When does free speech cross the line?

[Jules]

I wanted to start a thought povoking thread,to get to know each other and the countries we are from.

I heard a radio program tonight on the tongue, and free speech. They talked about how the tongue is untamable and how it can cut a persons spirit like a two edged sword. The Bible says the tongue is like a spark that can burn a forest.
It got me thinking about "Free Speech" around the world, the United States
first amendment, and this forum of conversations, debates, thoughts, opinions, beliefs and topics of interest between people of many walks of life and culture. Some countries free speech is unthinkable unless you want to die for it.
Here we are all busy getting to know each other. We are all different, but with one thing in common; we are all fans of Mr. Steven Seagal.
This forum is a everyday display of free speech. Many times here I have seen individuals hurt others, and sometimes I have seen people get hurt. I know, I have some burn marks myself.
I thought this would make a good thought provoking thread where we all could give input and info about where they are from and free speech in general. I think "we" (I included) need to think about our free speech and how it effects others. My personal intention when I get on this website is to behave like Jesus would have me to. I pray many times before I get on here that I will not say something that will hurt someone. Many times I ask God for the words to say in sensitive issues. I ask God to help keep me from losing my temper because anything we say we can not take back. It is out there forever. We can say we are sorry, but usually the damage is done.
The radio show tonight even mentioned three points to keep in mind before speaking:
WAS IT?:
1) True
2) Nice
3) Nessesary

Also, I was wondering what kind of free speech do you have in your country. In the United States there are people everyday who are denied their free speech if it is against public opinion on controversial issues. Example: Kids are told they can not talk about God in school because of "Seperation of Church and State;" which is not even in the Constitution. The "Seperation of Curch and State" is actually a letter written by Thomas Jefferson about keeping government out of the churches and out of every aspect of our lives. Our founding fathers put the government together in such a way in hopes that all parts would have to work together and not one part would get more powerful than another part. Checks and balances.
I would love to hear your input on free speech generally and conversationally. If you think this thread is stupid, ignore it and it will be on page five in a few days.

 

[Amos Stevens]

Just this morning I was reading about the 4 freedoms & feeling that we have about lost them in our world today!
Telling people what words you can say-telling people which way you're suppose to believe.....

 

[kickingbird]

Nice thread Julie ... here's a thought:
If there is separation between church and state, how come Bush admin. is so intent to block stem cell research (for religious reason)? if religion isn't supposed to be the vanguard of politics/state?
For more info on stem cell research, visit the Christopher Reeve Foundation.

 

[DoHuhJooSay]

I have to say that being able to stress my opinion on subjects that are near and dear to me is very important. I am very honored to have that right.
Freedom of Speech opens a wide gap, and therefore bad things will always be said.
In truth, I believe anyone with heart and conscience doesn't have freedom of speech because our feelings and emotions will beat us up for somethings we do say. You know those moments, we've all had them..."Did I say that? Oh my goodness, I would give anything to take that back."
There is a line in Freedom of Speech as well as every single thing else. Some of us choose to see the line while others are oblivious and scuff there feet on it as they're walking right on past.

 

[TDWoj]

I recall reading an essay by Pierre Berton about the difference between what Canada has and what the US has, and the terms used to describe them.

The US has "liberty"; Canada has "freedom".

The difference between the two is slight, but telling: "liberty" implies permission must be sought from a higher authority for freedoms in the society, while "freedom" is the full right of being a free society.

We have some issues of free speech here; namely, the language and literature of hatred, pornography, holocaust denial, and in Quebec, what language you are permitted to speak, or post signs in, if you have a business, for example.

In British Columbia, there was a big kerfuffle when Canada Customs kept seizing gay and lesbian literature being imported from the US. It's okay to publish it here; but just try importing it from elsewhere!

Free speech crosses the line when it becomes harmful. How to quantify "harm", and to whom it's being harmful, however, is an issue in and of itself.

