Re: Fairness Doctrine -- yes or no?

BTR1701 wrote:
On Jul 16, 7:00 pm, BTR1701 <btr1...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <1184528475.944603.170...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,


Take libel, for example. One could be prosecuted
for it

One cannot be prosecuted for libel. One can be sued civilly for libel but
one can't be put in jail for it.

--- Prosecuted, sued, same thing. They still end up in court, pay the
penalty if found guilty and also have to get ripped off by lawyers in
the process.


because I guess one can say it's a form of
hate speech.

One could say it but one would be wrong. There's nothing necessarily
hateful about a libelous statement.

--- Often when one is libelous, one has an ax to grind against whom
he's being libelous. To have an ax to grind against someone is to
have a certain dislike, or even hatred, of that someone, otherwise why
libel? According to the Associate Press's definition of libel:

Libel is the publication of writing, pictures or cartoons that expose
a person to public hatred, shame, disgrace, or ridicule, or induce an
ill opinion of a person, and are not true.

Nowhere in America is hate an element of proving a libel case. And even
so, libel law doesn't prohibit people from speaking or censor any kind of
speech, it just says if you say these things and cause financial injury
to someone, you'll be responsible for it, just as if you do anything
else that you're free to do and is not against law that causes another
person financial injury.

--- But that in itself restricts free speech. Free speech, to be
truly free and a form of anarchy as you would like it, would have to
come with no threat of punishment for saying what you want, whatever
it may be. The fact that there are libel laws is a way of restricting
true free speech for most people, certainly 99.99% of the population
at the very least. That's been my point all along. There is no true
free speech without threat of punishment, there is only defined free
speech in order to avoid a threat of punishment.


If the government hadn't fallen asleep
in the lead-up to 9/11, there never
would've been a 9/11, sparing 3,000 lives

How do you know? You seem real confident
with these categorical statements of fact
that (without being psychic) you couldn't
possibly know. The British government wasn't
asleep on 7-7 and they still got hit. The
Spanish government wasn't asleep and they
still got hit. The Russian government wasn't
asleep and they lost an entire school full
of children in Beslan. Terrorism happens.
The only way to stop it is to turn the
entire nation into a police-state.

--- Here, get some real news from these videos
you can watch on line produced by the CBC.

http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/lies/

That's all about what "led to the Iraq war", not the government being
asleep regarding 9-11 or any other of the various atrocities committed
around the globe.

--- That video is actually a summation and update of a half-dozen
previous documentaries the network aired [links to each on the left
sidebar]. The earlier programs would have what you're looking for. I
recommend The Unauthorized Biography of *** Cheney as one of the must-
sees. It's a real hoot. Here's the direct link for that one:
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/dickcheney/ascent.html

--- It's not about penalizing bad thoughts. It's
about not threatening the safety and security of
people with those bad thoughts.

Um... no. Merely offending someone is not threatening their safety and
security. Yet that's the standard in places like Britain and (apparently)
Canada. No one could legitimately and honestly claim that the billboard
with bible quotes on it actually threatened their safety and security.
They just didn't like it. They were offended by it. And that's all it
took for the government's full weight and power to drop on that guy like
a ton of bricks.

--- Yeah, nipping it in the bud - before the whole neighborhood would
start to get crazy by others putting up their own little billboards
of Koran quotes and Satanic Bible quotes and Howard Stern quotes and
so on and so on. We've got to keep the landscape free of that kind of
visual pollution.

People have been criminally fined in the U.K. for telling "insensitive"
jokes. I recall one news story about a man who was fined for imitating
the Apu character from "The Simpsons" while dining over a meal in a
restaurant. It was deemed that his imitation was an Indian racial
stereotype and might offend those around him. So he got a criminal fine
for that.

--- There's got to be more to the story than that. If there's any
truth to it, I'd be very surprised. That would clearly be a case of
free speech definition gone awry. I'd sue.


"I have an A-bomb [shows his A-bomb] and I'm going
to blow up this city right now!" What are you going
to do, wait for him to actually do it?

Um... no. In that situation his actions (possessing and arming a nuclear
device) would be more than enough to warrant deadly force. I'd kill him
on the spot. It wouldn't matter what he said. He could say, "I'm Bugs
Bunny! What's up, doc?" and the result would be the same. It's his
actions that matter, not his words.

--- But how would you know if it's really a nuclear device, even if
he claims it is? He's certainly not going to let you get anywhere
near it to inspect it, so what would justify the deadly force to get
him? The mere threat he uttered that he has such a device? But he
has free speech to say what he pleases, no? See the dilemma you now
find yourself in?


