Ruben Cassar wrote:Nephilm with all due respect your argument is flawed in many ways.
First of all you say you adhere to free speech, yet you are against the swastika and agree that it should be banned. However you don't agree that this username should be banned. That means you aren't as liberal as you claim to be. You are SELECTIVE of what should be controlled like everyone else because depending on you OWN ideology the swastika should be banned but this username shouldn't.
Second you say that grown ups don't control speech or thoughts of people. You know very well that that is bullshit. Even in the most democratic countries in the world we have certain limits. These are laws. Without them there would be anarchy. So there is a limit to free speech. You cannot make racial or religious insults for example because you could end up in jail as there are laws against this. So once again your whole argument doesn't make sense.
Anyway I made my point and as I said earlier I am going to leave this issue in the hands of the mods. However I felt I had to respond to your comments.
Thanks for responding, i love to argue. OK, believe this or not, i almost wrote a couple of posts ago that i don't have a problem with banning the swastika but i would also be okay with not banning it. Then i thought about it a bit and left out the latter part. I did this b/c i was building an argument around a principle: some types of hate speech can and should be censored b/c all rational people can agree that they aim at ill will and destruction. I agree, Ruben, that true free speech would allow the swastika, and i can get behind that. But i can also see good reasons for removing it, and i don't think they are negatively ideological. Like I said, the swastika, for many or most people, stands for genocide and anti-Semitism. I don't think it's an ideological or political move when symbols of that sort of thing are banned. I think it's simply human, simply an honest, noble thing to do. (But as i have said, i see reasons to allow that kind of speech, too).
Secondly, your second paragraph makes no sense, friend. We can make racial or religious insults in the States (and many other places) w/o fear of jail. Sometimes this is qualified as hate speech and is criminal, but many times it is not. Of course there are laws limiting free speech. I was responding to your original comment: "I am grown up, in the grownup world this sort of stuff is not acceptable." But ruben, many grownups would have no problem with the name "molestedbygod," they would accept it and move on, w/o trying to control the speech around them as you are doing. My argument is this: grownups talk in many different ways and true grownups dont tell others what they can or cannot say. Sometimes there is hate speech that maybe should be banned. But the name "molestedbygod" is not hate speech and your reaction to it is quite immature. The person behind the name can and should say whatever they want regardless of your tastes, as long as it is not criminal.
