TheSentinel said:
Billion Backs said:
TheSentinel said:
Billion Backs said:
THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
Sure, this poem is about Nazi regime and stuff, but the general feeling is very applicable here.
No, it's not.
Why not? You do know that short responses like this one can be very easily considered trolling.
And yes, this poem totally applies. Most people don't swear too much and they don't really care too much about swearing. But if you let someone control your speech, even the part some people view as less important, they won't stop. First it's the swearing, then it's all the political incorrectness, and then welcome, 1984!
First of all, yes, I noticed you either reported me or something, so I edited my original post to elaborate. Let me do it again here.
A comparison to Nazi Germany is, in no way, applicable here.
You are undermining exactly what made Nazi Germany terrible. They murdered MILLIONS of people. They invaded several countries and locked Europe into a brutal war for the second time in just over two decades.
This is a hundred dollar fine on swearing.
See the unreasonable comparison here?
Also, your 1984 reference is cute.
Clearly you haven't read the poem.
If you let things that don't really bother you be taken away, sooner or later it'll be your time to be taken away and by then there won't be anyone to help you.
And there was NO Nazi Germany during World War 1. Nazi Germany existed from 1933 to 1945, when governed by the NSDAP and Adolf Hitler (obviously). So they couldn't exactly lock Europe in a war twice, considering that World War 1 ended more then a decade before the coming of power of the Nazi party (which in my opinion is majorly Allies' fault, too).
Before Nazis showed up and ruined the reputation for Germany, it was a pretty awesome country.
Now, forget about Nazis, and consider this. What constitutes "swearing"? There are plenty of things some people might find offensive that others would not. What list of words, exactly, be considered swearing? And consider that our common swears very often depend heavily on contest - they aren't necessarily used as an insult (which can be considered assault in many countries).
By putting a fine or any other punishment on saying what constitutes, basically, things "they" don't like, "they" control the speech of those around. "They", of course, are the government or some other authority. Should swearing be considered just a list of words like "****", "shit", "fuck", and so on completely outside of context? Or should something be considered a swear because it offends someone?
Because for one thing, "Christ" would be pretty offensive to some Christians (granted, most of modern Christians are fucking phonies when it comes to all of their rules, which is arguably slightly better than if they all were "for real").
If they just have a fixed number of terms, people will just come up with new ones. Languages evolve, y'know. If they go down the other road, they might end up slowly censoring everything because offensiveness and public misbehaviour can be very subjective things. And if it goes down to the point where various religious or political groups are "defended" by that law, it's not a far leap to simply restricting all criticism of current political party/situation.
And then you can hardly prove that someone swore unless everything is always being recorded in good quality, which allows plenty of opportunity for pissed off cops to just oppress the populace for the lulz.
So it not only prohibits your speech (fairly unreasonably), it's a bad system in the first place. Because as I said before, either what constitutes swearing is a fixed list - and the slang would simply evolve to use other terms not on the list, which would get commonly accepted pretty quickly if the law is in actual use... Or the police have the authority to simply pick and choose any word on context alone.
And I hope you can see the problems with that. The first case scenario simply doesn't work and doesn't do shit, the second cast scenario leads down the slippery slope of corruption and censorship.
