Jenab6
This discussion pertains to administratively imposed debate restrictions. For as long as there have been public debates about race, leftists (or "liberals" in the USA) have tried to restrict the spectrum of allowed speech by declaring their opponents' best arguments out-of-bounds. They corrupt the governing rules of forums with administrative policies that establish their own views on the subject as the only permissible views and define dissent as "hate speech." Then if anyone disagrees with the leftists' thinking, he will be found guilty of "violating the rules" and banned.
In other words, the leftists first gain the power to write the rules, and then they write cheater's rules rather than fair ones. Their justification is preventing offense to racial minorities. Although there's nothing wrong with choosing to remain silent in order to avoid giving offense, the freedom of speech has a higher value than politeness does. When one value must be sacrificed to preserve another, then the lesser should be let go and the greater kept.
What the leftists are doing, of course, is leveling heresy charges against racism, and then acting as both prosecutor and judge of the matter. Whether racists sometimes make good arguments, in the sense that they include statements that are both important and true, doesn't matter to leftists, who don't consider truth to be a defense. (The leftist Civil Rights Commission in Canada actually said so in nearly those very words.) The better a racist's argument is, the more it threatens to expose the errors of liberalism, and therefore leftists are more inclined to call for the censorship of thoughtful racist arguments than for the censorship of poor ones.
These are mostly the same liberals who argue that anti-Christian themes in movies, such as Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ," and in art, such as Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" crucifix in a jar of urine, ought to be protected speech despite their offensiveness to many Christians. What blasphemous themes are to Christians, racist opinions are to leftists. Leftists frequently seek censorship of racist arguments so that they will not have to present opposing arguments that they might not be capable of presenting.
It isn't necessarily wrong to exclude points of view on a board. If the stated purpose of a forum is to glorify a particular god, a race, a political philosophy, an election candidate, or a brand of consumer goods, then it's perfectly all right for the board's owner or moderator to come along and censor posts inconsistent with the forum's mission. You can legally criticize Jesus, but you shouldn't go into a church to do it. If you do, the preacher has the right to throw you out.
But when a board's stated purpose is to engage in debate, for the purpose of arriving at the truth, or at a better understanding of the reasons for disagreement, then a priori restrictions on unpopular views are hypocritical attempts to "fix" the debate so that only the popular point of view can seem to win. The advocates of the unpopular viewpoint (who are racists in this case) will be allowed only to score small points with their lesser and more oblique arguments, while the leftists can bring forth their whole array of verbiage unfettered by any fear that they will be censored.
To give the leftists ground for calling for the censorship of racist opinions, the rules of debate are written to exclude racist opinions and, even more especially, the reasoning behind those opinions. "Racist remarks" and "hate speech" are ruled illegal, and then the rule is used not only to prevent racial insults, but also to censor arguments that the leftists find too threatening to their belief system to deal with forthrightly.
That's how things are in most race-related debates. They are not so much debates as controlled pretenses thereof. It's surprising to find a media venue that will host ideas that fall outside the spectrum of opinion that leftists are comfortable with, e.g., by letting racists present the case for racism, in their own write, unedited and without preconditions.
In other words, the leftists first gain the power to write the rules, and then they write cheater's rules rather than fair ones. Their justification is preventing offense to racial minorities. Although there's nothing wrong with choosing to remain silent in order to avoid giving offense, the freedom of speech has a higher value than politeness does. When one value must be sacrificed to preserve another, then the lesser should be let go and the greater kept.
What the leftists are doing, of course, is leveling heresy charges against racism, and then acting as both prosecutor and judge of the matter. Whether racists sometimes make good arguments, in the sense that they include statements that are both important and true, doesn't matter to leftists, who don't consider truth to be a defense. (The leftist Civil Rights Commission in Canada actually said so in nearly those very words.) The better a racist's argument is, the more it threatens to expose the errors of liberalism, and therefore leftists are more inclined to call for the censorship of thoughtful racist arguments than for the censorship of poor ones.
These are mostly the same liberals who argue that anti-Christian themes in movies, such as Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ," and in art, such as Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" crucifix in a jar of urine, ought to be protected speech despite their offensiveness to many Christians. What blasphemous themes are to Christians, racist opinions are to leftists. Leftists frequently seek censorship of racist arguments so that they will not have to present opposing arguments that they might not be capable of presenting.
It isn't necessarily wrong to exclude points of view on a board. If the stated purpose of a forum is to glorify a particular god, a race, a political philosophy, an election candidate, or a brand of consumer goods, then it's perfectly all right for the board's owner or moderator to come along and censor posts inconsistent with the forum's mission. You can legally criticize Jesus, but you shouldn't go into a church to do it. If you do, the preacher has the right to throw you out.
But when a board's stated purpose is to engage in debate, for the purpose of arriving at the truth, or at a better understanding of the reasons for disagreement, then a priori restrictions on unpopular views are hypocritical attempts to "fix" the debate so that only the popular point of view can seem to win. The advocates of the unpopular viewpoint (who are racists in this case) will be allowed only to score small points with their lesser and more oblique arguments, while the leftists can bring forth their whole array of verbiage unfettered by any fear that they will be censored.
To give the leftists ground for calling for the censorship of racist opinions, the rules of debate are written to exclude racist opinions and, even more especially, the reasoning behind those opinions. "Racist remarks" and "hate speech" are ruled illegal, and then the rule is used not only to prevent racial insults, but also to censor arguments that the leftists find too threatening to their belief system to deal with forthrightly.
That's how things are in most race-related debates. They are not so much debates as controlled pretenses thereof. It's surprising to find a media venue that will host ideas that fall outside the spectrum of opinion that leftists are comfortable with, e.g., by letting racists present the case for racism, in their own write, unedited and without preconditions.