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From: mcgeer@ucbvax.ARPA (Rick McGeer)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Could D. Black have legal problems?
Message-ID: <10496@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 30-Sep-85 02:54:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.10496
Posted: Mon Sep 30 02:54:08 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 1-Oct-85 03:30:37 EDT
References: <195@pyuxh.UUCP> <10451@ucbvax.ARPA> <305@ihnet.UUCP>
Reply-To: mcgeer@ucbvax.UUCP (Rick McGeer)
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 43

In article <305@ihnet.UUCP> eklhad@ihnet.UUCP (K. A. Dahlke) writes:
>> the first major tests of the free speech rights, a couple of Nazis get convicted
>> for saying that the Holocaust didn't happen.
>> ...
>> number of Western Canadian lawyers that I know won't talk to Christie, because
>> he blew the world's easiest case, and, incidentally, also set a rather nasty
>> precedent: that the Hate Laws stand up under the Charter.  For fairly obvious
>> reasons, few informed Canadians are happy about that.
>> 						-- Rick.
>
>While I agree, a defense of "they might be right" is absurd,
>I don't consider this case "easiest in the world", as you seem to imply.
>Remember the famous "shouting fire in the theater" case, where the abuse
>of free speech might be harmful to society.
>Similarly, if not more so, denying the existence
>of the holocaust is (I believe) *very* dangerous in the long run.
>On this basis, I would support a law/ruling prohibiting individuals from
>making such claims.  The trouble is, I can't *prove* it is dangerous.
>I just feel that some will be convinced/brainwashed,
>and learning from history will be more difficult,
>and the event is more likely to be repeated.
>Even if this scenario is unlikely, the risks are very great.
>The question is not trivial legally, or philosophically.
>-- 
>	This .signature file intentionally left blank.
>		Karl Dahlke    ihnp4!ihnet!eklhad

The hell it's not.  "You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you
free".  In the long run, teaching kids socialism is dangerous, and I can damned
well prove it: look how many people on this net believe in socialism.  The
case of yelling fire in a crowded theatre is provably, and immediately,
damaging.  But in this country libels whose impact is far more immediate than
an abstract debate on the holocaust go unpunished -- consider the Westmoreland
or Sharon cases.  Or consider the rather vast number that assured us that there
were and are no concentration camps in the Soviet Union, or that Nicaragua is
a wronged paradise...

If people are allowed to say that there was no holocaust, a certain percentage
on the lunatic fringe will believe it -- but so long as the vast majority
speaks the truth , and speaks it loudly and clearly, the risk to freedom from
them is far less, in my mind, than from those who would deny them speech.

						Rick.


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