One the one hand, free speech is not an absolute, even in the USA. Shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre, inciting the violent overthrow of the government, inciting violence in general, libel, slander, etc. are all actionable to one degree or another.

On the other hand, a Supreme Court Justice famously remarked that the best way to deal with hate is to expose it to the light of day and reasoned discourse.

I wish the UK would have admitted Phelps & Roper and then charged, tried, and imprisoned them for a VERY long time under their hate speech statutes.

I watched a horrible and at times gut-wrenching film (even though it was of course just acting) playing out the story of the only mass escape of victims in European history from a concentration camp.
It was about the concentration camp called Sobibor in Poland. A very few men escaped from Sobibor. What did the Nazis do? The commander rounded up a crowd of camp inmates to show them what would happen if any more escaped. The commander chose 13 men to die, some of them with their clothes in shreds and whip marks on their faces and bodies Each of those men had to choose a live partner to die with them making 26 who had to die. Noone moved inspite of the commander’s repeated orders that if the oondemned didn’t choose a partner, the commander would do the choosing and 50 would die instead of 26. Eventually a man in complete tatters slowly comes forward and chooses a young male and takes him back with him arm around his neck. Then one by one each of the original 13 to be condemned comes forward and chooses another young man. One older man says softly I am sorry. Another strokes his hand slowly and lovingly across the cheek of another young man before taking him with him.
Another takes another man back with him and puts his arm around him and holds him very tight gripping him around his neck by his coat collar. You see the faces of those trying not to shed tears, eyes dare not close or look at the ground. Because the commander forbids that. Or more will be killed. The condemned did not take a single woman to die with them, only young men to of course let the women later have babies if they could one day escape or be freed somehow. One woman in the crowd not then chosen to die was having trouble holding her head up, so commander took his coiled whip and shoved it under her chin to force her head up and make sure she was watching. Then an order was barked and the whole standing row of 26 condemned to die was gunned down within about 10 seconds going down just like a line of dominoes as they were mowed down from left to right.

Babis were not allowed at Sobibor, they had to die. Sobibor was in part made up of workshops, the inmates were expected to work, to produce and mend things etc. in small cottage-like buildings with windows. Guards would visit and walk in and out to see how things were going. In one was a group of women that worked and lived there. One of them was a young mother in a white sweater frantic with worry as she had a baby that she was desperately hoping would not be noticed. Baby would cry inspite of her efforts to keep it out of sight and quiet. She knew the guard was coming so she put it in a bunk bed and pulled the covers over it. It would not be quiet so as the guard came in so she flung herself in front of the bed. Guard takes the baby and says that babies are not allowed. She begs for her baby, so the guard says the baby would die but she would live. She screams again and guard says again like it were a bargain and don’t you appreciate that you will still live but baby doesn’t, with that she screams, “I spit on your uniform” or on you” and spits on his uniform. Next he shoots the baby in front of her and then he shoots her in front of the other women.

People are in fear but they do what they have to do and what they are in told Until one day in comes a captured tall blond haired Russian soldier with light colored blue eyes still in uninform who just happens to be Jewish whereas most of the other camp inmates were dark haired and of “average height” with him taller and broader shouldered than the rest. One of the bolder inmates decides to share with a few of those inmates he immediately trusts the idea of escape but he says look what happened to those who remained behind after the first escape. Therefore all 600 plus must be included in the plan to escape or none at all. He takes notice of the big Russian soldier and wants to see if the Russian is OK. So he talks to the Russian who wonders if he should get involved and why and if he could trust these other inmates. After the two decide to trust each other, a plan is formed. Every inmate would be informed of the plan to eventually escape but it had to kept secret. The people had to talk together but act normal. The Russian engaged in a fake romance with a woman not his wife and others started to little by little do the same. Just live and act like normal people do and be social and get the guards used to this state of affairs for a while. Then the Russian starts to assign secret jobs and find the right people to make nice boots for the commanders and be friendly to them and do other diversionary tactics after enough knives and hatchets had been secretly made and hidden for the moment. Meanwhile boots and other normal things were pleasingly made, very delicious smelling food was cooked to lure the plumpest Nazi guard, and one after another the guards and commanders were lured by “friendly” inmates to come for their goods and one by one each of those Nazis was axed in the back at the right moment and/or stabbed to death. After enough had been killed, the inmate who knew electrical work cut the phone lines and cut the electricity to the lights off. So word could not get out. The fat guard was lured by the cooking smells and he tasted it and demanded to know what made it taste good when the cook would not tell him, he pulls the cook up close runs his finger down the cooks long nose and says what is your Christian name..Cook very slowly pulls a knife out unbeknownst to the guard and says as he suddenly slits the guard’s neck from behind his back, “I don’t have a Christian name, My name is Herschel Zimmerman and don’t you ever forget it!”

