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this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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You're partly right. But it's the job of the citizenry to stand up to this stuff, not the state. We can't keep our heads down and hope it goes away on its own. We shouldn't allow the state, with its monopoly on violence, to fight our social battles for us.
I dislike the idea of the state getting to start making decisions on what is "hateful". And I'm disgusted we don't have more people standing up and loudly declaring how wrong the hateful viewpoints are. It is our responsibility and we are failing.
It is a tempting proposition to let the state handle hateful speech, but we don't have to look much further than Florida to see what happens when the shit side is in power and starts redefining what is "hateful".
So what's the state for?
Serving the interests of the citizens.
That’s a good question ;)
Nah. Our state should do more and better things than that.
I like having a space program, for example. And education for all
A space program is not optional in today's world. As is education, among a huge number of different things
There are many schools of thought on what a government is for or should do and most people do not ascribe to the notions you are presenting as fact.
It doesn't matter what you think. Governments are expected and set up to do much more than that around the world and that's because that's what their intents are. It's not just those three things. If what you said was true, we'd have had no meaningful progress on anything.
You can deny it all you want, denial ain't just a river in Egypt
I think you're misunderstanding the person you're talking to. They are just saying that anything that can't do those 3 things is not a government.
There are a lot of things that collapse a government if not done that's not one of those three things, though. Like educating its people. Especially that one for a democratic government, in actual fact.
I think you're still confusing what you like in a government (e.g democracy) with what something has to do in order to qualify as a government.
Take a look at this report on education. If we look at a country like Mali the average child there has just two years of schooling and attendence even at primary/elementary school is very low.
It may not have a government that we like, but it still has a government.
No, you are not understanding that
is subjective, and differs from culture to culture and person to person.
And until you accept that fact, no debate is possible. Goodbye
Bye, have a nice weekend!
Also make laws
The function of a properly constituted government is to prevent other worse governments from forming.
This doesn't define what a properly constituted government is though. Any government can prevent other worse governments from forming, all they need to do is massacre their citizens and there will be nobody left to form a government.
'Hate' is vague. 'Intolerance' however, is probably legally definable.
Definition of intolerance: opposite of tolerance.
QED
You seem to be suggesting that separating hate speech prevention from legislation will protect you from a "tyranny of the majority" situation.
But if the populace has a bigoted plurality, won't that also create a tyranny of the majority?
If the populace has a bigoted plurality, then they get to declare what is officially hateful. So yes, you're right.
I put the onus on the collective citizenry, but there is no perfect solution in reality. There is a role for the state to play in protecting people, I just don't think they should dip much into what speech is or isn't allowed. The majority should rule in my opinion, but we have the job of maintaining a majority that isn't regressive bigoted shitheads. It's an eternal struggle, unfortunately.
Defamation, intellectual property, stalking/threats, harmful digital communications, false advertising, accurate declarations of food contents, protected names, conspiracy to commit serious crimes: all these forms of speech are regulated by law and the judiciary where I live, so I have no problem with hate speech laws as long as they are clear and reasonable.
Personally I am in favour of proportionally representative democracy with a lot of checks and balances to enshrine human rights in law, so that if a populace wavers toward the hateful there are still protections for minorities and the non-hateful.
Fair, but the more people you have, with more diverse viewpoints, the harder it will be to get people to agree on what is hateful. And the more nuanced your laws, the harder it will be to agree on what is reasonable or even clear.
That's a fair point.
But we have got people to agree on everything from what is a fair defense against defamation, right through to the percentage of meat a product such as a meat pie has to contain in order for it to be able to be labelled "meat".
Democratic consensus is something that gets built up and refined over time. We don't try to invent it all in a single day.