It's bad enough that college campuses (campi, for the perfectionists, I guess) love to squelch any speech that's not left-wing, as illustrated by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (thefire.org), which reports that Jacksonville State University supports free speech for all students as long as there is no chance anything said by any student will "offend" any other student on the campus.

Now someone's Going to jail over what he said.

As I said in another thread, freedom of speech is here to validate those opinions that go against everything you believe. I think this moron is ignorant and uninformed; however, I wholly agree with his right to speak his mind. If he doesn't get to say what he thinks, then why am I allowed to speak my mind? It has to work both ways, or it doesn't work at all.

I sorta like the idea of MIB supporting my right to call him an ignorant dumbass.

And I support your right to say something stupid. See how this works? wink

The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, is a politician so revolting, so sleazy and so authoritarian, that the London Eye should be weeping with shame that this appalling individual is the city’s most visible public representative. That said, what has just happened to Red Ken is yet another reminder that legal restrictions on "offensive" speech are a real danger to the freedom of expression that once was the pride of the West .

The facts are not savory, to put it mildly. Basically, and with typical unpleasantness, Livingstone took it upon himself effectively to compare a (Jewish) journalist from London’s Evening Standard to a concentration camp guard. The appropriate remedy, for that, and for much else besides, is to vote Livingstone out of office. What happened instead was that some Blair creation called the "Adjudication Panel For England" decided that Livingstone should be "suspended" from his job for a month.

And have no doubt that somewhere an Islamic extremist is watching – and just loving the precedent.

Free speech is free speech is free speech. There is no but.

yes, free speech is free speech, but plagiarism is not. anytime you reprint or repost someone else's words or writings, a link or source should be cited.

How about the Austrian guy (I think he is an author or maybe a politician) who was jailed for saying the Holocaust has been greatly exagerrated? Seems it is, in fact, illegal in Austria to deny the Holocaust, but to be jailed for it?

It's an incredibly ignorant thing to say. But it shouldn't be illegal. Is it illegal in Austria to say God doesn't exist? I'm sure alot of this Holocaust protection is based in the guilt the Austrians must feel for their part, but somebody shouldn't go to jail for making statements about it.

David Irving is the British Holocaust denier who's being jailed. Not every Western liberal democratic country has free speech laws and in almost none are they absolute (including the United States). Free speech rights in Canada, Britain, and much of the rest of Europe are far more restrictive than the US, and in many parts of the world, there is no such thing as "free speech." Just consider China, where journalists are still being jailed and dissenters continue to be killed by the Communist state there (with almost minimal outcry from most of the west). And it's not just at universities; states and the federal government try to and sometimes do muzzle certain types of speech.

Not only that, but some fanatics are trying to shut down people's public access to certain types of protected speech. In fact, at a Maryand library just a few weeks ago, state homeland security officials (wrong) went into a library and ordered anyone viewing pornography to stop doing it, thereby clamping down on people's free exercise of their rights to access to certain types of speech in the public domain.

I strongly disagree with jailing people for making racist, hatefilled comments, unless they become threats or intentional provocations to others to harm people, in which case there is no freedom to threaten people's lives. The right's darling, plagiarist Ann Coulter, treads (and sometimes stumbles right over) this line all the time.

It's possible that their laws on this were written with the Big Lie in mind. The Nazis understood that if something is repeated often enough, many people will accept it as true, even if there is no evidence for it, even if there is evidence against it. Say it repeatedly, say it loudly, and many will accept it.

The Austrians might have remembered that practice from their horrific history with the Nazis, and established punishments to be real deterrents. Jail time is surprising to me, but perhaps fines were not enough.

One thing you have to remember is that a "carte-blanche" style of free speech, where a person can say anything, anywhere, anytime, and be protected by law, is by and large an American construct.

For example, Here in Canada, we have freedom of speech in our constitution, but that cannot trump other laws. A person cannot deny the holocaust, or say that the haolocauset needs to happen again, and be protected for it. They would be, and have been, (as in the case a few years ago of Jim Keegstra) convicted by Canada's hate laws.

In Europe, the same exists in most countries. With centuries of ethnic, racial and religious hatred behind them, most countries take a measured approach to free speech.

"Measured approach?" Such laws are anethema to human freedom and squelch free speech; and hate laws punish thought, one reason why I am completely opposed to these feel good bullshit laws known as "hate laws."

Livignstone's suspension an affront to Magna Carta, the English Charter, and the U.S. Constitution?