Burning the flag is illegal: a constitutional amendment

POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Saturday, July 2, 2005 02:01
VIEWED: 16637
PAGE 9 of 10

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Originally posted by Opus:

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Originally posted by Geezer:

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Originally posted by Opus:
So you're willing to fight and die for the rights of Nambla, a pedophile organization who publish a book entitled "Rape and Escape"? The book tells how to lure, befriend and rape a child, then escape detection and or prosecution.

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As for me - Yes. Information is not action. If someone tries to actually do this sort of stuff, hang them out to dry. But if you can ban this book, what happens if the majority decides to ban books about safe sex, or contraception...or how to make home brew, or reload ammunition in your basement, or grow pot in your basement, or set up a grassroots organization to protest government actions, or raise funds for third parties, etc. etc. etc. It's that old slippery slope.

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Opus, I answered this earlier post with an admittedly rather long reply (see above). Comments?

perfessergee

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PERFESSERGEE

Wednesday, June 29, 2005 5:52 AM

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:

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Originally posted by perfessergee:
This doesn’t mean that we have to just sit there and listen and agree with the argument; we are certainly free to vilify the advocates of abhorrent ideas. And for that matter, kick their butts if you feel so strongly inclined *as long as you are willing to pay the full price of a criminal conviction for assault*. If you don’t think you should have to pay that price, please go live in some other country where they don’t believe in free speech. I’ve spent time in several of them, I prefer it here.

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Does this apply to children, the party directly affected by NAMBLA’s freedom of expression? Effectively it does not. Children are a special case; they do not have rights, necessarily. I agree with you that free expression should be its own regulation most of the time, but when a party does not have free expression then that regulation does not exist, giving predators like NAMBLA an advantage over a largely defenseless social class. Is free expression served by allowing a group such an advantage?

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Huh? This reply doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense to me, with respect to what you are quoting above. The rights of kids aren't at issue here (though I think most attorneys would be surprised at your assertion that they don't have rights - they most certainly do). Remember that we are talking about people who are *only* expressing an idea, not acting on it and not trying to incite it. Neither of the latter is remotely protected. Are you discussing the rights of children to vilify the SOB's who express these ideas? They already have that right. Please clarify.

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Originally posted by perfessergee:
And now, we finally get back to the notion of burning the current banner of the United States for purposes other than disposing of worn out specimens. I hope that by now you’ve now twigged to my point, and please forgive my shouting, but this needs to be shouted, and apparently from the rooftops because there seems to be way too few Americans who understand this: FREE SPEECH ONLY MATTERS WHEN THE SPEECH IN QUESTION IS THE MINORITY OPINION. Not just your own, not the majority of whomever you associate with, and most certainly not “society’s” majority. If you can’t understand this and you can’t defend the right of others to express speech you disagree with, then please, please, please move to some country where demagoguery and intimidation pass for righteousness and reasoned discourse. And please, please, please, let that not be the country that I live in and love.

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So the free expression of a majority, such as Christians for instance, does not matter? Is it then acceptable in your view to silence the opinion of Christians, in favor of the opinions of atheists who are minority? That’s doesn’t sound to me like an endorsement of freedom of expression.

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Free speech rights don't have to be defended for majorities because they are already defended by sheer weight of numbers. And who is talking about silencing Christians? Certainly not me, and I sure don't see much effort going into it in this country. Do you see anyone picketing outside Christian TV and radio stations demanding that they be shut down? Or demanding that ministers not be allowed to preach? I think not. Individual Christians, and private groups of Christians are completely free to express their opinions. Now if you are going to argue that it is a silencing of Christian opinion to disallow that expression under color of government authority, we have a very different debate here. And fortunately the framers of our Constitution saw that for what it is: an attempt to use governmental power and authority to establish religiosity. And most of us who have read it have concluded that our Constitution expressly forbids this.

perfessergee

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Originally posted by perfessergee:
Huh? This reply doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense to me, with respect to what you are quoting above. The rights of kids aren't at issue here (though I think most attorneys would be surprised at your assertion that they don't have rights - they most certainly do). Remember that we are talking about people who are *only* expressing an idea, not acting on it and not trying to incite it. Neither of the latter is remotely protected. Are you discussing the rights of children to vilify the SOB's who express these ideas? They already have that right. Please clarify.

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When was the last time you saw eight year olds out picketing against NAMBLA? What media source, written and run by eight years olds, is NAMBLA vilified?

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Originally posted by perfessergee:
Free speech rights don't have to be defended for majorities because they are already defended by sheer weight of numbers.

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You assume. I doubt that’s necessarily true; particularly when one considers judicial legislation, but it’s an ethical issue. There’s something distinctly tyrannical about insisting that rights only apply to the minority.

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Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:

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Originally posted by perfessergee:
Free speech rights don't have to be defended for majorities because they are already defended by sheer weight of numbers.

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You assume. I doubt that’s necessarily true; particularly when one considers judicial legislation, but it’s an ethical issue. There’s something distinctly tyrannical about insisting that rights only apply to the minority.

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You're missing the point. You love doing that, don't you?

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

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Originally posted by SergeantX:
You're missing the point. You love doing that, don't you?

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I don’t think so. I just don’t subscribe to the notion that freedom of speech is only important if the speech in question is a minority opinion, nor do I believe that the majority is necessarily guaranteed freedom of expression, especially if we adhere to the notion that the majority opinion is unimportant or less important.

Although if I am missing the point, then my apologies. If the point is to say that the minority opinion is at greater risk of suppression, then that is probably true. I don't see how that makes the majority opinion unimportant, but maybe I'm wrestling with semantics.

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Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.

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Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:

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Originally posted by SergeantX:
You're missing the point. You love doing that, don't you?

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I don’t think so. I just don’t subscribe to the notion that freedom of speech is only important if the speech in question is a minority opinion, nor do I believe that the majority is necessarily guaranteed freedom of expression, especially if we adhere to the notion that the majority opinion is unimportant or less important.

Although if I am missing the point, then my apologies. If the point is to say that the minority opinion is at greater risk of suppression, then that is probably true. I don't see how that makes the majority opinion unimportant, but maybe I'm wrestling with semantics.

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Finn,

Freedom of speech is important for everyone, majority, minority, or even split. And nobody's version is more "important" than anyone else's (well, unless it's mine of course! - that's a joke folks). That's not the point at all. The point has to do with when a right to expression needs to be defended (not necessarily agreed with, just to exist in the public sphere); this is the whole reason for the existence of the Bill of Rights. If a viewpoint is not at risk of suppression (i.e., it's that majority viewpoint), then it simply doesn't need to be defended. The minority's viewpoint is *always* at more risk of suppression in any kind of democratic society (heaven only knows it's been done repeatedly in US society). The framers of the Constitution recognized the risk of the tyrrany of the majority, which is why we got the Bill of Rights in the first place. It seems to be an unfortunate part of the makeup of our species that majorities regularly become tyrranical. I'm talking the whole species here, not just Americans. Human history is littered with the wreckage of suppression of minority viewpoints, ranging from mild admonishions to wholesale murder . This is precisely why it's important to defend the rights of minorities.

perfessergee

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