Empowering people who start fires to define freedom of speech is how freedom of speech dies
The inability to distinguish between those who set fires and those who criticize those who set fires
An Op-Ed by Sarah Chayes in The Los Angeles Times, ‘Innocence of Muslims’ doesn’t meet free-speech test sets forth the standard by which freedom of speech dies in this country:
In one of the most famous 1st Amendment cases in U.S. history, Schenck vs. United States, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. established that the right to free speech in the United States is not unlimited. “The most stringent protection,” he wrote on behalf of a unanimous court, “would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.” …
In Afghanistan, and in all of the Arab nations in transition, an extremist fringe is brawling for power with a more pluralistic majority. Radicals pounce on any pretext to play on religious feeling…. By providing extremists in Libya and elsewhere such an opportunity, the makers of “Innocence of Muslims” were playing into their hands.
As for imminence, the timeline of similar events after recent burnings of religious materials indicates that reactions typically come within two weeks. Nakoula’s video was deliberately publicized just before the sensitive date of Sept. 11, and could be expected to spark violence on that anniversary.
While many 1st Amendment scholars defend the right of the filmmakers to produce this film, arguing that the ensuing violence was not sufficiently imminent, I spoke to several experts who said the trailer may well fall outside constitutional guarantees of free speech. “Based on my understanding of the events,” 1st Amendment authority Anthony Lewis said in an interview Thursday, “I think this meets the imminence standard.”
Finally, much 1st Amendment jurisprudence concerns speech explicitly advocating violence, such as calls to resist arrest, or videos explaining bomb-making techniques. But words don’t have to urge people to commit violence in order to be subject to limits, says Lewis. “If the result is violence, and that violence was intended, then it meets the standard.”
Empowering the people who start fires to determine what we can and cannot say is how freedom of speech dies in this country.
We already are pretty far down that path.
Update: Sarah Chayes, author of the piece in question, emails:
Dear Prof. Jacobson:
Just for the sake of precision, could you put the accurate headline for my LA Times piece on your blog? I never said “Innocence of Muslims” doesn’t meet First Amendment standards, I said it may not. As you doubtless know, authors don’t get to write their own headlines, and the LA Times has corrected it, so it now reads as a question. In the print version it was “free speech or incitement?”
For the record,the headline the LA Times now has on it’s website is NOT the original headline. I accurately quoted what originally was on the LA Times website.
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The death of our first and second amendments is being hastened by having an anti-American president who sees them as impediments to his destruction of our country.
First they came for the rich,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t rich.
Then they came for the racists,
and I didn’t speak out because I didn’t think I was a racist.
Then they came for the 1st Amemdment,
and I didn’t speak out because I didn’t need 1st Amemdment that day.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left who could speak for me.
This guy picked the wrong pseudonym, it should have been Winston Smith.
Egypt just issued arrest warrants for Terry Jones and other Americans connected to anti Islam video. Isn’t it time we tell them to pound sand over the Blind Sheikh and also tell them to forget about any more foreign aid.
1. Probably the Obama administration will not try to enforce the warrants on behalf of Egypt, but I’m sure they’d like to. Other supposedly civilized countries might. Jones et al should be careful where they travel.
(Unfortunately, there is precedent: on behalf of its Hollywood cronies, the administration browbeats other countries into enforcing American copyrights. Afaic Obama opposed SOPA the way he “opposed” gay marriage.)
2. The Chayes column is one of the vilest of the vile trial balloons the administration has floated.
shouting fire in theater causes people to be in fear for their lives right there.
making a movie does not.
One other important thing. I think the original quote said “FALSLY shouting fire in a crowded theatre”. If there is a real fire, it is not wrong.
But the easiest way to shoot down arguments like this is would the same standard apply if a similar insulting or blasphemous thing was made about christians or other religions. If you prohbit insults against muslims, that you would never prohibit against other religions, the double standard is clear, and it also becomes clear that you are rewarding violence, and not protecting religion or promoting tolerance.
“But words don’t have to urge people to commit violence in order to be subject to limits, says Lewis. “If the result is violence, and that violence was intended, then it meets the standard.”
