The Student Room Group

46% of people in England don't believe in free speech

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Original post by BarryBeTrippin
t a country's borders appear trivial for anyone but the ruler of a country.


No. A country's borders limit the area that holds a population that can expect protection from the country's government. If the population appoints a competent system of government, and peoples it with competent governors then it can expect to be well protected. Protection of the population is a country's most important duty.

The UK, for instance has reasonably well-policed boundaries, a competent system of government and competent people carrying out that government; its population is generally safe, well-protected and reasonably prosperous.

You can contrast this with other countries where government is left to bad systems, tyrants, religious wowsers or oligarchs, in which the population's safety and cultural and economic development are not looked after.

Countries are very important indeed, and pride in belonging to one that serves its people well is justified as it stems from the collective will and synergy of its people.
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by Saoirse:3
I support secularism all the same


Secularism protects people of all superstitious beliefs, and none, from the excesses of other people with extreme religious beliefs.
Original post by Good bloke
Secularism protects people of all superstitious beliefs, and none, from the excesses of other people with extreme religious beliefs.


And moreover ensures that nobody is put at any advantage or disadvantage due to their religious background or lack thereof :smile:
Original post by Good bloke
No. A country's borders limit the area that holds a population that can expect protection from the country's government. If the population appoints a competent system of government, and peoples it with competent governors then it can expect to be well protected. Protection of the population is a country's most important duty.

The UK, for instance has reasonably well-policed boundaries, a competent system of government and competent people carrying out that government; its population is generally safe, well-protected and reasonably prosperous.

You can contrast this with other countries where government is left to bad systems, tyrants, religious wowsers or oligarchs, in which the population's safety and cultural and economic development are not looked after.

Countries are very important indeed, and pride in belonging to one that serves its people well is justified as it stems from the collective will and synergy of its people.


You're outsourcing the protection of your private property (including yourself) to a government, conferring power to it, as you now rely on it for protection. It's in your interests to be freely able to protect your private property.

Though I will admit if you don't have access to much resources, government provided protection is more economical.

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Original post by Good bloke
You do realise that the European and Arab slave traders, in general, only bought their slaves from the Africans that had already enslaved them, don't you? I'm not claiming that is any less blameworthy, but the Africans were generally enslaved by other Africans.

Africans were no more selling “their own” than whites were killing “their own” during the Holocaust. Plus most African countries did not sell slaves and some even fought against it.

But because Europeans back then could control the supply of guns there was little Africans could do to stop it.

Was their slavery in Africa ?

It was fairly common for Africans to keep other Africans (as in prisoners of war) as slaves, but this was nothing like the slavery that took place in the US, Caribbean, West Indies, South America.

There was no chopping off people hands who tried to read, slitting pregnant women stomach open and that's not even mentioning the many who died in the middle passage.

Slavery in Africa was more of an indentured servitude with a beginning and an end. Many slaves ended up marrying into the families they served. What’s important to note here is that slaves maintained their humanity and were not born into slavery.

The child of a slave was born free. Where as the slavery in the Americas was different beast.

Not just because of slavery, that was just the starting point. But because white supremacy would not allow themselves to see blacks as humans and it carried on long after the slave trade was abolished.

Although the slave trade was abolished, slavery was not. So, those whites who wanted to do the “cool” thing at the time and be “progressive” said ”Sure, we’ll stop bringing slaves over from Africa, but I’ll be damned if I give up the ones raising my children and tending my land.”

The central impact of the African Transatlantic Slave you nonchalantly brush aside is the LEGACY. And its that legacy that connects us and everyone else posting in this forum today and will continue until the day its resolved or addressed.

You cannot (and here is the challenge if you are up for it) point to any other form of slavery (present, past or pre-historic) that has had such an immense and global impact on this planet than the African Holocaust.

You can debate every other form and type there is or has been and then ask yourself why are we not discussing or talking about it here right now ?What is the LEGACY of the African Transatlantic Slave trade ?

