Hate speech in Germany...

[Lizard <lizard@dnai.com>]

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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.
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