Quote:
Originally Posted by tater
Freedom of speech is binary, you have it, or you don't. If a party or symbol is banned you are not free.
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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.