Posted on 07/22/2009 7:12:41 AM PDT by La Lydia
In an in Santa Barbara, California, last Saturday, I discussed the imminent threats to free speech -- and how they will affect our ability to combat the global jihad and Islamic supremacism. Now here is more indication of just how threatened our right to free speech really is: "Sonia Sotomayor and the Future of Anti-Islamist Speech," by David J. Rusin for Islamist Watch...The United States holds a unique advantage in the fight against radical Islam: buttressed by the First Amendment, Americans' freedom to speak and write about the Islamist threat is unmatched anywhere in the Western world. However, such protections can suffer at the hands of judges who seek to mold the Constitution according to their own personal preferences. With Sonia Sotomayor nearing confirmation to the Supreme Court, there is no better time to explore which judicial approaches are most likely to weaken First Amendment rights.
Three qualities in particular should set off alarm bells for those concerned about free speech:
Advocacy of the "living Constitution" model. When judges are "amending the Constitution and other laws as the judges see fit," a straightforward statement such as "Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" can become disturbingly pliable. If legal reasoning could be found to restrict political speech (e.g., McCain-Feingold), could not the same fate befall other types of speech? Citation of foreign law. This increasingly popular trend on the Supreme Court should put fear in the heart of anyone intent on protecting anti-Islamist speech, as practically every Western country has hate speech laws on the books, many of which have been employed against critics of Islamism. Just ask Ezra Levant, Mark Steyn, Oriana Fallaci, Geert Wilders, and a host of others.
Fixation on group identity. Those who see the group, not the individual, as the central building block of society are more likely to curtail individual rights for the purpose of mollifying certain racial, ethnic, gender, or religious groups. Such thinking undergirds European-style hate speech laws.
Unfortunately, all three of the above qualities are reflected, to some extent, in Sotomayor's past remarks. A sampling: "Our society would be strait-jacketed were not the courts … constantly overhauling the law," she wrote in 1996, effectively offering a thumbs-up to legislating from the bench — where, as she once put it, "policy is made." Furthermore, she asserted recently that "foreign law will be very important in the discussion of how to think about the unsettled issues in our own legal system"; she also has cited foreign cases in her decisions. Finally, her musings on the virtues of the "wise Latina woman" and the possibility that gender and ethnicity "will make a difference in our judging" do not bode well on the identity politics front....
it’s already happened on university campi.
Very well put. This was the reason for civil rights legislation in the first place--to prevent abuses by people who see the group, not the individual. Why this irony escapes the liberal left is completely beyond my understanding.
"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness." Allen Ginsburg
its
“Will Sotomayor help extinguish free speech about jihad and Islamic supremacism?”
of course. She is a confirmed leftist, hiding behind a smile.
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