Re: Imprisoning academics, in the West.

On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 19:21:27 GMT,
Perplexed in Peoria <jimmenegay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"snex" <snex@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1175018566.677913.168420@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Mar 27, 4:17 am, j.wilki...@xxxxxxxxx (John Wilkins) wrote:
hy <positiveio...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
A long time ago, if you didn't believe the earth was flat, you'd
suffer for such beliefs, as Galileo Galilei discovered when he
proclaimed the earth was indeed round. At the time, the government
insisted that you believe the earth was flat, and punished Galileo for
his differing beliefs.

False in the first paragraph entirely. The earth was known to be roundin
Greek times and all but a few know-nothings (Lactantius and Cosmo
Indocopleustes, for instance) knew it, through the middle ages. The myth
that before Columbus or Galileo people thought the earth was flat is due
to the ignorant book by Washington Irving on Columbus.
...

[Snip anti-Holocaust stuff. I think it is wrong to prosecute people for
their views unless those views incite violence. These usually do.]

how does the belief that 6 million jews were not killed by nazi
germany incite violence? id really like to hear the cause-effect chain
on this one!

You are asking for an explanation of a cause-effect chain, many of whose
links run through the rather odd mental mechanisms of some very odd people.
I believe that Wilkins is unwisely jumping from empirical correlation to
a hypothesis of causation. The causation might run the other way.

However, if there is a link, it might run like this: "If there was no
holocaust, then why is the lie that the holocaust happened so prevalent?
It must be a conspiracy to suppress the Truth(TM). What a monstrous
conspiracy! We must do something about it!"

Nonetheless, I think that laws against holocaust denial, which do exist
in countries with a Nazi history, are probably a bad idea today. I am
surprised that the OP seems to think that such laws exist in Australia.
Do they?

I am generally against anything that denies freedom of expression, but I
can understand in Austria and Germany, where there is a rather special
history behind all of this, why Holocaust denial laws are in place. I'm
still not convinced that forcing these loons to go underground really
does help, and from what I see in Germany, most of the neo-Nazis pretty
much ignore the laws anyways.

--
Aaron Clausen
mightymartianca@xxxxxxxxx

.

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