@Vrael - I'm henceforth dropping that it was illegal (I'm hopeless unqualified to argue U.S. law
) - and will focus on the morality.
@Oh_Man - Stunning how you can call my reasoning abhorrent and not form a concrete attack on said reasoning. I don't think you've sufficiently eroded neither my premises nor my argument. I encourage you to employ the counterexample method, or use equivalent statements to show that my reasoning is such - in the interests of avoiding miscommunication/ unintentional straw-mans, I’ll put my arguments in standard form (for those curious: ADD stands for putting two statements together, MP is a Latin abbrev. roughly meaning "if you put the 'IF' with the corresponding 'IF-THEN', you get the 'THEN'")
Before I continue, 'Sam Bacile' is an alias (he's probably a Coptic Christian from Egypt named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula), not a Jewish film producer in Cali. originally from Israel as he claimed. (sourced later)
1. Speech which will knowingly and needlessly put people at great risk of harm should be restricted (see below)
2. 'Sam' released content knowing that it would bring people to harm (see below)
3. 'Sam’s content was needless (see below)
4. 'Sam' knowingly released speech that would needlessly put people at great risk of harm. (2, 3, ADD)
5. This speech of 'Sam’s should be restricted. (1, 4, MP)
Premise 1In support of premise 1: I used both legal and anecdotal evidence to show that free-speech should not always be protected, and I put fourth very short lines of reasoning why this particular instance should not be protected as displayed in my standard form argument. You only appear to reject premise 1.
Knowingly put themselves at great risk? From what? Other humans who are unhappy at their satire - so unhappy that they will kill you for it. This is the whole POINT of free speech, you can say such things without censorship, ESPECIALLY violent censorship. And that is all Islam is trying to achieve in these cases and others, violent censorship.
I in no way supported violent censorship, I merely rejected the self-aware, unnecessary provocation of violence and stated that when one does so, he should not be protected under the umbrella of free-speech. I consider the introduction of 'violent censorship' in this context a particularly smelly red-herring.
You may as well say that Copernicus should have shut the hell up when he put forward the heliocentric model because he 'knowingly put himself and his peers at risk of violent behavior from the Catholics'.
I'd like to raise two objections to this response:
1. I wasn't aware that Copernicus put forth the heliocentric model knowing it would provoke violent reactions from the Catholic community (we know it provoked violent reactions after-the-fact, but did he know it would provoke violent reactions before-hand?), if he didn't know, then this is a very weak analogy, please source.
2. He put forth the heliocentric model intending to show his findings in a respectful manner, he did not put fourth an offensive, tasteless, mixture of truth and lies into a 12 minuet, targeted insult of a culture, knowing that it would provoke violent reactions; the comparison strikes me as unjustified.
How could anyone from a society where this sort of mockery is commonplace and regarded as little more than a bad joke really predict how much violence it could cause in a place thousands of miles away?
This calls into question premise 2 ('Sam' released content knowing that it would bring people to harm), I do have two separate lines of inductive reasoning for it:
Premise 21. 'Sam Bacile' is most likely Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a Coptic Christian from Egypt.
(source)2. Most Coptic Christians from Egypt would understand that such a video would incite violence. (intuition, accept or reject for yourself)
3. Therefore he probably knew video would cause violence.
1. Klein appears to be an associate of Nakoula
(source)2. (from the horse’s mouth) "We went into this knowing this was probably going to happen," Klein said.
(source)As I’m sure you know, a premise being more likely than it's contradiction(s) is all that is necessary for it to be part of a good argument - I think that's been satisfied.
Premise 3In support of premise 3, I’ll simply point to the many occurrences of such content in the past that fostered negative reactions and did not facilitate change. Respectful discussion between emissaries (state administrators, Jewish/Coptic leaders) and Islamic leaders has met success in the past and should be how we attempt to facilitate change.
If it can be proven that Sam Bacile intentionally incited the peoples of the Middle East to cause harm to Americans, then that speech should not be protected and he should be locked up for manslaughter. However, I doubt it was intentional, and even if it was, this would be very hard to prove.
If I may take a short rant: 'proving'/'to prove' is a terrible word/phrase that colloquially requires unreasonable amounts of evidence. To quote Alexander Vilenkin "It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man."
Rant/legality aside, I think that if he knowingly and needlessly incites violence of any kind, he should be locked up - and I think there is good reason to say he did just that.
Note: I argue for 'acted knowing X would happen', not 'acted intending X to happen'
Stepping outside of the specific situation upon which I have clearly taken a stance… I do think It is a grave problem that individual (stressing individual) Islamic’s take such serious offense that they would resort to violence, I do wish their culture would change that, I am in full agreement with the statement “This should not be offensive” and that satirical content should not cause such an uproar. Likewise I think using the ‘N-word’ should be completely appropriate and wish that it could be used in a joking manner (this is an aside, not a supporting analogy) – but the world’s not quite like that, in the meantime I think that we should be watching our step and work towards change through building positive relationships.
Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 16 2012, 10:22 pm by jjf28.
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