Posts Tagged ‘law’
On hate speech
To accept the exercise of power by a government of one’s allies, one must also accept the same exercise by a government of one’s enemies.
To accept the suppression of speech found morally objectionable by a government whose ideology one supports, one must also accept the suppression of speech found morally objectionable by a government whose ideology one does not.
The easiest way to find out which ideology holds power at any given time is to find the one whose adherents support the most suppression of speech. Consider the schoolbook fable of the Puritans: it is said that they protested the lack of religious freedom in England, but established theocracy in their colonies. Better yet, consider National Socialism: they burned books in Nazi Germany, but enlisted the legal aid of the ACLU in America.
It is now said that there is an “international consensus”, backed by the United Nations, that ‘hate speech’ is to be suppressed. What does this say about where power lies?
N-codicalism
After the war, the British wanted the Nazis shot, the Americans wanted them tried, and the Soviets wanted them tried and found guilty. Acodicalism, monocodicalism, duocodicalism; the series flows so smoothly that one must suspect a natural progression, a trip down the stream, cut brutally short by the leering face of an inevitable Buffalo Bill, or perhaps a circle, a Gumb-headed ouroboros eternally eating and excreting itself.
Why a circle? Why even the progression? Duocodicalism, of course, cannot arise without monocodicalism; without a lock, there is no need for a lockpick. And where there’s law, there’s lawyers—not to mention ideologues willing to take any means to their favored end—so one cannot expect a particular instance of monocodicalism to last forever.
The progression from duocodicalism to acodicalism I will admit to much more skepticism about, but duocodicalism appears to be a relatively recent development, so sufficient evidence may not yet exist. There is, however, one thing I do know for sure: when we caught our modern-day Hitler, we out-Britished the British and told ourselves that “justice had been done”.
