Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> On Sun, 08 Feb 2009 00:59:21 -0500, Warp wrote:

> > Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> >> I suppose you could look at it that way.  The friends I have in Germany
> >> have described it more as suppressing hate speech.
> > 
> >   There's a fine line between suppressing hate speech and suppressing
> > freedom of expression. It seems that European countries in general are
> > slowly but steadily probing how much they can extend the latter in the
> > name of the former before people get angry.

> You have to admit that Germany is something of a special case, though - 
> one of my friends there works in government (not as an elected official, 
> but as an IT guy) and he's stated that that chapter of German history is 
> something that should never, ever be repeated again.

> I think that's something that most people would agree on.

  Yes, but what I find questionable is the *timing* of these laws.

  WW2 and the nazi regime happened over 50 years ago. Why exactly are these
laws being enacted *now*. Why werent't they enacted in the 50's or 60's?

  I also find it ridiculous to ban the swastica as the nazi symbol.
Do they honestly think that outlawing a symbol is going to diminish the
amount of hatred, xenofobia, racism and anger people have?

  What they *really* want is to outlaw certain political ideologies. But
they cannot do that (yet) because it would break certain constitutional
principles. Thus they invent these ridiculous laws to get around the problem.
Since these undesired political ideologies tend to use certain symbols to
visually express their stance, what the government does is to ban the
symbols, so that they will have an excuse to punish the people with those
unwanted political ideologies.

  Of course this won't stop the political ideologies from proliferating.
It will only cause these people to express them in other (still not
outlawed) ways.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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