Some total stranger comes up to you and
decides to exercise his free speech by
telling you exactly how he's going to rip
your wife to shreds. You're just going to
stand there, laugh it off and have a beer
with him?

No, if he tries to do it, I'll kill him. Simple as that.

You're going to call the cops, first thing

Probably not. I'd call my wife, first thing (assuming she was not
present) and tell her to lock the doors and load the gun. And if she was
present, then I'd draw my own gun and make sure the guy never laid a
finger on her.

--- While that may be commendable, you'd also be going against not
only his right to free speech but also against the law itself. And
you call yourself an upholder of the law? What's the difference
between that guy threatening your wife and some guy with anti-gay
bible quotes fomenting intolerance towards a segment of society? Why,
in your view, is the bible quoter's speech okay and not deserving of
punishment and the wife-threatening creep's speech not okay and very
much deserving of punishment? I thought you believed in the anarchy
of free speech. Well, he's being as much of an anarchist with his
free speech as he can be and you're ready to put a stop to it. A bit
of hypocrisy there, methinks.

If someone publically proclaims his intent
to use a dirty bomb he possesses on your city,
you're just going to sit back and respond
"Yeah, well, prove it"

No, I would investigate him to determine if he's
taken any affirmative steps to put that plan
into motion and/or if he currently has the
capability to carry out that threat. If so,
then his *actions* will justify his arrest,
not his words.

--- He's already used the bomb before you could
even get up the next morning to begin that
investigation

In which case, punishing his words wouldn't have done me much good,
either, now would it?

--- But it would've saved a 100,000 lives. You're not seeing the big
picture here.


Free speech needs to protect itself
from abuses of it in order for free
speech to exist.

So we need to stop free speech in order
to save it? Orwell would have loved you.

--- You still keep using free speech in
universal and absolute terms, which is
indefensible.

And yet I'm defending it. Weird, huh?

--- Your defense comes with no defense.
That's what's indefensible about it. In
order to have a defense, you need a definition
of what you're defending.

I've defined it; you just don't like what it is.

--- If that's a definition, it's one you don't even abide by, seeing
as how you're ready to pump a couple of dozen bullets into that creep
who has expressed a clear intent to threaten your wife's life.


Let's see how far you get in court when you
claim that your defense is that you believe
in free speech for the sake of free speech

Which I've never actually said. I said don't believe it's the
government's place to be regulating the content of speech, declaring
some of it good and some of it bad according to its whims.

--- What you said is you like anarchy for free speech, and that
amounts to free speech for the sake of it.


If the FBI had been interested in doing its job,
and listened to its field agents ringing alarm
bells about individuals whose ACTIONS (not words)
were suspicious, that would have been a much more
effective way of stopping the subsequent attack
from going through.

--- Even in that way it wouldn't've been as simple
as you make it out to be. Check the link, enlighten
yourself.

I don't need to check your links. I've seen all the actual documents and
talked to many of the people involved. I doubt the CBC has anything new
to tell me. And it's been my experience that the media rarely gets
anything right. I can't count the number of times I've attended an
event, only to watch the media coverage of it later and wonder what the
hell they were doing. The "facts" reported and the commentary often bear
very little resemblance to what actually happened. I'm deeply skeptical
of the media, even more so than the government, and that's saying
something.

--- You've seen ALL the actual documents? Each and every one of
them? Including the OSP ones? Including the ones that Bush and
Cheney refuse to disclose to the House and Senate? Interesting. And
when it comes to media coverage, I'll agree with you there if you're
talking about American media coverage, which has been woefully absent
of any incisiveness in their investigations. Only PBS has come
closest to lifting the lid off a few things, but after seeing the CBC
documentaries, those were only partially lifted lids at best. Unlike
PBS, CBC has no American government to answer to so obviously it's
freer to delve into greater revelations. A bit of irony there, no?
Canada being freer in its speech on its public broadcast network than
the U.S. on theirs?


And what's with all those cop car chase videos
you see on the tube all the time? Doesn't seem
like they bothered to check their little radar
gun when they could clearly see some nut hurtling
down the road at a 150 mph and get all the other
cops to join in on the chase.

They're chasing those guys because they failed to stop when the cops
tried to pull them over after they clocked them with their radar guns
and took off instead. And when the cops finally catch them, they don't
get speeding tickets; they get arrested for felony evading. That seems
brutally obvious to me. Not sure why it escapes you.