Out of the 600 inmates who flee smashing open wooden gates and chopping through several barriers of I guess it was barbed wire with sharp hatchets. Then while racing frantically for the woods about 300 died… shot down by guards up in the watch tower. The rest made it and went to other parts of Europe, Russian soldier went back to Russia, some eventually made it to the US, etc.

As for Auschwitz (Oscwiecim, the Nazis tried to burn and destroy things to hide their attrocities from the Russians and the Allies. They did not succeed in time and much of remained was turned eventually by the Polish government into a museum so that the world would not forget the Nazis and just how they murdered thousands and cremated many dead bodies every day. They would pretend that people were going to take a shower, cram them in and then gas them from the contents of can after can of I believe it was called Zyklon B. I saw a few of those emptied cans on display.

We must not forget these horrors toward “undesirable” people as we GLBTs are still “undesirables” maybe just barely tolerated in a lying and sarcastic way if at all by people like Huckaboom.

When we gain rights and acceptance, when we educate and educate for the goodness of diversity and see the number of outright bigots fall over the years all of us (not just us GLBTs) here and elsewhere become safer from those who do not wish “different people” well and who wish them (including GLBTs) gone.

I wish you’d show a little more respect to our constitution. If they can be banned, you and I can be banned.

This is the same country that tried to shut us up when we screamed, “No taxation without representation.”

Eliminating speech and banning people who speak things that you don’t like is, well, un-American.

I commend the British Government taking such action.

To right wingers, do you really think the U.S. wouldn’t ban a foreign talk show host who threatened or advocated for the assassination of the president or any other American for that matter? I see a double standard, typically right wing one too.

National Socialism? It was closer to a corporatist-facist model, which is why companies like VW, ThyssenKrupp, BASF and Siemens (among many others) all paid some sort of reparations for their use of slave labor during the war. (Recall that it was the central government which created IG Farben, a forced amalgamation of Germany’s largest chemical companies.) That has NOTHING to do with the Obama Administration trying to staunch the meltdown of two economic sectors. Recall that Thatcher didn’t divest state interest in UK firms without making at least some effort to get them in suitable condition for privatization. Recall that Japan forced mergers in its financial sector to avoid massive bank failures. Recall that oh-so-leftist France has major companies with significant state interest (Areva in nuclear power, SNCF’s TGV consulting and development arm, energy leader EDF)–and it’s the stability of cautious state investment that has allowed them to avoid the profit-now mentality of the US and the UK.

So please, next time you want to trot out the party line, or you just feel the need for a good bout of denial and self-deception, go to your mirror instead of your keyboard.

Hitler was a man. Pol Pot was straight. Stalin was Russian. Does that mean that all men, Russians, and straight people are evil?

Huckaboom’s arguments are ridiculous. But, in the case of the Holocaust, I want to make sure that people who are reading huckaboom’s silly arguments understand the truth of the horrors of the Holocaust. All too often people ignore the destruction and suffering of genocide.

This means Phelps will be right here in the USofA more often.