Gabriella,
And I really don't know why you insist on doing this to yourself BHS. It's not difficult to grasp. You queried the last line in the para that I quoted and I explained that the last line was not part of the traditional story but had been added by the author of the article because he had written it after the US consulate in Benghazi had been set on fire by extremists.
I linked to the article not just because of the traditional story but because the article had lots of what I thought were useful points in relation to the current topic about freedom of speech and people with different values trying to live together and work together to solve bigger issues in society than a cartoon. The article discussed how Obama might address the Prophet Mohamed cartoon issue in the same way he addressed the Reverend Wright conflict in the US by going to the heart of the issue rather than focusing on the symptoms. The article referenced his "A More Perfect Union" 2008 speech where he made it clear that solving these big problems required sacrifice and struggle:
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time......
....But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.
The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through
And yet all you could do was make inane one-liners about not setting fire to a house. The contrast between your focus on one line and Obama's eloquent perspectives on real issues were irritating but not entirely unexpected given some of your previous posts.
This is bonkers. Try reading your Reply 24 again. You set out various claims and statements about “the Prophet” not reacting “with anger and hatred” and followed them immediately with a story (in quotes) that (supposedly) illustrated this trait. I then said that the story you used to illustrate not reacting with anger and hatred set the bar pretty low (ie, not burning down a dying woman’s house).
Nowhere did you say “oh, and here's a story has nothing to do with anything I’ve just said but is pertinent to something else in a link that follows it to which I’ve made no reference whatsoever”. (For what it’s worth by the way I assumed the link was your citation for the quote you’d just posted as is standard practice here.) As I said before, if you want to stick with your version with a straight face that’s up to you but you can hardly blame someone for commenting on a thematically identical story that immediately followed various claims for thinking you intended the story to illustrate those claims.
And I kept saying that given the absence of facts, while we can speculate about all kinds of possibilities, only the school and the teacher can clarify what actually happened.
Which is different from claiming knowledge that is was a policy matter, but ok.
You can think it's evasion if you want. It's not evasion for the simple reason that people are free to not consider issues in the simplistic terms that you demand they see them and to reply in a more nuanced way than perhaps you would like.
You’re prevaricating again. “Simple" and “simplistic” are not the same thing. The question is, “do you think “I’m offended by that” is ever justification for the denial of the right to express the thing at which the offence was taken?”. It’s simple inasmuch as the answer is binary: Y/N – either you do think that or you don't think that.
The minute you try an “it depends” though you allow for the possibility that there could be cases when the degree of offence taken justifies the banning of the right to make the statement, so "it depends" is also “yes”.
Glad you have finally understood that I answer questions based on my own posting style and not based on yours. We got there in the end.
I make no comment on your posting style (other that is than weariness at your tendency to tell someone how a watch works when all they asked you for was the time of day) – I was just trying to get a straight Y/N answer from you to a perfectly simple question of principle.
Aw not another one of your tedious flights of fancy,
Hardly.
It is the position I have been disagreeing with right from the start.
“It depends” isn’t disagreeing from the start at all, but I’m glad you’re now saying that it doesn’t depend after all: we’re aligned then in thinking that there is no amount of offence taken that would justify the banning of the right to say something right?
And as I already posted, I echo what Zuckerberg said. Do you have trouble understanding what the word "echo" means or do you have trouble reading Zuckerberg's comment and understanding how it relates to your question?
No, but you do it seems have trouble understanding basic concepts. Zuckerberg was making a statement about commercial expediency and the way his business chooses to act. He wasn’t arguing for a philosophical principle. You though
are being asked about that kind of statement. I’m not asking you how you’d run your business when addressing free speech issues, I’m asking you
as a philosophical principle whether you think offence taken should ever justify banning free speech.
Why would you think that I think murdering a Danish cartoonist would justify banning his freedom to express his idea? I have not said that I think the Danish cartoonist should have been banned from publishing his cartoon. What I said was that in certain cases in society I would support restricting freedom of speech ie, I would consider individual situations or look at it on a case by case basis rather than as a blanket rule either to give complete freedom or to ban all offensive cartoons of Prophet Mohamed or any other subject matter. This seems to be another one of your flights of fantasy.
No, it’s just you returning to the same evasiveness. How can I put this more simply for you…
…try this. When considering the right to free speech on a case-by-case basis, would any part of your considerations include the offence taken by the exercise of that right?
If you are going to quote me, then I suggest you stick the subject of my quote - which was the limited effectiveness of a puerile Hebdo cartoon in school as a teaching tool. I am not talking about society.
But you are, for the reason I just explained. Schools are part of society and if you let the cork out of the bottle by accepting offence taken as the justification for banning the right to free speech about a cartoon, then you have no argument to prevent the same justification of offence taken to prevent the expression of anything else. Your cartoon of Mohammed is someone else’s rainbow flag – it doesn’t matter once the underlying principle (that freedom of speech trumps offence taken) is abandoned. You can equivocate about this all you like by telling me you’d consider it on a case-by-case basis etc but actually the question is a matter of principle, not circumstances: when someone says to you “I want you Gabriella to ban the expression of X because I’m offended by it” would you throw them out before they got one word further or you wouldn’t you? Which is it?
