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Why should saying “I hope you die alone of cancer” be illegal?

• berbec 8y ago
  It should not be. Society should rightly shun you for it, but government should not make it illegal.
  • scotty79 8y ago
    Why not? What useful purpose does it serve? And if none what's the harm of banning it? Is it equally not right to ban saying "black people should die alone of cancer" to a black man?
    • setr 8y ago
      re free speech, because its difficult to find the line between actually harmful, and non-harmful, and declared harmful due to ulterior motives and the degree to which you hold that view (that its dangerous precedent, and difficult to stop once the ball gets rolling), is the degree to which you accept hate speech banning. But imo yes, in general, if theres no backing threat, then the government should not have any opinion on such a saying. Individuals and corporations can, should, and do, but the government has no business regulating such a thing.
      • scotty79 8y ago
        I still don't see why wishing someone dead or expressing he should die should be treated differently than empty threat to kill him. Or why you should allow people or corporations to enforce a ban but not government. There are already things you cannot say. Why not add wishing someone harm to them? What useful purpose does it serve?
        • setr 8y ago
          >I still don't see why wishing someone dead or expressing he should die should be treated differently than empty threat to kill him I think I misunderstood your position; I'm in agreement with that statement: there is no difference, and neither should be punished or regulated, unless theres evidence of there being a real chance to transform into (or cause) actions. >Or why you should allow people or corporations to enforce a ban but not government. The federal government offers a space for the entire population; corporations offer a space for a (very) limited subset, and individuals offer a space for those in their household. Due to the sweeping nature of its power (and its slow speed to update), its by far preferable to play conservatively. If you don't have a good reason to regulate, the government should not regulate. The same applies less to corporations, due to limited power, the general availability for its subjects to move to other corporations (which exists for country movement, but much more difficult than corporate). >There are already things you cannot say. Why not add wishing someone harm to them? What useful purpose does it serve? Well, you want to limit the amount of speech regulation in general, because again its difficult to regulate, difficult to decide what to regulate, and almost trivially easy to abuse. The problem isn't that keeping that particular statement is beneficial, but that banning such a statement, and statements like it, is prone to buggy behavior. And of course you want to avoid as much as possible reaching the point where you can no longer criticize the federal government, and the more you regulate speech, the more stable that path becomes. And the federal government is naturally incentivized to take that path if it can: it makes its life far, far easier.
          • scotty79 8y ago
            To a point I agree with you but there are plent of exceptions already https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_ex... and I don't think defending right to publicly wish someone dead especially if such fuzzy category as false statement of fact can already an exception to free speech. How well the law works... that's another thing. Trump can say there's no global warming and nobody puts him in jail for that.