[Wikipedia-l] German anti-free speech law and Helga

[Ray Saintonge]

Fred Bauder wrote:

>>>The law considers denying of the holocaust as an insultation
>>>of the dead. Insulting someone is not protected by the right
>>>of free speech, AFAIK that's the same in the US.
>>>
>>No, it's not.  Insults are speech too, and often hig art.
>>We protect them too, and rightly so.  As our supreme court
>>said said, "If freedom means anything at all, it means
>>freedom for the thought we hate."
>>
>
>That's why it's a "high art." Avoiding libel and slander is not easly. Most
>of our public victims in the US are public figures, covered by an
>exception. In Colorado speaking ill is the dead is in the criminal code as
>the crime of slander. Never enforced, perhaps unconstitutional, but there.
>
The art of innuendo!

Some of the state legislatures have passed some weird things.  Often it 
was one legislator pushing something through as a test to see if his 
colleages were awake.  They weren't.  I believe that it was the 
"Saturday Evening Post" that used to have a regular column about some of 
these strange laws.  Things could get really strange when somebody took 
them seriously and tried to enforce them.

Eclecticology