German chancellor allows prosecution of satirist who insulted Turkish president

[anon50609448]

@fuzzyfungus

It isn’t a good thing that the American judicial branch has to spend so much time beating first amendment 101 into censorious assholes; but the fact that we are knee deep in domestic censorious assholes provides a robust immune response to any outside attempt to be a censorious asshole. Germany’s situation sounds like it involves a somewhat less poxed political culture; but, since it is less poxed, one with relatively few formal defenses if somebody just ignores the tacit rules and demands the full force of the explicit ones, as Erdogan is certainly doing.

I disagree, I think that no amount of rules work, and in fact in many cases the existence of rules encourage people to wallow in the worst behaviour the rules will allow. A society that expects everyone to cooperate gets everyone 3 points most of the time and gives some asshole 5 points some of the time. A society that expects everyone to defect walks around thinking that somehow everyone getting only 1 point will make the people who already have a million points behave. In reality, justice in America is only for people who can afford it anyway, so the idea that the rules are protecting the people just doesn’t pan out.