Am Sun, 08 Feb 2009 07:53:14 -0500 schrieb Warp:

> Florian Pesth <fpe### [at] gmxde> wrote:
>> Germany was a democracy when Hitler was elected by the people. All of
>> those ideologies want to abolish the democratic order of germany.
> 
>   Are you saying that democracy is a bad thing? Because it certainly
>   looks
> that way.

No and I don't see how you can read my post that way.

My point is that we have to protect democracy itself. The failure of the 
first democracy of Weimars republic was partly because we didn't have 
measures to prevent a democratically elected chancellor to overturn 
democracy. These laws are a consequence of the failure of the first 
democracy.

> 
>   Well, I actually wouldn't find it surprising even if it were true,
> because that seems to be a common trend in Europe nowadays: Democracy
> and freedom of opinion is a bad thing because it allows some people to
> have the wrong opinions.
> 
>   Some people say (something along the lines of): "Freedom of opinion
> doesn't mean you can be a racist." Well, freedom of opinion means
> precisely that you can be a racist if you want, or support whatever else
> ideology you want. That's precisely what it means. If you outlaw
> opinions, you are suppressing freedom.

There is no law in germany outlawing racism.

> 
>   Allowing people to have certain opinions doesn't mean you support
>   those
> opinions or agree with them.
> 
>   I certainly detest some people's opinions (such as racism and nazism),
> but they just have the right to have an opinion. If they start harming
> other people, that's a completely different issue, but as long as they
> are only opinions and don't bother others, that's their right.

Do you think there is / was no harm done with propaganda? Do you think 
there is no guilt in convincing other people to murder if you don't 
murder yourself? Surely there have been high Nazis who let others do the 
dirty work of killing. Does that mean they are free of guilt, because 
they just offered an opinion? I really don't think so.

> 
>   However, in modern Europe it's more and more common to forbid certain
> opinions (even if it's not still de jure, very certainly de facto).

Your argument would hold more water if you could point to recent law 
changes which restrict your speech in new ways.

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