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To: freema

Another straw man for October porches.

Please identify the imminent threat posed by the few Nazis and Mr Szych to the rioters.

Who rioted for hours.

No comparison.


855 posted on 10/15/2005 10:25:43 PM PDT by Mr. Rational (God gave me a brain and expects me to use it)
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To: Mr. Rational
Another straw man for October porches.

Please identify the imminent threat posed by the few Nazis and Mr Szych to the rioters.

Who rioted for hours.

No comparison.

Exactly. Our closet- and not-so-closet-authoritarians here think that just because "someone is making trouble" that therefore the government has a right to silence them. Not so. There have to be dire, immediate, imminent threats before one can claim that speech has to be silenced to prevent violence. None of that applies here. What we have is a "just so" way of looking at the world: the Nazis are bad people, bad people cause bad things, the world would be better off without them, therefore silence them "for the greater good". But the First Amendment was not written to promote "the greater good" as defined by authoritarians: it was written to shackle the arbitrary power of those in authority. No one wants to censor speech they agree with. It is precisely the unpopular speech that was intended to be protected by the First Amendment.

864 posted on 10/15/2005 10:39:36 PM PDT by Vast Buffalo Wing Conspiracy
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