Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: $Revision: 1.6.2.16 $; site inmet.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!harvard!bbnccv!inmet!nrh 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 Date-Received: Thu, 31-Oct-85 06:10:23 EST References: <863@lsuc.UUCP> Lines: 57 Nf-ID: #R:lsuc:-86300:inmet:7800597:000:2701 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.