VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

Re:VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris ... by oblio on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @11:04AM (#10581922)

That's a very polite way to deal with the problem.

I've seen first hand that most people bend easily. A very charismatic leader can do a lot of harm.

I'm a firm believer in anti-hate-speech laws.

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Re:VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris ... by venomsnake on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @11:31AM (#10582126)

>I'm a firm believer in anti-hate-speech laws.

And I am firm believer of benevolent dictatorship. The main problems comes with the inheritance - how can we ensure the next is also benevolent?

Same is with speech - we cannot project into the future how laws banning (especially widely defined as the lawmaker bodies love to do them) categories of speech will be abused - so it is better safe to not have them at all.

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Re:VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris ... by jacquesm on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @01:23PM (#10582959)

No need to wait that long, usually the benevolent dictator of today is the tyrant of tomorrow.

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Re:VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris ... by lmm on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @11:17AM (#10582014)

Fair enough, but in that case you're not really a supporter of free speech. If you believe in outlawing certain kinds of harmful speech, why not other kinds of harmful speech?

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Re:VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris ... by oblio on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @06:52PM (#10584893)

That's a false dichotomy. Freedom is not absolute, it's already limited through various laws.

Why should speech be absolutely free when I am not absolutely free?

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