This was the equivalent of wiping out a sizable portion of the planet and just starting again. But not just starting again in the same place. Starting in numerous places scattered all over the rest of the world
Original post by Unkempt_One
This isn't as relevant as you seem to think it is. The argument here is about whether some forms of speech should be legally sanctioned. Individual organisations can have their own code of conduct but they cannot invent their own laws.


Hmm.. I'll simplify; to maintain and function a well respected civil environment freedom of speech has to be regulated and by that it means constrained.

Individual organisations have their policies which is designed (in most cases anyway) to create a civil and respected environment for the participants within that organisation.

The fact that such policies are absent in the public domain enables morons to blather (like hate speech) and gather an audience. Such a platform is unwanted and detrimental for a cosmopolitan society 👍🏼
Original post by Prince_Paul_246

Slavery in Africa was more of an indentured servitude with a beginning and an end.


You now sound like an apologist for Arab slave traders, selling Islamic slavery as a benefit to the slave.

You can try to spin history until you are blue in the face, but the source of most people sold into slavery across the Atlantic was the African slave-takers.
Original post by BarryBeTrippin
You're outsourcing the protection of your private property (including yourself) to a government, conferring power to it, as you now rely on it for protection. It's in your interests to be freely able to protect your private property.


Rubbish! How would a British peasant have protected his private property if Napoleon had managed to invade Britain in 1805, or Hitler in 1940?

You cannot be safe in private property if that property is not already in a safe place. That safe place is provided by British society and the government on its behalf. Contrast the safe haven you enjoy to the lot of the Syrians, Kenyans and Afghans, whose governments have failed in this primary duty.
Original post by Good bloke
Rubbish! How would a British peasant have protected his private property if Napoleon had managed to invade Britain in 1805, or Hitler in 1940?

You cannot be safe in private property if that property is not already in a safe place. That safe place is provided by British society and the government on its behalf. Contrast the safe haven you enjoy to the lot of the Syrians, Kenyans and Afghans, whose governments have failed in this primary duty.


"Though I will admit if you don't have access to much resources, government provided protection is more economical"

Interesting that you disregarded that part.



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Original post by BarryBeTrippin


Interesting that you disregarded that part.
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You are confusing protecting your personal property within a country with being protected by your country. If you want life to be a free-for-all where the rich and unscrupulous can take what they will from those unable to protect themselves then I suggest you either travel back in time a few hundred years or move to a third world country. Our civilisation has moved on, thank goodness.
Reply 170
Then they get what they deserve.
Importing muslims and commies has resulted in this conclusion. Lefties agree because they pander to people who want to ruin the west.
Original post by Good bloke
You are confusing protecting your personal property within a country with being protected by your country. If you want life to be a free-for-all where the rich and unscrupulous can take what they will from those unable to protect themselves then I suggest you either travel back in time a few hundred years or move to a third world country. Our civilisation has moved on, thank goodness.


Not confusing anything.

You're spot on on the second point.

I'd be safer as millionaire in Panama, than as a billionaire in the UK, insofar as I'd be more able to protect my personal property.

Though for the poor or middle-class the Western model is more economic.

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Original post by Good bloke
You now sound like an apologist for Arab slave traders, selling Islamic slavery as a benefit to the slave.

You can try to spin history until you are blue in the face, but the source of most people sold into slavery across the Atlantic was the African slave-takers.

Slavery has never existed in Africa.

Look - I get it. Everybody wants to believe that their group that they represent is good.So I understand why you are defending white people.

But whites use the "Your sold your own" argument as a way to excuse chattel slavery. It does not excuse it. White people simple need to own up to it.

You talk as if that would make blacks every bit as culpable as the folks whose wealth was built by the slave system; as if Europeans had only come to Africa for the weather, and had been coerced into the transatlantic slave trade.

Or consider the way that whites blame indigenous people for the mass death they experienced after the invasion of the Americas, by saying, with no sense of misgiving, “Well, it wasn’t our fault, I mean, they mostly died of disease,”

As if native folk would have contracted these diseases short of the desire by whites to conquer the planet for our own aggrandizement.

