Big thanks to the Persuasion team for publishing this. If you are interested in the sort of subject matter I address in this piece, feel free to subscribe to my newsletter as well, where I write about developments in US and world politics regularly. Cheers.
Max, I appreciate the article and agree with you on many of your conclusions, especially the ideal that it is bad to let violence set our laws.
However, I found a few points to be unconvincing arguments, significantly weaker than the rest of the piece. One is the idea that "victim blaming" here is inconsistent or incoherent, where I find the reasoning you present natural, if unpleasant. The other is the section reproduced below:
> If criticizing Islam is, according to McGarva’s reasoning, no different from “hostility towards members of a religious group,” then it is very difficult to see how hate speech legislation differs, in practice, from stridently orthodox interpretations of Islam.
I find it very EASY to see how hate speech legislation differs from stridently orthodox interpretations of Islam — it differs in every way except one!
I should say (as you as well do), that even in that one way that hate speech legislation is similar to Islam, it is still different: the punishment is a fine or jail time, not death
Big thanks to the Persuasion team for publishing this. If you are interested in the sort of subject matter I address in this piece, feel free to subscribe to my newsletter as well, where I write about developments in US and world politics regularly. Cheers.
Max, I appreciate the article and agree with you on many of your conclusions, especially the ideal that it is bad to let violence set our laws.
However, I found a few points to be unconvincing arguments, significantly weaker than the rest of the piece. One is the idea that "victim blaming" here is inconsistent or incoherent, where I find the reasoning you present natural, if unpleasant. The other is the section reproduced below:
> If criticizing Islam is, according to McGarva’s reasoning, no different from “hostility towards members of a religious group,” then it is very difficult to see how hate speech legislation differs, in practice, from stridently orthodox interpretations of Islam.
I find it very EASY to see how hate speech legislation differs from stridently orthodox interpretations of Islam — it differs in every way except one!
I should say (as you as well do), that even in that one way that hate speech legislation is similar to Islam, it is still different: the punishment is a fine or jail time, not death