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Kipchoge Spencer's avatar

Thank you for the thought provoking examination, John. So what would your version of the First Amendment look like? How would unjust speech be policed in a way that didn’t do more harm than good in the society we currently have?

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Chuck Fall's avatar

Good discussion John of an iconic idea: "free speech." I accept your distinctions. I think back to the Rwanda episode of the Hutu slaughter of Tutsis back in 1990's?? Just like in Germany in Nazi era, there was a radio announcer who for a couple of months in the run up to the slaughter, made deprecatory statements about the Hutus calling them "cockroaches" and what not, to stir up the vigilante groups that conducted the murder. I wonder if that radio announcer was ever arrested. To be clear though, I know that many Hutus were killed along with Tutsi, and the Hutus that were killed were politically opposed to murdering fellow Rwandans. This situation is complicated of course, and I don't fully grasp the details of what happened (the French stood by and let the slaughter occur without intervention??) but I accept that some sick mass murder was conducted against Tutsi, a tribe the Brits imported, I think, to hold administrative positions in the colonial government, which bred acrimony between one group of haves against the other group of have nots). But I see your point.

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