[in response to a street preacher being attacked with a baseball bat]
This would be a legitimate concern if women and minorities had equal access to power and resources, but free speech has this annoying tendency to serve the interests of the powerful more than the interests of the underprivileged. Systemic oppression can't be defeated from within the system. That's not to say anything goes, or that this woman was justified, but prioritizing free speech over all just serves the system, not justice or equality.
23 comments
I do believe in free speech. However, if this is the you-deserve-to-be-raped guy, his "preaching" comes dangerously close to hate speech in my opinion.
Either way, I just can't make myself give a fuck if that guys gets his skull caved in.
It disturbs me that people are defending this. We live in a nation of laws, you don't get to attack people who say things you don't like. If he breaks the law, but is no immediate threat to anyone, you call the police and let them handle it.
I really don't care who he was, or what he was saying. You don't take the law into your own hands, especially when no one is actually breaking the law. He may be a vile man who says vile things, but at least he can't be charged with assault.but free speech has this annoying tendency to serve the interests of the powerful more than the interests of the underprivileged. "
Free speech, "yelling fire," noise pollution, disruption of commerce, buskers & poll takers impeding sidewalk traffic, etc. It's a slippery slope. My solution would be to set up a Bughouse Square area for these preachers, and not allow them to accost or insult citizens going about their business.
Frankly I wouldn't shed a tear if 'Bro Dean' Saxton (the hate-preacher who got attacked here) got his genitals stuck in a paper shredder by accident, but I wouldn't condone anyone putting them there.
There are times where armed resistance or insurrection might be necessary, but peaceful solutions should always come first.
You (and he) are free to say it. But you must both understand that freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom to say objectionable things without taking the consequences. Nobody is guaranteed the right to have people listen respectfully when you exercise your freedom of speech. A baseball bat was a bit extreme, but so was his speech.
I'm not sure how I feel about this, to be honest. Ordinarily, I'd say assaulting someone with a baseball bat because they said things you disagree with is horrendous behaviour. But then, I also find it delightful that a promoter of hatred and violence just became a victim of hatred and violence, the very things he was preaching.
I'm having a hard time reconciling my strong disapproval and the schadenfreude.
That said, the quote here suggesting that you can attain complete equality by denying certain segments of society fundamental rights is totally moronic.
Dean Saxton got a lesson - the hard way: literally - in the fact that with rights come responsibilities .
Just ask former Labour Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, re. her banning the Westboro Baptist Church from entering the UK; especially why subsequent Conservative HSs have upheld that edict. Certainly as to WHY.
Ever hear of a little something called Section 5 of the Public Order Act? It's the reason why there is no UK equivalent of the WBC. Certainly no British version of Deanie.
Perhaps - because such poor dears could be attacked by people with Cricket bats here in the UK - it's for their own protection...?!
You know what I love? That a member of the faculty was literally in the middle of telling him that if he didn't back the fuck off to at least the curb outside the school (Dean Sexoffender was in fact breaking the law by putting on his act on the actual campus and the school would have been well within their rights to remove him forcibly) and kept directly attempting to menace the students that it was just a matter of time before somebody considered him an actual threat and laid him out flat. And then the unflinching, quietly exasperated, perfectly delivered "I told you so" that teacher sighed out after the thunk of bat on batshit was the cherry on top.
You'd be hard pressed to script such a perfect convergence of coincidence into this masterpiece of poetic justice.
Overstepping his bounds socially and legally, calling kids perverts as he involved them in his any-excuse-will-do sexual fantasies of rape, properly warned but defiant to the point where one could say he was truly asking for it, and finally struck down by a woman he would completely dismiss and expected to terrify with his presence. And if the neo-nazi allegations are true the significance of provoking a black man and daring him to lay a single finger on him with full knowledge of the law's slanted nature only for him to restrain himself as much as humanly possible until a white woman turns to violence just coats that sweet cherry in chocolate. All with that smug, stupid, shit-eating expression on his face as he preached assault - sexual and otherwise - to be an acceptable and even just consequence of not knowing your place while thinking he was somehow untouchable by man or law.
Perfect.
I know I should feel guilty at how much pleasure I gain from this even knowing the sick fucker's affiliation with the Philosophy of Rape, but then again while I know my satisfaction is wrong from a moral standpoint every self righteous bastard who invokes "morality" as a reason to suspend human decency utterly revels in such suffering and never even thinks about the contradiction.
Dean Saxton is a vile, insufferable bastard. If you assault him, he's a vile, insufferable bastard in the right. Don't give him the moral high ground.
#1950473
You're on the side of a rapist and pedo? That says everything about you.
I'm not saying that beating Dean up was the right thing to do, but he definitely had it coming!
The person who beat Dean Saxton with a bat should definitely be punished for their actions to the full extent of the law, because that is why we have these laws in place.
But I'm still glad that asshole got his comeuppance and I find myself applauding nonetheless.
@ Zachski
Rollercoaster of a feeling, isn't it?
I admit it: I am not well. I try to be strong but I hate so much I can taste blood and I like it.
I want people to be better than me and I have to believe they can so I appreciate your guilt and your principles even with this maelstrom brewing in my psyche.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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