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Which is a complete mischaracterization of what he said. In the USA you have to have a court order to get a wire tap to gather evidence on a suspect.
I thought that was suspended by the Patriot act. Either way its not a special or unusual provision - in the UK you need the consent of a judge.
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In the USA I can sit in my own home, in your home, on the steps of the capitol building or even in the midst of the president himself and say how much I think the admistration sucks ass and I cannot by law be arrested unless I am also commiting some other crime by that act.
And the same applies here, and in SA. Expressing the opinion that the administration sucks ass DOES NOT AMOUNT TO THE DEGRADATION OF A PERSON OR GROUP OF PEOPLE. You know I don't think that at any point you or any of the defenders of the American position have actually addressed this point. You keep raising straw men about "offence" or dissent as if they were even remotely relevent. As I have pointed out, in the South African Constition free speech, including dissent, is generally protected and hate speech is specifically NOT protected. You have yet to explain why you would find this problematic.
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Not on the basis that it is private property. On the basis that it is not officially sanctioned by an agent of the government.
Which is totally, utterly irrelevant except to the curiously anti-state ideology of the US. As pointed out in the article on SA's constitution, the very idea that this debate is a live issue is pretty much absurd from the South African experience. The majority of problems in regards race hate speech did not originate with the government but with private citizens on private property.* Whether or not it is government sanctioned is not inherently important to the issue. A criminal act is a criminal act, it does not become criminal only when perpetrated by a state authorised actor.
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Overall, you seem to think abuse is sanctioned in the USA when it is explicitly not.
I think the consequence of your constitutional arrangements is an endorsement of hate-speech, yes. After all on this very board hate speech has been protected by default to claiming that the board is private property and therefore the owner has total freedom to determine whether or not they choose to publish that hate speech. A secondary argument was advanced to total freedom of speech. This is quite clearly the sanctioning of hate speech and the provision of a venue for its expression.
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What is also explicitly protected by law is your expression that does not explicitly abuse anyone even if it may be denegrating or offensive. Even if you don't like it, that is the point. Your morals or sense of civility don't make law.
But fortunately my morals HAVE made law in the form of the South African constition, which I consider superior to yours. And furthermore this reponse fails to address the issue rtaised: the scenario offered was one in which you attended a ball game and found that it was being run by the KKK and you were obliged to listen to their bile at the start of the proceedings. Thegeneral reponse was that if you don't like it leave - which is a clear endorsement of the freedom of the KKK to carry out denigrating hate speech protected by their private property rights.
And incidentally you are probably the first person here to suggest I have sense of civility.
* this requires clarification. The government was certainly malicious and homicidal, but it did not much engage with actual hate-speech. That was left to citizens, many of whom had links with the state, of course, due to SA's particular history. SA had an entirely different argument (separate developemet) to justify apartheid which did not rely on racism. But of course the tenor of the culture was very racist, and this originated from private citizens and their control of the media of public discourse.
This message has been edited by contracycle, 01-07-2005 07:22 AM
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