It's easy to support free speech for things you like. The real test is whether you're able to support it for things you absolutely detest.

Yes, but the fact I don't like something doesn't necessarily mean it's constitutionally protected free speech. Every country in the world imposes limits on speech, because not all speech is harmless. If speech were powerless, it wouldn't be protected in the first place.

My point is that it has nothing to do with "sympathy." If you think it's harmful, that's a whole other thing.

It doesn't matter — a country which punishes such speech is not free.

It was in bad taste, but bad taste is not a crime. What is a crime is using violence to take $42,000 from someone merely for saying words.

Why is a fine violent, but repeated deliberate public humiliation not?

> Why is a fine violent, but repeated deliberate public humiliation not?

A fine is enforced with the threat of violence. Knowing that someone somewhere is laughing at one is not, in fact, violence.

It takes two to humiliate: one to mock, and one to accept the mockery.

In my opinion, bad taste joke would go along the lines "Disabled kid enters a pub and...". But he targeted one specific kid, so apart from being it a joke, it could also be an insult or other offense. (I am not lawyer, though).

Should governments be punishing insulting or giving offense? That's a very scary prospect in my mind.

Could we even have meaningful political dialog if, for example, it was illegal to intentionally offend Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?

The idea of a right to not be insulted has scary implications.

> Could we even have meaningful political dialog if, for example, it was illegal to intentionally offend Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?

That's actually exactly what Citizens United was about … a group of people were trying to show a film critical of Mrs. Clinton, and the federal government attempted to punish them for it. That's why there was a big push in 2014 to repeal the First Amendment: politicians wanted to make it illegal to oppose politicians.

A line has to be drawn. There is no right to not be insulted per se, but persistent abuse and harassment of an individual cannot be allowed.

> Should governments be punishing insulting or giving offense? That's a very scary prospect in my mind

Luckily they're not doing that. They're waiting for the offence to cause harm, and then they step in.

You think insults should be illegal?

No, no, although there might be claims for intentional or negligent infliction of emotional distress. I actually don't say the comedian should be punished like this, I only think the title is misleading, it is not about just "telling a joke".

It was a tasteless joke. And a governments committing disproportionate violence over it is overkill.

(To save us the argument, if it's violence when I do it, it's violence when the government does it too. If I take your money, lock you up in a cage, or kill you, these are all violent.)

Why is taking money violent? We don't have debtors prisons in the developed world; people who are fined for something and can't pay, just don't pay. Fines, like (most) taxes, are meant to be disincentives, not punishments.

Just not paying a fine is not an option for most of us. If you don't pay the fine (that you have the means to pay) and take steps to prevent the government from collecting, then the next step is jail.

How is the “comedian”'s repeated public humiliation of a specific disabled kid less violent than him being fined $42k?

You don't have to find it funny. That doesn't make it not a joke.

Maybe it is a “joke”. So? Absolutely any statement, no matter how provocative or hateful, can be excused on that pretense.

So that begs the question: should “jokes” be protected? Why?

> Absolutely any statement, no matter how provocative or hateful, can be excused on that pretense.

Yes, that's kinda the point of free speech: the State doesn't get to send men with guns and truncheons to silence people who are merely saying things.

> So that begs the question: should “jokes” be protected? Why?

Because they're expressions of ideas, i.e. speech.

Jerry Seinfeld often speaks of why offensive jokes are needed even though many people may not like them.

In the end professional comedians are artists and art can offend.

Jerry is more eloquent than I am he can explain it better he often does on his show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

Because it's speech and speech is--or should be--protected.

Hard to have sympathy yes-- but freedom of speech/expression is still freedom of speech. Regardless of how tasteless it is, and should be protected..

No country in the world has absolute freedom of speech, and with good reason: speech can be harmful. Indeed it is precisely because speech can be powerful that it is protected in the first place.

Is this where to draw the line? I'm not sure, but it is not the case that absolutely any “joke” is costitutionally protected free speech.

The fundamental problem with the government drawing any line is that you can't have free speech under those circumstances. Is advocating for Communism harmful to Capitalism? Is advocating for the rights of women to abort their babies harmful to the fetuses? What about touting the benefits of Schedule I drugs? Surely that can be seen as harmful to the public health.

It doesn't matter what you or I think about the examples I gave above. It only matters what the government thinks. And if they think any or all of those are harmful concepts, then by using your reasoning any speech invoking those concepts would be controlled by the government.

That's simply untenable as far as I'm concerned. The only way to ensure the government doesn't have that kind of power over words, is to allow any and all ideas to be expressed. It's impossible to draw lines on which ideas are allowed to be expressed and those that aren't, without running into this hazard.

Those are all abstract speech and therefore are usually legal everywhere. (They might be "treason" in some places, but that's separate from the issue of whether they're harmful. Treasonous speech is whatever speech a government doesn't like, whereas "non-protected" speech is the set of things its citizens don't care to defend you for saying.)

The thing Canada mostly considers illegal is saying something like "hey everybody, you should hate/kill X because they're {Native American, gay, old, disabled, etc.}!" with a specific X that people might then go and kill.

It's not even that we don't want to protect that speech as speech; it just seems to lead directly to hate crimes being committed a non-negligible proportion of the time. So we make hate speech itself illegal, to try to stop the hate crimes early.

> The fundamental problem with the government drawing any line is that you can't have free speech under those circumstances. Is advocating for Communism harmful to Capitalism? Is advocating for the rights of women to abort their babies harmful to the fetuses? What about touting the benefits of Schedule I drugs? Surely that can be seen as harmful to the public health.

These are complicated questions. But this is what case law exists for. The US, for example, allows one to speak of revolutions “in broad terms”.

> That's simply untenable as far as I'm concerned. The only way to ensure the government doesn't have that kind of power over words, is to allow any and all ideas to be expressed.

Allowing absolute freedom of speech is self-defeating. Yes, now the government can't hurt you, but your opponents can use their “free speech” to silence you. It's not healthy for a democracy, and this is why no country on earth has absolute freedom of speech.

> Yes, now the government can't hurt you, but your opponents can use their “free speech” to silence you.

I'm interested in some examples of this. At first blush this statement reads to me as a "marketplace of ideas", which is a feature in my opinion. But I could be interpreting your statement wrong.

They can publish your location and tell vigilantes to go to your house and beat you up.

That's speech.

In civilized countries governments do not draw the line.

The legislature and the judiciary do.

A legislature or a judiciary are still the government. I use the term to refer to the whole mechanism, not just an executive.

Regardless of where they derive their power from (democracy, monarchy, whatever). Constitutions exist to provide limits on even the power of the current majority to change fundamental aspects of governance. The U.S. Constitution for example, requires a very high bar before alterations can be made, precisely to avoid even democratically-elected representatives from making changes, even where those changes would enjoy popular support.

I agree that the fine is ridiculously large, but the US concept of almost total freedom of speech is unique to the US. And even in the US there are large groups of people who think freedom of speech doesn't apply to hate speech.

And it's hard to say anything about this joke without actually hearing it. Maybe the comedian has some useful funny things to say about Treacher Collins syndrome?

Unlike the United States Canadian freedom of speech isn't nearly as absolute. As an example hate speech isn't protected (unclear if his bit is / might be considered that).

lol. I'd love to see your reaction to some real dark comedy like The League of Gentlemen.

I'd love to see you point out where League of Gentlemen "punch down" to single out an individual child with a profound condition like Treacher Collins Syndrome.