We used to say The Lord's Prayer in class every morning. I remember my Jewish classmates were always excused during the Lord's Prayer, and no harm done. It was an accepted practice that a Jewish child would not have to remain in class during the Prayer. No one thought anything of it; it was normal.

However, eventually, I seem to recall it was one woman's crusade against it that banished it from the classroom of public schools. (I'm not sure if Catholic schools still have it, though). The issue was that SHE was an atheist, and she demanded that people follow her beliefs and remove religious elements from the public school system since, according to her, they had no place there. Amazingly, she won.

Free speech - the Toronto Sun is an ultra-right wing newspaper that daily prints headlines that are just this side of yellow journalism. They print stories that are factually compromised, at best, and always with the slant that if it ain't right wing, it's wrong. Yet, no one - not the government, against whom most of the factually incorrect stories are written, not the government individuals named in the stories, no one calls them on it. They are perfectly free to print whatever they want, regardless of accuracy. They wouldn't dare do that to a private citizen, though - the liklihood of getting sued is too great. But against the government, they can print whatever they want.

Free speech - I remember shortly after I left high school, there was looming on the horizon Bill C-54, which would have effectively banned certain pieces of literature from our schools forever. Romeo and Juliet (child pornography), The Merchant of Venice (anti-Semitic), and let's not even discuss Catcher in the Rye... taught out of context, such pieces of literature were deemed to be harmful to the social development of the student.

Mercifully, C-54 died a quiet death, and we've heard no more about it since.

I had also read that the Beatrix Potter books were going to be rewritten so that, for example, Peter Rabbit's father's unfortunate demise and ultimate fate in Mrs. MacGregor's pie would be excised so as not to frighten little children; and that all the descriptive language in it would also be rewritten so that children would not learn nonsense words like lippity-lippity-lop (I'm not sure if that's in there, but you know what I'm getting at).

I have an article from the Toronto Star of about 20 years ago, written by a woman who one day decided she wanted to share the books of her childhood with her daughter - but upon reading them as an adult, was horrified to discover, through her politically corrected adult eyes, that the books were totally unsuitable. Little Women was both anti-feminist (well, it was written circa Civil War!) and ultra-racist and cast the Negro people of the south in a very bad light (I've read and re-read that book from cover to cover and I still can't figure out what she was talking about - I assume it was the servant, Hannah, that got her all het up - but nowhere in the book does it explicitly say that Hannah was black), while the roles of women as good little wives was touted as the only life a woman could live (I guess she overlooked Jo March!). The Bobbsey Twins - well, she did have a point there. Dinah and her watermelon and fried chicken and her "yes, massah" speech were a bit much - but kids reading those books don't concentrate on those elements, they're more interested in the trouble the Bobbsey twins were always getting into. It's only us adults that get into an uproar over that sort of thing. Frankly, until this article pointed it out (and made me read one of my BTwins books again) I never even gave it a second thought - it was the adventures that I was interested in.

Free speech - I read in the Koran of how women do have rights equal to men - but if she gets uppity and speaks her mind, her husband or male relative is encouraged, nay, expected to beat her into submission. In'sha'Allah.

Free speech - well, my father made the mistake of thinking it was okay to shoot off his mouth against Hitler in Germany in 1939. Guess where he ended up....

I just saw a programme this evening about how certain comic books were banned in Canada for a very long time (true crime, for example, and horror comic books) as being a bad influence on the young'uns. Of course, that didn't stop the comic books from turning up. Information will always find its way to those who want it badly enough.

That's the trouble with information - it has a way of getting out, despite the best efforts of those who don't want it to. There are people for whom suppression of information is necessary to maintain their power base. And that goes back to the first civilisations - this is not a new phenomenon.