So, in other words, a stupid movie that makes Life of Brian look like Lawrence of Arabia is reason enough for the First Amendment to be cancelled in America, so as not to “offend Muslims”.
What next? A “Fairness Doctrine” for films, just like the one that kept people like Rush Limbaugh out of the airwaves until 1988?
Methinks those people are surrendering our sacrosanct Bill of Rights… to fear of the sword, no less. Our Founding Fathers pledged their “lives, fortunes and Sacred Honor” so we didn’t have to do such a thing!
While surfing some Arab websites, I came across one that had an article of note concerning the movie. It related how some “experts” stated that according to certain sections of U.N. agreements the movie would be considered to be in transgression of them. (I’m a bit fuzzy about this. I tried to locate the article, but after reviewing nine news sites of eight Arab countries I couldn’t locate the one).
Two points: 1) The discussion lacked any discussion of U.S. law, but was rather about U.N. regulations (treaty agreement?), and (2) how this sounded much like the current discussion regarding a small arms treaty. Our Constitution with Federal, States, and local laws, adding International law to the mix – what’s a person to do?
I don’t have the details to mind myself, but the Obama administration did sign a UN treaty which -among other things- prohibits deliberate disrespect of religions, or some such.
This makes it theoretically possible for a foreign national to sue the producer in a US court.
I read on a leftie blog how the “movie caused the deaths of the ambassador and three Americans.” A movie, really? As I noted there, a movie can hardly rape and drag through the streets a human being.
Lefties do actually know this, but as usual, they are not letting a crisis go to waste. If they can establish anti-blasphemy (per Sharia) laws, they can then extend those to all sorts of speech (“seditious” speech that dissents, for instance, will be high on the list), and will. This must be stopped. Now. Before it’s too late.
These uprisings should reinforce our need for free speech, not undermine it.
Sticks and stones (and RPGs and mortars) can break your bones, but youtube clips are for the most part harmless.
Strange. In the LAT, standing in a crowded theater and saying “Mohammad sucked eggs” is tantamount to yelling “fire”.
I think that tells us a lot about the Times, both of them. And it ain’t pretty.
It is also hyper-creepy (a technical term) that you can’t get a straight answer out of a DOJ “civil rights” moke about protecting the FIRST flucking AMENDMENT.
That exchange-which occurred in July, I believe-was unbelievable. It was like watching a Congressional sub-committee interview a Soviet “lawyer” (I would have said Nazi, but Godwin’s Rule, you know).
It made me want to stroll up to that insufferable idiot and shove a dirty sock in his mouth to see if he liked being censored.
Yes, and even worse I suspect they would say that yelling “Christianity Sucks”, would be just fine. Christians are bombarded with these sort of insulting videos constantly, many times it is even funded as art, but you dont see Christian mobs rioting and murdering all of the time over this stuff. The wrong party here are the barbarians doing the rioting and murdering, not whatever spark might have set them off.
If the Times was firebombed, I wonder if the irony would strike them.
I’m no lawyer, but I cannot understand how someone who yells “fire” in an American theater should be held responsible for fires somewhere else in the world. So why should this Supreme Court ruling even apply in this situation?
Philosophical question: If someone insults Mohammed somewhere in the world, does a Muslim hear it? Whether a Muslim hears it or not, I’m sure that at any given moment, someone somewhere is insulting Mohammed and therefore that justifies perpetual killing, fires, and riots. (Sarcasm)
You have just isolated the logic flaw: The fire in a theater example misused. To advance her case she cites something we take as fact to get ther reader to fall for her illogic. I believe its called “refer to authority”.
She attempts to make the video and yelling fire falsely in a theater “the same”.
They are not.
Yelling fire falsely cannot have any redeeming quality. Its not about opinion or artistic expression and not subject to interpretation.
Again, if she is looking for a more fitting metaphor to illustrate what has happened in the Muslim countries she might think of guns. By themselves they are injurious to noone. Only when they are misused do they become harmful.
Or use matches/lighters if we are uncomfortable with guns as an example. Do we question BIC lighters when we consider an arsonists work?
Of course not. The sole responsibility/guilt is with the arsonist.
