On Saturday 01 Mar 2008 10:18:22 pm Amit Varma wrote: > Sorry, I misunderstood then. There's nothing wrong in a merely verbal > protest. But most political protests these days that are based on being > offended aren't verbal, and many of them involve the law being used against > offenders, or at least the threat of it. The Hindu piece that started this > thread, for example, mentioned vandalism being the form of protest used.
I believe that the gap between "feeling insulted" and "hitting out" are very small. Small enough to be semantic. The semantics and that small gap have both been utilized on this thread which is good fun for discussion. Disclaimer: I am not accusing anyone of anything but just trying to dissect he small mental gap between words and physical action. There may well be, withing the human psyche, a very short fuse between insult and physical aggression. That may turn out to be a lesson that I can take away for further validation from other scenarios. I have deliberately insisted on speaking of "protest" against hurt sentiment. However Udhay used a well known metaphor that introduces a physical dimension to a verbal difference of opinion "Your right to swing your fist stops where my face begins". Some person who identifies himself or herself as [EMAIL PROTECTED] also added a physical dimension as an extension to "protest" by suggesting that he has a can of kerosene that I can utilise to set something on fire. The close psychological link between insult, anger and physical aggression may well be a reason for having a check of exactly what is meant by free speech. Early on in this discussion I was going to post the analogy of my walking down the street of some town in the Southern US shouting "You racist bastards" at every white man I meet and wondering if free speech would be respected. Somehow that particular analogy did not get into my post - I change the wording. Ultimately laws of any society must work for that society. One cannot lift laws out of another society and impose them somewhere else and expect success. shiv
