From: clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis)
Newsgroups: news.admin,alt.censorship
Subject: Re: "Computers graphic when it comes to porn"
Date: 30 Aug 92 08:26:45 GMT
Followup-To: news.admin
Organization: Elegant Communications Inc., Ottawa, Canada

In article <1992Aug29.160031.3744@m.cs.uiuc.edu> kadie@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie) writes:
>clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) writes:

>>  A reasonable anti-hate law
>>would have a better chance at keeping their numbers smaller.

>I concede that additional punishments against KKK might discourage the
>group.

Which is better than nothing.

>Speech punishments, however, aren't the only possible such
>punishments. Punishing the KKK just for breathing would be even more
>effective. My point is that justness of a punishment can not be
>evaluated just by considering it effectiveness.

I don't want a Goldwaterish "end justifies the means" approach.  It isn't
necessary - and it would be ruled invalid by the courts anyways (at
least in Canada.  The US government has been given more leeway).

Where non-trivial harm can be shown, or considered a virtual certainty
*in* the courts, it doesn't seem unreasonable to prohibit that speech -
or, more accurately, to punish afterwards and prevent repeats.
In this, both of our Supreme Courts agree - where they disagree is how
certain that certainty has to be.

I've often considered class-action libel or slander lawsuits a better
approach than the laws we have, but we don't have that option because
class-action suits in themselves aren't valid here.  (Something to do
with you can't represent/defend/sue on behalf of someone who's not
personally and individually part of the suit.  Instead, you have
organizations that spring up as an umbrella group and those who choose
to become members sue jointly - but they can only sue for their
own "damages", and by definition, that "group" wasn't the target of the
speech in the first place).  But this would certainly have the
advantage of getting the government *completely* out of the business.

>A danger of government speech restrictions is that the government will
>abuse its authority. (I am especially leery of giving the U.S.
>government this power.)

If I were you, so would I.  However, we're not talking about the U.S.
government here (which has demonstrated abuse more than enough to
convince anybody), and frankly, we're not even talking about the
Canadian goverment - for the government still does *not* have any
such authority to impose their views of historicity - it still
has to be proven in court, to a jury.  No different than any
other criminal proceedings.

>Another danger that people stop deciding what
>is good and bad (true and false) for themselves and begin instead to
>depend on a government-defined orthodoxy.

Aside from the aforementioned point that this orthodoxy isn't
government-defined (at least in terms of conviction), if you had
been exposed to our media during these trials, you'd see very quickly
that it ain't the government that's pushing the "orthodoxy", aside
from the trial itself.  If it wasn't for the trial, you'd never
hear what the "official" position was - if indeed there is one.

>(Listening to the the
>Canadian Broadcast Company, I was very disturbed that they needed to
                    ^^^^^^^  Corporation! ;-)

I should point out that though the CBC is government funded (as is,
for example, the NPR, BBC or VOA), CBC radio (in particular) models
itself after the BBC, and is entirely independent of the Government
"line".  The CBC is very good at digging the dirt and embarrassing the
government politicians - who've in unguarded moments have labelled
it "communist".  No, the CBC isn't a friend of the government.  The
government doesn't get to decide what the CBC says.

>keep reminding people that just because this Revisionist's conviction
>was over turned, that doesn't mean his writings were true.)

This is a simple fact.  The precise truth.  It doesn't.  And it
had to be said.  Alan Borovoy, the president of the Canadian Civil
Liberties Union (I think this is its official name)  has been stressing
this often.  For the same reason.  Some people wouldn't understand.
And it's painful to have yourself associated with the slime buckets.

Whenever the ACLU goes to bat for the defendant in cases similar to
this they keep saying precisely the same thing - "we're not defending
him because we agree with him, we're defending FoS *only*".

>Government-defined orthodoxies are brittle and give little immunity to
>creative, new mutations of hate.

I don't see this at all.  There's no official parliament-approved
"list".  The government can charge whereever they feel that they
can get a conviction.  Though, both Keegstra and Zundel demonstrate
that they were reluctant to places charges.

Besides, I'll settle for controlling just the old versions of hate.  The
new mutations have been too trivial to worry about.
-- 
Chris Lewis; clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca; Phone: Canada 613 832-0541
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