An Onymous Lefty: I may not agree with your t-shirt, but I will defend your right to wear it

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

I may not agree with your t-shirt, but I will defend your right to wear it

I'm trying to put myself in the mindset of someone who thinks that the state should criminally charge someone for words on a t-shirt.

Okay... I can do this. People's feelings MUST BE PROTECTED FROM BEING HURT BY THE FULL FORCE OF THE LAW! No, that's so idiotic I can barely even force myself to type it. Fools need to be "made" to "mind their manners in public"! My god, that's insane. We must punish people who make jokes that are rude and not funny! Jesus fucking Christ. Uh, okay, imagine if the person was wearing a t-shirt that said something defamatory about you as a living person! That'd be harassing and stalking behaviour - shouldn't that be prohibited? Well, obviously, if it's against a real, living person... which this wasn't.

I'm sorry, I can't. I thought Andrew Bolt's comment thread might help, but that's just full of heroic keyboard warriors daring the kid to wear a t-shirt insulting Mohammed and walk through a muslim area. Watch me as I challenge this kid's bravado by calling for him to be assaulted from the anonymous safety of my computer!

The closest I can get is to think of the kid as a bad person, and therefore make the depressingly common leap into concluding that the law should therefore punish him. But that leap is so profoundly illogical, dangerous and flat-out stupid that it twists my guts to even try it.

I wonder if they'll drop the charges or try to push them through and bully the kid into pleading guilty.

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Disclaimer

The contents of this blog are entirely fictional (and often ridiculous), intended only to amuse, or to provoke lively, non-libellous discussion. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental, even if they have the same names and are exactly alike in every respect except for a potentially defamatory one. Posts are written in character, not as Jeremy Sear (even the ones suspiciously marked "Jeremy"). Opinions expressed on the blog do not in any binding sense represent the views of any organisation of which the author is a member, or the views of the author himself, even when he says that they do (it'll be in character, you see?). Links to external sites should not be taken as endorsement of their content or views. The fact that this site is written in English is not intended to be construed as an insult to other world languages, all of which the author respects greatly, even the stupid ones that are bound to die out within a generation.

Pretending To Be Me

Bizarrely enough, there are a few sad morons out there on the intertubes pretending to be me - commenting on other blogs as "MrLefty" or "Jeremy Sear" (using the same image of Blackadder), copying my posts into new blogs (or trying to steal my actual ones) but slightly changing the text to invert its meaning, and generally being obnoxious in an attempt to sully my good name (or pseudonym).

So if you see something purporting to be from me that seems to be completely opposite to what I argue here (for example, if I suddenly start attacking the Greens and I'm not being sarcastic) - then it's not me. It's one of the trolls. Please delete the spiteful hack's drivel.