But who knows. Maybe she agrees with our new Egyptian friends that demand arrests.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19640175
I think the logical fallacy you refer to is called “false equivalence”– wherein someone attempts to negate a point (the movie) by drawing a parallel to a completely unrelated point (yelling fire).
And your point about blaming arson on Bic lighters is an excellent metaphor.
Yes. The only legal analogy that even remotely fits would be incitement to riot. But that doctrine only applies if the inciter supports the rioters, is inciting against somebody else, and is in close proximity with them. When one person says something, and other people who disagree burn down his place in a riot, you dont get him for incitement to riot, you get the rioters for rioting.
So she found one “expert” willing to go on record as being an idiot. Bravo? Meanwhile actual Free Speech experts (like Eugene Volokh) are saying this doesn’t meat any criteria that would render it illegal (excluding of course any possible parole violations for accessing computers.)
IANAL, but I’m fairly certain Brandenburg was more narrowly crafted than the so called “expert” would thinks.
Anthony freaking Lewis…a “1st amendment authority????” Gimme a break. Lewis is a retired far-left op-ed scribbler from the NYT and about as much an “authority” as your uncle Harvey. He makes the freaking Gang of Four look like the steering committee of the RNC.
Eff you, Chayes, and Lewis and everyone who looks or thinks like you do. Fascist creeps.
A leftist view of free speech rights: I’m 100 percent in favor of strict limits to free speech.
As long as only my standards are used to define what is acceptable.
I once heard Charles Krauthammer say (claiming someone unknown came up with it) that liberals don’t care what you do as long as it’s mandatory.
Apply that to free speech and this whole debate becomes completely clear. They believe completely in free speech as long as it’s approved first.
So in the leftist view, the ACLU should defend the free speech of Nazis marching through Skokie and carrying signs of offensive antisemitism, because Jews are known to behave civilly.
Conversely, one may not insult Islam, because Muslims are presumed to be irrational violent assholes who will riot and commit murder around the world if provoked.
WHO here is denigrating Muslims?
Yes. Or as I word it, leftists always support free speech, for other leftists, for anybody else not so much.
” The most stringent protection … would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.” …
You’re sitting in a crowded theater. Which of the following loud yells might make you panic?
1. “Fire!!!”
2. “Youtube Video!!!”
How about not falsely shouting “Fire”? How about setting real fires and killing people using pretexts for your evil free will?
If you give a sheep or me a reason to believe there is a fire, beyond our volition, we’ll run.
If you give a sheep or me a reason to believe there is a 14-minute video which insults our beliefs hidden among trillions of innocuous videos on the internet … well, sticks and stones and words and all … we’ll both just keep on grazing.
Our son loves to go to some site on the internet which enables him to make his own irreverent cartoons.
When, inevitably, a few 15-year-old high school freshmen in a cheeky mood upload their Mohammed video to youtube, will they be brought in for questioning by the autorities before they have to go into hiding?
This is just madness.
So very true! It would almost be appropriate that free speech will die because of a lie, that the “Innocence …” video caused these deaths. Yet, does that also mean that Bill Maher’s video, containing his 20-minutes of anti-Islamic stuff, gets a pass and that perhaps he gets to keep his freedom? If so, why?
Professor, good on you for this posting as it does very well, and nicely too, some of the arguments for our First Amendment. Plus it lays the foundation for keeping our Second Amendment intact and ready for use!
I just became a willing Romney voter though I still have issues with him. The only person who would talk like this would be Palin.
http://www.jpost.com/USPresidentialrace/Article.aspx?id=285410
“By providing extremists in Libya and elsewhere such an opportunity, the makers of “Innocence of Muslims” were playing into their hands.”
Cowardice or ignorance? It’s one or the other. Or maybe both? As cowards, this is simply how they’ve internalized journalist Daniel Pearl’s decapitation and bomb threats at Comedy Central, or it’s the self-loathing fruits of their Progressive, multi-cultural and anti-Enlightenment education in which all cultures are equally precious and worthy of respect outside of their own despised Judeo-Christian culture, the only one which provides the educational and liberal fundaments that invests the term “respect” with actual meaning.
