Posted on 06/22/2015 5:33:28 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Say this for the guy: It takes some Jedi-level trolling to make yourself part of another country’s national debate about racism after a mass murder when you don’t even count as a celebrity there anymore.
I like that he calls for actual jail time, not a fine or parole or some other more ceremonial penalty. If we’re going to carve out First Amendment exceptions for thoughtcrimes, might as well be bold about it.
What would I do with white people who use the N-word? Jail them.
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) June 22, 2015
Not to play a fool’s game here, but why limit punishment to white offenders? Believe it or not, that’s probably the biggest constitutional problem with his idea. The First Amendment is an obstacle too — a law that purported to criminalize the use of the N-bomb would probably be unconstitutional in any federal court in the country at the moment — but that obstacle might be cleared in due time. Remember Chris Cuomo mumbling about the “fighting words” exception to free speech? The “fighting words” doctrine says that the state can ban words which are so inflammatory that their mere utterance is apt to incite a breach of the peace. If there’s any word in American life that a majority of the public might agree rises to that level of inflammation, it’s the word “nigger.” In fact, Cuomo explicitly analogized between that word and drawings of Mohammed to try to capture how insulting Pam Geller had been to Muslims. If the left ever fully commits to trying to ban “hate speech,” Morgan’s idea is their strongest play, a potential foot in the door of First Amendment jurisprudence. Get one word banned successfully and then everything afterward is a simple matter of analogy. If people deserve jail time for the N-word, why doesn’t a cartoonist deserve it for a Mohammed drawing? Hate is hate, right?
How would you write that law to maximize its chances of passing Fourteenth Amendment scrutiny? Any thoughts, legal eagles? Treating a certain kind of behavior as a crime only when someone of a particular race engages in it seems … not so progressive, a prime facie violation of equal protection. I guess there are ways you could torture the jurisprudence to find that it’s copacetic — if protecting minorities (“suspect classes”) is the chief concern of equal protection, a law that focused on wrongdoing committed exclusively by the majority would be kinda sorta okay-ish if you squint real hard, I guess? I dunno. Presumably you write the law neutrally, making racist intent an element of the crime, and trust that prosecutors will understand that one black person calling another “nigga” playfully doesn’t meet the definition. But let’s not overthink this. Morgan’s not making a legal argument (the niceties of Second Amendment jurisprudence have never slowed him down from backing gun-grabbing), he’s making a moral argument to show his Twitter followers how enlightened he is. How enlightened is he? So enlightened that he’d eagerly embrace a precedent in which the state can imprison people for their opinions, obnoxious though they may be. Which is darned enlightened.
Piers Morgan is a perfect example.
Howza ‘bout a racist word like ‘cracker’..?
we can toss the white half of Obama in jail right now..
Come and arrest me, limey poofter.
Freedom of speech? - Use the N-Word and you can go to jail. What a slippery slope he is proposing. Such a short sighted person he is.
Is it ok if they identify as black? Can they say the N word then?
Hey Piers we hear it from every “N” word rapper on social media. That’s how we know its cool to say “N”. :-)
Piers needs to take the Blue Bus #7 here in LA, the Pico Blvd bus, he will hear the N-Word non stop, but not by whites, by Blacks, enough to make a rapper blush
Piers, go home. You know, the place where they don’t have a First Amendment.
Sort of like you Piers who escaped prosecution in the UK for your nefarious deeds.
Obama is white...
just saying...
Liberals loose all logic and common sense when it comes to race. This moron thinks we should have laws for white people that is different for black people. Making decisions based on race, in other words racial discrimination. This is supposed to help?
Nothing like taking the blindfold off of lady justice and start having different laws for different races. Liberals always seek to divide people into classes. Content of character does not matter to them, color of skin does.
He’s being niggardly.
Come and get me, Thought Cop.
I thought this Limey c**ksucker went back across the pond.
Piers who?
Isn’t he the one who got deported because he couldn’t get anybody to sponsor his H1B visa after CNN canned him?
Did’nt MSNBC get rid of this guy? If so, he can’t get much lower.
Leftist insanity grows in America as Americans diminish and trash the meaning of free speech, the most important of our freedoms.
BILLS_OF_ATTAINDER_ARE_COOL_PING! /s
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