No. And nobody forces an alcoholic to drink if you put a bottle in front of him. Nobody forces a criminal to steal if you leave him in charge of the cash. Nobody forces a child to pull the trigger if you give him a handgun, or to cross traffic without looking. But people who are not very smart or are susceptible to being misled do things when evil people entice them to.RCSaunders wrote: ↑Mon Jun 29, 2020 7:34 pm No one had to listen to or read Marx or take anything he said seriously. No one force anyone to adopt Marx's theories or to practice them.
Good thing you don't live in Minneapolis, Atlanta, Dallas, Seattle or London.So what? I'm not worried about the idiots threatening others, only me.Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jun 29, 2020 4:33 pmWell, Marx did.I admit I do not say some things in the presence of idiots who will irrationally react to what I might say in some form of force or violence.
Sure it is, if you instructed them how to go about it and gave them reason to think it was a good idea.If what I say incites others to do bad things, that's not my fault.
Not at all. I blame them for their share. But they are not the masterminds of the problem, and the conceivers of the violence have their distinct share of responsibility too.When you blame Marx for what evil men have done, you are letting the real perpetrators of evil off the hook.
No, but being intelligent is one of the things you have to have going for you if you're even going to get in that game.Good grief. You think being a Rhodes scholar is the equivalent of being intelligent?
So the real reason you want to suppress free speech is because you think human beings are so stupid they need intelligent censors, like you, to keep them safe from hearing dangerous things.
Don't be silly. I'm making the point that words can incite actions, particular in situations of thoughtlessness, like fear and panic, or in the case of children and the mentally limited, and in the cases of mass movements. And those who carelessly or maliciously manipulate the masses into actions of violence and cruelty are not at all innocent of what they cause. Marx knew what he wanted: violent revolution, the end of religion, a new state of collectivists, the elimination of the bourgeoisie, and so on. He got it. Now, he has to answer for it.
Heh. There's a world of difference between writing something that is "misconstrued," and something that is construed exactly as it was intended, and leads to the suffering and murder of millions. If a man writes a note saying, "Kill my wife, and I will give you $10,000; she'll be at the Sheraton at 6," and the police find it, I wonder whether or not they'll think they're being unfair in accusing him of attempting to create a murder...Or will they simply say, "Well, it's his freedom of speech"?No, you only mentioned what other people did, not how anything anyone said or wrote harmed anyone. Really, IC, if one is never to say or write anything some idiot might swallow whole, misconstrue, or take to heart and do wrong because of it, nothing of significance can ever be said or written.
Marx was not unclear about what he wanted to see happen, and what reasons he wanted it to happen. Hitler was pretty clear in Mein Kampf, too. And I wouldn't put either book in the hands of children or fools. But I would read them for myself, to know what evil men said and thought...and, if for no other reason, to be able to refute their evil. So I would not "censor" anything: but neither would I put guns in the hands of children, nor pretend others were innocent when they did so.
Marx was certainly "significant," as you put it, but in every bad way. I think the world would have been better off without the man, personally. And so do the many millions murdered in the pursuit of his ideology, I suspect.