First Amendment

We've all had discussions with people who, when their assertions are proven wrong, claim "Well, I have a right to my opinions," or (more often) "I have a right to free speech and I can say whatever I want!" Indeed, when I found a simple $3 error in my girlfriend's checkbook, she claimed that " .... there are other universes in this eternal cosmos, and in some of them 2 plus 2 really is 7, .... so it's not a mistake .... we're just in the wrong universe." When I said "That's absurd," she countered "Well, I have a right to express my beliefs, and that's what I believe. You can't shut me up!"

Certainly, we're all familiar with the entertainment industry's claim that the First Amendment protects them as they pollute our society with guns, sex, horrific violence, and death. "Artistic Freedom!" and "Freedom of Speech!" they cry.

Over and over, people claim First Amendment protection without knowing exactly what the First Amendment genuinely permits, safeguards, prohibits, and forbids.

In fact, the First Amendment is much weaker than they actually think, and it allows for a good deal more of what they believe it outlaws.

When a well-known radical feminist lesbian moved into my neighborhood, I told my neighbors about her views. I even quoted her publicly voiced anti-hetero death fantasies to them.

But ..... despite her monstrous notions about "jailing non homosexuals for intolerant speech and attitudes in their own homes" and "inviting the world's gays to come live in America," my neighbors immediately decided that I was the villain, and my objections were construed as an attack on her civil rights, particularly those of free speech and political expression, then later her "right" to have sex with whomever she pleased.

As usual, when confronted with deep and strongly held absurdities, I was flabbergasted: Fully adult people with such a naive and faulty vision of the First Amendment that they perceived my remarks not as legitimate criticism, not as a legitimate (though opposing) point of view, not as a legitimate warning that their new neighbor indeed hated them and deliberately feigned local sociability in pursuit of a broader hostile political agenda, but instead my comments were construed as an evil assault on her essential right of Free Speech, viewed as an attempt to deprive her of some core American Freedom. What an evil prick I was.

And so it is throughout society. All too often, people say and do (and 'saying' is 'doing') the most horrible and horrific things in the name of art, politics, social justice, peace riots, etc., then hide behind what they believe is the First Amendment to insist that they have the right to act however they like, while their critics do not have the right to object or to punish them. It seems like the Leftists believe that anger-filled free speech is their own little entitled province, as if dissent and valid criticism come only from the Left. Therefore, when it comes from the Right it's evil.

Their underlying notion is: Free Speech equals Consequence-free speech. Like a political Diplomatic Immunity, Free Speech is a shield from behind which any destructive loudmouth can use his anger as a weapon against good Americans with absolutely no fear of reprisals.

In the mind of the Liberal, Rap music that pollutes our children, students stealing and burning dissident opposing political ideas, phony ministers preaching politics from Liberal pulpits, anti-corporate anarchists rioting and looting and running wild in the streets, penises hanging on a clothesline in a library, religious icons spattered with feces, homosexuals stealing Christian Communion wafers then urinating on them and grinding them into the wet, stained sidewalk, Blacks and Feminists and Liberal news pundits openly lying on radio and television news-opinion shows, the ugly "America hating sedition" from the likes of Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Al Franken, and a thousand other traitorous teachers (from pre-school to grad-school) ..... are all "protected speech," while any Right Wing analogs are "Hate Speech," and thereby ..... crimes. Any objection is an attack on the basic human right of Free Speech, an assault which, in return, has to be viciously attacked and destroyed. Conservative Christian churches have to be deprived of their tax-exempt status. Pro-Business and ROTC groups have to be driven off campus. Traditional American Values have to be mocked and deconstructed into hate crimes against women and minorities.

So, what's going on here? Are the Leftists correct? Does the Constitution protect them alone, and not their critics? Is Democratic speech legal and Republican speech illegal?

In fact, there is a huge distinction to be made between the speaking of words, and the content or intent of those words. We each certainly have the right to freely speak words (unless of course a judge tells us to keep quiet or be charged with "contempt of court"), but we have no implicit immunity from the legal consequences that arise from the content of those words.

For example, it's a crime for us to exhort others to commit crimes. Maxine Waters has every right to speak (or scream) the words, "No Justice, No Peace!!," but when she stands on the L.A. Courthouse steps and uses those very words to exhort Black Americans to riot, it's a crime. The KKK has every right to speak the words, "Kill blacks!!," but when they actually tell their members to go out and murder blacks, that's a crime. Our right to free speech applies only to the act of speaking words, not the content of those words. The government doesn't bust us for merely "speaking the words," it busts us for a combination of the intent and consequences of those words. We have every right to yell "FIRE!!" in a crowded theater, but if we know there's no fire and if someone gets hurt in the resulting panic, we're in big trouble. We don't get arrested for speaking the words, we get busted for the intent to cause a panic. If there was an actual fire, and people were saved, we'd be a hero.

Another similar principle applies to Art. We're all familiar with the corner drugstore candy racks where children, on their way to (or from) school, buy cleverly packaged sugar, to which they are more or less happily addicted. They're offered bubble gum that looks like slices of baloney in an Oscar Mayer package, candy that looks like a gaggle of worms, sugar pellets in a miniature video game, or sour cherry balls in a box with a Chinese font labeled "Cherry Chan." It's an endless flow of creative marketing, and naturally, all the kids love it, and they buy it every day.

