-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 02:09 AM 12/6/97 +0100, Peter Herngaard wrote:
Reply to Duncan Frissell:
If the German people desired to abolish the Radikalenerlass they could do so simply by changing their goverment precisely as U.S. citizens could abolish use of capital punishment against minors. Is there any difference?
There is a difference, in that calling for the abolition of laws banning 'hate speech' can easily be labelled as 'hate speech' in themselves. Further, since it is never popular speech which needs government protection, the odds are good that the majority of those who would call for the abolition of such laws are those who wished to engage in such speech -- and thus, by calling attention to themselves, they could risk jail. The reason such laws do not exist in the US is NOT because 'the people' do not want them -- I daresay a popular vote would install them in a heartbeat -- but because the government is NOT a democracy, and the 'will of the people' runs up against the Bill of Rights, which serves to protect people from the government, and from each other. While I'm sure there are at least some ideaological free speech absolutists in Germany, I'm betting they're a smaller group than they are even in the US -- Germany has no real history of free speech, compared to the US, and Europe in general has a history of placing the collective good ahead of individual liberty. While a US 'leftist' will, for the most part, cede the right of even his enemies to speak (this is changing lately, but it used to be true, and there's still a few old lefties about), my exposure to German and other European leftists indicates that they approve strongly of laws banning 'racist' or 'hateful' speech -- while the American left has its roots in the anarchists of the 19th century, the European left has grown from the totalitarians of the 20th century. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 Charset: noconv iQA/AwUBNIiqdjKf8mIpTvjWEQI24ACfX33Yo1UFlM5CyHW/lQqqzjbBUvgAoObC W9x8sXsD1LHjgH7vk2n76OcH =3Apc -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----