You know, I suspect that most of these people have no idea what "treason" means, beyond it being "a really bad thing to do to your country."
I also think that most people have a tendency to over-react. You've talked before how people tend to yell "I'll sue" at the slightest provocation. And today I was reading up on freedom of speech (in that book about Internet privacy I blogged about). The author was explaining how you can't just make it illegal to tell lies about others, because people can and do make mistakes, and you can't have debate if people are going to sue the minute someone gets a fact about them wrong. So if you are going to allow people to sue for defamation you have to require them to prove malicious intent. That reminded about how often, when someone has objected to one of my book reviews, they immediately assumed that I didn't really dislike the book (how could one dislike a book that they liked?), but that instead I had maliciously told lies about it with the express purpose of causing distress to the author.
People like being the center of stories, and consequently they always dramatize things.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-03-01 12:08 am (UTC)I also think that most people have a tendency to over-react. You've talked before how people tend to yell "I'll sue" at the slightest provocation. And today I was reading up on freedom of speech (in that book about Internet privacy I blogged about). The author was explaining how you can't just make it illegal to tell lies about others, because people can and do make mistakes, and you can't have debate if people are going to sue the minute someone gets a fact about them wrong. So if you are going to allow people to sue for defamation you have to require them to prove malicious intent. That reminded about how often, when someone has objected to one of my book reviews, they immediately assumed that I didn't really dislike the book (how could one dislike a book that they liked?), but that instead I had maliciously told lies about it with the express purpose of causing distress to the author.
People like being the center of stories, and consequently they always dramatize things.