Every man in the world is better than someone else and not as good as someone else.
William Saroyan, The Resurrection of a Life (1935).
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William Saroyan
Category: Thought
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John Bates Clark
Brotherly feeling is a weak thing indeed if the condition of its existence is that men shall be equally well-off. Communism does not develop the finer sort of brotherhood; but inequality may develop it if the moral fiber of the race shall grow strong.
John Bates Clark, “The Demos of the Future,” Independent (July 18, 1901), in The Annals of America (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1976), Vol. 12.
Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do.
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James Branch Cabell
You touch on a disheartening truth. People never want to be told anything they do not believe already.
James Branch Cabell, The Cream of the Jest: A Comedy of Evasions (1917), Ch. 13: “Suggesting Themes of Universal Appeal.”
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Jean-Baptiste Say
[A]re the gains of the privileged company, national gains? Undoubtedly not: for they are wholly taken from the pockets of the nation itself.Jean-Baptiste Say, A Treatise on Political Economy (1903, first pub. 1855), Book I, Chapter 17.
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Something to Hate
Headline: “Hate talk in homes ‘must be prosecuted.’”
“Must”?
The proposed legislation targets speech alleged to promote prejudice. It is backed by Scotland’s secretary for justice, Humza Yousaf.
Might the law be deployed to squelch debate regarding, say, radical Islam?
“Are we comfortable giving a defence to somebody whose behaviour is threatening or abusive, which is intentionally stirring up hatred against, for example, Muslims?” Yousaf asks. “Are we saying that that is justified because that is in the home?”
I suspect that here we have someone who has never attended a sizable family gathering. Many attendees might report “hate talk” but oppose fining or imprisoning the so-called hate-talkers.
Could the law be directed against journalists and others who publicly express loves and hatreds?
“We wouldn’t want to give the likes of Tommy Robinson a defence by saying that he’s ‘a blogger who writes for The Patriot Times,’” says Yousaf.
“Stirring up hatred” is, of course, not identical to threatening or instigating violence. Presumably it is already illegal in Scotland to plan murder and mayhem over the dinner table.
There’s an awful lot of speech out there with which we might vehemently disagree. Plenty of dumb, hateful, prejudice-laden speech that violates the rights of no one does get uttered in homes and Internets. We must preserve the distinction between “things that are wrong to say or do” and “actions that should be illegal.”
Scots should resist these hateful assaults on their right to speak freely.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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