Swollen Goat said:
You haven't changed my mind a bit. Your feeling are not the governments problem to intervene over. So people can have free speech WHERE you deem it appropriate? Awfully kind of you. This is why I belittled your point. What would you say if something you believe in was outlawed in certain places.
The two examples (and currently the
only two places where I agree with censorship) I used are patient treatment and a funeral. Tell me, who on Earth would think it is "nice" to have their son's funeral protested? I don't think any of us would. It's objective in that sense. What I'm saying is that it wouldn't be down to where I deem it appropriate, it would be down to where society deems appropriate.
I feel you are using a touch of the slippery slope argument. "If we let the government outlaw funeral protesting, they might start outlawing protesting at other locations!" Why does that have to happen? It hasn't happened in the countless other (perfectly fine) countries where funeral protesting is banned.
Swollen Goat said:
I understand you're a Muslim-what was your position on the Islamic center built near ground zero? Surely you were against it because of all the hurt it caused to the families of the 9/11 victims, right? Because it's the exact same thing.
You think it is the exact same thing? Really? Wait.
Really? You have to be being facetious here.
Where to begin:
-The Islamic community centre isn't all that near ground zero. It's completely out of sight, off a back street and is a fair distance away. You'd have to go looking for it to find it, and is way out of the way to people paying their respects at Ground Zero.
-Islam itself has nothing to do with 9/11. 9/11 was caused by Al Qaeda over a long seeded hatred of the USA, stemming from the Cold War. Both officials from the CIA, FBI, Bin Laden and high ranking members of Al Qaeda have all claimed this was the reason. Islam and 9/11 are completely unrelated. Is Shintoism related to Pearl Harbor? Is Christianity related to Hiroshima because Paul Tibbets prayed to God before he started the mission? Of course not. To even suggest that is being short sighted. A complex system of foreign affairs, domestic politics, and a touch of simple human emotion is the reason.
-Islamic community centres have existed since the 1960s within a five mile radius of Ground Zero. In fact, a small Islamic community prayer centre has existed for many decades much closer to Ground Zero than the one that was proposed without a whimper of complaint from the public.
I could go on. For it to be "the exactly the same thing" members of Al Qaeda would of had to of shown up at Ground Zero with signs and pickets chanting "Victims of 9/11 were murderers!". Then you'd have a point. Albeit a very obscure one.
Swollen Goat said:
I don't believe we've gotten to the point where emotions are under their jurisdiction quite yet.
Oh, I completely agree Mister Goat. It's not there yet. Your constitution takes much more to change. I wouldn't be surprised if it got there eventually - but that is entirely dependent on the future.
But really, I'm just going to let this die. The USA's politics is not my concern. It's a place of contradictions anyway. For example, nearly every curse word under the sun is censored on most of your television - and that is fine with the Supreme Court. The government has no problem with channels and networks censoring minor swear words to avoid offending people. Yet they have a problem with the idea of censoring people from being disrespectful
at a funeral where no one can just change the channel to get over it. Freedom of speech doesn't exist in your television, but it exists at your funerals? Strange. Can you explain that? I doubt you can. I know I certainly can't.
