How does freedom of speech work?

[EddieBrock]

Can someone explain why all the following was said without any protest by some people:

All the comments by Ward Churchill comparing victims of 911 to nazis are protected by freedom of speech

Professor Al-Arian raising money for terrorist is free to do so b/c its academic freedom

"Mario Obledo (former California secretary of health and welfare and co-founder of Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund: “We’re going to take over all the political institutions of California. California is going to be a Hispanic state and anyone who doesn’t like it should leave. If they [Anglos] don’t like Mexicans, they ought to go back to Europe.” [interviewed on radio station KIEV, Los Angeles, June 17, 1998"

"Grace Watkins (black 18-year-old New Yorker on two policemen killed in a shootout at the Stapleton Houses project where she lives): “I think a lot of people out here weren’t worried about [the killings] because they thought they were white cops. But when they heard the cops were black, they’re attitude changed totally. And they started expressing concern for the police officers’ families.” [Douglas Montero, “Surprising Sympathy Dawns in Projects,” New York Post, March 12, 2003.] (added 3/14/03)"

"Noel Ignatiev (Harvard professor)—“Keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females, too, until the social construct known as the white race is destroyed. Not deconstructed, but destroyed.”

But Bill Bennett says in the course of a discussion about abortion that hypothetically if you aborted all black babies the crime rate would decrease he is brutally attacked by the media, members of congress give speeches calling him a racist, and some people even call for congressional hearings. Shouldn't speech like this be protected and debated without name calling? Shouldn't we be looking up the data on the crime rate and see whether or not a disproportionate number of crimes are caused by blacks? If you focus on that statement shouldn't you be debating the truthfulness rather than complain how offensive it is?

 

[gh0st]

bill bennetts words are true. kill all black people, crime would go down. same as if you killed all white people, crime would go down. same as if you killed any huge group of people, crime would go down. he's correct in that statistically a greater number of crimes per capita are comitted by blacks, but that has (scientifically) little to do with the fact that they are black or white.

anyway to answer your question, freedom of speech has also the responsiblility of being moral and truthful and, i guess, meritous. i think bennett has the righ tot say whatever the hell he chooses, but there are consequences. just like i cant go up to people and say **** you and walk away, bennett should also be more thoughtful of peoples feelings/sensitivity.

 

[dream431ca]

Can someone explain why all the following was said without any protest by some people

You just explained to yourself what freedom of speech means. :thumbs:

 

[EddieBrock]

You just explained to yourself what freedom of speech means. :thumbs:

My question is why are those comments ignored by the media and lawmakers, while they go crazy over Bennett's comments. He was actually exploring an idea, not just insulting people for no reason which is what some people I quoted did.

 

[dream431ca]

My question is why are those comments ignored by the media and lawmakers, while they go crazy over Bennett's comments. He was actually exploring an idea, not just insulting people for no reason which is what some people I quoted did.

In that case...the content of those Paragraphs are racial...and racism is bad. That is not freedom of speech anymore when racism is involved.

 

[Adabiviak]

My question is why are those comments ignored by the media and lawmakers, while they go crazy over Bennett's comments. He was actually exploring an idea, not just insulting people for no reason which is what some people I quoted did.

Make no mistake that most of the media is in the business of making money, and Bennett's comments sell better, because it gets people's attention.

 

[Hapless]

BENNETT: Assuming they're all productive citizens?

CALLER: Assuming that they are. Even if only a portion of them were, it would be an enormous amount of revenue.

BENNETT: Maybe. Maybe. But we don't know what the cost would be, too. I think -- does abortion disproportionately occur among single women?

CALLER: Uhhh...

BENNETT: Do you know?

CALLER: I don't know the exact statistics but quite a bit are, yes.

BENNETT: All right. Well, I mean, I just don't know. I would not argue for the pro-life position based on this because you don't know. I mean, it cuts both -- you know, one of the arguments in this book, Freakanomics, is that they make is that the declining crime rate -- you know, they deal with this hypothesis that one of the reasons that crime is down is that abortion is up. Well --

CALLER: I don't think that statistic is accurate.

BENNETT: Well, I don't think so it is either.

CALLER: Yeah.

BENNETT: I don't think it is either because, first of all, I think there's just too much that you don't know. But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do. But your crime rate would go down.

UNIDENTIFIED CALLER: Well, this --

BENNETT: So these far-out, these far-reaching, you know, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.

Makes a big difference when you see the comment in it's full context. Especially with what he said right after.

 

[Laivasse]

Freedom of speech is great, but the idea that you can have a "safe" freedom of speech is flawed. An idea is one of the most dangerous things you can possess. If everyone is protected by the state in terms of spreading their ideas around, then a lot of damage (and good) can be done by promulgating a particularly powerful idea. For example, if were to say "I wouldn't shed any tears if (such-and-such person) got killed" then I'm just exercising my freedom of speech, but the person I'm referring to has had the value of their very life challenged. If that person is in a position of power, then they're going to want to come down very hard on me and my freedom of expression.

You will find that the state/media/whatever are less eager to preserve freedom of expression when what is being expressed looks like it could upset a few people, or weaken the popularity of a government or anything like that. I doubt it made the news in the states, but there was an 80 year old labour supporter at the recent Labour conference who got manhandled and wrestled out of the venue by security after saying "Nonsense!" during Jack Straw's speech. He was then taken into custody by police under anti-terrorism laws!

This might seem like a tangent, but it is part of my point. We see freedom of speech as an essential part of our democracies in the west. However, even in a democracy governments are desperate to protect their power which, since it's a democracy, stems from their popularity, which depends on what people think of them... which depends on what people say about them. So in a way, you could say that democracy is not very compatible with freedom of speech at all.

 

[kirovman]

I would say you have the right to free speech until this right infringes the rights of others. Same with any other freedom or right. I have the right not be insulted because of my skin colour or nationality for example. So when these 2 rights come into conflict, it should be my right to not be insulted by such things that automatically defaults.

People need to know their responsibilities as well as their rights. And that's the problem with this world. Not enough people know their responsibilities, but all of them know their rights.

 

[Razor]

If this Bennett guy is a high ranking official or someone well known, the reason that everyone hated his comments was because the media blew the comments up because he was famous. If the media reported that some black woman living in a slum didn't give a crap if 2 dead policeman were white but then showed remorse when they were white, no one would care as she is a nobody.

Freedom of Speech depends on how many newspapers the media can sell when you say something stupid.

 

[Gray Fox]

As far as I know, you can say anything you want, even racial and discriminatory things. unless you openly call to hurt people. So you can say something like, all white people are worth less then dogshit, but if you say something like, kill all white people, then you can be sued.

 

[Mechagodzilla]

i've read the book he's talking about (Freakonomics), and the argument used is rational and based on a detailed and fully explained methodology.

However, the book did not go into race so much as it went into poverty. The finding was that if less poor parents have less poor children, then less children turn to crime. Thus legalized abortion is the best explanation for the super-low crime rates in the 90's.
Even without the research, it still makes plenty of sense.

Then this radio dude just added the fact that black people are a larger slice of the poor population. It's a gross exaggeration, but he acknowledges it as such. he could have been more careful with his words, but it only sounds as if he's racist.

This is a non-issue.