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July 31, 2010 12:37 AM UTC
9 Comments
to keep him from getting his ass kicked, from the looks of the video.
But please, by all means, exercise your constitutional rights and wear that jersey. In fact, I strongly encourage you.
By constitutional mandate, the cops are employed to protect the constitution, not to protect those who would violate it. The First Amendment is very explicit about this – in particular, about the use of government power. The idea that the cops intervened to prevent the speech, rather than protect it and prevent violence against it, is gross.
That you think otherwise – that you think state power should be used to crush speech and defend those who threaten violence against the lawful (if detestable) exercise of Constitutional rights – well, it says a lot about either your ignorance or your un-American authoritarianism.
Very well said
David’s point is entirely in keeping with the philosophical defense of free speech. If you’ve read Mill’s On Liberty (which was written in 1859, so well after 1st amendment — but it’s the classic defense), he spends a ton of time on social pressures on free speech, and how important it is for the government to preserve free speech unless it’s causing harm to others. His example of speech that causes harm demonstrates the opposite of your point — he says if someone’s leading a mob in front of a merchant’s house and chanting that the merchant starves the poor etc., that the mob leaders can have their speech curtailed (because they’re about to be responsible for harm).
In other words, the cops should have focused on breaking up the mob to keep the peace.
If the cops hadn’t removed him, he likely would have been torn life from limb.
You’re always free to say what you want to say. You’re also free to accept the consequences.
Free Speech only applies to prior restraint, not to accepting the consequences of your actions.
God gave you a mouth and a brain. Use the brain first.
So I guess that means you’re defending the free speech rights of the zealots who assassinate abortion providers, or assaulted Freedom Marchers, or, or, or. After all, they should just “accept the consequences” of their free speech.
They should go to jail for the rest of their lives.
You have a problem with that? I don’t.
But the question here is what the POLICE should have done in this situation. I wrote my previous response too quickly — my “they” in the second sentence was the Freedom Marchers/abortion providers, not the shooters/violent bigots (in other words, should they just accept violence as an inevitable consequence of them daring to speak against the crowd).
Sirota’s point is that the police acted to limit free speech as opposed to protecting it. Had they calmed or dispersed the crowd, people would have still been free to scream as many dumbass drunken insults, individually, as they wanted, but nobody would have been attacked. And the fan could still have worn his freakin’ shirt.
So again, do you think that the responsible police action in Birmingham in 1963 would have been to break up the freedom marches and send them back up north (eject them from the south, so to speak), or to stand idly by as they were assaulted? Because it sounds to me like that’s exactly what you’re defending. But hey, they’d get jail time after. Oh wait, it’s pre-Civil Rights Act. They wouldn’t even get that.