The Act of Speech Deserve No Special Treatment

[IIIIITHE1IIIII]

Crono141 said:

IIIIITHE1IIIII said:

Let me put it this way: A man who gets punched in his nose never chose to have his nose bleeding, or to experience the following pain. In a similar manner, people don't choose to be offended or mentally harmed. If people keep getting punched by others (who may also have the right to do so), the victims won't be able to be free in their own societies. If a person or his/her family can't leave their house without facing massive verbal protests against them living there as a minority, they are anything but free. You can't just shake off whatever hateful words people may throw at you, everyone has their unique limit. And the purpose of our laws in our Nordic society is to stop as many approaches to this limit, among our population, as possible. We want people to be free from verbal offences. America? They want people to be able to throw shit at whoever they want, while it's up to the receiver to learn to clean their shitty clothes.

Nothing good can come out of being intentionally offensive.

You missed my point.  My point was that if I insult someone their reaction is UNKNOWN.  There is no way to determine before I say something how that person will react to what is said.  I don't know if they'll feel pain, or anguish, or find it funny, or want to have a discourse.  Thats the cool thing about free speech, you never know where its going to go and what NEW ideas or changed points of view will result.  And who do you trust to determine if an off color joke was meant to genuinely insult or to just be silly.  I don't trust anyone, especially in a political climate as volatile as ours.

As for feigning insult, the examples here were intentionally satiracle.  There are TONS of instances in the political discourse of the Unites States where one party or groups acts far more insulted by something someone said (who happens to be their political enemy) than they have any right to.  They do this with the express and explicit intent to silence their enemy through intimidation and social reprisal.

The reaction following an insult is irrelevant. An insult is still an insult. You never expect positive feedback or results from insulting someone, because that's what we call a joke. Yes, jokes may or may not be misinterpreted, but the reason why the joke was made is what matters. The joke-makers may lie in an attempt to bypass the system but then again, that's what we have the court systems for: To make it as fair as possible for as many as possible.