Leigh, I don’t know what that is. As I said, I wouldn’t make a judgement on Mark Steyn’s case unless I knew the full context. I mentioned that I hadn’t read any of Albrechtsen’s columns and I saw a few posts in my greader but didn’t read them either. I’m not prepared to offer a view unless I understood the context, and I really think I’d be wasting valuable moments of my life if I spent them reading anything Mark Steyn wrote. But, again, I don’t hold the position that any speech in any context is defensible at all times under the claim of a right. As I said, that should be fairly clear from what I wrote above.

I think she’s referring to the Salam Cafe discussion on one of the Saturday Salons’

http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/05/10/saturday-salon-139/

I made it clear that I do not believe there should be an unconstrained right to free speech, if the intent and effect of that speech is to vilify and demean others particularly if they have less power and in particular less power to respond. That has nothing to do with “the free circulation of ideas” or whether arguments can and should be challenged on their logic (and their apparent motivation and context) - and note I don’t use the metaphor of the market. It should be very clear why I adopt this position from the comments I’ve previously made and that I do not accept the framing of speech in terms of rights - at least not without some understanding that such rights are contextual. Debate and argument are to be encouraged and facilitated but there are much better frameworks for so doing than rights claims.

Nothing in what I have written implies any desire that the state should be arbiter in these matters, though in some limited circumstances it may be desirable that it should be. It’s too late at night, I’m sorry, for me to be prepared to explain further or argue this out.

On matters of Australian law, I must defer, since obviously different countries have different codes. Some of them worry me more than others, but unlike Mr. Bush, I don’t think it’s my brief to transform all humanity. We seem to be straying into a fundamental difference of conception of liberty between Australian and American law, and since those are uncharted waters for me, I can go no further.

laura — what’s your point? (or as a character in a Dashiell Hammett book might say, Is that a threat?)

In Australian law, if I defame you, and you sue me successfully, I have to publish a retraction. I’d also suggest that you might be more attached to “property rights” than many folks in this country (except for the alleged libertarians who are very selective in their love). It would be easy to make an argument in principle that where people are misrepresented and vilified they should have a right to reply to the same audience who’s read the offensive article.

This is your blog. Imagine if you deleted one of my comments, for whatever reason that you felt appropriate (and you rightly reserve the right to make such judgments), but then I sued you for inciting hatred against whatever zany nonsense I had commented about in the first place. It’s ridiculous, right? Guess what, that sort of hooey is starting to happen.

I agree with you, “it would be nice” if what I said was in jest.

“predicated on privilege”?! What are you, smoking crack?

Wow, way to descend to playground abuse. I can’t work out whether you mean you deny such speech is predicated on privilege, or whether you don’t know / can’t see what he means (said blindness to privilege being a classic symptom of it).

I can’t believe I still have to argue this stuff with grown-up, educated adults.

Shorter JPZ: they cross me, therefore they are ignorant children.

As for my other points, obviously I hold those truths to be self-evident.

I can’t believe I still have to argue this stuff with grown-up, educated adults. Doesn’t this sort of thing get washed out in junior-high civics class? “predicated on privilege”?! What are you, smoking crack?

“I’ll just recommend the rather lucid work of Judith Butler on this topic…”

Well, you stick with your Butler, and I’ll hang onto my James Madison, and we’ll see who rots in a gulag first.

I’ll just recommend the rather lucid work of Judith Butler on this topic, then run away because it will, I predict, be impossible to have a sensible conversation with some people after mentioning the very overdetermined phrase “Judith Butler”.

Conflicts of rights are common. But only if they’re seen purely in the abstract and in some false universality. And that’s how they have to be seen if the “right” to hate speech is to be protected. Because in the concrete, there’s no conflict of rights but an assertion of power.

“When I say ’should not be protected’, what I mean is ’should not be protected’. Protected, specifically, by the frenzied bleatings of WADDABOUT TEH FREE SPEECH?? (bleatings that that are themselves intended to silence the other party; oh the irony) every time anyone objects to hate speech.”

Then I don’t really know what you’re talking about. Either you have used the word “protected” idiosyncratically, or else you are simply calling for more (and critical) speech in response to hate speech, which is the right thing to do. Neither of these issues are a bee in my particular bonnet, so, perhaps we are arguing about nothing.