--- No, these are clearly videos of cops who are suddenly met with a
speeding vehicle before they can even pull out any radar gun. In
fact, while in Houston once, I had made a brief stop to get a coffee
one afternoon, and just as I had stepped out of the restaurant, I saw
a car suddenly screech out of the parking lot for apparently no reason
that I could see, with 2 guys in it, and just take off down the road
in pretty reckless fashion. Maybe they were just joy riders, I don't
know, but as timing would have it, they turned onto the street right
in front a cop car that was just cruising by in the opposite
direction. You could tell that these guys probably didn't expect to
see that cop car because it looks like they just panicked and floored
the gas right away. And you know what? No cop stopped to get out of
his car and pull out a radar gun to clock them first before chasing
the car, there wasn't going to be any wasting time for that kind of
nonsense because it was pretty clear and obvious to anyone looking
that the guys were speeding rather unnecessarily and breaking the law
on those grounds alone. Never found out what happened to that chase,
there didn't seem to be anything on the news later that day, or maybe
I just didn't catch the right channel.


--- And who do you hate, or
would love to hate in public that
you think you'd like to ruffle
people's feathers with the wrong
way?

Why is that relevant in the slightest?
In fact, why do you assume that just
because I'm arguing in favor of free
speech, that means I must hate someone
or something?

--- Because in your free speech world,
the people that would inhabit it would be
allowed to hate because you would allow
for anarchy.

Yes, in a free society people can hate
whomever they like. I can't believe you're
seriously suggesting the government should
be allowed to engage in some kind of thought
control (how it would actually work is beyond
me) which would prevent people from feeling
certain emotions-- and that if the government
*could* do something like that, you apparently
think that would be a wonderful thing.

--- Sure you can hate anyone you want. As long
as you keep it to yourself

That's not what you said. You said, "...the
people that would inhabit it would be allowed
to hate because you would allow for anarchy." That
means that in *your* ideal world, the government
would be free to control the thoughts and emotions
of the citizens, prohibiting them from feeling certain
things and thinking certain thoughts-- like hate.

--- No, my ideal world would be run by the government
of Canada.

Damn. You really have drunk the Kool-Aid, haven't ya? I hate to break it
to you but Canada is not a perfect utopia. It's not even a real country,
anyway.

--- It's not? You mean my passport is useless? Yeah, so Canada is a
federation. The U.S. is a republic. Same difference, more or less,
except for the political system. Can't beat the parliamentary one,
it's a harder one for politicians to try to hide behind.


--- Actually, free speech didn't solve the Klan
problem. It was the huge lawsuits in the 80s that
considerably weakened them, bankrupting some chapters.

Which enraged the individual members and drove them underground where
they seethed and plotted in private. That's how you get guys like Tim
McVeigh.

--- There'll always be guys like McVeigh, Klan or not, and especially
if you allow an environment for it.

Which is really a sly way of curtailing free hate
speech when you think about it. So there are ways
to put a stop to it in the States, after all.

Apparently not since the Klanners and the American Nazis and the New
Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam are still having their rallies
and making their speeches to this very day.

--- Well, Canada put a stop to that lunacy a long time ago. It also
has an anti-gang law. The U.S. should get one of those, I hear it's
got big problems now with that MS-13 crowd.


Didn't Bush steal the 2000 election and not be
granted it by the citizens?

Nope. That's a Michael Moore fantasy.

--- Nope. If Bush didn't steal it, then the Supreme Court certainly
did it for him. Citizens were left entirely out in the cold in 2000,
had no real say in the matter.


The closest the original Constitution
mentions any kind of freedom is the single
use of liberty in "secure the blessings
of liberty to ourselves". And it's not even
securing "liberty" either, but the "blessings"
of liberty. Meaning that liberty can be a
curse just as much as a blessing. Meaning if
liberty is a curse, it doesn't exactly fall
under the protection of the Constitution.
Some guy calling for your death across the
street from your house is a curse of liberty,
; > > so therefore he's not protected.

That's got to be the most bizarre take on the
Constitution I've ever seen. I'd love to see
Jefferson's reaction to your "liberty is a curse"
theory or that there's some qualitative difference
between freedom and liberty.

--- If they wanted to mention liberty, they
would've just mentioned liberty. There's absolutely
no reason or purpose to adding "blessings" to
the text.

First, the preamble has no legal effect so arguing about this is silly.
The preamble was a way for the authors to express their purpose while
waxing philosophical and as such they used words more to inspire than
for legal persuasion. Even so, assuming that use of "blessing" also
implies a converse is an assumption without merit. Something may be a
blessing without also necessarily being a curse.

--- To everything there is an opposite - the ying and yang law of the
universe.

.

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