Thank you for your time, J.
You are welcome.
The reason I harped on the death penalty portion is because it was the most bewildering. Being a rabid free-speech advocate, I've come across the concept of hate speech laws and I understand that. I get why people would want to criminalize certain types of speech. Heck, I slip into that mindset every now and then because its easy to want to punish particularly disgusting figures.
I know I’ve said it already, but it’s worth repeating that I am extremely wary of limitations on speech. I am opposed to them on principle, and I only make exceptions when I think the reasons are sterling.
The great political ideal of a conscientious philosopher is to resolve injustices without creating new ones. It’s easy to look at the crime of hate speech and say, well, let’s ban that. The problem is that it introduces a new injustice by curtailing the freedom of speech. The crime is very severe and the costs of the obvious solution are very severe. There are only three answers to that: Find another solution, accept with the current solution, or use pinpoint-accuracy to tailor the current solution from a general one into a highly specific one. Which of these is best depends on the circumstances.
I honestly can’t think of another effective short-term solution. In the long term we can fight this with education, but while people are suffering now we need to do something about it now—and, indeed, our educational efforts can’t proceed until we began to clear the way for people to change their minds about some of the incredibly horrible sexist attitudes they hold.
That leaves a choice between the general ban on sexist hate speech and a highly specific one. The lawyers would have useful information to contribute; I’d be prepared to entertain either possibility. But my own ethics say to go with the general ban. Sexist hate speech is very destructive, and it occurs in so many forms and through so many media that I don’t know how a specific solution would work without being a laboriously extensive enumeration of the blanket provisions of the general solution.
Zeality's fond of telling people to die or go to hell, but you tend to be very reserved about that sort of thing. This, along with the fact that you don't approve of capital punishment in general, shocked me.
For clarity, I actually do approve of capital punishment in general. Passionately, in fact. What perhaps differs, and have you the contrary impression of me, is that I am very discriminating in where I think the capital punishment is appropriate to apply.
People, for the most part, should not be killed. Even if they’re losers, wretches, fools, mooks...even Republicans! Seriously. Killing people is something we should all try and avoid.
When I go and read the comments on news websites (and elsewhere!) people are so quick to call for death. And they’re not half-joking about it like ZeaLitY is. Some are thumping their chests. Others are just venting their fury.
I should note that many of the people whom others call for to be killed are the very same victims of sexist hate speech we have been talking about.
In short, it’s not uncommon for people to call for death. Many will do so quite readily. One of my measures of whether to respect a person is a judgment that I make as to how that person would behave in a mob situation with no accountability. Because, in those situations, the vast majority of the human population becomes killers. Indeed, this is a big part of why I almost never respect people who are not intelligent and strong-willed, because only intelligence and a strong will, or else an abiding sense of decency (which is really just a facet of intelligence), can stop a person from becoming a killer in circumstances like that.
So, yes. I do tend to be very reserved about calling for the death penalty. And all the more so because I usually would insist on a fair trial first. People like Glenn Beck, who, in the pursuit of money, have destabilized the nation and given cover to the plundering actions of robber-barons and vinegar to the paranoia of religious extremists, ought to be put on trial for sedition.
Sedition brings about an interesting aside: Sedition laws are another form of constraint on free speech, and this nation has used them liberally in the past. Even though I support a new sedition law (as none of the previous ones have been done correctly), it too is a rare instance of an exception to my overwhelming support for free speech.
But I wouldn’t want to see Beck put to death on my charges. I’d want to see a court of law do it.
Anyhow...yes. As a philosopher who tackles the entire spectrum of human existence, I don’t mind dealing with difficult subjects, and I have learned quite easily that capital punishment is a penalty which must be reserved only for what narrow instances in which it is appropriate. Indeed, I only recommend the death penalty for a very narrow subset of the offenders who make this completely odious hate speech which I utterly detest.
That's what's called verbal assault, and its punishment is everything you mentioned. This should also be the case on the Internet. But it isn't, due to that veil of anonymity. I think if you got rid of that(or at least the legal protections thereof), or invented a device that allows you to punch people over the Internet, this problem would die down on its own.
You’re right, and there’s a whole other topic of discussion in that. Perhaps we can return to it in another thread.
The capital punishment thing makes sense as well; the people you've described would probably be "bad" enough on their own to commit capital offenses anyway.
One important detail: Many people who have not yet committed what is already counted as a capital offense nevertheless have the mentality to do so. One of the challenges facing a better justice system is to reach these people before they can destroy lives (including their own!).
If I supported capital punishment at all, I might agree with you. But I don't, and I think there are better ways to get to your desired end. Maybe FW's shock collars. If it works for dogs, it could work for beasts of that nature.
I didn’t know he had proposed that.
I find most severe forms of punishment to be akin to torture, which is indefensible, or else the result of an indefensible act of vengeance built into the system. Life in prison without parole is cruel, at least for humans. Shock collars are cruel, at least for humans. The death penalty has no cruelty to it, if the death is swiftly administered. There is no vengeance, either—at least not at the institutional level. A dead person is gone. They cannot endure further suffering. So I turn your viewpoint upside down. The death penalty is a more humane form of high punishment.
Now if we were talking about a man standing in the middle of Times Square holding up a sign or speaking through a megaphone, saying something like "All women should be in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant," I'd say no, that's protected speech.
Yes, we have that now. I probably wouldn’t support banning that. For one thing, it might require another constitutional amendment. For another, marches and protests are a way for people to voice their frustrations. They are not crimes against specific people.
I cannot justify imprisoning them and not someone like you who says things that would disgust most "normal" people.
Ah, yes, but normal people are broadly unfounded in their views whereas I am well-reasoned and justice cares about that sort of thing. =)
And to cut off speech like that is tyrannical, and tyranny is bad. I realize who I'm up against, and that I'd have better luck swimming the English channel with a lead weight. I'd take the challenge, but unfortunately I don't have the time or energy to obstinantly argue like I used to. I'll have to save that for a future contention. So for the time being, you can call me a mook and a useful idiot and we can part on that.
I tentatively agreed with you before (re)reading this paragraph. =)
Mook! Ne’er-do-well! Ninnyhammer!
There. All’s right with the world.
for J to say that he supports the death penalty for a recidivist hater is a pretty clear statement that sexual equality is his #1 issue, or shares that rank with anything else he'd apply the death penalty to. Which is perfectly consistent with his philosophy as much as he's shared it so far.
This begs the question: for those of us who don't support the death penalty under the circumstances J has outlined, what does it say about us and our own priorities?
This should come as a surprise to no one, but sexual equality is not my number one priority. Education is, and there's no room for capital punishment in education. Unless the kid just gets really really annoying.
Education is probably my top priority too. I think we differ in the scope of its application.
