Dear David,

Thank You for sharing your thoughts with me.

While living and working in Los Angeles for so many
years my husband and I had the privilege of getting
to know quite a few Jewish people. They included -
academics, (I worked at the University of Southern California)
business people (through my husband's work in architecture
and town planning), and our apartment owners who were Jewish -
and - whose parents were Holocaust survivors.

Therefore when I read what ALTRAV had written - it had an
impact on me. I simply could not believe it, especially what
he wrote about the Holocaust, and
I decided to quote him exactly and let people make up their
own minds for themselves.

I find that it is important to call things out. Hitler would
not have risen to power had it not been for vast numbers of
of people who gave him that power. Although they may not
have shared his hatred, they didn't have a solid, moral
commitment to not hate.

Only a society in which there is a widespread commitment to
not hate is safe from hatred. A little hatred is like a little
cancer. It is dangerous.

David, I posted Dr Haim Ginott's letter from the private
school's principal to show that we can rid the world of
atrocities only by refusing to take part in them.And by
speaking out.

Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn tells us in the Preface, to his
book, "The Gulag Archipelago", about an old Russian
proverb that says:

"No, don't! Don't dig up the past!
Dwell on the past and you'll lose an eye".

But the proverb goes on to say:

"Forget the past and you'll lose both eyes".

Unless we learn from the mistakes of the past, the tragedies,
and allow the spread of hatred to continue - and now with our nuclear weapons -
it is unlikely that we will have a future to contemplate.

We cannot allow hatred to be spread. The moral choice is ours
to make. We have to stop people in their tracks spreading
as you put it - crap.

Hi Joe,

Do you recall the ridiculous claim made in the 1950's or 60's, that Red China was secretly tunnelling under the Pacific with the intention of a surprise attack on the United States. I think it was inspired by a cheap B grade Hollywood sci-fy of the time. Not staring the same B grade actor from 'Bedtime for Bozo'. Some people actually believed it.

Dear Foxy,

You wrote: “We cannot allow hatred to be spread. The moral choice is ours to make. We have to stop people in their tracks spreading
as you put it - crap.”

Respectfully, I disagree. People have a right to speak even if what they are saying is crap. The problem with limiting speech is that we have to give someone the power to decide what one can say and what one cannot say. I don’t trust anybody to have that power even though I don’t like a lot of things that are said.

I don’t approve of the anti-vilification legislation we have in Australia. I don’t approve of 18c. Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act makes it unlawful for someone to do an act that is reasonably likely to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” someone because of their race or ethnicity.

It is too broad. I want the right to say any religion is nonsense even though it could be interpreted as offending, insulting, humiliating or intimidating someone because of their race or ethnicity.

The Weimar Republic had excellent anti-vilification legislation. Under that legislation Nazis were charged. If the charges stuck the Nazis could play the martyr. If the Nazi was found not guilty they could say they were justified. The anti-vilification legislation shut people up, but it didn’t keep the Nazis out of power.

Free speech is risky. We may lose our freedom if a demagogue is believed and takes power. Banning speech is not risky at all. We are sure to lose our freedom by the act of banning. I prefer the risk of losing freedom to the certainty of losing freedom.

We can educate people to employ critical thinking and to evaluate arguments with reason and information.

Lincoln said ”You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

If we are to have a free society we have to take the risk that some of the time all the people will be fooled.

Paul,

Or Menzies' claim that the Chinese were about to all hop into boats and row down to Australia (i.e. down-hill, after all) ?

Joe

'Do you recall the ridiculous claim made in the 1950's or 60's, that Red China was secretly tunnelling under the Pacific with the intention of a surprise attack on the United States'

I am more concerned about the idiotic claims of the gw fraudsters, uni professors and scammers who made foolish predictions about the damage to the earth by climate change. These fools have brainwashed the masses for about 30 years. Still no evidence for this soothsaying.

Dear David,

People who enjoy the rights of free speech have a duty
to respect other people's rights.

A person's freedom of speech is limited by the rights of
others. All democratic societies put various limitations
on what people may say. They prohibit certain types of
speech that they believe might harm the government or the
people.

Most democratic countries have restrictions on
free expression.

We have laws covering - libel, slander,
public decency, urging violence, hate speech. The development
of freedom of speech in most Western countries has been
brought about through the growth of democratic governments
based on the rule of law.

I guess we shall have to agree to disagree on this.