Austrian bakery sells Nazi-cakes, owner faces prison

[Associate Justice PiT]

No, no, you see problems where there aren't. What matters above all other things is that this sort of thing is not tolerated. There is no way to prevent them from happening, but they have to be utterly unacceptable when they do. There'll always be idiots and scum, that doesn't mean we have to just let them be. One doesn't argue that murder might just as well be legal because 3 millenia of ilegality haven't made it go away either.

     And of course baking a swastika cake is in no way comparable to murder. Ideas do not equal actions.

[Associate Justice PiT]

To behave as these people behave is intolerable. You think there's no damage being done here? I can't think of a crime more heinous (so to speak). The things that are being trivialized here are  among the most pivotal events of the whole of human history. You say that this is not an act but 'just' speech. I must confess that I'm always baffled at how banal libertarians seem to think 'speech' and 'ideas' are. Why bother having free speech if it doesn't even have any consequences anyway? And if it does have consequences, how is this not an act? How is this not a direct insult to the 5.5 million victims of the Holocaust? How is this not an insult to the very core of humanity?

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It's intolerable that the righteous should always be out there to prevent this evil from finding a place to grow. The only correct response is to destroy it systematically when it pops up and be as harsh as humanely possible in doing so.

     Why should people not be allowed to insult "the very core of humanity"? It's called free speech for a reason, after all.

[Associate Justice PiT]

To behave as these people behave is intolerable. You think there's no damage being done here? I can't think of a crime more heinous (so to speak). The things that are being trivialized here are  among the most pivotal events of the whole of human history. You say that this is not an act but 'just' speech. I must confess that I'm always baffled at how banal libertarians seem to think 'speech' and 'ideas' are. Why bother having free speech if it doesn't even have any consequences anyway? And if it does have consequences, how is this not an act? How is this not a direct insult to the 5.5 million victims of the Holocaust? How is this not an insult to the very core of humanity?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

It's intolerable that the righteous should always be out there to prevent this evil from finding a place to grow. The only correct response is to destroy it systematically when it pops up and be as harsh as humanely possible in doing so.

     Why should people not be allowed to insult "the very core of humanity"? It's called free speech for a reason, after all.

Why shouldn't I go round drowning kittens? Some moral imperatives are of a nature that exceeds my capacities to give them arational foundation. I don't think murder is okay because of that. WHy should it be okay to play pretend the Holocaust wasn't a big deal? I don'tv see how some petty little idea like 'freedom of speech' weighs up against the trivialization of pure evil.

     Possibly because I do not think that the government should be in the business of deciding what expressions are alright & what ones aren't. Begging the government to protect you from people glorifying past wrong-doing constitutes a sign of weakness, IMO. If people would actually try to argue against & protest fascism (or any other idea) rather than just banning it, they would find significant success in keeping it at bay. Don't people learn anything from the United States Republican Party?

[Associate Justice PiT]

To behave as these people behave is intolerable. You think there's no damage being done here? I can't think of a crime more heinous (so to speak). The things that are being trivialized here are  among the most pivotal events of the whole of human history. You say that this is not an act but 'just' speech. I must confess that I'm always baffled at how banal libertarians seem to think 'speech' and 'ideas' are. Why bother having free speech if it doesn't even have any consequences anyway? And if it does have consequences, how is this not an act? How is this not a direct insult to the 5.5 million victims of the Holocaust? How is this not an insult to the very core of humanity?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

It's intolerable that the righteous should always be out there to prevent this evil from finding a place to grow. The only correct response is to destroy it systematically when it pops up and be as harsh as humanely possible in doing so.

     Why should people not be allowed to insult "the very core of humanity"? It's called free speech for a reason, after all.

Why shouldn't I go round drowning kittens? Some moral imperatives are of a nature that exceeds my capacities to give them arational foundation. I don't think murder is okay because of that. WHy should it be okay to play pretend the Holocaust wasn't a big deal? I don'tv see how some petty little idea like 'freedom of speech' weighs up against the trivialization of pure evil.

     Possibly because I do not think that the government should be in the business of deciding what expressions are alright & what ones aren't. Begging the government to protect you from people glorifying past wrong-doing constitutes a sign of weakness, IMO. If people would actually try to argue against & protest fascism (or any other idea) rather than just banning it, they would find significant success in keeping it at bay. Don't people learn anything from the United States Republican Party?

Who are these "people" arguing against fascism? What if they don't exist?

     I know that they didn't exist when they were needed, which is part of why fascist governments became so powerful in Germany & Italy. That isn't to say that anti-fascist protests don't work; just that people historically, for whatever reason, didn't take on the project while the fascists were still weak enough to be stopped.