[ExI] What the France!?

[Fred C. Moulton]

Well I was going to take a break from posting for a few days; I was not
even going to reply to the little rant someone aimed at me since it was
so full of false implications and errors of reasoning that it did not
even have enough substance to qualify as an ad-hominem attack.  However
I decided to write a few lines to show some of the flaws in the
proposals sent by painload2k at libero.it.  I do not plan to cover them all
or be exhaustive in my remarks but I will cover some of the more bizarre
items.

On Wed, 2009-04-08 at 17:40 +0200, painlord2k at libero.it wrote:
> 
> Who want use force and intimidation to remove people unwanted?
> There are many lawful ways to make life harder for people you don't want.

Well first we need to remember that the values that I think most on this
list want people to hold such as "equal protection under the law" and
"freedom of expression" would be weakened by the proposals.  It would be
difficult to urge Saudi Arabia to liberalize their society when doing
the opposite elsewhere.  

> 1) Complete ban on burkas, niqab and other ways to conceal your face. 
> Five years of jail for anyone doing it.

Well there goes the Masquerade Ball.  And Halloween.  So you advocate
anyone going to a Masquerade Ball gets 5 years in jail.  So much for
individualism and freedom of expression.

> 3) Preaching in mosques must be done in French (or the local language). 
> Five year for anyone preaching in a different language.

Interesting that "local language" is not defined.  Would it be the
predominate language in a country, state/province, county/parish,
city/town, neighborhood or what?  Where I live the closest supermarket
uses Spanish for announcements over the public address system and the
signs are in Spanish usually with English below in a smaller font.  And
just a few miles a way is a market where Vietnamese is predominate and
in the other direction is a market with a lot of Chinese language signs.
So this idea of local language is poorly defined.  And let us not forget
Latin,  would the use of Latin be outlawed?  I seem to recall the
Catholic Church uses it.  Thus we see that the proposal is poorly
defined and essentially nonsensical.

> 4) Anyone jailed for terrorism or helping and abetting or advocating 
> violence will have his citizenship revoked and will be expelled after 
> completing his term.

Do you really mean "advocating violence" as a general category?  What
about someone promoting the War in Iraq?  Personally I think the War in
Iraq is a bad idea but throwing someone in jail for advocating the war
violates the principle of free expression.  Now maybe this is not what
you meant but that is exactly what you wrote.

> 7) Mandatory swimming lessons in mixed classes for all students.

And what do you do if the students show up for class and do not do
anything; they just stand there in their street clothes?  What do you
do; give them a failing grade?  How totally ridiculous.

> 8) No prayer time during the work schedule.

This is a matter between an employer and and employee. If an employer
wants to let an employee off for an hour on Ash Wednesday to say a
prayer and get some ashes on their forehead what possible concern is it
of the government.  

> 9) No Halal slaughter.

Are you going to outlaw Kosher also?  Do you have any idea how difficult
this would be to monitor?

> I'm sure a lawyer could come with much more ways to make life harder for 
> bad people.

Your list of laws would make life harder for good people as well and
would most probably lead to an undesirable outcome.

> Do you think anything of this will constitute a "Crime against humanity" 
> or "ethic cleansing"?

Probably not "crime against humanity".  As for "ethic cleansing" well
what you suggest is certainly lacking it ethics.

Fred