Odysseus to Agamemnon, wrathfully: “Son of Atreus! What words have escaped the barrier of your teeth!” – Iliad 4, 350.
That’s Homer for you: “Our teeth are much like the topless towers of Troy the Greeks had to face: a barrier to hold back unruly or recalcitrant words,” he tells us. “Don’t let false words, fake words escape that barrier.”
If he were a modern-day Aussie, he’d put it in these words: “Words are like mozzies, mate: They fly and they can bite you on the bum. Take care what words you let fly out of your mouth!”
Words fly, written ones remain.” George Theodoridis
" A fair and just society is made up of fair and just citizens, the blood and soul of which are words that are the true reflections of the thoughts of its citizens and their expression is pure and undefiled by any interference by anyone. No society can be fair and just if its citizens can’t do that.
The fact is that free speech in any democratic system should be so valued, so profoundly salient, that any decent enlightened government should legislate to see that it is not abused.
That it carries with it sacrosanct principles of decency that are beyond law and ingrained in the conscience of a collective common good.
After all, the dignity of the individual (or individuals) within the collective is more important than some fool's right to use freedom of speech to vilify another.
Those who insist on unlimited free speech should realise that when they do so, they also reveal their own inner morality.
The fact that so many people agree with the free speech argument highlights the tolerance we have for the unacceptable right to hate each other, which to me is the source of everything that is wrong with human behaviour.
We will never truly understand the effect free speech has on people until we have personally suffered from the abuse of it.
And we want to make it acceptable by legislating to condone it.
Are we really saying that in a supposedly enlightened society that values, love, decorum, moderation, truth, fact, balance, reason, tolerance, civility and respect for the other's point of view, that we need to enshrine in law a person’s right to be the opposite of all these things?
If that is the case then we are not educating. We are not creating a better social order and we are not enlightened at all."John Lord
The ABC, we all thought foolishly, was a media platform where these vested interests were kept at bay; that this taxpayer-funded body was protected by legislation and that it worked free of manipulation and of agendas belonging to particular interests and not to its funders, the Australian demos. Recently we found out that this was not the case and that the ABC was in fact, run by a board put there by political interests and that these political interests were ruthlessly directing the trajectory of its work.
We know this because the words used by the chairman of its board, Justin Milne, demanding that one of its best-known journalists should be sacked, rose to the surface of public scrutiny, much like the sewage of a badly maintained plumbing complex.
The ABC, which though, I suggest might not always have given us a “no punches pulled” account of the facts, was and certainly is vital to us if we are to understand ourselves, as well as others and to respect the two most crucial elements of a humane society, truth and justice. This body must not brook any interference from anyone and to pursue, as its charter suggests, truth at any cost.
And this is while the Senate is trying to assess Kavanaugh’s suitability to a seat in the Supreme Court. His words, Trump’s words, are a belligerent, bellowing cascade of bitterness, of hatred and of poison that has indeed, escaped the barrier of his teeth. They are nothing short of a vulgar, unabashed interference in the process of seeking the truth. (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/02/trump-mocks-christine-blasey-ford-at-mississippi-rally)
Interference by powerful, vested interests. An aggressive attack on a person with little power other than that invested in the truth, an attack aimed at shutting down any other person who holds the truth but who is not powerful enough to utter it.
The ABC, like the ancient Greek stage, is the platform where the truth comes to see the light and breathe the clear air. This light and this air must not be subverted in any way. It must not be turned into a “truth maybe” or a “truth but.”
However, Andrew Bolt put's his faith in Milo just another Trump card who by punching down offers nothing by way of enlightenment or education just another barker like Bolt who lets words fly for a few cents but offers nothing by way of education.
‘An enlightened society is one in which the suggestion that we need to legislate one's right to hate another person is considered intellectually barren.’
Just who is Milo Yiannopoulos and what is he all about? - The Brag
The Sad Truth About Milo Yiannopoulos - VICE
Antarctica Has Lost 3 Trillion Tonnes Of Ice In 25 Years. Time Is Running Out For The Frozen Continent | IFLScience
1) Andrew Bolt tells us the Ice has infact grown2) The Oceans aren't rising
3) Climate isn't effected by such massive change
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