Well, here in my local community, down in the ghetto (a society of like-minded victimologists determined to live in wretchedness until "Whitey makes it right") they tried to sell little, clear plastic Crack Pipes (!!) with which the kids could suck tiny sugar balls into their mouths! Needless to say, the community went absolutely nuts, and demanded a ban on the offending product.

The candy distribution company asserted that the pipes were no less than the "art" of advertising, for which they claimed First Amendment protection against "Censorship." However, the local authorities decided that there was a major distinction between art and commerce, and that the city government was not stopping any creative processes, no one was preventing the ad artists from doing whatever they pleased, but that when artwork is mass produced and offered for sale, the content was a product subject to the laws of commerce, which is regulated everywhere, every day.

And so, banning Rap music from our community's children is not censorship. No one is preventing the "artists" from writing or performing the music. The prohibition is just like banning tainted meat from our grocery shelves; it's the commercialized marketing of unhealthy content that's the problem, not the guaranteed right to "speak the words." Free Speech does not guarantee a commercial marketplace. For this reason, we can fire the librarian who hangs penises on a string in the Library instead of flying the American flag. The Library is a public marketplace of ideas, and it's subject to local regulations governing public consumption, not some nebulous federal right of "intellectual diversity in place of patriotism." And most dramatically, you can't pour paint down a well as a work of art or as an artistic statement. The right of the public to a healthy, uncontaminated environment trumps the so-called "right of free expression."

So it should be with political Spin Doctors. If they lie, or if they spread the lies of their boss, they should be busted for intentionally polluting our common information pool.

Most interesting in this discussion is the remarkably unusual concept of "Fighting Words."

Created in the 1980's by a Liberal Supreme Court to give black Americans the 'right' to assault white Americans over matters of ethnic slurs, the idea is this: Certain words are, in and of themselves, so provocative that violence is the only response that a reasonable person can have to them. Like a "temporary insanity" defense, the victim of fighting words is entitled to go berserk and attack the person who spoke those offensive fighting words.

This notion of 'fighting words' creates a legal scenario wherein the actual speaking of words can safely elicit a retaliatory physical, punitive response, if not from the government. The result is, if you call a black person a "coon," they can legally beat the crap out of you, and you can go to jail for "hate speech" intended to harm an entire race of people. Inevitably, it's from this notion of "Fighting Words" that Liberals attack every opposing person or idea as a criminal.

There's no way that more than 40 years of Liberal anti American traitorspeak can be construed as anything but "fighting words." They heap their hateful invectives on a nation, and individuals in that nation, as if it's illegal for that nation or those people to beat the crap out of them. Their words are an attack, a battle, a fight, and are therefore fighting words. In fact, they call their agenda "the Struggle, the Battle, the Good Fight," and so by their own admission, their words are "fighting words." And yet they feel protected by the First Amendment, literally invulnerable in their ubiquitous hate mongering.

Well, they're wrong. And by that virtue, they sacrifice any physical immunity to the reaction of a society they hope to destroy. They're subject to the same intellectual and physical violence as they heap on others because their own promiscuous cries of "Racism!" and "Sexism!" actually constitute racism and sexism. Similarly, their cries of "Mean Spiritedness!" and "Hate Speech!" are, in and of themselves, mean-spirited hate speech. Radical Leftist mob actions are just as evil as they claim Conservative protests are evil.

In fact, it's only because Conservatives are decent, good natured people that they haven't utterly destroyed the Liberals by now. If, under the auspices of the First Amendment equally applied to Liberals and Conservatives alike, the Conservatives burnt Liberal books, occupied and vandalized the offices of Liberal collegiate groups, hounded and intimidated Liberal leftover hippie professors, purged our libraries of Leftist and homosexual ideologies, or roamed up and down the streets harassing and vandalizing Democratic party workers and headquarters, then the First Amendment would still be intact, insofar as the loudmouthed Liberals see it.

But in the end, Free Speech is not Consequence-free Speech at all. Only the right to "speak the words" is protected, not the content or intent of those very same words. The content of Free Speech can be regulated in any number of ways to protect our children and keep our commonly, communally consumed resources (food, health, safety, information, environment, marketplaces, schools ..... ) free of contaminants, deceptions, pollution, and crime.

For individuals, a whole spectrum of retaliatory speech and action is legal, that is to say: not illegal. Shunning, shame mongering, condemnation, disapproval, persistent antagonism, physical occupation of college buildings, theatric protest rallies ..... it's all just as legal for both sides of any dispute, not only for the Leftists as they so often claim. (They're even just as subject to beatings when they spew their traitorous, Anti-American hate speech as are the very people they insist deserve a beating for speaking all the other odious, hateful, fighting words.)

Conservatives, steeped in the arts of Respect and Manners, don't like loud, angry discourse, and thus they have no real, effective response to the constant, 40 year long verbal assault on them from the Democrats. They roll over and take it instead of fighting back. The Liberals are waging a war of "Rights," and the Conservatives are losing that conflict because the Left constantly ill-defines those "Rights" to their own benefit.

But, in truth, the Liberals have far fewer protections than they imagine, and the Conservatives have far more powers than they've been told all these years.

Until and unless Conservatives get as tough with America's enemies as those enemies are tough with them, the enemies will always win, just like they always have. There's no more time left, no more excuses left to be politely sandbagged by the indecent, insulting, and incendiary ferocity of the Democrats.

C'mon Conservatives, get mad! Use your First Amendment rights to GET LOUD! Fight Back!

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