If any of his followers kill themselves I wonder how he would feel??
At least one already tried; she cut the throats of her two little girls and then tried to do the same to herself. Luckily, she failed in all attempts; they all lived.
I think this is exactly the kind of inciting speech that should be prosecuted.
Crash, I usually agree with much you post. However, prosecuting idiots for saying idiotic things leading other idiots to do harm to themselves or others is folly. If he incited a riot that would be one thing. But printing billboards and spewing crap on the airwaves is protected. Otherwise every kook in the country would be calling out for a law suit for the bad choices they made due to being gullible and stupid. I would be interested in how culpable this man is legally.
. However, prosecuting idiots for saying idiotic things leading other idiots to do harm to themselves or others is folly.
Why do you think she was an idiot?
Why couldn't she have been an entirely regular person incited to a harmful, criminal act by another person acting with reckless disregard for human life and public safety?
Are you saying that speech can never be a criminal act? What about fraud? What about saying "I'll give you $10,000 to commit murder on my behalf"? Those are both examples of criminalized speech acts. I don't think someone who hears the latter and then goes off and commits murder is an "idiot" who is solely responsible for their actions. Telling someone you'll pay them to commit murder is nothing but a speech act, but it also makes you party to a crime.
I believe Camping is party to this crime, as well.
What i hate about those Hitler videos is that i understand German and its hard for me to read the subtitles lol
I've always wondered how german speaking people feel about these hitler videos.
You gotta admit. Some of them are pretty clever. And they try to match the subtitles with the words in key places. Like that second hitler video on the rapture. "My prick needs..." LOL you can actually hear hitler says "my prick..."
For believing the world is going to end on 21 May 2011.
crashfrog writes:
Why couldn't she have been an entirely regular person incited to a harmful, criminal act by another person acting with reckless disregard for human life and public safety?
She is ultimately responsible for her actions. Just because someone tells you to jump off a cliff...you know the rest.
crashfrog writes:
Are you saying that speech can never be a criminal act? What about fraud? What about saying "I'll give you $10,000 to commit murder on my behalf"? Those are both examples of criminalized speech acts. I don't think someone who hears the latter and then goes off and commits murder is an "idiot" who is solely responsible for their actions. Telling someone you'll pay them to commit murder is nothing but a speech act, but it also makes you party to a crime.
The examples you give are of course crimes. Fraud is of course illegal, so is murder for hire. But predicting the end of the world is not.
crashfrog writes:
I believe Camping is party to this crime, as well.
If found so he will be prosecuted. I doubt they will have a case.
I've always wondered how german speaking people feel about these hitler videos.
They're so fucking boring to me, I've heard his rant to many times now.
You gotta admit. Some of them are pretty clever. And they try to match the subtitles with the words in key places. Like that second hitler video on the rapture. "My prick needs..." LOL you can actually hear hitler says "my prick..."
It may sound like that, what he's actually saying is "der Krieg (ist verloren)", which means "the war (is lost)".
At least one already tried; she cut the throats of her two little girls and then tried to do the same to herself. Luckily, she failed in all attempts; they all lived.
I think this is exactly the kind of inciting speech that should be prosecuted.
But Camping told people how to avoid the apocalypse: they should have faith (which apparently she did), turn to Jesus, and get raptured. In his theology, if she'd enquired, that despair and suicide would get one straight to hell, which is even nastier than Armageddon.
If a doctor tells me that smoking has a high chance of giving me lung cancer, so I should quit, it's not his fault if I think that a better way to avoid this would be to cut out my lungs with a rusty knife. Again, if I'd bothered to find out about his belief system, I'd have found out why that was a bad idea.
Of course Camping was wrong and the doctor is right, but I think the two cases are of a kind: you can't be blamed for the actions of someone who ignores your advice.
Are you saying that speech can never be a criminal act? What about fraud? What about saying "I'll give you $10,000 to commit murder on my behalf"? Those are both examples of criminalized speech acts. I don't think someone who hears the latter and then goes off and commits murder is an "idiot" who is solely responsible for their actions. Telling someone you'll pay them to commit murder is nothing but a speech act, but it also makes you party to a crime.
I think that we've had a conversation like this before in the How Does Republican Platform Help Middle Class? thread, when we hijacked the thread to have it out over whether or not raising a kid to be a racist constituted brainwashing.
Of course there's such a thing is criminal speech. If I say "Hey, I'll give you $10,000 to put my boss in the woodchipper," that's a crime, because it's soliciting a criminal act. On the other hand, if I say "Jeez, my boss is an idiot. Work would sure be a better place without him," and you decide on your own to put him in the woodchipper, that's something else entirely. I hope that you can see the fundamental difference.
