Free Speech sounds great on paper, and in America we pride ourselves for upholding its principles, no matter what. I love the idea, but the reality of it can get very tricky. In Germany, where I'm from, we collectively decided after what happened in the 1930's and 40's that there are limits to free speech. Yes, you can have reasonable disagreements, but you cannot incite violence nor can you say things that are blatantly and patently false. Thus it is illegal to display swastikas or say that the holocaust never happened. Follow me below the fold on why my country has limits on Free Speech.
In light of the recent murders at the Holocaust Museum and the Wichita church it seems to be a fair question whether freedom of speech is an absolute right or whether it should be limited in certain circumstances. Intelligent and rational minds have disagreed on this subject, which is why you can produce and distribute swastikas in places like the United States, Scandinavia or Italy, but not in Germany. Let me give you what I think the rationale is behind my country's decision to limit free speech.
It's fair to say that most of the time fringe elements are just that: Small groups of people who subscribe to some sort of outlandish philosophy that to a reasonable person are based on fantasy and fabrication and pose no threat to the commonly held ideas of reality. If they don't threaten anyone else the most effective way to deal with them is to ignore them. However, if these fringe ideas threaten other people's existence we're getting into trickier territory.
Of course, everybody knows what happened in Germany, and one of the most commonly asked questions was, "Why didn't anyone do anything about this earlier?" Well, for example, if you were in an average family that had one member who started spouting hateful racist epithets, the thinking was, "that Uncle Klaus, he'll get over it, let's just not talk about this stuff, here, have a beer." Thing is, all the Uncle Klauses, though clearly a minority in their extreme views, were the most vocal and agitated members of society, constantly pushing their bile. It seems to be the nature of the most deluded that they're also the loudest most vocal screamers.
So with everyone just hanging back, and with a really weak nascent democracy, the screamers were able to poison the whole well, to the point where a lot of folks who hadn't ever even thought about race and other groups of people and who were pretty much just trying to feed their family are now getting in line behind the screamers because they don't want the conflict and mostly just be left alone. This of course is a very simplified version of things but my point is that a small minority of vile screamers can get a lot more power and attention than would be their natural share.
So, fast forward to post-war Germany. Obviously, there was a lot of migration but for the most part it's still the same people who lived there before and during the war, but now they're no longer Nazis. Geez, what happened? Obviously, the silent majority went back to being nice, normal and law-abiding democrats, but the screamers who hadn't been held accountable still existed. It just seems that they will always be there, and it doesn't seem to matter what country. There are plenty of neo nazis in Germany today, as there are in the U.K. and the U.S and Scandinavia.
In Germany, however, with our sad and horrible history, the silent majority got together and decided through democratic means that the screamers could not be allowed to scream. We decided that the risk of infringing on "free speech" was worth the potential trade-offs, that if you don't nip these things in the bud early, you may not be able to do so later. Obviously, this brings with it a whole slew of other issues, like when does something qualify as hate speech and who decides. But overall, it has worked out pretty well in Germany. I think that by having some taboos that cannot be crossed (like displaying a swastika or denying the holocaust), some of the other things that are still legal, like neo nazi rallies, become much more marginalized because we're much more sensitive to and less tolerant of those borderline statements and activities. For example, every time there's 100 neo nazis gathering (and they have to get an official permit) there will be thousands upon thousands of counter demonstrators, mocking them and putting them back in the hole that they belong.
I'm not sure if Bill O'Reilly could legally get away with calling George Tiller a baby killer on German TV, but I know that if the network didn't yank him off the air immediately, there would be so many calls for his resignation that the public pressure would get him down.
Obviously, the U.S. has a much stronger democracy than Germany did back then and I don't mean to equivocate the two, but I do think that some good lessons can be learned from my country's history for all of us to be vigilant and never be apathetic toward the screamers. Sites like daily kos are great because they allow all of us to go on record expressing our outrage and disapproval of people who promote hatred, violence and racism. I wish there had been an internet when my people were at their critical junction in history. Anyway, thanks to all of you for constantly speaking up and being involved in the course of this country.
peace & shalom