| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation is a study in the power of words to maim, and what a civilised
society can do about it. Not every abuse of human communication can or should be
controlled by the law or custom. But every society from time to time draws lines at
the point where the intolerable and the permissible coincide. In a free society such as
our own, where the privilege of speech can induce ideas that may change the very
order itself, there is a bias weighted heavily in favour of the maximum of rhetoric
whatever the cost and consequences. But that bias stops this side of injury to the
community itself and to individual members of identifiable groups innocently caught
in verbal crossfire that goes beyond legitimate debate.
An effort is made herein to re-examme, therefore the parameters of permissible
arguments in a world more easily persuaded than before because the means of
transmission are so persuasive. But ours is a world aware of the perils of falsehood
disguised as fact and of conspirators eroding the community's integrity through
pretending that conspiracies from elsewhere now justify verbal assault- the nonfactors
and the non-truths of prejudice and slander.
Hate is as old as man and doubtless as durable. This report explores what it is the
community can do to lessen some of man's intolerance and to proscribe its gross
exploitation. A look at the ancient civilisation will illustrate that even in those
ancient times the concept of Human Rights was given the due recognition that it
deserved. The following trilogy will ascertain this fact. | en_US |
