You can perjure yourself outside of a courtroom, such as by signing a written legal document known to contain false information.
I think you fail to distinguish between facts and beliefs. As a scientist, I would think you'd appreciate that distinction.
Some members of the scientific community *don't* believe there's reason for alarm regarding climatic change. Like you, I don't buy their explanations. However, it's not the open-and-shut case you'd make of it.
You also fail to recognize that Austria, like many Western European nations, has laws against hate speech. Suggesting that intellectual progress is impossible unless the right of free speech is absolute is ridiculous and offensive to the people and lawmakers of Europe as well as those who have been wounded by hate speech. Moreover, free speech *is* regulated within America, ranging from prohibitions on yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater to commercial speech to perjuring in a court room.
I would think that a feminist would approve of laws limiting hate speech against those outside of power.
Anon, you're arguing with some things I've said and some things I've not said. Let's start by clearing this up.
I didn't set out to prove that this law is contradicted by the Austrian legal system, but that it is a bad law that will create more problems than it solves. If you'll notice my previous post, I'm aware that there are a lot of European laws against hate speech. This does not mean I approve of them, and it's a little melodramatic to say I'm insulting European lawmakers by making my objections to this law known. I think this is a bad law, and above are the reasons why. Surely, if European lawmakers are going to be insulted by something, it's the American code of law that does not criminalize hate speech.
I also did not claim an absolute right to free speech, and I realize that there are some reasonable and necessary ways to limit speech for the good of society as a whole. I do not count a law against public denial of the Holocaust as reasonable or necessary, though, which is why we're talking in the first place.
I would think that as a person who sat down to read my post and respond to it, you would have understood this much about my post, but I guess we're both learning that people don't always think what you expect them to.
You're right about the perjury thing, and if I were smarter, I would just have said that Irving isn't commiting perjury when he publishes his odious nonsense. People lie all the time, even in print and on television, without going to jail.
I think my comparison to denial of climate change or denial of evolution is a useful one, because of the way the roles are reversed from this situation with Irving. In both sitations, someone is publicly raising "doubt" about well-established knowledge, but Irving is a crackpot, whereas George W. Bush is the President of the United States. The lawmakers are not on the side of reality in this situation, but they have the power to demand everyone stay on their side regardless of what is going on in the real world. They can cover up knowledge, disallow exploration, and do their best to bury the truth - to disastrous consequences.
There are plenty of harmful types of willful ignorance that are protected - Christian Scientists not taking their sick kids to doctors, people carrying homeopathic first-aid kits - and unfortunately, Holocaust denial fits into this category. It's one of the most morally repugnant types of willful ignorance, but the only fair alternative is to allow the government to decide what can and can't be questioned. That alternative seems worse than having to deal with crackpots (who, realistically, we'll have to deal with even if they are being prosecuted). And, I might add that laws against Holocaust denial punish not only the willfully ignorant (who are jerks and deserve our disgust), but the plain old ignorant people who happen to be wrong, and I don't see why being a moron or being misled should be reason
I'm ambivalent at best about the whole banning-Nazism thing, but I have to admit that I'm just viciously gleeful that Irving is going to prison. Unlike quite a few people who found themselves in the prisons of the regime he has been waving pom-poms for over the past four+ decades, he'll presumably get out eventually.
I'll admit it. I totally broke out a Nelson Muntz-esque "ha-ha!" when I read the news.
Apropos of this discussion, it's worth remembering that Indiana legislators once tried to legally change the value of pi to something less complicated back in 1897. They failed, but not by much.
--- Ajax.
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