Ask Lemmy

It's not a slippery slope, it's an ambiguous gray area which a lot of moral rational debates like this don't do well with. For example I think we can agree that white people shouldn't call black people n*gger, but what about negro? There are some people who will do the victim hood Olympics and say calling people black is bad too.

If we follow the free speech absolutist line then we get a bunch of white men demeaning every marginal group with horrific slurs. If we follow the no offense at all costs line then we're walking around a term for Mexican food because someone said that it's racist. We need to find some sort of middle ground and that ground is going to be very blurry, socially determined and subjective, and it won't have any easy hard rules that people desperately search for in stuff like this.

The punishment for leaving this area should just be social ostracization though, not violence or death. There shouldn't be an assassin's veto but there also shouldn't be an asshole get out of jail free card.

This all wasn't my argument though, I was arguing against the people in this thread saying we should've doubled down, published the cartoon in all major publications and done more Mohammad drawings simply to assert free speech. That's saying that speech is valuable and should be spread simply because its offensive and caused an overreaction which is the same logic as those annoying right wing assholes who say horrible shit to "trigger the libs". Offensiveness can be a means to an end but when it becomes an end unto itself then it just becomes cruelty.

Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"

He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"

He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"

Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over

I find it weird when religious people don't see this. I was proselytized to not long ago by a Muslim dude from Egypt out of the blue. He tried to dismiss Christianity because there are many denominations and when I pointed out the various Muslim denominations he just said they're wrong by default because they are. Like, ok, I see your brain is forced to turn off with this topic.

Completely agree.