested in a show of intolerance and . public humiliation. In not sitting back as the shit flies back and forth in front of us. In not silently putting up with the fucktard who pukes his bigoted guts all over us. Yeah, I can walk away and often do but I feel guilty as hell for not calling them out and humiliating them in front of their audience. Bigots are cowards and will generally keep their opinions to themselves if they sense that no one will agree with them. Don't allow them a stage. Shut them out of the conversation every time they open their ignorant yaps. The pull out of advertising sponsors for Rush Limbaugh's show is a one example of how this works to stymie inappropriate speech.

As a society, we've decided that murder, theft, rape, etc is unacceptable. It's also up to society to decide what is and isn't appropriate speech. The more we, as individuals, tolerate the bigot, the more freedom the bigot will have to voice his opinions publicly, inciting others to possibly do more than just talk.

The fairy tale is in believing that words are not weapons. That the harm they do is limited to the overly thin-skinned. Maybe school systems are wrong about their anti-bullying policies and we should allow the verbal bashing of homosexual students and nerdy kids. Hey, it's free speech right?

Yeah, we tell our kid it's not worth getting all upset over the jock that calls him a pussy but we should also be telling him that it's unacceptable so he doesn't get the idea that the bullies and the bigots of the world have a pass to be rude and ignorant - unless of course they do. Maybe one day, we teach him how to stand up to the bully and bigot. We give him clever little comebacks to use to cut the asshole off at the balls and humiliate him in front of his buddies. We teach him how to defend himself too.

No government intervention. Personal responsibility.

 

You talking about personal responsibility in America, Joniemack ?

Why you socialist commie pig, you.

Very un-American.

 

You used the word need. It's in the very first sentence of the bit I quoted and your last post. If that's not what you meant and all you're looking for is the right to tell the relevant people they're assholes, then fine, go ahead. But that isn't the way it read to me.

School systems involve captive audiences of children and as they're an entirely different context they do and should have different standards.

 

of course, all this talk about this stupid movie is mostly beside the point if you are thinking about the scenarios in the north africa, the middle east and elsewhere:

The only surprise is there aren't more violent protests in the Middle East | Seumas Milne | Comment is free | The Guardian

of course that doesn't preclude the film being used for types of political grandstanding:

Egypt issues arrest warrants over anti-Islam film | World news | guardian.co.uk

as for the "free speech" argument: there is a case to be made that this was incitement to violence. that's not protected speech.

 

I was in a rush (cooking dinner if you must know) and should have responded to this at greater length.

I feel the need to remind you of the context here, the thread was supposed to be specifically about what the government should do. You also juxtapose what you feel is the appropriate response to this film against the response to murder, rape and theft which is appropriately, government mandated suppression. As I said before, if all you want it the right to shout down the bigots fine but the way in which you're expressing that is far from clear.

 

The first bit of that post was meant to be rhetorical but in it's context I suppose I was indeed saying that we don't need to say everything we're thinking and as adults we've learned when it's appropriate and inappropriate to do so. We learn that it's not okay to tell the next door neighbor she has a fat and visually offensive ass (even if she does) because most of us are taught that we should refrain from hurting others peoples feelings for no good reason. So I would assume that making a film disparaging the leader of someone else's religion would either have to have been done for some good reason or by someone who was not brought up to consider the feelings of others.

Now I have my complaints against religion of all stripes and I gladly debate the believers but see no point in trying to rile them with insults. It's the ineffective tool of the ignorant and intolerant wielded at the ignorant and intolerant.

All parties in this matter are playing that game while the rest of us can do no more than cover our heads. I could easily blame religion for this mess but I'd rather place the blame on those of us who condone intolerance and hate speech with our silence.

The anti-bullying stance in schools is fairly recent but is proving effective. Hopefully we will begin churning out generations of adults whose standards and expectations of civility are higher than ours.
--- merged: Sep 18, 2012 at 8:08 PM ---

And I responded to that. I said that the government should not interfere unless it's determined that the filmmaker intentionally set out to incite violence and in doing so, threatened US national security.

Do you really think that the response to murder, rape and theft is a concoction of the government? Sorry, but religion was on that long before governments decided to incorporate it into their legal systems. Before religion? Well I believe even the earliest communities of humans decided that survival of the species depended upon not killing one another off and working in a spirit of cooperation. Societies made up of individuals decide the course of such things. Governments just follow along with what the majority decides.

I'm expressing myself the only way I know how.

 

I think it would be interesting if someone rewrote the Constitution to include all of the restrictions now in place that weren't included in the original draft.

*Include no nudity in public, government sanctioned areas during political events, private property restrictions, divulging classified information, yelling 'fire' to incite a crowd, explaining how to make bombs and explosives...

And then the 2nd amendment...

 

Did I say that the suppression of murder rape and theft were made up by the government? No. I stated that the suppression of those things by the government is the way the world actually works. But that's neither here nor there as you've made it since made it clear that isn't actually what you think should be going on in terms of speech. Which is fine and I agree with you, actually, on the bulk of your points, now that I understand them. I even said more or less similar things in my first substantial post on the thread.

My only real bone to pick in this whole thing is with those who feel that the government should not be protecting the rights of people to be insulting and blasphemous, whatever the population might think about them as individuals. And use this kind of violent reaction as a excuse to mandate the suppression of speech by the government which is ostensibly the position Remixer is taking.

 

Is it possible in this day and age with the Internet for the US government to restrict the 'offensive' speech to just within the borders of the US? I think most Americans can handle freedom of speech, and the immigrants coming here should be taught about it and how to use it. This video didn't cause a lot of problems within the US, and the Muslims here should take note that most of their neighbors rejected the movie and don't think it was right.

But just because something is the law here in the US, doesn't make it legal in a different country.

Then again, the US probably wouldn't filter any political speech and distributing it anywhere in the world, but I think religious topics made to create hate shouldn't be exported.

 

Apparently a small paper in France is jumping on the inflammatory bandwagon.

France Ups Embassy Security After Prophet Cartoons : NPR

 

And France has a bunch of Muslims living within the country. They might be a little more 'liberal', but it will be interesting to see if they use this as an excuse for protesting their treatment in society.

 

charlie hebdo will sell more copies.
what else do you expect will happen?

and there are french people and there are muslims. they can't be the same thing, can they?
the conversations has already taken a front national turn.
but that's the point of such things from the metr0-conservative viewpoint really.

 

Muslim rioting in France is an ongoing state of affairs. I don't think they need an excuse. Their day to day treatment in French society is reason enough in their minds.

Interesting article, Hektore. The debate over free speech and free expression is once again on the Western table.