It’s like the moral and intellectual decay of the West, which we’ve all been noticing over the years, just hit some sort of turbo acceleration, and we stand now among a newly-revealed tribe of sophisticate-savages lording over our culture. But they’ve been there all along, in our midst, and the day and hour of our fall has cast a light on them, or allowed them to emerge into the light. Now the war is in the open. Will our leaders recognize the enemy?
Ace of Spades, in his devastating twitter take down of William Saletan, in-house leftist intellectual at Slate, pointed to this collapse of liberalism in one generation. To paraphrase him, “You people used to quite Brandeis and Oliver Wendall Holmes on the ultimate importance of defending speech you didn’t like or agree with. Now you’re the first to call for its censorship.”
I personally recall a Hungarian refugee from Communism I knew quoting socialist Rosa Luxemburg’s injunction: “free spech means nothing if not the freedom of speech you don’t like.”
I’ve never missed Christopher Hitchens more. This would have been his moment. Breitbart, too, on another front. What’s going on right now is really incredible and horrific.
Excellent points, raven.
Here’s a brand-new quote from the comments at HotAir to add to your collection:
“What’s the purpose of free speech if it isn’t used against a barbaric religion?”
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/09/17/salman-rushdie-actually-no-i-dont-sympathize-with-the-mohammed-filmmaker-whos-now-being-threatened/comment-page-1/#comment-6269783
from the comments:
It is neither cowardice nor ignorance.
It is an active attempt at misdirection in order to drive a narrative where President Obama and Hillary Clinton are not completely incompetent and inept at foreign policy.
The Liberal Press and Main Stream Morons play the “it’s not free speech” card in order to try to excuse President Obama giving a pass to the barbaric behavior of a group of illiterates who are told by their cleric “if you kill the infidels, Allah will forgive you.”
Does Sarah not understand that the way Western women behave and dress is also an insult to Mohammad?
Suppression of speech is only a first step. Once you start to reward bad behavior, don’t be surprised if you get more bad behavior. Any Kindergarten teacher could tell you that.
“While many 1st Amendment scholars defend the right of the filmmakers to produce this film, arguing that the ensuing violence was not sufficiently imminent …”
This is the piece of misdirection that shows this argument for the complete lie it is.
The movie was irrelevant to the ensuing violence. It was a pretext, an excuse, not a direct cause. The first amendment is not implicated in this case at all, and arguing over it is, at best, pointless. At worst, it is an invitation to tyranny and nothing less.
Hopefully Sarah Chayes makes no claims at being a scholar nor an analytical thinker. Or, perhaps she is actually on board with giving any group prone to violence more ‘rights’ (to use the abused progressive term) in their reaction to offense. Somewhere I thought legal standards were set based on the ‘average person’, or ‘rational man’, or some such language. If every other religion would NOT act violently, wouldn’t Chayes’ opinion fail the test?
I had no idea who Sarah Chayes was so I looked her up. It was everything I imagined: Phillips Academy, Harvard, Peace Corps, NPR.
Case study in the Progressive educational system’s moral failure to teach critical thinking and to reaffirm and pass on our classic liberal traditions.
Not to mention that Daddy was a professor at Harvard Law – it must have been soooo difficult for her to get into Harvard undergrad with family like that…really, life has just been full of challenges. This background explains a lot – people like this write truly never leave ‘the bubble’, as I’ve come to call it. They never leave it, and they are unable to communicate with people who have. All they can do is talk to each other.
I don’t wanna figuratively yell “Fire!” but I do think there should be some limits to free speech.
Spousal nagging, for example.
Conditionally agree!
An exemption is always allowed for a husband nagging a miscreant wife! 😉
How about a list of offensive anti-religious speech that should immediately be curtailed under the new rules?
* Any and all speech or actions in favor of same sex marriage since this an affront to muslims and other religious persons.
* Immediate arrest and imprisonment of any persons who create, display, promote, or cause to be promoted or displayed, symbols of religion dipped in or covered by urine.
* Immediate arrest and imprisonment of any persons who create, display, promote, or cause to be promoted or displayed, symbols of religion made of dung or equivalent materials.
* Movies made by one Bill Maher and others intended to denigrate religion.
