Why belief in rape should be permissible
September 22nd 2006 00:17
The obvious gesture is to be cynical about the whole enterprise of "Australian values". (I'm not necessarily saying that I am cynical; I just think it's the obvious gesture.)
-- Forcing tourists and immigrants to sign some piece of paper encourages the values of lying and lip service.
-- It's all meaningless, substanceless rhetoric, a crude and opportunistic exercise in populism, xenophobia, and the politics of marginalisation. It's hopelessly vague in its details.
-- It's a backdoor route to an arbitrary extension of federal power via a question-begging definition of "Australian". It's like jumping on the open-ended "war on terror" bandwagon. It's McCarthyism prosecuting unAmericans. It's imperial Japan equating "being Japanese" with "believing in State Shintoism".
-- It's humourless, authoritarian, intolerant, and unAustralian.
-- It's intrusive into the private, and morality should come from individual reason, not from state propaganda.
-- Australian values aren't meaningfully different from anyone else's.
-- Australia has integrated waves of immigrants in the past. Has anything really changed?
So that's the what might be one's instinctive reaction. But let me discuss what I think is an example of a hard case.
What if someone says to you, "As soon as you let me in, I'm going to rape and kill as much as I can". Must you let them in?
In this case, I personally think it's legitimate to bar them. I'm okay with prosecuting people for the intention to commit a felony.
But what about if they say, "I believe rape is morally permissible."
Well, in this case, I'd have more difficulty.
I'd want to distinguish between a belief and an intention. And it's possible to have one without the other. Plenty of people want to do things, and therefore believe there's nothing wrong with doing them, but don't go through with the act, because of legal repercussions.
Let me put it this way.
What if someone who was already an Australian citizen were to wake up one day believing that rape is morally permissible, and then go around stating their belief. Should they instantly be thrown out of the country or into jail?
I'd want to say: as a society, we should be able to proscribe certain acts, and to give legal consequences to your behaviour. But we shouldn't be able to tell you what to think, no matter how obnoxious your beliefs. In a Catholic society, Protestant beliefs might be obnoxious, but that shouldn't count as a reason to prosecute them. Freedom of conscience should be absolute.
To put this in a vaguer way, being free to reason, and to believe in your reasons, are part of what it means to have personal integrity and human dignity. And, in the best sorts of society, we should create the conditions for integrity and dignity to flourish.
In fact, in a functioning democracy, in a healthy and vibrant democracy, it's important to have divergent views. Mill even thought that if there wasn't opposition to your ideas, you should create opposition. It's only through continual arguing and defence of ideas that we gain clarity about what we believe and can keep our beliefs meaningful.
I said I'd have difficulty with allowing entrance to the rape-believer. Belief and intention can be separate, but, yes, they're often concomitant.
And, when drawing the immigration line, you might want to more harshly err on the side of caution in some cases, and at some times, than at others -- closing your borders during times of war, for instance.
So I'm employing some degree of consequential thinking.
Mill, incidentally, follows similar thinking -- individual liberty is only for the developed society.
But I personally reckon our society is such a society, and that our democracy can withstand people who believe rape is morally permissible. We don't have to thought-police each other's speech and jail or deport each other as soon as we step out of line.
Says Peter Singer: it's morally obligatory to allow immigration until the consequences of racial tension are too difficult to deal with.
-- Forcing tourists and immigrants to sign some piece of paper encourages the values of lying and lip service.
-- It's all meaningless, substanceless rhetoric, a crude and opportunistic exercise in populism, xenophobia, and the politics of marginalisation. It's hopelessly vague in its details.
-- It's a backdoor route to an arbitrary extension of federal power via a question-begging definition of "Australian". It's like jumping on the open-ended "war on terror" bandwagon. It's McCarthyism prosecuting unAmericans. It's imperial Japan equating "being Japanese" with "believing in State Shintoism".
-- It's humourless, authoritarian, intolerant, and unAustralian.
-- It's intrusive into the private, and morality should come from individual reason, not from state propaganda.
-- Australian values aren't meaningfully different from anyone else's.
-- Australia has integrated waves of immigrants in the past. Has anything really changed?
***
So that's the what might be one's instinctive reaction. But let me discuss what I think is an example of a hard case.
What if someone says to you, "As soon as you let me in, I'm going to rape and kill as much as I can". Must you let them in?
In this case, I personally think it's legitimate to bar them. I'm okay with prosecuting people for the intention to commit a felony.
But what about if they say, "I believe rape is morally permissible."
Well, in this case, I'd have more difficulty.
I'd want to distinguish between a belief and an intention. And it's possible to have one without the other. Plenty of people want to do things, and therefore believe there's nothing wrong with doing them, but don't go through with the act, because of legal repercussions.
***
Let me put it this way.
What if someone who was already an Australian citizen were to wake up one day believing that rape is morally permissible, and then go around stating their belief. Should they instantly be thrown out of the country or into jail?
I'd want to say: as a society, we should be able to proscribe certain acts, and to give legal consequences to your behaviour. But we shouldn't be able to tell you what to think, no matter how obnoxious your beliefs. In a Catholic society, Protestant beliefs might be obnoxious, but that shouldn't count as a reason to prosecute them. Freedom of conscience should be absolute.
To put this in a vaguer way, being free to reason, and to believe in your reasons, are part of what it means to have personal integrity and human dignity. And, in the best sorts of society, we should create the conditions for integrity and dignity to flourish.
In fact, in a functioning democracy, in a healthy and vibrant democracy, it's important to have divergent views. Mill even thought that if there wasn't opposition to your ideas, you should create opposition. It's only through continual arguing and defence of ideas that we gain clarity about what we believe and can keep our beliefs meaningful.
