From: thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Ted Frank)
Subject: Re: Hate Speech Okay, says the Supreme Court
Reply-To: thf2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 00:29:27 GMT

In article <1992Aug26.213908.27042@Princeton.EDU> egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges) writes:
>In article <1992Aug26.140218.1497@midway.uchicago.edu> thf2@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>>Then what is a law?  A magical mystical device that changes the
>>innermost thoughts of a society?
>>
>>"Ah," the bigot will say, "I used to hate this Albanian, but now the
>>city council has prohibited anti-Albanian speech, I suddenly feel a
>>deep love welling within me."
>
>That's something like what happened in the American south in the 1960s.

Really?  Name one hate speech law from the 1960s in the American South.

>Because laws were passed expressing the idea that discrimination was
>wrong, bigots did indeed rethink their attitudes, with the result that
>the South is significantly less racist than in the Fifties.  

No, laws were passed prohibiting discrimination.  "An expression that
discrimination is wrong" would've done nothing, because such expressions
had been coming for years before and after the Civil Rights Acts, as
well as in the first Brown v Board decision.  (We'll leave aside for
the moment the fact that much of the discrimination was *because* of
state laws insisting on segregation.)

And if you think attitudes have changed so much in the South, then why
have whites completely left the public school system down there?

>Perhaps
>you'd rather see the deliberate arming of racial factions and incitement
>to hatred, as is being engineered by white racists in South Africa?

That's a bit of leap, even from the Carl Lewis of logic.

>>to condemn the anti-Semitism of those posts you praise).
>
>Little quick on the draw.  You assumed, Ted, that I would not condemn
>what you perceived to be Sherheryar's "anti-semitism".  But a few
>minutes ago I replied to YOU, saying that you probably are the
>anti-semite, at least in Edward Said's sense, for you reasoned from
>Sherheryar's Arabic-sounding name and a mild criticism of Wesern media
>bias to Sherheryar's anti-semitism.  I said that if Sherheryar believes
>that Jews control the media, I disagree, but if he believes that a
>Western dollar elite, comprised of scum of all developed nations, sets
>the agenda for the middle east, I agree with him.  

Wow, don't let Schmidling see these new codewords for Jews: "scum of
all developed nations."  (And you have no idea why I reasoned the post
was anti-Semitic -- it was because the language within the post was
anti-Semitic, whether it comes from Sherheryar, Henry Ford, Pat Buchanan,
or Ed Nilges.) 

>If Sherheryar replies
>with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, he's wrong

Of course, you use the exact same language as the Protocols of the
Elders, only without the word "Jew."

(As if Said wasn't an anti-Semite, himself...)
-- 
             ......................................................
             ted frank | thf2@midway.uchicago.edu | std disclaimers
             the university of chicago law skool, chicago, illinois
             it's log!  log!  log!  it's big, it's heavy, it's wood