Posted on 09/18/2012 6:37:04 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
U.S. 1st Amendment rights distinguish between speech that is simply offensive and speech deliberately tailored to put lives and property at immediate risk.
In one of the most famous 1st Amendment cases in U.S. history, Schenck vs. United States, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. established that the right to free speech in the United States is not unlimited. "The most stringent protection," he wrote on behalf of a unanimous court, "would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic."
Holmes' test — that words are not protected if their nature and circumstances create a "clear and present danger" of harm — has since been tightened. But even under the more restrictive current standard, "Innocence of Muslims," the film whose video trailer indirectly led to the death of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens among others, is not, arguably, free speech protected under the U.S. Constitution and the values it enshrines.
According to initial media investigations, the clip whose most egregious lines were apparently dubbed in after it was shot, was first posted to YouTube in July by someone with the user name "Sam Bacile." The Associated Press reported tracing a cellphone number given as Bacile's to the address of a Californian of Egyptian Coptic origin named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula. Nakoula has identified himself as coordinating logistics on the production but denies being Bacile.
According to the Wall Street Journal, when the video failed to attract much attention, another Coptic Christian, known for his anti-Islamic activism, sent a link to reporters in the U.S., Egypt and elsewhere on Sept. 6. His email message promoted a Sept. 11 event by anti-Islamic pastor Terry Jones and included a link to the trailer.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
All of us should take heart at the savaging Chayes is taking in the comments to her article. (Of course, it is the LA Times, which of all the MSM print-outlets seems to be the most given to “random acts of journalism”, so maybe the readership is actually further right than one might guess and not representative of the general populace in its distribution area.)
“...falsely shouting fire in a theater...”
Therefore, the test is, were the accusations in the film True or False?
Some groups will riot whatever is said.
Some groups riot when their team looses a championship.
Some groups will riot when their team WINS a championship.
Is the riot the fault of the loosing team?
The refs?
The league for having a championship game at all?
(Sarah Chayes is one of the idiots...)
Great post.
“Don’t say anything that could upset a crazy person” is not a standard. Murderous rage in the case of these “riots” is most often a deliberate, provoked, and self-provoked insanity designed to declare war on all of us until we obey a law other than our own.
Our country is a republic because we sought freedom from the tyranny of both despots and mobs. We believed that human nature can and should be better than the impulses to lynch, rape, and murder. We tame the blood-lust within; it does not tame us from without. That is the choice and philosophy upon which we have based outselves as a country: the individual behaves him/herself because our image of God is of a benevolent Creator who gave each one of us the means and freedoms and responsibilities to govern our own lives civilly. That image of God is at odds with the concept of God and Law we see in these riots. Choose one.
these people are not swayed by logic, only volume
Thanks!
Insulting Muslims is like yelling “Fire!” falsely in a crowded theater because insulted Muslims like to set fire to things.
OK. Got it.
And that concludes today's lesson in “Liberal Logic”; or, Why the principled defense of our precious Constitutional liberties must never be left to liberals.
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