Michael Moore aside, the best book on free speech - free thought - I have ever read is Fahrenheit 451. A more light-hearted look at political correctness and the effect it has on free speech is a short story by Connie Willis called "Ado". As awful as the movie is, "Logan's Run" makes some interesting points on the subject, as well, as does THX 1138 (notice that these are all books and movies in the science fiction/speculative fiction genre). The sf genre is the safest place to discuss these ideas because sf has historically been a marginalised form of literature, usually associated with pimply lads and whose book covers in the early days tended towards the garish (alas, the days of buxom lasses in brass bras are gone, young fellow me lads!), and therefore, no one took the ideas contained therein very seriously.

And yet.... science fiction has often predicted the future with uncanny accuracy, because the writers were able to extrapolate the future from the past and the present of their day (well, sometimes they got the technology woefully wrong - but the societal aspects of the stories are frequently, frighteningly, dead on). And it was this ability to predict what direction society might take that makes some sf classics a chilling forecaster of the now not so far away future.

The effects of free speech and the suppression thereof tended, in sf stories, to come to a bad end, usually by revolution. In a sense, then, sf might be considered a subversive form of literature; it is certainly a literature of ideas, a fact overlooked even unto this day. Free speech, free thinking, freedom of expression all had parts to play in much classic sf, and kids reading it got an education in what freedom (and the loss of it) meant, even if it was peripheral to the brass bras of the tale.

-TD, thinking, wow, it's been ages since she's written an essay here

 

[joyful]

thank you td for this info... this is a very interesting essay...

we have that kind of newspaper, too. everyone knows that they are making up a lot of stories, but noone seems to care... and it´s still germany´s most read newspaper...
i used to attend a catholic school and we didn´t only say our prayers in the morning, but also at breakfast, before and after lunch and before we went home. we also had to attend the mass regularly...
but they are also not doing that anymore... while i was there, they only allowed catholics to attend this school, but that has changed, too... (i think for the better)
free speech and church can sometimes be a problem:
in addition to the catholic school i also lived in a catholic foster home. and when i started developing my own thoughts about religion, they weren´t happy to hear that...
when i said that i do believe in god, but not in church and that (for me) god is not a person, but in everything we do and everything there is, they were totally mad at me. they said that someone who thinks like that can not be a full member of any real community and will always be alone... (and at the same time they said that a personal opinion is one of the most important things in life... )
that´s when i decided to forget about free speech and to start thinking diplomatic until i have my own life...
free speech is a matter of definition: some people can accept other people´s opinion only as long as it´s their own, but they still claim to tolerate everything.
some people encourage their children to say what they think, but those children shouldn´t dare saying anything against their parents...

that´s where we come to the problem with free speech: "we are forced to be free" (i don´t remember who said that, but it struck me - sorry)
even if there´s noone around who´s telling you what to think, you still can´t always say what you would like to say. it´s a question of everyones moral picture and laws... those laws can be written or just be common sense. everytime we say something, we have to make a decision: whether it´s good or bad. and if it´s bad, if it´s also neccessary...

td- you are also right about the sf genre:
writers can say whatever they want, because they can always claim that it´s just fiction, but i think sometimes they are pretty serious about the message...
and they are really good at predicting the future... (in ways of society)
like george orwell with "1984". we are getting closer to that everyday...

ergo: as long as we stick to the rules, free speech is a beautiful gift.

 

[jhogan]

Nice thread Julie ... here's a thought:
If there is separation between church and state, how come Bush admin. is so intent to block stem cell research (for religious reason)? if religion isn't supposed to be the vanguard of politics/state?
For more info on stem cell research, visit the Christopher Reeve Foundation.

Bush has not BLOCKED research, he has limited the research. Guvmn't research IS going on.

