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To: Strategery
The Constitution should be open to new, more progressive interpretations, rather than sticking with one neanderthal view, IMHO.

Dunno quite why you're getting so much guff for making this point, other than maybe because it is perceived as spitting on an icon around here. Nevertheless, you are quite correct.

Want a literal, strictly constructionist interpretation of the First Amendment? You have no free speech rights on the internet. Period. It's not literal "speech" (the act of verbal communication), nor is it a literal "press", so obviously the plain language of the First Amendment does not apply to the internet. There's your strictly literal interpretation - hope you like it.

But we don't do that, of course - we reason analogously that the internet is like a printing press, and should be treated as a printing press under the First Amendment. But the minute you do that, you've wandered away from the plain language of the Constitution in order to bring your own interpretation to it and apply what you think the principle underlying the actual language is. And we do that all the time - it's absolutely unavoidable, in fact. So then the question becomes not one of what the actual plain language means or allows, but how the principle underneath it applies to some new situation - and like it or not, that's an interpretive exercise.

84 posted on 04/12/2003 11:00:41 AM PDT by general_re (You're just jealous because the voices are talking to me....)
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To: general_re
Of course interpretation is unavoidable, but do you interpret according to what is the most likely meaning intended by the words, or do you interpret according to a political agenda? Those are two very different things.
85 posted on 04/12/2003 11:07:39 AM PDT by inquest
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