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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (181277)	2/6/2006 5:22:35 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I think there are several issues wrapped up in this. First, do we force newspapers and artists to be self censoring because art or reporting may incite violence? I'd say no- but then I have to be willing to tolerate the response if I say that, and I am. I happen to think that responses like this one to art are very rare, and I'm willing to live with the rare episodes of violence, so that artists and reporters in the countries that are free, or semi-free, will be able to do what they think is important. Second is the issue of how to respond. I don't think you let people off the hook just because they are offended. If they kill someone because something set them off, that might be mitigation (although not much, imo, because someone who can be set off by art might be set off again- I'm not inclined to be very lenient on that aspect), and it might be explanation, and you might use the causation element to try to head off such problems in the future- but that's it. I wouldn't use the results as a reason to censor going forward, but more as a way to predict outcomes, and perhaps ameliorate reactions to art in the future. The burden of criminal responses to outre art and writing has to be on the person who responds criminally- that's really the only thing that makes sense if you value freedom of expression. Third, why should it be important that people feel remorse for inflammatory content? I think it would be "nice" if people felt remorse for the violence inflammatory content might cause, but "niceness" isn't something I really want mandated for my newspapers or artists- because quite frankly, one person's niceness, can be another person's sheer boredom, or crackdown on information and expression. I'm not looking for an argument, but my kids were interested in this, and we drew the issue out on paper to unravel it- which made a lot more sense to them then trying to understand it as one big ball of emotions, facts and law. I don't know Danish law- so we discussed it in the context of the US- and we talked about some of the things that have offended US people- like the Piss Christ.