The You Can't Make This Shit Up Department

[Thumpalumpacus]

What if I told you that there are people from the old regime that still like fascism, and letting these ideas be promoted freely could drive the majority of the population in support of fascism? Better not take chances. They can be underground and discuss their ideas all they want, but they won't have a chance doing it publicly. Sure you have a point when you say we could expose the dumbfucks, but what if our (ignorant) population liked these dumbfucks? What would we do now?

If I were you I'd move, because ideology doesn't bow to laws. Personally, I think those ideas are so hoary that they are easily dispatched in the discussion they'd certainly arouse. And if they have the critical mass to silence such a discussion, you'd best move.

However, the idea that restricting a polity's speech is an expansion of their freedom is silly.

It's your opinion...

Of course. This is a disucssion.

By the way, freedom of thought is absolute, my professor said well that we could all be fascists on the inside, we can even declare we are fascists in public, we simply can't promote by showing a positive side of it, I'd rather have things like this.

I think the greater good is served by allowing freedom of speech. I don't see point out the positives that may have arisen from a system as "promoting" it, insofar as its negatives are also discussed. In the case of fascism, the positives (higher employment by improved infrastructure and defense spending, mainly) are so obviously outweighed by its negatives (loss of freedom, and perhaps even life) that such a discussion would have a deep effect on waverers. The diehards will not change their minds, sure, but by not vocally demostrating their fallacies, you leave the public unequipped to reply to them.

[quote='Blackout' pid='706471' dateline='1405171501']And about the absence of action, promoting something is an action, the action of promoting.

Your unquestioned premise seems to be that discussing fascism is promoting it. I think that premise will not withstand questioning; we discuss Christianity constantly without promoting it, here.

[quote='Blackout' pid='706471' dateline='1405171501'] Absence of action being punishable would be if someone was sentenced to jail for being merely a fascist, only with an action can you get punished, that's the most basic requirement of the system, and propaganda is an action, whether it is trough speech, headlines or papers. This is not the only promotion crime, there is also crimes of promotion of suicide, promotion of murder (telling people to murder others), promotion of hatred against races (saying people blacks are inferior and incentive of violence)

If those crimes such as inciting to murder and other violence are committed, they are already prosecutable. Banning speech simply because the speaker is a fascist and wishes to promote his political system is not an expansion of freedom; it is a reduction of it.

You can think individual liberties should prevail all day long, but if you talked with someone who was arrested and tortured for being a protester against the fascist regime, they'd tell you clearly this prohibition is a requirement. Let alone the German case of nazism they took it very far indeed, maybe too far.

I lived in Iran for four years under the authoritarian regime of the Shah Reza Pahlevi, and I witnessed first-hand its repressions of the Iranian people. I find the idea of destroying freedoms in order to defend freedom to be laughably short-sighted, because once you have established the principle that freedoms can be abrogated for the "right" reasons, the only thing left is determining who gets to decide what is right. Trusting the government to not abuse that power is to me naive in the extreme, given the fact that governments have a tendency to abuse any power they may have.

Your opinion is, to me, unconvincing. You would not want anyone telling you what you could and could not espouse. You should extend that same respect to even those with whom you disagree.

As far as the NaZi regime, they certainly took it too far. One of the ways they managed to do that is by outlawing speech they found uncomfortable. Another example, from the other end of the spectrum, would be Stalinist Communism. Both systems stand as warning signs to citizens, that they abandon their essential freedoms at their own risk.

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I don't think so. The problem is europe still has a big nazi heritage, people underground that share the ideals of nazism and fascism [....]

That would seem to imply that laws banning hate speech and pro-fascist sentiment aren't particularly effective, considering how many European countries have had such laws for so long.

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The Grand Duchy of Tuscany abolished the death penalty in 1786. The Europeans have been at it a long time.

Perhaps some day the US will finally mature....although I have no hope for Texas.

I know it's trendy to bash my home state, but there's a good amount of us working to change it. The condescension of others may help insofar as it fuels our drive to spread reasonability, but it's a little galling all the same, thanks.

Now pardon me while I go hunt up some paint-thinner ... I think I just got swabbed by a broad brush.