@ceoln I am familiar with that argument. And I agree that such bigotry should not be tolerated.

Where I draw the line is that the government is not the correct forum to deal with that.
People should not be jailed or beaten by the government for their bigoted thoughts or speech.

They should be shunned and shamed and outcast by society instead.

When we give the government the power to punish wrong-think, it is inevitable that a bigot will gain power and use it to beat and jail those seeking justice.

So, as for the comic, I agree with everything except "must be outside of the law". Instead, it should be "must be outcast from society".

@LouisIngenthron
Okay ... There's a lot of nuance here. The original thread wasn't couched entirely in terms of government punishment. You said for instance that you don't "wish suffering" on those who disagree with you. But being outcast from society is certainly suffering. Probably just a matter of keeping the details clear.

@ceoln For sure, there is a degree of nuance.

I don't think I'd consider "self-imposed mental anguish" to be suffering, though.

If a person *chooses* not to eat, are they really "suffering" from starvation?

Likewise, if a person chooses to believe something that society has collectively decided is abhorrent (i.e. racism, pedophilia, eugenics), are they really "suffering" when that society inevitably collectively shuns them? They knew the rules of the game and chose their path anyway.

(Also, fwiw, my original reference to "suffering" was a bit off-topic to the original thread, since it was in direct response to my opponent wishing harm on me directly.)

@LouisIngenthron
Hm. I would certainly consider those things to be suffering; I'm not sure what your definition is here.

If someone chooses to believe something odious and people shun them, and that's not suffering, does it become suffering if the government punishes them for the same thing?

I don't think that's what the word means. :)

I don't know where exactly the lines ought to be drawn between things that are met with polite disagreement, social disapproval, social shunning, and government action.

But I don't think government action is different in kind from those other things; if you're worried that "if the government can punish you for opinion X, then it can punish you for any opinion," you should be just about equally worried that "if society can shun you for opinion X, then it can shun you for any opinion"; they aren't fundamentally different.

And both of them are "the exact tools fascists use to rise to power."; before they were in government, they made lots of use of social pressure. We can differentiate between social OR government power being used in good causes, and the same power being used in evil causes.