Of course it's alright for them to do something. Dude. At what point did I ever say "You're not allowed to react to being squicked out"?
Do you think a boss can react by firing an employee for fantasizing about killing them or having sex with them and then sharing it with co-workers? If so, isn't that fairly punitive? Would it be OK for them to get a restraining order? How about filing harassment charges in court? I'm looking for some detail on what you consider a legitimate response vs. an illegitimate response.
There's this whole rich field of human behavior that has nothing to do with who is right, and who is wrong ... yeah?
Correct, but I'm not sure that field is as expansive as some people argue that it is.
I get the feeling that you're using a different sense of the word "judge" than I am. 'cuz your sentence above sorta reads like this: "I never said it was wrong to do X, I just have a problem when people argue that it's not legitimate to say that it's wrong to do X."
I think that's part of the problem, yes.
If you're using "judge" as "I judge that Malcolm is a gross, tasteless person" then we're back to agreement. But I don't think that's honestly what you're trying to get across. I judge that you're being disingenuous, because you're doing every damn thing in your power to walk right up to the edge of "This is morally wrong" with your rhetoric.
Well, that's the edge I want to explore -- why people react to certain ideas as moral wrongs and whether that's legitimate or not. I would agree that aesthetics are simply matters of personal opinion (at least part of what you refer to above as a "
whole rich field of human behavior that has nothing to do with who is right, and who is wrong") but I think there are legitimate reasons why large numbers of people react to certain ideas and fantasies as moral wrongs and I think there are legitimate reasons for that reaction.
People react to certain ideas with varying degrees of disgust, there is a pattern to it that scientists are starting to understand, and there is likely a good reason why that behavior is built into the human psyche (whether via evolution or deity). And the question of what happens when a human being lacks that visceral moral response is not merely academic. We can see the sorts of behavior it produces in psychopaths who do, in fact, lack those responses. A lot of the parts of the human psyche that we take for granted such as empathy, fear, and so on are visceral, not rational, and we can know what happens if a person is lacking many of those visceral responses because we often can find examples of such people (e.g., there is a small number of people who lack a sense of fear and don't viscerally know that it's dangerous to step out in front of a moving car -- they need to think through the likely result if they do so). So I don't think it's a good idea to totally ignore those visceral feelings, though moderation might be warranted.
But beyond that, the arguments used in defense gross and tasteless ideas are often the same sorts of arguments that psychopaths use to rationalize their behavior and to argue that they should be left to do what they want. As such, I wonder if society embracing the morality of a psychopath doesn't encourage society to move in a direction that leads no place good.
The natural back-pressure against gross, tasteless, and disturbing ideas is social pressure through shunning. In such an environment, normal people are discouraged to express such ideas through disincentive and the psychopaths stick out like a sore thumb. But by arguing that such ideas should never be condemned or controlled and protecting their encroachment in the public space, the encourage of such liberty can actually lead to it being taken away legally, because that's what happens when the liberty of a few becomes a liability for the many. I think moderation is in everyone's best interest because extremes lead to extremes.
Really, man, you aren't comparing this kind of suspect discussion to (say) dead-baby jokes or MILF emails ... you're comparing to queer-bashing, school-killings and the holocaust. Godwin's law is there for a reason: Using this kind of emotionally loaded material in an argument shows a bias that people will judge you upon
Part of why I'm using emotionally loaded material to point out that the sort of emotional detachment that people seem to call for as a matter of principle has limits. The reason why a person might want to ban a violent video game is because they believe it has the potential to trigger real violence, which is at a root level the same reason why another person might want to ban verbal bashing of gays and lesbians. If you really believe that the free expression of ideas is absolute, then it should cover verbally insulting gays and lesbians and making sexually crass comments about members of a particular sex or even talking about torturing and killing people that they don't like to their face. But as with yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, I doubt most people are the free speech absolutists that they claim to be. And once we get past simplistic statements of principle to the more pragmatic issue of how we separate the dead baby jokes from sexual harassment, then I think we can have a discussion about what the real principles at work are.
But I'm also not talking about actual violence but talking about it. Not beating up gays and lesbians, killing others at school, or perpetuating a holocaust but about talking about beating up or killing gays and lesbians, talking about killing your teachers and or classmates in a school, or denying the Holocaust or arguing that there should be another one. This is not simple idle speculation or straw men on my part. These are very real areas where people are not only regularly judged on moral grounds for what they say but where policies and even legislation have been passed to punish the expression of those ideas.
Casually fantasize about the killing of gays and lesbians with your co-workers and I don't think anyone would be surprised if you were fired, which is far more punitive than simply shunning a person. Casually fantasize about murdering your teachers or other students at school and you might not only be expelled but might wind up being arrested. Deny the Holocaust in many countries and you can be censored or even arrested.
And for all the talk about free speech absolutism on the Internet, there are plenty of limits on it in Europe, Canada, and elsewhere that few people seem very interested in. Look at the case of
Oriana Fallaci in Italy, France, and Switzerland or
Mark Steyn in Canada, for example. Or if you want someone less defensible, how about British historian
David Irving being arrested in Austria, where it's illegal to deny the Holocaust or glorify and identify with the German Nazi Party? Why do the Austrians (among others) feel it's necessary to make Holocaust denial a crime? How exactly did the Nazis win elections and take control of Germany? Godwin aside, I think that's a legitimate issue when discussing free speech.