Amos Yee : Atheist arrested twice for "intention to wound religious feelings"

[Brian37]

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/09/14/asia/s...-amos-yee/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/13/world/...icted.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/28/us/amo...sylum.html

For those of you who don't know who he is. He is Amos Yee, a now 18 year old Singaporean who openly critisized his government and religion. Singapore is a very strict country, it's technically a dictatorship, and Singaporeans are very sensitive people. Amos Yee has been arrested twice on the charges of obscenity and "intention to wound religious feelings" Just search Amos Yee on YouTube and you'll see what I am talking about.

He is now seeking asylum in the United States.

Amos Yee Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amosyeebanana/

Assholes like Trump and far too much of the GOP would point to this and say, "This is what we are fighting"..


BULLSHIT, first off it is a myth that liberals  as a majority want that level of political correctness. NO WE DONT, what causes those societies to have people arrested for blasphemy of religion, is not western liberal ideas, but conservatism. While the left in the west has the empathy for others, both left and right of any given religion, fear the questioning and blasphemy of religion. 

I have had liberal theists say "don't offend religion" but unfortunately that plays into the extreme political correctness of theocracies of Saudi Arabia and Iran whom will have you arrested or put to death for offending their religion.

Now, having said that, that DOES NOT justify the political demagoguery of our religious right here. Liberals have the empathy, and I love liberals for that. But even my fellow liberals need to understand the difference between protecting human rights, and the horrible idea of insisting on blasphemy laws. Human rights should be valued, religious freedom should be valued, common law should be valued, but claims as ideas should never be free from scrutiny or blasphemy. 

Liberals have the good intent of wanting civility, we should all want that. But protecting pluralism, isn't about never offending or getting offended, but how one responds in the face of those situations. Political demagoguery leads to more closed societies and authoritarianism, be it worship of an intolerant theocracy like Saudi Arabia, and even an intolerant worship of the state like North Korea.

Blasphemy laws are not a good thing. Fighting bigotry and hate and political demagoguery is fine, but it is a bad idea to use "never hurt anyone's feelings" as a blanket solution. Power shifts over long periods of time, so it is not a good idea to give government absolute power of censorship. Only common law in the idea of no calls to violence or acts of violence. If all 7 billion humans got to silence someone because we got offended, all of us could think of things we would rather not hear or read.