Or consider the way that whites seek to rationalize racial profiling, by arguing that since blacks have higher crime rates, individual and perfectly innocent blacks really can’t complain when cops target them, and should instead blame their own for the way blacks get viewed, and treated; same thing with Arabs and terrorism.

Whites play up certain parts of their past and not others

As I have said - if the inventions are proof of the intelligence of whites, then slavery and genocide are proof of the great evil of whites. You cannot claim one without the other.
(edited 8 years ago)
301% of all statistics are made up ****
Original post by Prince_Paul_246

You talk as if that would make blacks every bit as culpable as the folks whose wealth was built by the slave system; as if Europeans had only come to Africa for the weather,


Well, obviously, the Africans who enslaved the other Africans and who sold those slaves to the Europeans made a profit from doing so, and that wealth could have been invested as wisely as the European slave-trading wealth was. That is was not is the fault only of those who had the money and misused it.

Any African who took a slave and sold it to a European is just as culpable in the slave trade as the Europeans who bought the slaves.
Original post by TaintedLight
Hmm.. I'll simplify; to maintain and function a well respected civil environment freedom of speech has to be regulated and by that it means constrained.

Individual organisations have their policies which is designed (in most cases anyway) to create a civil and respected environment for the participants within that organisation.

The fact that such policies are absent in the public domain enables morons to blather (like hate speech) and gather an audience. Such a platform is unwanted and detrimental for a cosmopolitan society 👍🏼

This is a really asinine reason to legislate against protected speech. Might as well make it illegal to put the milk in first, if you're so concerned about decorum.
Original post by Good bloke
Well, obviously, the Africans who enslaved the other Africans and who sold those slaves to the Europeans made a profit from doing so, and that wealth could have been invested as wisely as the European slave-trading wealth was. That is was not is the fault only of those who had the money and misused it.

Any African who took a slave and sold it to a European is just as culpable in the slave trade as the Europeans who bought the slaves.

Africans did not sell slaves.in the main. I know white people (every white person I have ever met and spoke to about this) tries to use that as a get out of jail card

It was simple because Europeans back then could control the supply of guns there was little Africans could do to stop it.

Trying to justify something by using an everyone does it argument does not work. It would be like me robbing a bank and saying "Many people have robbed banks"
Original post by Prince_Paul_246
Africans did not sell slaves.in the main. I know white people (every white person I have ever met and spoke to about this) tries to use that as a get out of jail card

It was simple because Europeans back then could control the supply of guns there was little Africans could do to stop it.

Trying to justify something by using an everyone does it argument does not work. It would be like me robbing a bank and saying "Many people have robbed banks"


Let's be clear: I'm not trying to justify anything; the slave trade is abhorrent to me.

All I am saying is that all those involved in the capture and supply of slaves were, as individuals, equally to blame for their role in it. Trying to claim black people did not take part, or should shoulder no blame because they did not have guns in asinine. They did not need guns to capture the (also gun-free) slaves, did they? They did not need guns to sell them to the European or Arab traders, did they?

Each participant did so as an individual. Very few of them, if any, did so in an attempt to subjugate black people specifically; they just sought easy targets. The African capturer did not think for one moment that he was engaging in some sort of race war, and neither did the Europeans and Arabs. Your attempt to spin it as a deliberate anti-black holocaust is, therefore, specious and dishonest.
Original post by Good bloke
No. A country's borders limit the area that holds a population that can expect protection from the country's government. If the population appoints a competent system of government, and peoples it with competent governors then it can expect to be well protected. Protection of the population is a country's most important duty.

The UK, for instance has reasonably well-policed boundaries, a competent system of government and competent people carrying out that government; its population is generally safe, well-protected and reasonably prosperous.

You can contrast this with other countries where government is left to bad systems, tyrants, religious wowsers or oligarchs, in which the population's safety and cultural and economic development are not looked after.

Countries are very important indeed, and pride in belonging to one that serves its people well is justified as it stems from the collective will and synergy of its people.


Hobbesianism in action.

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