Harold Camping is morally culpable for all the damage he's done, I don't dispute that. And if it can be shown that he intentionally deceived all those rubes to donate their life savings for his billboards, then he'd be legally culpable for defrauding them as well. But (and this is - heh - a big but) that this nutjob woman decided that the best thing to do if the rapture was coming was to cut her daughters' throats instead of, for example, maybe spending the day praying, that's her bad, not his. You'd have to find him on record saying that the best thing for believers to do with their (possibly) non-believer children is to put them in the woodchipper before you could find him responsible for this one woman's botched murder/suicide attempt. (By the way, there's a right way and a wrong way to cut someone's throat, and if you're really serious about murdering your children, then you should at least do a competent job. Also by the way, my saying that is not a criminal incitement to murder.)
Criminal speech is criminal because it intentionally incites or solicits a reasonable person to do a criminal act. Stupid or even irresponsible speech that an unreasonable person uses as an excuse to do something heinous is just that, stupid and irresponsible, but not criminal or even legally actionable in a civil court.
Just because something is wrong, that doesn't make it illegal, and just becuase something is legal, that doesn't make it right.
Your beliefs do not effect reality and evidently reality does not effect your beliefs. -Theodoric
Reality has a well-known liberal bias. -Steven Colbert
I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. - John Stuart Mill
Now the last time I asked you to back up any of those predictions, you told five pathetic lies and then backed off. Care to try again? I'm especially keen to hear how the right-wing media has been "eliminated".
Mutate and Survive
All of the above are aspirations of Obama. Were it not for the surprise tea party express in 2010, he would have accomplished more of them than are already emerging.
Btw, you need to acknowledge the definition of lie. If you think I was mistaken or that my predictions failed, say so, but I appreciate it if you would refrain from personally attacking my character, calling me a liar.
I said he would undermine Israel, restrict energy production, push the socialist agenda and work to end nationalism and advance the new world order. I said he would cause energy costs to rise. He did, and they are still on the rise. He is undermining the American $$ by his stimulus and spending spree.
Yah, so long as this regime is in power, bad stuff continues for the US. The end time prophecies of end of the present Gentile era/age and apocalyptic phenomena are fast emerging into a Jewish Jesus messianic era.
Camping had it all wrong with his fool hearted and deceptive nonsense. He took it upon himself to read into the prophecies a whole lot of what isn't there.
The power of deceit is great. The James Joneses, the Heaven's Gaters and Now Camping et al attest to that fact.
BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW. The Immeasurable Present Eternally Extends the Infinite Past And Infinitely Consumes The Eternal Future.
I said he would undermine Israel, restrict energy production, push the socialist agenda and work to end nationalism and advance the new world order. I said he would cause energy costs to rise. He did, and they are still on the rise. He is undermining the American $$ by his stimulus and spending spree.
At least one already tried; she cut the throats of her two little girls and then tried to do the same to herself. Luckily, she failed in all attempts; they all lived.
I think this is exactly the kind of inciting speech that should be prosecuted.
But Camping told people how to avoid the apocalypse: they should have faith (which apparently she did), turn to Jesus, and get raptured. In his theology, if she'd enquired, that despair and suicide would get one straight to hell, which is even nastier than Armageddon.
If a doctor tells me that smoking has a high chance of giving me lung cancer, so I should quit, it's not his fault if I think that a better way to avoid this would be to cut out my lungs with a rusty knife. Again, if I'd bothered to find out about his belief system, I'd have found out why that was a bad idea.
Of course Camping was wrong and the doctor is right, but I think the two cases are of a kind: you can't be blamed for the actions of someone who ignores your advice.
I agree that Camping is certainly not guilty of actually inciting people to commit murder or suicide.
On the other hand, I would say that he's guilty of inciting panic. He didn't tell that woman to slit anyone's throat - he did, however, convince her of a scenario so frightening and stressful that one could reasonably expect a large number of people to behave irrationally out of sheer panic. A person who's already emotionally less than stable or who has invested too much of their self-identity into this doomsday cult could be expected to do something like this - we've seen it before, after all.
I don't know that that's an actual crime. It's definitely not saying "okay everybody, take up your glasses and lets drink the phenobarbital-laced Kool-Aid, don't forget to help the kids first." It's not quite screaming "fire!" in a crowded theater either, but it's not too far off.
All of the above are aspirations of Obama. Were it not for the surprise tea party express in 2010, he would have accomplished more of them than are already emerging.
In the same way, you aspire to eat babies, but don't do it because you're scared of reprisals from the aliens who watch you from the skies.
Btw, you need to acknowledge the definition of lie. If you think I was mistaken or that my predictions failed, say so, but I appreciate it if you would refrain from personally attacking my character, calling me a liar.
But you had no basis on which to bear false witness. You did so apparently ust because it pleases you to do so.
I said he would undermine Israel, restrict energy production, push the socialist agenda and work to end nationalism and advance the new world order. I said he would cause energy costs to rise.
And how wrong you were.
Camping had it all wrong with his fool hearted and deceptive nonsense. He took it upon himself to read into the prophecies a whole lot of what isn't there.
The power of deceit is great. The James Joneses, the Heaven's Gaters and Now Camping et al attest to that fact.
But you're different, right?
Oh, wrong. You're a false prophet. You know what the Bible says about those?
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