Strange dream

Saturday night I dreamt that I was in an abandoned city, something like detroit.  A man called Andrew was living in a well-appointed house that he needed to leave.  I was to tell him.  I needed a helper, and for some reason in the dream I chose Slate.com's film critic, Dana Stevens, because we were going to be communicating with Andrew via the sniper rifle we had with us.  Dana showed me how to stay in cover - apparently it was good practice to avoid making a silhouette for fear someone might shoot at it, and Dana Stevens really knew how to survive (and work as a sniper).  I never found out how the rifle was to be used - I remember wondering if we were going to shoot lettering into the wall, and thinking we didn't have enough shells to finish a message.  I also remember knowing somehow that Andrew was sentenced to thirty years in the house, and after twenty years still felt obliged to stay another ten.

Free Speech

I was recently putting a case rather forcefully on Facebook that it was wrong to think vilification laws were a universally good idea because:
1. People's experience differs and people build prejudices on their experience.  Someone might say 'All men are bastards' and we might look at their life, their social circle (Cabinet?) and conclude they were making a fair enough point rather clumsily.
2.  The law is a slow and blunt instrument; and trying to legislate on behalf of every group who might identify themselves in a pejorative adjective is infeasible.

But, I thought to myself later, is there not progress of political ideas?  This was partly informed by my thinking about secularism, legitimacy and genuineness.  At some point, western societies began to give up on 'legitimacy' and be satisfied with 'genuineness' - a real Quaker is accepted as better than a fake Anglican.

If WWII taught us anything (and let's hope it did) surely the lessons were: 'give refuge', and 'in fighting and dying, all are equal.' Out of those lessons come the UN conventions on refugees, human rights and so on, and within states, you get the fulfillment of the new deal, the national health and the economic liberality of the fifties trying to respect the sacrifices of the troops.  Mussolini was elected on a platform of fascist racism.  That was what his brochure said about him.  Now, that sounds absurd. (National socialism sounds a lot better...)

Is it wrong to codify these lessons in law? Do we really have to win the argument again and again?

The Prime Minister of Australia persists in describing asylum seekers as illegals, the Treasurer wants to talk about the 50% of our lives in which we are too young, too old, too unskilled or physically disabled as being a leaner, a shirker, a rorter.  The labels are pejorative and wrong.