Keep in the vote

There will be a referendum on a new constitution this weekend. (See how rational it is here, holding an election over two days, on a weekend, as opposed to the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.) Many people that I know are not at all satisfied with it.

Progressive NGOs and political parties are organizing a boycott of the referendum. It’s hard for me, coming from a place where minimum voter turnout requirements are very rare (only for the occasional school bond levy), to view boycotting as a good thing. The not voting=apathy equation has been burned into my brain. (Although, if my absentee ballot doesn’t get here in time, maybe I’ll just say I was boycotting.) I understand the tactic intellectually, but it still doesn’t sit quite right with me.

Speaking of political things that don’t sit quite right with me, I’ve been thinking a lot about European laws that restrict speech. Denying the holocaust is a crime in a lot of Western Europe and there is a [rarely enforced] law against spreading racial, religious, etc. hatred here. France just passed a law that criminalized the denial of the Armenian genocide. Criminalizing speech, even ugly and hateful speech, just doesn’t seem like a good idea to me. Not allowing people to say things publicly doesn’t stop them from thinking them. Acting violently on such ugly beliefs should be punished, but saying them should not be. The freedom of speech is another of those things that has been burned into my brain. And where to draw the line? The Economist made an interesting point this week; if denying the holocaust is a crime, why can’t insulting Islam be a crime?

Things to ponder, things to ponder.