…
[…] William Jacobson: Empowering people who start fires to define freedom of speech is how freedom of speech dies. […]
Andrew Klaven of PJMedia (http://pjmedia.com/andrewklavan/2012/09/17/shame/) also puts it quite well:
“When I see, in the United States of America, a man rousted from his home at midnight and dragged to a police station over a YouTube video, when I see brutal, primitive, violent Islamism on the march and the values of free men and women in retreat, when I see so-called journalists doing everything they can to suppress, deny, and explain away rather than spread the news, my first reaction isn’t outrage at our foolish failure of a president, nor is it hatred for the cancerous religion currently doing murder to people of every competing belief system everywhere around the world. My first reaction is genuine sadness over the many, many Democrats of good will who are going to betray every value they profess to hold dear and double down on their error this election day because they simply can’t bear to acknowledge the fact that they were wrong.”
The so-called “good will” of Democrats turns to death or demise for innocent others while they fry the film maker.
Nakoula’s video was deliberately publicized just before the sensitive date of Sept. 11, and could be expected to spark violence on that anniversary.
Guess what, LA Times? That deliberate publication was performed by State-run media in the Arab countries. THOSE media, and their owners, are to blame for shouting ‘fire’ by running Nakoula’s film – which would have had no effect without their selection and repeated broadcast of the film. So if the Times has a beef with incitement, go after those media.
But the Times’s beef seems to be free speech in America. Don’t abuse the deliberate act of Arab media as an entering wedge to roll back OUR First Amendment.
Yes, that was a curiously passive phrasing. Also, without mentioning who publicized it, Chayes seems to implying that the film maker was responsible.
Madcon, imagine living in an islamic hellhole. People there know their lives suck and every once in awhile the politicians there let the populace release some steam and express their rage and then everything goes back to usual and by that time they satisfy themselves with the usual crappy situation because that is better than violence and fires. All the population needs is a target that isn’t the current ruling government so attacking an embassy and foreigners and infidels (icing on the cake) works for the ruling class of the muslim country.
To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.
Voltaire
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/v/voltaire_7.html#3V76q7mvf2WQQbDi.99
It’s impossible to get around the fact that, as Orwell noted, pacifism is objectively pro fascist. That’s why bin Laden was big on the whole strong horse-weak horse thing. At this point, the west isn’t even mounted.
“At this point, the west isn’t even mounted.”
We’re too busy self-gelding.
I don’t mean circumcising. Don’t want Europeans at my throat.
Blasphemy has been committed, alright, but not by the make of the film.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
which contains, among other horrible things, an agreement to engage in an advertising campaign to convince Muslims that they have a personal, religious duty to kill every Jew on the face of the earth and re-conquer every square inch of land ever held by a “Muslim” regime.
The Avalon version is expurgated. The unexpurgated version is even more hair-raising.
http://middleeast.about.com/od/palestinepalestinians/a/me080106b.htm
This is the version that starts with an introduction that claims that the terrorists are willing to sacrifice their own SOULS “in the path of Allah” ! One has to wonder how a person’s destruction of his own soul could be viewed an anything like a legitimate service to Allah. It’s a much longer version than the Avalon translation, with much more nakedly murderous intent.
Islamists are blasphemers. It is not blasphemy to take them at their word.
Let’s see now…things that insult radical Muslims and incite them to out-of-control, violent killing rampages:
1. You have a pulse
2. You are not one of them
I think that about sums it up.
Those of us for whom the above applies are guilty, guilty, guilty!!!!!
It’s when idiots like this put pen to paper (or, more likely, fingers to keyboard) that the Liberals show they are entirely intellectually bereft.
They can quote Holmes (jr.) Schenck vs. United States, but they ALWAYS ignore the Brandenburg v Ohio and Hess v. Indiana.
Imminence, while undefined, is maybe 10 MINUTES. It is thought to be a period before the listener could cool down and think better of the action. If they want to try to extend imminence to a TWO WEEK period, then I want to see the press call for the arrest of ALL of the Occu-Idiots for their “illegal” rhetoric which then caused their adherents to commit crimes.
Lets hear the Liberal morons start screaming about the suppression of free speech then and laugh at their hypocrisy.