***
I said I'd have difficulty with allowing entrance to the rape-believer. Belief and intention can be separate, but, yes, they're often concomitant.
And, when drawing the immigration line, you might want to more harshly err on the side of caution in some cases, and at some times, than at others -- closing your borders during times of war, for instance.
So I'm employing some degree of consequential thinking.
Mill, incidentally, follows similar thinking -- individual liberty is only for the developed society.
But I personally reckon our society is such a society, and that our democracy can withstand people who believe rape is morally permissible. We don't have to thought-police each other's speech and jail or deport each other as soon as we step out of line.
Says Peter Singer: it's morally obligatory to allow immigration until the consequences of racial tension are too difficult to deal with.
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Comment by Damo
Firstly I never have been a fan of consequentialism and certainly no fan of nihilism, so that does effect my view point.
Rape is like any crime against humanity and there should be no question of where any lawful society stands on the matter. Rejecting a person who promotes rape from Australia has little to do with national values but more to do with universal values. I would be shocked if any western nation would alow someone in who would promote disregarding basic human rights and one of the most basic legal protections.
Freedom of speech despite the fluffy good feeling we have about it, there are limits. Go too far in one direction and you end up with vilification and in another you get chased for slander.
As a society we do tollerate hearing even the most stupid suggestion from people who should know better. Go to a pub and listen to the way some blokes talk about women and you'll know what I mean. Rape is just the tip of the imagination for some people. This is regardless of race.
Next question. Do we tollerate every viewpoint? Sure we do, up until that view point is turned into action. No one can stop someone believeing that rape is okay but they can certainly stop him commiting one.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
If I'm reading you properly, you agree that people should be allowed to believe in whatever they like, but you suggest there should be limits to freedom of speech?
A couple of thoughts in reply:
-- To be consistent, I'd probably allow racial vilification in a flourishing democracy (though, for consequentialist reasons, not in Weimar Germany). And I'd try to mount a two-pronged argument, one of whose prongs would be that it's better that these viewpoints get expressed, and defeated in rational argument, than allowed to fester. I'd mount the same argument, incidentally, in favour of self-censorship of one's own thoughts -- it's better to face them, than to deny them.
What do you reckon?
-- My post above didn't expressly deal with the issue of inciting violence (I just talked about expressing a belief in such things).
I guess I'd have difficulty with incitement; but again, I'd deal with it on consequentialist grounds. If it will likely result in injury, you can bar it; if it won't, you can't. One reply is to point out the trouble of applying this test; but I'm not convinced such problems are insurmountable. (Yeah, as I said, I'd have difficulty with this issue.)
I'd also point out that people incite violence all the time -- anyone who argues in favour of torture, or in favour of wars, or who barracks for one of Israel, Palestine, or Lebanon.
All of these are obnoxious viewpoints to a lot of people. But if it's your honest opinion, and you have a good reason for inciting violence, I don't see why you should be gagged.
-- I'm curious what you make of Mill-type arguments about free speech. You don't address these directly. The idea, for instance, that it's necessary to create extreme opposition, in order for our own views to be certain (Mill would say, in fact, that the only reason we have for certainty in our views is that there is a standing invite to all and sundry to try and disprove them).
Thanks for the thoughtful comment!
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
It's this: that if you get anything out of the discussion, that already goes some way to proving Mill's point about the value of contrary points of view.
Comment by nagster
Cenacle
Comment by Damo
Ideas are not dangerous in them selves. They can be in error or totally false but they are nothing until people acting them out. If it were otherwise then our libraries would have been closed years ago. You can read Lenin and Hitler in a public library but does that make the books dangerous?
Censorship is a word that creates an emotional attachment for some people. However despite what I believe, there are limits to my freedom of speech as stipulated in common law. I do not aspouse any limits on expression of opinions, but there are limits all the same. Are we really free?
Granting an entry visa to someone is a lot different than allowing a book to be published. I am very happy if known advocate of child porn is prevented entry. I have no problem with people in this country discussing in public whether he should have been allowed in or not. Yet I believe there is such a thing as a duty to prevent a person of bad character seeing his visa as official consent for his opinions.
There are no absolute freedoms in this world and many freedoms are balanced against others.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
But then again, I think I misjudge him, and perhaps he's completely pro-free speech after all, since he seems to disavow all consequentialism (and all dangerous consequences of free speech?).
Personally, I'd do as much as possible to allow the cartoons. In the short term, there might be some riots; but freedom of speech is so important for the long term that...
Dear Damo -- the book example is a great one! I hadn't started thinking about general censorship issues, so thanks for developing the conversation in the natural way.
Your final point is also a great one. Can't disagree with you there.
About character grounds... I'm not quite sure what to think. I'm trying to rewind to what was said about the Nazi apologist guy (can't even remember his name) when he was refused entry to Australia...
You probably know that the minister has a discretionary power to cancel migration vias on character grounds. The discretion has been somewhat controversial; in Ruddock's time, I think he wasn't even required to properly give reasons for his decision, and he used it against people who, basically, had spent their whole lives here.
Character is a thing I find difficult to talk about in general, because of the possibility of change...
Am rambling now. Not quite sure what to say to you on this point. Will have to give it more reflection.
Comment by Damo
There is plenty of scope for bad taste in this world but it doesn't mean I approve of it.
I can have opinions but how I express them is what matters.
Whatever happened to the "Stick 'n' Stones..." defense?
I think I will leave the migration debate alone for a while.
Censorship crosses a lot of media: spoken, image and video. One size might not fit all.
Comment by Cibbuano
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Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
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A one-and-a-half day conference on regulating extreme speech in a democratic society
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