One of the last Holocaust survivors dead

[RobertE]

Unless speech incites violence or other material harm to specific victims, it should not be restricted, in my view.

Indeed, political correctness has fucked up this world.

[Cato]

Unless speech incites violence or other material harm to specific victims, it should not be restricted, in my view.

Indeed, political correctness has fucked up this world.

Free speech is sacrosanct, not because we want to hear what every imbecile crank has to say, but because it is recognized an intrusion on the idiiot's right will likely cascade to a violation of our own. Now if we could only get people to be as impassioned about the protection of our other rights.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Indeed, political correctness has fucked up this world.

Free speech is sacrosanct, not because we want to hear what every imbecile crank has to say, but because it is recognized an intrusion on the idiiot's right will likely cascade to a violation of our own. Now if we could only get people to be as impassioned about the protection of our other rights.

Another, almost inestimable, value to free speech is that it encourages the same imbecile cranks to spout off in public, so we know who and where they are. I really, REALLY don't want these people forced underground.

Boru

[abaris]

Another, almost inestimable, value to free speech is that it encourages the same imbecile cranks to spout off in public, so we know who and where they are.  I really, REALLY don't want these people forced underground.

Boru

That's the main reason why I hate these laws. It's like putting a band aid over a festering wound. But it's not as if European countries had invented them on their own. Originally they were enforced by the allies. The guilt of European governments lies in not rolling back on them in the ensuing decades.

[RobertE]

Indeed, political correctness has fucked up this world.

Free speech is sacrosanct, not because we want to hear what every imbecile crank has to say, but because it is recognized an intrusion on the idiiot's right will likely cascade to a violation of our own. Now if we could only get people to be as impassioned about the protection of our other rights.

I agree entirely, but when it comes to those who frankly deny the holocaust:

David Duke,
David Irving.
Louis Farrakhan.
Ayatollah Khamenei

These are the fucks, the dregs of society spew their shit about the holocaust and frankly, not worth pissing on if they were on fire.

[Brian37]

I think I had mentioned in another thread that my mom had a roommate in rehab that grew up on Poland during the occupation. It is one thing to watch documentaries, but quite another to listen to a survivor in person. It is also why today a certain asshole politician pisses me off. When politics leads to demagoguery this is the type of horrors humans can commit. When you ignore or assume these things cannot happen, you set the stage for them to happen.

"Fear of the other" is what allowed slaver, lynchings genocide of native Americans. But it is also why you have things like Isis, and also carpet bombing of Palestine. If we are to reduce harm to our fellow species, we cannot view a label as always being the victim or always being the aggressor, but geographical. Hitler rose to power because Germany had been left to rot, and he played a populist card to convince people to follow him down a very dark road. The same populism of the theocracies of the Middle East. The same hyper nationalism we see now by the far right.

The sooner more in our species see others as the same species the better diplomacy can be managed and the horrors of history are less likely to repeat. The age of tribalism on a global scale needs to go extinct. Not our differences, we always will have them. But the idea that "us vs them" and "if I just defeat them and dominate them".

Ayaan Hirsi Ali "To tolerate intolerance is cowardice". Humans need to learn more to treat individuals as such, value the idea of common law and non violence with criticism and blasphemy but leave out the political demagoguery. Humans no matter what label deserve to be free from fear of harm of their government and their neighbor, but ideas as claims should never get blind value.

If "extreme vetting" and "stop and frisk" don't scare you, then you have no clue what a victim is. The Jews of WW2 Germany were victims. Netenyahu is a bully. Isis are a religious street gang bully. But here in America Trump is a bully, merely with a better leash on him, so far, but the "us vs them" mentality is the same. Gays and minority Muslims and atheists living in the theocratic east are victims, our right wing here are the bullies and what has given rise to Trump is the old school conservatives see the writing on the wall and are scared of losing their social status.

I will not back off equating Trump's tactics to that of Hitler. He has used fear to call for mass deportation. He has used fear to call for bans on an entire religion, just like Hitler called for bans on Jews owning businesses. And again, it isn't that the country can fall overnight but the tone long term is toxic which can lead to global instability or collapse of the political system.

The Holocaust is not a lesson on what not to do to Jews, it is a lesson on what not to do to your fellow human. Just like accepting the genocide of Native Americans is also a lesson on what not to do to your fellow humans. Just like slavery and Jim Crow and white oppression of blacks even after slavery is also a lesson on what not to do to your fellow human.

Offending and political demagoguery are two different things. Offending isn't a crime, selling fear as a blanket solution in politics is scapegoating and once you start doing that, you are not doing anything constructive but merely selling fear. And once you start successfully selling that you can get mass groups to do great harm to other groups.

[abaris]

Humans need to learn more to treat individuals as such

That's the crucial part. It was ingrained in me since I was a child. Always look at the person and not where they're coming from.

I grew up in a family of Holocaust survivors, by the way.

[Brian37]

Humans need to learn more to treat individuals as such

That's the crucial part. It was ingrained in me since I was a child. Always look at the person and not where they're coming from.

I grew up in a family of Holocaust survivors, by the way.

I cant even begin to fathom what that must have been like in person. You hear more of those stories having had family members. They are for humanity living history and worthy of listening to.

[abaris]

I cant even begin to fathom what that must have been like in person. You hear more of those stories having had family members. They are for humanity living history and worthy of listening to.

They kept most of it away from me when I was a child. Only later on, long after my grandfather had died, they told me parts of how it was.

[Brian37]

There is absolutely no humanity left when your goal, or a group's goal for whatever reason, political or religious or a combo of both, is thinking that force and violence with a "once and for all" attitude will work. Once you get to that point, you are no longer empathetic and cannot claim any moral high ground. To this day, Ann Frank's quote is one of my favorites of all time, "I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are good at heart".

I will never hate my species capability for empathy and compassion, I do hate that my fellow humans far too often cant see beyond what is local and falsely attribute anything they might do as good to bad logic. Our species is capable of great empathy and compassion, but it only takes just enough bad logic to be bought en mass to lead to things like the Holocaust, Isis, KKK, Stalin, states like Saudi Arabia and North Korea. I don't ever want the west or America, my home, to descend into that monster.