Reply #186: what don't you get?

[iverglas]

I summed up an enormous body of work by stating that it is immoral to forcibly prohibit an opinion from being expressed.

Nope.

You can only sum up that enormous body of work by stating that IT SAYS THAT it is immoral to do whatever.

It is not a summary of anything to state an opinion. You may purport to derive an opinion from something, but you may not state that the opinion is a summary of anything. It isn't.

To properly elucidate this matter would require discussions on the nature of morality, the definition of "opinion" and the ethical and political contexts in which force is proper or improper.

Yup. But in the meantime, we could all just refrain from stating our favourite opinions as either revealed or demonstrated truth. They aren't. Not yours, and not any religious fundamentalists'.

For those who want to pursue this issue I suggested primary sources to read.

Again, there is no primary source when it comes to OPINIONS. The source is the place to find the opinion; it does *not* establish the unassailability of the opinion, simply because *no* opinion is unassailable.

It is indeed worthwhile to read things in order to understand what some people derive their opinion from; this might even persuade them to that opinion. But it simply does not prove the rightness of the opinion, because even to say that is a nonsense.

All the words you used: dignity, rights, tyranny, oppression, equality, freedom, security, blasphemy, are subject to differing opinions among human beings.

Duh. Although actually, I would say that the level of importance assigned to them -- or, as you said, their applicability in any situation -- is what is most relevantly subject to differing opinions.

Some things are the subject of sufficient consensus that we don't need to continually go behind them. That's what constitutions and charters of rights are for: to lay out that consensus and secure formal adherence to it.

If agreement on the basic importance of certain values is not present to start with, then it may be necessary to go behind them and try to persuade others to adhere to them. It may also be necessary to use force to prevent those others from acting contrary to those values, if their adherence cannot be secured. At some point, one does indeed say "fuck you", for instance to people or bodies acting contrary to the values that the collectivity they belong to has chosen to adopt -- but when that point is reached is of course a subject of yet another potential debate among people who recognize that it exists.

You have no right to forcibly prevent me from expressing my opinions, whatever they may be.

Jeezus fucking christ. SEZ YOU. I don't happen to agree with you. Now wasn't that a worthwhile exchange of views?

To argue that shouting "fire" in a theatre, which people will act upon as a direct and imminent physical peril, is somehow similar to a cartoon which is offensive to the religious sensibilities of some people, is ridiculous in the extreme.

And to persist in this pretence that the cartoons were ONLY "offensive to the religious sensibilities of some people" is the height of disingenuous.

As is your attempt to distinguish speech that you don't like from speech that someone else doesn't like, btw. Nothing wrong with arguing for the distinction you wish to make, of course; it's just that positing the validity of that distinction as a given doesn't wash either.

Where did I tell you, or even intimate that you should,.... go fuck yourself?

At the precise moment when you asserted that something that is nothing but your opinion is a non-debatable principle and made it plain that nothing I might have to say in disagreement with that assertion was of any import to you or, if you had your way, in the rule-making process.

Just as everyone telling Muslims who object to degrading and dishonest representations of themselves, in all these many threads, has been telling them to fuck off, in many instances literally, that being was what I was actually talking about.

I have at no time said that your opinion about what rules should be made regarding speech is automatically trumped by any opinion of mine. All I ask is the same consideration for myself and anyone who holds any differing views, and I find that it is in much less than short supply in this "liberal" (open-minded, is that?) place.

And I really, really don't give a crap what Spinoza or anyone else not a party to the discussion had to say about anything. I might find it persuasive, and I might not. I'm not talking to Spinoza, and perhaps more importantly, Spinoza isn't the one who's going to have to live in the world that the talking is being done in.