""Agree. All SDF's argument boils down to is the slippery slope fallacy. "This might lead to this..." etc. This is the same thing Republicans opposing the New Deal argued in the 1930s - they said it would lead to communism and state socialism. ""

First off, about 99% off the people who use the Slippery Slope Fallacy (yourself included) seem to know absolutely nothing about how it actually works.

Sufficed to say, sometimes the slope actually is demonstrably slippery.

Secondly, the idea that you'd want to ban speech if there wasn't a slippery slope - in other words, that you'd want to ban speech if only you could ensure that only speech which you strongly disagree with is banned - officially makes you a really creepy person.

Contrary to your inaccurate claim that Western Europe is authoritarian, you'll find that citizens there are actually quite happy. They only get mad when their leaders, like say Dominique Villepin (French PM) do so called "reforms" that bust unions, deregulate corporations, and remove vital social protections. And if Western Europe is so anti-democratic, why do their elections have significantly higher voter turnout than ours here?

Additionally I would argue that Western Europe is, in some ways, more democractic than The United States. There, many countries have elections with proportional representation, runoff votings, and national referendums.
Most countries have a central electoral commission that ensures full voting rights, unlike the U.S. system where partisan Secretaries of State have an unbelievable amount of power over the vote. And, best of all, they don't have an electoral college.

The reason freedom is a solution to stupidity isn't that it makes people less stupid - it means you aren't dependent on them, so you can do as you please and not have to worry about them.

Now there's an interesting fallacy--the idea that you are not dependent on your neighbors for your continued quality of life. That I find both prima facie absurd, and somewhat disappointing.

You think stupidity can be eradicated? What planet are you living on?

I don't think it can. But your previous sentiment sure as hell seemed to express support for the notion that it can. In fact, the phrasing you used seems to suggest that stupidity has a solution, which you vaguely defined as "freedom." It was, for you, a terrible piece of rhetoric. Just as disturbingly, the condescention coming from you of late has been, shall we say, excessive.

But I digress.

You're still essentially arguing that recognizing what is known as hard-and-fast fact through codification under the law is inherently a bad thing (I think that's the most nuanced generalization that can be made about your arguments to this point). I disagree. I think there's something to be said for preserving singular existential statements of fact when they face challenges that could dilute important areas of the historical record. Like "Biblical magnitude" important. Just as I don't mind the government claiming as an existential fact that the Declaration of Independence as approved by the Second Continental Congress was adopted on July 4, 1776, neither do I mind them claiming as existential fact that millions of Jews were systematically executed under the Nazi regime, ceteris paribus. The reason is that neither is taken as an article of faith--there is ample documentation confirming both events actually transpired.

In fact, I'm glad you mentioned the Armenian Genocide, because it undercuts your argument rather well. You're talking about an event that transpired about ninety years ago, meaning that most of the survivors are now gone and many if not most of the injustices committed then are now obfuscated within the historical record to the point where a grave breach of human rights is now a matter for debate. Because the historical record was not protected, there was enough room to fabricate alternate histories. But the Armenian case is less well documented than the Holocaust, which created huge piles of paper and photographic evidence to corroborate survivors' stories. We even found documentation of orders to destroy documentation. The primary sourcing on this horrible chapter is still recent enough to be recognized and verified for future students to employ in appropriate contexts. The fact that a genocide against the Jews occured under the Nazis to the rational mind at this time is, in a word, undeniable. I see no problem in theory with restricting the denial of the undeniable.

So the question for me is, is the Holocaust one of those rare historical occurences of such importance as to justify governmental intervention to preserve the salient and undeniable facts for posterity? I think so, given the incredibly long-reaching aftershocks it has already caused and will undoubtedly continue to cause. Much of middle-eastern affairs can be traced back, in some senses, to the effects of the Holocaust. The concentration of Jews into certain communities following the war and the ethnological impact that has had gains added significance when considered as a part of post-genocidal anthropological studies. I could go on and on (except for it being after 4 am and me being sleepy).

Suffice it to say, I don't think laws against Holocaust denial are necessarily part of the road to ruin. I don't think you've made the case that the implications of protecting singular existential fact are so dire as to preclude it from the realm of possibility.