Nazis are having a rally in Arkansas

[laughing dog]

Because ultimately, there must be a decider. That's Jason's point. I know you got his point, but kept on keeping on. And on.

The discussion was specifically about Nazis not anyone with whom we may disagree. But feel free to continue to babble on.

Why did you parents name you "Titania"?

 

[ruby sparks]

Having people decide stuff is tyranny. I thought we'd established that in the thread already. Duh.

 

[bilby]

No, they just think you are fucking stupid for being so dedicated to an ideological principle that you allow people whose goal is to destroy your ideology, and even your life, the means to their end.

...

Indeed. And in a handful of cases - Nazis being one of those - this is perfectly justified by actual history in which millions of people died. Not some ideological principle achieved by navel gazing on the part of a bunch of old geezers a couple of centuries ago; Actual experience of mounds of corpses.

So you think the way to defeat them is to become them. That's why I don't support banning ideas. What Nietzsche wrote about fighting monsters and possibly becoming a monster wasn't "this is how to fight monsters", it was "be careful to not do this when fighting monsters."

If you really cannot see the difference between saying 'You will be fined if you persist in promoting Nazism', and rounding up people for extermination on the basis of their ethnicity or ideology, then I feel very sorry for you.

Limiting the freedom of people to be actual Nazis is not 'becoming them'. Only someone blinded by staring too long at the brilliance of his own navel could make such a dimwitted claim.

So you want to be the dictator. Understood.

Well clearly you have not 'understood', because I have no desire whatsoever to be a dictator. One would have to be incredibly foolish, or childishly naive, to think that banning Nazism was tantamount to dictatorship.

I find your comments as offensive as those of any Nazi or Communist, therefore you are bound by your own stated code to shut up about banning speech you don't like.

I don't advocate banning 'offensive' speech; I advocate banning the promotion of genocide. I don't advocate the killing of people who promote genocide. And I am not talking about banning speech 'I don't like'; I am talking about banning speech that has a demonstrated history of leading to millions of deaths.

You have a serious problem with black and white thinking, and seem utterly wedded to your false dichotomy fallacy. If you genuinely cannot tell the difference between saying "The Jews must be killed" and saying "People should not be allowed to call for genocide", then I pity you.

Reality is not even close to being as neat, orderly, and easy to understand as you pretend it to be. Your childish understanding leads you to some truly awful conclusions, based on theoretical analysis that is contradicted by observed facts. The holocaust was a real event, caused by real Nazis. Allowing real Nazis to flourish un-checked in society on a point of principle is utterly foolhardy. To suggest that preventing them from doing so is tantamount to dictatorship, is batshit insane.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Why is Arkansas pronounced "Arkansaw" isntead of "R-Kansas"?

I never understood that.

 

[bilby]

So you want to be the dictator. Understood.

I find your comments as offensive as those of any Nazi or Communist, therefore you are bound by your own stated code to shut up about banning speech you don't like.

There is no evidence that bilby has a documented history of espousing or engaging in genocide or mass murder, so using blatantly stupid analogy is not an effective strategy for a convincing argument.

Hang on. Who made you the decider? The decider gets to decide what speech is government approved and which is not. Watch out, buddy.

A decision doesn't imply a (dictatorial) decider.

The 'decider' who banned Nazism in Germany was the German people, as represented by their parliament. No one person made that call; It was agreed by the people, on the basis of a clear and demonstrated harm caused by allowing Nazis in the past.

Kinder surprise eggs are banned in the USA. But not Nazis, because banning Nazis would be government overreach. That's fucked up beyond belief.

No society has total and complete freedom. Americans like to talk as though they did; But they don't. The only question is what gets banned. I agree that banning speech should be reserved for the specifically dangerous instances of speech. Shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre, or saying "We need to round up all the homosexuals and kill them", for example.

You (I believe) agree with me in principle - your only disagreement is in the details. Which are necessarily arbitrary. But which you are pretending are objective and absolute.

Americans and Europeans have freedom of speech, with (in BOTH cases) some limitations based on historical concerns for the deadly results of certain types of speech. Shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre has a FAR lower potential death toll than advocating a National Socialist Reich as a homeland for pure Aryan racial stock, free of Jews and other untermenschen. That the Americans fail to recognize this is a failure of imagination, caused by their isolation from the defining conflict of the twentieth century.