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While I agree with you that such a law is poorly constructed and should be fixed, that it exists is not worrying to me at all. Until recently, it was legal in
by erikpukinskis 10y ago
While I agree with you that such a law is poorly constructed and should be fixed, that it exists is not worrying to me at all.
Until recently, it was legal in many places to rape your wife. It is still currently legal to release pollution into the atmosphere without paying for its ecological costs. There are a lot of bad laws on the books, and even more that were on the books 50 years ago. And we're ok. We figured it out.
If thousands of people start getting put in jail for offending folks, I'll get a little more worried. And we'll fix it.
What bothers me is that you are spending energy worrying about a law that may, theoretically, be misused in the future when there are people in prison right now because of bad laws that have been on the books for a long time.
You're lucky that you are in such a comfortable position that you can worry about hypothetical future prosecutions, but I might suggest using that privilege to help people who are already in the position that concerns you.
- int_19h 10y agoThe reason why people worry about these laws is because of the trajectory. Historically, freedom of speech was pretty much not a thing, and laws made all kinds of offensive speech (usually offensive to those in power) illegal. For a while, we had a strong trend of getting rid of such laws and getting more free speech. Freedom of speech, including all kinds of offensive speech, was a key tenet of humanism, and associated social and political advances. But now the trend is in the other direction. As time goes by, our societies acquire more laws regulating speech, compared to where they were even a few decades ago.
- erikpukinskis 10y agoI just can't worry about "it'll-be-bad-later-in-the-trajectory" problems when there are "it's-bad-right-now" problems ready to solve.
- int_19h 10y agoMany of the "it's bad right now" problems were started because at some point in the past someone was trying to solve a different "it's bad right now" problem without minding the consequences. Just to give an example, a "tough on crime" crackdown back in 90s to deal with a genuine crime wave, resulting in mass incarceration, especially of non-whites.