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And in the U.S. you aren't allowed to advocate the violent overthrow of the government, to shout fire in a crowded theater, to distribute child porn or to consp
by waqf 15y ago
And in the U.S. you aren't allowed to advocate the violent overthrow of the government, to shout fire in a crowded theater, to distribute child porn or to conspire to blow up airliners.
The only difference is that U.S. culture teaches you to believe that those exceptions "aren't covered by free speech", i.e. they don't count because we said so ... just as o1iver thinks about Holocaust-denying.
- tedunangst 15y agoExcept your examples aren't really even examples of speech, free or otherwise. Walking around with a swastika on your arm is quite different than actively holocausting people.
- waqf 15y agoFor convenience of argument I will retract the child porn example, but "conspiring", "shouting" and "advocating" are much closer to a common-sense understanding of the word "speech" than is "walking around with [any particular symbol] on your arm". Unless you totally missed the words "conspire" and "advocate" in my post, I'm not at all sure what you're trying to say.
- tedunangst 15y agoAfter you conspire to blow up an airliner, people die. After denying the Holocaust, nobody dies.
- waqf 15y agoConspiracy does not mean that you carried out the act, or even that you tried to. Besides, people die after someone shouts fire in a crowded theater, but it's still speech.
- mhd 15y agoTo take this a bit ad absurdum, so is ordering someone to kill someone else (or a few hundred). I think we shouldn't confuse the dictionary with a legal text.
- waqf 15y agoGood example (I think it's most similar to "conspiracy", though it might depend on what kind of implicit threat is backing up the "order"). btw, I'm not necessarily advocating free speech at all costs. If I'm going after anyone in this thread, it's the U.S. for hypocritically advertising "WE H4Ve phR33 5P34CH!!! unlike u european 1o5erz" and not being upfront about how delicate the line is.
- mhd 15y agoDoesn't the crime of conspiracy at least require one overt act?
- waqf 15y agoGood call, but in the U.S., according to Wikipedia: "The Shabani case illustrates that it is a matter of legislative prerogative whether to require an overt step, or not to require an overt step in any conspiracy statute." So conspiracy without an overt act is not constitutionally protected.
- lutorm 15y agoWell, in the U.S., spending money is seen as speech, leading to many absurdities. So spending money in support of various abhorrent things is apparently the same as just talking about it. Except if it could be construed that you are supporting terrorism, of course, since then all constitutional protections are off.
- tedunangst 15y agoI'll go at this another way. AFAIK, you aren't allowed to do any of those things in Germany either. So it's not really an issue of these things are free speech in one country, and other different things are free speech in another country. It's kind of irrelevant what the US does, Germany has all the same "reasonable" exceptions, but then some more on top.
- getsat 15y ago> in the U.S. you aren't allowed to advocate the violent overthrow of the government Yes, you can. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio