{"id":6893,"date":"2004-12-08T09:16:25","date_gmt":"2004-12-08T16:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2004\/12\/08\/poking-fun-go-the-pokey.html"},"modified":"2004-12-08T09:16:25","modified_gmt":"2004-12-08T16:16:25","slug":"poking_fun_go_t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/12\/08\/poking_fun_go_t.html","title":{"rendered":"Poking fun? Go the pokey."},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m not a huge fan of Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean (or much of his besides Blackadder), but I think he’s spot on in this particular critique.<\/p>\n

To criticise a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous but to criticise their religion – that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticise ideas — any ideas even if they are sincerely held beliefs — is one of the fundamental freedoms of society. And the law which attempts to say you can criticise or ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed. It all points to the promotion of the idea that there should be a right not to be offended. But in my view the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended. The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed because one in my view represents openness — and the other represents oppression.<\/p>\n

It’s all part of the debate a proposed bill in the British Parliament<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill, which will have its second reading in the Commons today, anyone judged to have stirred up religious hatred through threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour, would be liable to a maximum of seven years in prison.<\/p>\n

Yeah, because by criminalizing insults you’ll make folks be nice and tolerant and happy.<\/p>\n

The bill supporters claim that the threshold for such prosecution will be very high, but aside from the chilling effect (second-guessing whether something you say might go over the ambiguous threshold and so further suppressing your own speech), it’s always dangerous to base criminal law on subjective evaluation of ideas expressed. There may be times when it’s necessary, but they only should be in the most extreme and dangerous cases. <\/p>\n

(via Andrew Sullivan<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m not a huge fan of Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean (or much of his besides Blackadder), but I think he’s spot on in this particular critique. To criticise a person…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zt-pc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7535,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/02\/11\/the_right_to_be.html","url_meta":{"origin":6893,"position":0},"title":"The right to be offended","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 11-Feb-05 10:21am","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's a marvelous essay by Salman Rushdie (who knows a bit about offending) describing how a free society requires the opportunity to be offended -- as only a moment or...","rel":"","context":"In "ZT & PC"","block_context":{"text":"ZT & PC","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/zt-pc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7158,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/10\/18\/anglican_disuni.html","url_meta":{"origin":6893,"position":1},"title":"Anglican disunion","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 18-Oct-04 12:13pm","format":false,"excerpt":"An internal conference of the Anglican Communion has reported to the Archbishop of Canterbury. 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And when you get through kickin\u2019 ass and celebratin\u2019 the sheer joy of a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/popup5B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/popup5B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/popup5B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9157,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/02\/07\/sacred_cows_mak.html","url_meta":{"origin":6893,"position":5},"title":"“Sacred cows make the best hamburger”","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 7-Feb-06 8:38am","format":false,"excerpt":"Shame on the Vatican for basically agreeing with the Moslem cartoon rioters: The Vatican on Saturday condemned the publication of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad which have outraged the Muslim...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}