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Path: utzoo!lsuc!watmath!watnot!watlion!drsimon
From: drsimon@watlion.UUCP (Daniel R. Simon)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Television coverage and censorship in Canada (in net.columbia??)
Message-ID: <7582@watlion.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 4-Mar-86 16:03:21 EST
Article-I.D.: watlion.7582
Posted: Tue Mar  4 16:03:21 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Mar-86 19:18:58 EST
References: <6396@utzoo.UUCP> <514@kontron.UUCP> <1132@lsuc.UUCP> <556@kontron.UUCP>
Reply-To: drsimon@watlion.UUCP (Daniel R. Simon)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 54
Summary: 

In article <556@kontron.UUCP> cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:
>
>> Like other rights, freedom of speech can be abused to harm others.
>> A person who uses words to threaten physical violence to get money
>> is committing robbery, and thereby violating the rights of the victim,
>> every bit as much as if he said nothing and, instead, waved a weapon
>> and gestured at his victim's wallet.  The criminal law makes this
>> and other abuses of freedom of speech illegal.
> 
>
>Bullshit.  If someone walked up to you and said, "Give me your money", but
>there was no way for them to injure you (for example, a police officer
>standing there, and the person making the threat was clearly unarmed, and
>physically incapacitated so as to be no threat with their fists), it 
>would not be credible that they were robbing you.  You would ignore
>them, and if you used force against them, YOU would be in trouble.
>
There's a fellow in New York who might want to talk to you about this
--name is Goetz, I believe...

Seriously, there are myriad examples of words (particularly false words)
which are understood to be injurious to others or to society, and are therefore
illegal.  Perjury is the crime of swearing to statements in a court of law
which are lies--no action is involved here, just words, including the oath.
Similarly, fraud can be committed merely through the verbal misrepresentation
of, say, a product as something it's not--again, the sale of such an item is
not, of itself, an illegal act; what is illegal is the fraudulent
misrepresentation of it.  And, of course, there's  the classic "shouting 'fire' 
in a crowded theatre" example.  False bomb threats, made by telephone, are
mere words--nothing more.  Should they be legal?  

Of course, there are many countries which abuse this notion of the danger of
words by defining any words critical of the government as false, and using
"slandering the state"-type laws for the purpose of suppression of political 
dissent.  However, absolute freedom of speech, like absolute freedom of action, 
is ALREADY a myth, as I have established, and somehow, our freedoms, by and 
large, have been preserved quite well.  Frankly, if absolute freedom of speech, 
including freedom to purjure, defraud, and engage in public mischief (not to 
mention to disseminate hate propaganda), is ever established in my country, I'm 
going to start packing, just as surely as if anti-government protest is 
outlawed.  I suspect that most people would agree with me.

In other words, we are all, whether we like it or not, on the "slippery slope"
between freedom of speech and controlled speech; we are on that slope out of
necessity, because any kind of ordered society requires some kinds of 
limitation to free speech.  Whether the restriction on the distribution of hate
literature is or is not too far "down the slope" towards suppression of free 
speech is open to debate, and has been discussed quite thoroughly here in 
Canada because of the Zundel and Keegstra cases.  But the issue requires a 
careful comparison of the positive and negative effects of a given limitation 
of free speech on a democratic society--not an unthinking promotion of free 
speech as always harmless and beneficial.

					Daniel R. Simon