Thanks for starting this again, Adelphe.... A worthy topic, to be sure. BTW, I haven't found any satisfactory sources that provide the total # of words in the English Language, nor the total # of words in NewSpeak... Have you any to provide?

Is there a difference between the two when it comes to stifling free speech? Only in the method....

Newspeak dilutes and corrupts the meaning of words..... when a word becomes overused, or improperly used, it loses it's meaning and impact. Substitutions become common place, reducing our language.

Governments make great use of Orwell's Doublespeak without the slightest indication of their own irony... The US Department of Labor focus on unemployment, the Defense Department focus not on Defence, but on offense.... (sometimes pre-emptive but that's another thread).....

Disclaimer: I'm a very strong proponent of our First Amendment right of free speech and religious freedom... Given that, I can certainly agree with and understand why we should limit someone from shouting Fire in a crowded place.... because the words in this case have the potential to result in IMMEDIATE harm....

Hatespeech is rather insidious and very ugly because it attempts to stifle freedom of speech on the premise that future harm may result..... Are bigots like Fred Phelps guilty of hate speech when he rants about homosexuals? Yes, he most certainly is. Should he be prevented from speaking? No --- as disgusting as I find his focus to be, I would not want to live in a country that would silence him.

Too many people seem to forget the  RESPONSIBILITY that comes hand in hand  freedom. We are NOT free from being offended, we are NOT free from hearing things that may disgust us..... We are NOT free from having our feelings hurt.

With all that, I still would not stifle inhumane #$#holes like Fred Phelps and others of his ilk... As long as he doesn't call for violence against an individual... Perhaps that's where a very , very, fine line has to be drawn.....

We haven't heard the end of this battle. It amuses me that both far left liberals and far right conservatives sometimes collude to limit our freedom of speech. The far left does so using "hate speech" as their weapon, and the far right uses "defamation of religion" or  afalse sense of persecution complex ....  as a weapon to serve the same end.

Great opinions you have shared, AS.  I suspect that I have less faith in the U.N. than you do though.

Agnosticspirit says:

Too many people seem to forget the  RESPONSIBILITY that comes hand in hand  freedom. We are NOT free from being offended, we are NOT free from hearing things that may disgust us..... We are NOT free from having our feelings hurt.



I think we are free not to be offended, disgusted or having our feelings hurt.

Taking offense is in the eyes of the beholder.

Somebody may be offended by my wearing a red shirt, when I have no such intention.  And even if I had, they could  just ignore it and not offer a target.

That is what the Muslims that you refer to in the other post are doing: they are being offended and trying to prevent others from doing things that offend them.  But the offense is in their eyes.

People should deal with the way they perceive . All censorship is aimed at preventing people from experiencing the effect of their own biases.

There was a king that had tender feet.  He loved to wonder about his kingdom but the thorns and pebbles bothered him.  He asked his adviser for ideas to solve the problem. All the  advisers but one agreed that he should order  the kingdom covered with leather.

The dissident one said:  "if you cover the kingdom with leather, the flowers you love to go see won't grow, there won't be butterflies or birds either. But if you cut two pieces of leather and tie them under your feet, it will be as if the kingdom would be covered with leather and nothing will be disturbed."

"You can't cheat an honest man" is another way of saying it. 




What do you make of the UN's  non-binding "defamation of religion" resolution? Absolutely appalling!  www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTR... />
Of course, many in the Muslim world favored this... because it would stifle our ability to criticize Islam, create cartoons with Muhammad in the starring role... ALL nonsense. Why should Islam be any more protected from humor, critique, and ridicule than any other organized religion? Sunlight is a great disinfectant. Neither pope, president, king, imam or ANY organization should become so precious and so sacred that we can't openly discuss them without fear of reprisal.

I, too, do not see the relationship between Newspeak and hate speech, or why they are put together in the OP.

If we were reduced to using Newspeak, then we would still have the means to express "hate speech." They did it in Orwell's 1984, and they do it everywhere else ... even with a diminished vocabulary.

I also echo the concerns of those who say limiting speech in order to avoid offending certain groups will stifle discussion. In fact, I'd say those limitations are themselves a form of hate speech. All those Muslims who don't like hate speech need to let go their authoritarian mindsets and jump into some education. The same for everyone else.

At UW-Madison in the 90s, our campus newspaper, the Badger Herald, was challenged to a debate by a small group of loud white leftists who claimed that our interview with the head of the KKK would "cause" racial violence. They said that folks like the KKK should be denied free speech because such speech "causes" others to commit hate crimes.

We crushed them in the debate. Our editor, who was black, made a convincing case for free speech. But all they did was keep repeating the same old platitudes. And that's exactly what proponents of speech codes do -- they are unable to coherently and convincingly argue that hate speech would have the effects they claimed it would.

We ran the story and it stimulated discussion. I like to think that I am a little more sensitive to racial issues because of it, and that's all because we didn't buckle to hate speech codes.

Jun 9, 2009 -- 6:06PM, catboxer wrote:

Hatespeek doubleplus ungood because counter-productive. Cutwordlines. No doubleplusgood ducktalker ever engages.

Hatespeekers unexist, as what they do if they did is Goldsteinism, thus unpersons.

Now try crafting some hatespeech with Newspeak. I would, but I'm rusty on the mechanics of it.