 

[jhogan]

If anyone wants to see how much free speech is being restricted, all in an effort to be more "inclusive", see

http://www.tonguetied.us/

 

[tora]

You can refer that issue to me Dammit,you know it so well,this g*ddamn thing

 

[kickingbird]

Just want to clear one thing up - and that is what the Quran says about "beating women" ... these INTERPRETATIONS were and are made by males who were and are living in a tribal mentality. The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) tried to get the men of those times from beating their women - but of course some of them did not listen, nor do they listen now. He was strongly supportive of women's rights; again, the tribes didn't appreciate his teachings (He was, in fact, driven out). What we see in the world today in the fundamentalist society is simply tribal mentality. In the essence of the true teachings (which by the way were suppressed), women are encouraged to be modest and humble but they are NOT to be beaten or subjected to "honor" killings, or not allowed to drive cars, etc. ... all the BS that the tribes have carried into the 21st century. There were very strong, supportive women in the Prophet's family, and there have been many female saints - mainly the Sufi saints - Rabia being one. This is a case where the original, true teachings have been surpressed and overshadowed with incorrect interpritations.
Then there is Judgement Day - when those who inflicted pain, suffering and death upon others will they themselves receive that exact same pain and suffering and a million, million deaths over and over again. There really is justice, it just doesn't always happen in this world as we know it.
For more reading on women and Sufism and Islam: "Believing Women" by Asma Barlas; Rabia Basri: The Mystic and Her Fellow-Saints in Islam" by Margaret Smith; Quran and Women/Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective" by Amina Wadud. These types of literature deal directly with "free speech" of women and are more in tune with the original teachings and intent of the Quran. Reading the daily newspaper only gives one half a story, and a very propagandazed one at that.
peace

 

[TDWoj]

"Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because Allah has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them. Then if they obey you, take no further action against them. Allah is high, supreme."

I think the "beat them" part is pretty clear.

That passage is open to so much interpretation on the part of what men think constitutes "disobedience" that a woman has absolutely no chance to do anything at all if her "man" says she can't. And it isn't even an overt act of disobedience that gets them into trouble - it's the man's fear that disobedience is going to take place.

Essentially, they are being punished for something they haven't even done.

I didn't get this out of a newspaper, by the way. I got it out of my copy of the Qu'ran - Chapter 4, verse 34.

It's little wonder those who are not Muslims have such a strong reaction to the practices of Islam, especially that practiced by the fundamentalists. Fundamentalists in any religion are scary, though; ultra-conservatism is not limited just to Muslims.

Ultra-conservative fundamentalists abound in the world today much more than in the past 30 years because of fear. Things are changing faster than many social and cultural groups can handle. New ideas, new technologies are turning upside-down the most basic beliefs that have kept people in a status quo that is both comfortable and secure. Advances in gestational technology have opened all kinds of avenues that those who wrote religious tracts never dreamed of. Birth control, cloning, in-vitro fertilisation, surrogate motherhood, even the very definition of when life begins, is being wrangled over between the scientists, the social and legal systems, the religious sytems.

The safest place to be is the simplest one, one that has a specific set of rules to follow. The Qu'ran has a rule for every conceivable situation. So does the Talmud/old testament. Christianity, initially, kept it simple but then it got more complicated as more people got involved. Both the Qu'ran and the old testament exhort people to kill their enemies. The new testament (Christianity) offers a different approach - which was also terrifying to the existing social and cultural groups of the time!

This isn't a new phenomenon - but as technology gets more advanced, and we find more destructive ways of killing each other on a grand scale, the more likely it is that the pressure against socio-cultural development from fundamentalist/conservative groups will result in the end of civilisation as we know it, and the world will fall - is falling - into a new dark ages, where technological advances, and the pursuit knowledge will be snuffed out.

George W. Bush is one such, on one end of the spectrum; he's not only quashed stem-cell research for religious reasons, he's also chosen to shut down other areas of scientific research, not necessarily for religious reasons, but more for economic ones - so that he can keep the people of the United States in a constant state of fear from mysterious outside forces that are neither tangible nor specific - "the other, who is not us" - moving the money earmarked for scientific research and the search for knowledge into the military and advancements in military technology.

Osama bin Laden and Muslim fundamentalists are at the other end of the spectrum. Interestingly, their goals are the same - protection against "the other", in this case, the West - and therefore must be destroyed.

