(mmmm...potatoes...)
Sorry.
Speech becomes "intolerant", "bigotted" or "hurtful" depending on who says it. Watch.
Homosexuality is immoral.
Say that outloud and see how many angry letters (or letter-bombs), protests and bricks through your window you get.
Change the philosophy.
Catholicism is immoral.
Now it's okay (unless the president of a Catholic focus group writes a letter to the editor which will either be promptly ignored or misquoted).
Islam is immoral.
Burn, baby, burn (said outside a Danish consulate only).
Being Chinese is immoral.
That's okay because Chinese people don't have feelings the way you and I do. Say it enough and it makes it easier to trade with a dictatorship and ignore the slave labour, shocking abuses of human rights and the underhanded way in which they support other dictatorships as cruel and elusive as they are.
Of course, no one has the absolute right to free speech. You can't scream out "fire" when there is no fire but you also can't say homosexuality violates the precepts of your religion, either. Why don't people just be honest and say: "You can say whatever you like as long I like what you have to say." While we're being honest, that is, but that would make us hypocrites and you can't drive to Vancouver to discover yourself in an SUV with a "Free Tibet" bumper sticker or backpack through India with a Canadian flag on your backpack (because everyone in India loves you and has completely forgotten how your government screwed over its citizens and yours in the Air India Flight 182 case).
Everyone wants to speak their mind, or what little mind they have, and have the last word. I suppose its an inherent need to survive in a dog-eat-dog world. But freedom of speech becomes a ridiculous sentiment given that the same people who clamour for it are also the same people who will whip around like a cobra and cry "hate speech!" whenever they hear something they don't like. It's immaterial if the comment is factual or rooted in a centuries' old culture or religion (it does become material, oddly enough, if the comment is so absurd and rootless that that word absurd actually jumps out of the dictionary and slaps the face of the offending commentator, demanding a quarter every time they say something stupid).
It becomes equally sad when any kind of speech is allowed under the assumption (insert own joke here) that whoever hears the opinion being expressed can discern truth from fiction (The Da Vinci Crap is a timely example of this). If that were so, then any twit denying the Holocaust should be able to continue denying it and everyone around would shake their heads in disbelief that someone would deny an historical fact and say something so atrocious. But given that only one in three Canadians can pinpoint the principle victims of the Holocaust (that being Jews), Holocaust denial becomes dangerous and inflammatory. Is it the fault of parents and educators that something like that should occur? I think so. Look what I just did! I expressed a dangerous and educated opinion. Let the denial and finger-pointing begin!
People won't admit outloud they have an opposition to free speech because it makes them seem out-of-step with the times but in reality such opposition already exists. No one will come clean.
Let's see how long it takes for this post to be taken out-of-context, misquoted or blasted (if read at all).
4 comments:
Born again bigot, GO AWAY!(I'm getting bad vibes from you).
A while back the pro-gay meovement was trying to get making anti-gay statements defined as "a hate crime" and passed as law. I don't think anything ever came of this twisted agenda but the fact that they tried was scary enough. Basically they wanted ANYTHING derogatory about the gay lifestyle--such as "I don't believe homosexuality is natural"--to be considered "hate filled". They are so twisted, sister.
Anything anyone doesn't want to hear is hate speech. Everything done that is contrary to the wants of a special-interest group is a hate crime.
This is what happens when common sense is forced into early retirement.
Great comments,everyone.
I have a story about that. One time when I was working as a CNA we were having a hard time with the temp CNAs that were being sent in from agencies to fill our staffing shortage. They just didn't follow rules, didn't want to work, wouldn't listen to anyone. They were more hindrance than help. Totally lazy and rude. I was having an argument with one of them in the presence of a nurse supervisor who was making an effort to listen yet she was really ineffective. She wasn't doing ANYTHING to help resolve the problem. Finally I said "I've had it with these people!" Of course, "these people" referred to the lazy-ass temp CNAs, as was evident by the rest of the conversation. Suddenly the ineffective, useless nurse supervisor says to me "You need to watch what you say." Of course I had no idea what she was talking about. It was so bizarre. So I asked her, "Watch WHAT?" She said, "You just called them THOSE PEOPLE" and she gave me a look like "You KNOW what I mean". Here's the thing: all the lazy temp CNAs were foreigners and black...and so was the nurse supervisor. Suddenly two innocent words "these people" became a racial slur in the eyes of this woman because SHE was the same race as they were and I'm white. If all those people had been caucasian there wouldn't have been an issue of using the words "these people" because any idiot with two brain cells to rub together knows that the phrase "these people" refers to a group of persons. I was just completely taken aback that I was suddenly being accused of saying something dergatory about black foreigners by referring to lazy temp CNAs as "these people". That's how it is these days. The entire english language is being manipulated to suit the agenda of people who believe that everyone outside their own race or lifestyle is out to get them. It's like the gentleman who holds the door for the lady in the wheelchair, only to have her scream at him, "I can do it myself! Handicapped people aren't helpless, YOU KNOW."
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