see. I think it's sad. its our history....

I'm sorry slavery persisted in this nation as long as it did...im sorry there was racism...but we can be so bent over backwards by it that we try to pretend it didn't happen like this.

We are protecting our kids to death.

Happens in Germany every day....by law. No Swastikas. And they call themselves in favor of free speech . I laugh at them and consider Germany a lessor country.

Do you consider any country other than America to be anything other than a lessor country? :hmmm:

it is an interesting idea...but i think the general consensus in germany is that nazism is not really free speech, but hate speech, which is not considered free speech and protected.

I don't understand why you have to be insulting to people, in such a clumsy fashion, to make a point about censorship. :nope: Please use a little more tact.

Freedom of speech is binary, you have it, or you don't. If a party or symbol is banned you are not free.

That said, most of what people call "banning" of books os not banning at all. Banning requires that the government forbid a book. That means you cannot buy it, or own it.

No books are banned in the US. None.

A library not buying a book is not a "ban" a school not buying or teaching a book is not a "ban."

This is about censorship. I think a school buying a censored book shows them for what they are, a lessor school system. Just means my kids will have less competition to be the ruling class.

In Germany we say: Wenn man keine Ahnung hat einfach mal die Fresse halten!

Translation: If you dont have a clue, simply stfu!

Ah, my favourite hobby again - unlimited freedom, although everyone of us already necessarily finds a limit to his freedom where he meets somebody else, so that you have two spheres of freedom rubbing against each other.

To you the same question I asked before in other debates: when one side uses freedom to sow and grow ideas and a thinking that aims at overcoming freedom - is it then also a lack of freedom when you defend against this destruction of freedom by limiting the freedom to work for the destruction of freedom? Or means freedom to you to ban any defence of freedom, for a freedom being defended is no freedom anymore? Or in other words - is there any obligation in freedom to allow others destroying it, becasue by defending freedom you already would destroy it yourself?

Or couldn't it be that a society must find a sensitive balance between allowing freedom to the other, but hindering him to abuse freedom for derstroying freedom?

Must a state allow freedom to those wanting to destroy it'S constitutional basis?

The German constitution (form ed under heavy influence by the American occupoators after WWII ) says No, and defines a clear criterion: where somebody abuses freedom to propagate the destruction of the constitutional order, not only his freedoms and rights can be limited, but German even are given the constitutiponal right to resist to him by the means necessary to stop him.

Nazism does not want dmeocracy, but wants it'S destruction to rfeplace it with itself. It also villates several key parts of the constituti, namely the very first article of the Basic Law that says that the dignity of man is untouchable. But propagating racism, antisemitism, and own racial superiority, Nazism hardly can be seen as respecting the dignity of man. Not to mention that German Nazis put the national borders of European states at the end of WWII - namely that of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic - into question.

Are we really unfree when we forbid Nazism actively trying to trealsiue these ideas?

Have 60 million dead and the horror of the concentration camps not been big enough a lesson for you to learn...?

It is a paradox, but there is no such thing like unlimited freedom. There cannot be something like that, and there nowhere is. The right of the other to be free and to exist ends at the latest where he claims his freedom at the cost of yours and claims his existence to be valuable enough to deny yours at equal terms to his.

See the endless debate I haid with Steve about this 3 months ago or so.

I'm a bit tired of seeing peopole idnciating that Germany is a censoring, unfree regime becasue we do not show swastikas. Like in all Western nations, including the US, there are political ambitions of the elites to limit free speech of medias, most prominently Italy and the latest media censorshiup law in hunagry, but also certainb security acts in US legislation since 9/11 aiming at reducing the freredom of the media to do research or to report unauthorized information. We have such attenmpts to intimdiate the media occaisonally too in Germany. But the anti. Nazi laws are not part of that. Prohibiting Nazism is for very good and reasonable and sensible reasons.

One could as well argue that there is no freedom if people are not free to commit murder without getting punished.

What's there to understand...? A frog is squawking because it is a frog, a fish swims becasue it is a fish, and a scorpion stings because it is a scorpion.

Yup and the Troll trolls because its a troll!!

If someone being allowed to draw a symbol is an existential problem for a society, freedom of speech is the least of their problems.

Hmm ok and who said that the whole swastikas thing is a existential problem for the german society?
I and most of the Germans dont have a problem with it, so wheres the Problem?
You dont like it like we handle the things? Thats ok but also not my Problem.
We have more important problems, like our social security system, which with all of its problem ist still one of the best worldwide.
But it has to be reworked, no doubt about it, same goes for the school system over here.
If some americans are meaning we are a bad society because we dont allow swastikas, we can have live with that.

Despite all of the Problems we have Germany is a pretty good place to live.
Believe it or not.

It depends on who is leasing what to whom. :sunny:

I don't think that drawing swastikas IS a real problem in Germany, that's my point. I think that such free expression would receive the marginalized treatment it would deserve. Immediately post-war, when virtually every adult member of society (barring those who actively fought against it) was in fact at least passively complicit, it made sense. For the modern generations of Germans, there is nothing to see, move along.

So to be clear, I think that germany has gone well beyond the stage where such limitations do anything useful. You're better than that.

So that's the point. Banning expression is pretty much never the right solution.