[Reader-list] The Slimes of India's Patna edition reprints, Danish cartoon

[Koen Martens]

Yazad Jal wrote:
> Koen makes interesting points which need to be examined carefully. I
> applaud your forthrightness!
> 
> Just a thought: how "free" is free speech if we're to be careful of
> people's "sentiments"?

I've been pondering on this a while now. A lot of people i talk with
about this seem to have the opinion that free speech ends where you
hurt someone or don't respect someone. If this is the argument,
there is no speech at all, because i think about anything one can
say will hurt someone.

Others suggest setting forth some guidelines about what can and
can't be said. This reeks of censorship to me, even if it isn't the
government setting up the guidelines/list.

Also, making some things unspeakable is not healthy I think. For the
individual, suppressing certain things will lead to psychological
problems (eg. if one is quiting with smoking, supressing the thought
of smoking will only make it more difficult). I strongly believe
this scales to society too, if a society wishes to supress certain
'memes', the result will be unhealty.

Koen

-- 
K.F.J. Martens, Sonologic, http://www.sonologic.nl/
Networking, hosting, embedded systems, unix, artificial intelligence.
Public PGP key: http://www.metro.cx/pubkey-gmc.asc
Wondering about the funny attachment your mail program
can't read? Visit http://www.openpgp.org/