And on the one side, it is Christian fundamentalism as the driving force, on the other Muslim fundamentalism, and between them, the innocents who suscribe to neither view, as well as those who would take advantage of this mutual annihilation pact between these two extremes to further their own agenda.

-TD, who has NOT seen Fahrenheit 9/11 and has no desire to

 

[yudansha]

This is an interesting thread...

TD that was an interesting post ... that 'beating' reference reminded me of something.

Something I read awhile back...
Do you know where 'the rule of thumb' saying came from?
In the early days, men were allowed to beat their wives with sticks. It was not illegal, but there was a restriction on what the object to beat with was. It could be a stick, but no thicker (in diameter) than the man's thumb (that man's thumb who was doing the beating ... so the stick size varied and came 'the rule of thumb')...

Anyways, all this freedom of speech stuff is really not what it sounds like. In the U.S.S.R. citizens were allowed to speak their minds - anything they said was 'allowed' (not illegal - nothing) ... but ofcourse secretly punishable...

And all the political correctness is a bunch of B.S. ... My opinion anyways...

 

[Jalu]

Yes Yu...political correctness is BS...

There are only three kinds of speech not covered by the First Amendment (in the U.S.):

1)Defamatory falsehoods that destroy a person's reputation.
2)Threats against the life of the President.
3)Inciting an audience to illegal actions in circumstances where the audience is likely to carry out the action (inciting a riot).

Everything else is allowed.

 

[kickingbird]

In reference to the "beat them" interpretation ... it is woefully wrong. God never intended, nor does He intend, for anyone to beat anyone. I know what the passage "says"; however, as with all scriptures, it has been handed down by MEN, interpretated by men, and "enforced" (the religion police are very strong in Saudi Arabia) by men. Again, we are brought back to the dilemma - men are the ones who "say so", or who say "the Quran says so". Sufis believe that there is no difference between the genders in God's Eye - our souls are equal. It is the world that separates and creates differences. There are certain roles that each gender plays in the world; however, in the inner Heart of Human Beings, there are no roles nor gender. The Sufis recognize this Oneness. The first wife of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), Khadijah, was actually his first convert/disciple - she was by his side and encouraged him during his communion with God, and she is considered to be a humble and revered woman.
There are no beatings in the homes of true Human Beings.

 

[Hallarian]

I believe words such as "beat them " is actually additions made to Mohammad's words in the 200 years after he died. Church leaders rarely can fully accept the revolutionary writings of great men because it gives the common people and even women to much freedom. The same is even more true of Jesus. Many of his teachings were changed to fit what curch leaders wanted taught especially concerning the rights of ordinary people and women. Church leaders spent the next 1000 years trying to make kings subservient to them..

 

[Hallarian]

Freedom of speech is a hot issue of Tibetan refugees escaping the Chinese. A boy showed me that his hand had been chopped off when soldiers found he had a picturte of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He told me he would have lost his other hand and perhaps his head if they had found the little Tibetan flag he had hidden in a pocket. People told me Chinese and Tibetans keep lists of forbidden words handy to review because the penalty for saying something that is forbidden can be so severe.

 

[DoHuhJooSay]

WOW cool info Hallarian, Thanks.

 

[Jules]

That is a moral issue

Nice thread Julie ... here's a thought:
If there is separation between church and state, how come Bush admin. is so intent to block stem cell research (for religious reason)? if religion isn't supposed to be the vanguard of politics/state?
For more info on stem cell research, visit the Christopher Reeve Foundation.

It is funny that you should ask that. I just heard on the radio that stem cells from a fetus are not effective in lab tests but adult stem cells from fat deposits in the body are. President Bush is not blocking the research, just the killing of more unborn babies. Why kill the babies if their cells do not work? Just a thought.

 

[Jules]

Language issues?

You can refer that issue to me Dammit,you know it so well,this g*ddamn thing

Where is the bar of soap?

 

[Jules]

Politial correctness exists whether you believe it or not. I am not going to argue with you Jalu, I am not up to it right now. We are just going to have to respectfully disagree. Enough said.