Arizona just passed a sweeping Internet Censorship Bill 2549:
The bill is sweepingly broad, and would make it a crime to communicate via electronic means speech that is intended to ‘annoy,’ ‘offend,’ ‘harass’ or ‘terrify,’ as well as certain sexual speech. Because the bill is not limited to one-to-one communications, H.B. 2549 would apply to the Internet as a whole, thus criminalizing all manner of writing, cartoons, and other protected material the state finds offensive or annoying.
This would mean that if one of my posts about religion offends somebody in Arizona, I can be prosecuted. Who decides what is acceptable and what is not? The state of Arizona?
Must I remind us that this is what started happening in 1933 in Germany. Hitler took office on January 30, 1933. On February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire, and it was blamed on communist infiltration. On February 28, 1933, the government reacted with the Reichstag Fire Decree which suspended basic rights. Essentially, within less than a month of Hitler taking office, one of the world’s major democracies had been turned into a legal dictatorship by the cunning of just a few individuals. Once that step was taken, freedom of speech was gone, and interpretation of where to draw the line was up to the investigator on the street, the policeman, the secret policeman, the judge. People were put away into jails and basements just because they were caught reading the “wrong” book or flyer. The rest – as we say – is history, and only 12 years later the 1000-year-empire collapsed, but not until it killed 11 million people and ruined the lives of 50 million more.
It all started with censorship.
So what do I do when somebody in Arizona does not like what I said here and finds it annoying, offensive, harassing or terrifying?
The most bizarre aspect of this to me is that it seems to make the (one would think, obviously erroneous) assumption that the offended person or persons were somehow FORCED to read your lunatic rantings.
In this day and age, we are all TRULY forced to be exposed to opinions and attitudes that are offensive to us in so many OTHER ways, this seems to me to be, as you seem to imply, just another part of the “Homeland security” debate.
Only … It’s not really a debate, is it? Those who are intolerant or insecure forcing closed mindedness and intolerance into the laws of (at least certain parts of) our land. Those who value tolerance and freedom strangely silent.
Yes, and women, who have the right to abort their fetuses from rape or incest, are forcing others to abort theirs.