As best I can tell, only knowing of them for 18 hours, is they are a right wing/conservative group. But hey, one of their facebook links was to CFI, so, cool. Another of their facebook posts was this
Kind of unfair to debate a dead man, but I think Hitchens is making debate points here, that is, winning the debate, but not being logical, at least not all the time. The tag line that the above group quoted was, “To whom do you award the right to decide which speech is harmful or who is the harmful speaker?”
He answers it rhetorically and then shows the problems with his bad answer. He answers it as if the only choice is to assign it to a small group of men who can disappear truth down a memory hole. Like, duh, don’t do that Hitch! The correct answer is first, when talking about speech, where it is said is as important as what. As he points out, we can’t know what the “bad words” are to ban from school books if there isn’t a list of those words somewhere to reference. You don’t hand “Catcher in the Rye” to a 2nd grader, but, by the end of secondary school, you should at least be aware of it and have the choice to check it out.
The answer “to whom” is, someone who has a boss, who has oversight, who can be fired from their jobs, who are reviewed by people that everyone can elect. All the information on all decisions must be public. These anti-anti-speech groups are good at suggesting we tear things down, without thinking about how we built what we have.
I do think there is a limit to free speech though. You can’t spew hate speech and then expect to not have people get upset and maybe call you a racist. At the same time, yelling “fire” in a theatre could get people killed. Stirring up violence against another group of people or an individual should be allowed either.
IMHO everyone should have free speech, but it should be free of hate speech, not instigating violence, or causing panic. If Minchin wants to sing F*** the motherf***er he can, but he can’t encourage others to storm the Vatican, find the Pope, and have him killed, like the dotard (political) did on 1/6/21 when Congress was declaring President Biden the winner.
I think everyone would agree with you, but some people might take some long discussions, to get them to see their own thinking. Everyone has limits on what they think is okay to say. I like to use the example of what I would say in front of my grandmother, but now, grandmothers are from the 1960’s so that doesn’t work as well.
Hitchens probably knows these subtleties, this is an excerpt from a debate, then a quote mined from that. The oversimplification is typical of right-wing social media. They are all about their right to speak freely, but heaven forbid someone marches down their street with a banner saying they want equal rights under the law.
Exactly what I’m saying. Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong country.
I resemble that remark!
Back in the day, people were careful about what they said in public, despite having freedom of speech and the FCC censored TV and Radio, yet no one objected. You could not say “period”, “breasts”, “tampon”, diarrhea, vomit, pregnant (they avoided even showing a pregnant woman), condom, intercourse… the list goes on and on, many within our lifetime, yet we had freedom of speech. Now about the only word the FCC seems to object to is the F-bomb, but does allow it on Showtime, Cinemax, HBO, and alike channels. While we aren’t prudes anymore, the far right is demanding to have complete freedom to say any racist, sexist, xenophobic, hateful thing they want to say, as well as incite violence. That’s just too much and dangerous.
60s child: I just said “poop”, that hardly justifies me holding this bar of soap in my mouth.
60s parent: Shut up, and no more hanging around with “those” people who moved into our neighborhood and brought down the property values.
60s grandparent: We weren’t allowed to talk at all when I was your age, and soap wasn’t invented yet.
2020s grandparent: If you drop another F-bomb kid, we’re going to watch an hour of the kind of cartoons they made me watch when I was your age.
2020s parent: No, no lectures about the racists undertones of Looney Tunes. Kids need to make their own decisions, not some mainstream media opinion.
2020s kid: You guys know carbon is above 400ppm in the atmosphere now, and historically, that has caused massive change to the global climate, displacing species, and leading to extinction, right? But you’re worried about certain words?
