Ophelia has responded once more on the matter of Holocaust denial. Her position continues to puzzle me. She recognizes that in many countries Holocaust denial is not a criminal offence - which as I pointed out in my previous post entails that there is, in those countries, a liberty right to deny that the Holocaust occurred. Ophelia also stands by her view that Holocaust denial shouldn't be a criminal offence - from which the inference is surely unavoidable that this is a liberty right that she not merely notes as a legal fact but also endorses. Yet she resists the conclusion that Holocaust denial, falsifying the evidence and so on, is then covered - as she appeared originally to deny, or at least to question - as protected free speech (this, of course, provided it does not breach laws against incitement).
As far as I can see, Ophelia's only real argument for resisting that conclusion is that there are morally bad things that are not against the law - '[r]udeness, meanness, selfishness, egotism, lack of consideration...' - and that we can think certain acts wrong even though we don't want them criminalized. This is obviously true. But it doesn't suffice to show that people have no right to do morally bad (non-criminal) things, to display the above lamentable characteristics. It is in the very nature of liberty rights that they entitle people to behave in ways of which we will sometimes disapprove. Your right to free speech wouldn't amount to anything if you could never say what I disapproved of or encourage acts that I think morally wrong.
Placing this issue on the terrain of moral bads and goods (as we variously judge these) seems to me, in any case, to displace it from where it properly belongs. If protected free speech is what we're talking about - and that is where this discussion started - then we're talking about the legal state of affairs: what we think it is and what we think it should be. We're not talking about opinions on how people use their free speech rights in saying what they say. I can absolutely loathe what someone else says without it having the slightest bearing on their right to say it.
As Ophelia notes in her latest post, she and I agree on the substance here: Holocaust denial shouldn't be a criminal offence; but it is a pernicious lie, should nowhere be assisted, applauded, taken lightly, and so forth. I cannot see how, on such assumptions, it makes anything clearer to argue that under liberal norms of free speech there isn't a right to deny the Holocaust, or that there's only a thin one. There is the same right as there is to say pretty much anything else.