Religion, Atheism, Moral, Politic, PR and all that mess | 533 comments (533 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: context matters, sticking to facts, too (none / 1)

Good. The essence of this thread. Why did we need so many words?

by Katrin on Tue Sep 4th, 2012 at 06:43:49 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: context matters, sticking to facts, too (none / 1)

Because neither you nor melo has as yet articulated a legal standard by which Pussy Riot's video (or the Muhammad cartoons) are criminal, but selling a t-shirt with religion is the opiate of the people on it could not be credibly argued to be legal.

Unless you want courts of law to judge artistic or literary merit. Which is about the dumbest legal proposal I've heard since the last revision of the Danish terrorist law.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Sep 4th, 2012 at 07:05:28 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: context matters, sticking to facts, too (none / 0)

i guess it would have to be hammered out in court, where that line be drawn.

how many trampled to death in unfiery thetres did it take before we realised absolute anything is bad news?

straw man, yes, but so is the opiate tshirt lol.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Tue Sep 4th, 2012 at 08:55:27 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: context matters, sticking to facts, too (none / 1)

No, the opiate t-shirt is based on long experience with American fundagelicals - this is one of the Marxian adages that they go totally apeshit over.

(It's also a severely contextectomized Marxian adage, but that seems to be standard practice for religious outrage.)

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Sep 4th, 2012 at 08:58:39 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: context matters, sticking to facts, too (4.00 / 3)

Oh no. Do you really believe that it was ever legal to shout fire in a nonfiery theatre? The quote is from Justice Holmes' awful ruling against someone who was campaigning against the draft in WW1, which he compared to shouting fire in a theatre. To be fair to Holmes, he spent much of the rest of his career making up for this verdict (which was unanimous anyway), but whenever I hear someone use this quote, my instinctive reaction is to think him a hypocrite.

by gk (gk (gk quattro due due sette @gmail.com)) on Tue Sep 4th, 2012 at 09:02:32 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: context matters, sticking to facts, too (none / 0)

The line between the two is difficult to hit, that's why. But it's there, because it is two different concepts.

by Katrin on Tue Sep 4th, 2012 at 09:39:59 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Who gets to decide? (none / 0)

The loudest bigot? The most extremist bigot? The millionth most extremist bigot? The most violence-prone bigot (as you have suggested elsewhere)? A comparison to the standard set by an impartial (and therefore, by definition, secular) observer?

I'm fine with laws that create edge cases. I'm not fine with laws that allow the most hateful bigots in society to impose their views on the rest of us.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Sep 4th, 2012 at 09:46:38 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Who gets to decide? (none / 0)

I don't think there is a danger of that. What should make them so influential?

by Katrin on Tue Sep 4th, 2012 at 03:44:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Who gets to decide? (none / 0)

A law empowering people to demand prosecution based on nothing more than wounded pride would do that. Maybe not the single most intolerant bigot. But certainly the millionth most intolerant bigot.

Which is still way the Hell and gone over on the wrong side of the bell curve.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Sep 4th, 2012 at 03:50:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: context matters, sticking to facts, too (none / 0)

so many words?

that's how ET rolls!

because these issues are nothing if not nuanced, and we have been puzzling, litigating and warring over them for millennia, so 500 comments is another tiny dent.
what's fascinating about this thread is how articulately -and passionately- the arguments are being re-laid out, on all sides.

discordant? sure...

but anthropologically riveting.

:)

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Tue Sep 4th, 2012 at 08:50:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Religion, Atheism, Moral, Politic, PR and all that mess | 533 comments (533 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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