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From: nrh@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: Gone with the wind.
Message-ID: <7800597@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 24-Oct-85 11:08:00 EST
Article-I.D.: inmet.7800597
Posted: Thu Oct 24 11:08:00 1985
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Nf-From: inmet!nrh    Oct 24 11:08:00 1985


Dave Sherman and Don Black have been going at it over the issue of a
law in Canada that recently allowed the conviction of a publisher
of hate literature, apparently because the publisher knew himself to 
be making false statements.

Don Black points out that a law that makes "false" statements illegal
creates (in effect) a state version of truth, and questions whether it
is wise to convict people on this basis.

Dave Sherman points out that a Jury had to be unanimous in the conviction,
and that they had been instructed not to convict if they had a reasonable
doubt, and that since conviction occurred, it was the Jury's unanimous
notion of truth which prevailed, not that of the state.

Have I got it straight?  

We take you now to the trial of Galileo, where a court of law has
shown their total faith in the Christian Church, and their awareness
that Galileo was knew his theory to be false because he agreed the earth
didn't feel like it was moving....

We take you now to the trial of Rebecca Nurse, where she is convicted
of being a witch, of consorting with Satan, and is hung until dead
on July 19, 1692.

We take you now to the (hypothetical) trial of Larry Kolodney, who,
shown that there was no world government, and yet agreed he was aware
that there was world trade, refused to agree that trade could exist
without an embracing  government, postulating a clearly incorrect
notion of a virtual world government.

We take you now to the present, where Don Black and Dave Sherman are
locked in combat over the wrong question.

The question they're arguing about is (feel free to correct me) the
possibility of truth or falsehood of Don's notion of the Holocaust.

[Let me make it clear to any quick-fingered pinheads: I don't agree
with Don about the realities here -- my own understanding is that it
is a better-established fact than most of history (certainly more
basis than the events in the Bible as we have eyewitnesses and 
records)].

But a jury is a last resort for finding the best shot at truth when
it MUST be found, and there are no other ways to find it.  Given
time to pick my jurors, I could show that the Star Wars Defense
would work, that abortion is moral or immoral, that 2+2 may or 
may not equal four.  That you can convince a jury of something doesn't
mean that it is true, merely that the best legally-sanctioned guess
at the moment is that it is true, and in matters of free speech,
I think it foolish to make it an acceptable means of establishing
truth.

I wonder, for example, if I could get a jury (in the right locale)
to make it legally true that the Jonestown massacre was done without
harmful intent, or that Millard Filmore was not a US president.