The thing is, once you say "charging the perpetrators of crimes doesn't stop the crimes", you wind up in exactly the same place once you define "advocating monstrous things" as a crime.
Who would theoretically be responsible for arresting, charging and judging the people accused of publicly advocating rape or gay-bashing or murdering black people? The same people who are currently responsible for arresting, charging and judging the people accused of committing those crimes? If so, there's no reason to think they'll do any better -- which is to say, the tactic of silencing the opposition might not be effective. If not, and if we could theoretically get better people involved at those levels, maybe we could try getting better people involved at those levels first? -- which is to say, the tactic of silencing the opposition might not be necessary.
It's not like there's a discrete group of advocates of bigotry, and if we just silence them then everybody will be free of their pernicious influence. We'd need to get someone to do the silencing, and in order to do that we'd need to get people who agree with us about what is and is not acceptable behavior into positions of judicial power, and ... once we have that, we might have half the problem solved already without classifying speech as a crime.
no subject
Who would theoretically be responsible for arresting, charging and judging the people accused of publicly advocating rape or gay-bashing or murdering black people? The same people who are currently responsible for arresting, charging and judging the people accused of committing those crimes? If so, there's no reason to think they'll do any better -- which is to say, the tactic of silencing the opposition might not be effective. If not, and if we could theoretically get better people involved at those levels, maybe we could try getting better people involved at those levels first? -- which is to say, the tactic of silencing the opposition might not be necessary.
It's not like there's a discrete group of advocates of bigotry, and if we just silence them then everybody will be free of their pernicious influence. We'd need to get someone to do the silencing, and in order to do that we'd need to get people who agree with us about what is and is not acceptable behavior into positions of judicial power, and ... once we have that, we might have half the problem solved already without classifying speech as a crime.