On: Homeland Security to Compile Database of Journalists, Bloggers

[Mononokay]

Speech has never killed a man.

[lettergram → Mononokay]

Depends, guns protect and enforce the speech

[dang → meri_dian]

Would you please not take HN into the bowels of internet flamewar? Of all the things we don't need here.

[meri_dian → dang]

Sorry dang

[Mononokay → meri_dian]

Last I checked, guns and gas killed them.

[meri_dian → Mononokay]

Why were those guns and gas used? Because of the hateful rhetoric of an evil man and an evil ideology.

[Mononokay → meri_dian]

Speech didn't kill them a single bit more than water did, if you're using that logic:

What killed Holocaust victims? Gas. Why did they let that happen? Because the people forcing them to go in had guns. Why did they force them? Because they worked under a man who commanded that they be killed. How was he alive? Because he drank water, preventing him from dying of dehydration.

[meri_dian → Mononokay]

I guess we're both right then

[meri_dian → meri_dian]

So there wasn't torture destruction and murder on a mass scale before guns?

Humanity works itself into a fervor of anger sometimes. That is what kills people. The implements of anger are irrelevant.

[Mononokay → meri_dian]

Speech cannot directly kill anything. Guns, however, can.

[chapill → Mononokay]

But you agree that the motive in both cases is to take away constitutional rights.

[Mononokay → chapill]

No, I don't. The motive in the case of speech is to silence a populus/punish dissenters. The motive in the case of guns is quite overwhelmingly safety.

[Mononokay → chapill]

Enlightened? That's a very cultish way of putting "You'll never agree with our rhetoric."