[…] Sharia Law On America By Indirection Posted on September 18, 2012 3:30 pm by Bill Quick » Empowering people who start fires to define freedom of speech is how freedom of speech dies ̵… Empowering the people who start fires to determine what we can and cannot say is how freedom of […]
Sarah Chayes (ewk the pic ! ) is a latter day Stanley Ann Dunham.
Soap & body oils little cutsie cottage industries turning Afghans away from $ billion poppy production . FGS .
Carnegie endowed 50 year old eternal adolescent roaming around looking for a cause.
[…] William Jacobson: Empowering the people who start fires to determine what we can and cannot say is how freedom of […]
Holmes got it wrong (not unusual). The problem with shouting fire in a theater is the violation of property rights, not the violation of freedom of speech. In a theater, you can be asked to leave if you converse, text, talk on your cell phone, put your feet up on the seats… property rights. Go into a true public forum, get up on your soapbox, and you can talk about fire, Mohammed or any damn thing else you please.
The video is just the tip of the iceberg of Sharia violations. Consider that, before Sept. 11:
Victoria Secret *deliberately publicized* pictures of scantily-clad women and used the internet to make these pictures freely available to Muslims all over the world.
GM “deliberately publicized” images of women DRIVING… and without male escort!
McDonalds “deliberately publicized” the eating of non-hahal hamburgers, and Budweiser “deliberately publicized” the consumption of alcoholic beverages.
Barry has a lot of apologizing to do.
[…] UPDATE: William Jacobson: Empowering people who start fires to define freedom of speech is how freedom of speech dies. […]
As a Jew from Illinois, I am really curious then about reconciling Ms. Chayes viewpoint with the court’s decision near and dear to my heart in The National Socialist Party of America vs. The Village Of Skokie? How is display of the swastika in a village at the time 25% populated with holocaust survivors not seen as hate speech that would lead to immediate violence?
Jeffrey
That is an easy one! Those Holocaust survivors–and too many Jews, in fact–would never resort to violence to respond to such an insult. Ergo, no imminent threat. Were they the kind of people who would burn, riot, and murder over insults then it would be illegal to march.
Of course, I am completely stealing the Professor’s argument…
otoh, the specious arguments, violence, and assaults by the Left in this country upon this country are never responded to in kind. We are losing America because we (and I include myself in this) aren’t willing to bleed and go to jail to defend it.
This was a pre-planned coordinated attack, whom subversive elements within the US govt, helped them, the radical Al-Queda and Muslim Brotherhood affiliated radical islamists, to use this film to stir up the “in response angry mob” violence as a ruse for political cover, for islamists and Obama to blame as a scapegoat.. Resulting in the rape and murder of our US Ambassador and 3 other diplomatic staffers in Libya, as well as all the other Tet offensive style attacks upon America on the anniversary of 911.
And the so called mainstream media complex, aka Obama’s pravda propaganda praetorian media guards, have been givin their marching orders to run with it in defense of Obama- their Fuhrer-in-Chief, against all the factual evidence that says otherwise..
This was a pre-planned coordinated attack, whom subversive elements within the US govt, helped them, the radical Al-Queda and Muslim Brotherhood affiliated radical islamists, to use this film to stir up the “in response angry mob” violence as a ruse for political cover, for islamists and Obama to blame as a scapegoat.. Resulting in the rape and murder of our US Ambassador and 3 other diplomatic staffers in Libya, as well as all the other Tet offensive style attacks upon American Embassies in the middle east, on the anniversary of 911.
And the so called mainstream media complex, aka Obama’s pravda propaganda praetorian media guards, have been givin their marching orders to run with it in defense of Obama- their Fuhrer-in-Chief, against all the factual evidence that says otherwise..
They’re not fooling anyone but themselves..
All part of the plan.
DHS just ordered almost 2 billion rounds of ammunition for domestic use.
How many rounds did you order?
The idea that ruthless, lawless fascists are going to relinquish power simply over an election is as absurd as Obama’s election in the first place.
Mark my words: there will be martial law if Obama loses the election.
And you’d better not just prepare by sitting around waiting.
But then again, we have John Boehner on our side.
“The inability to distinguish between those who set fires and those who criticize those who set fires”
Its come to my attention that Professor Jacobson is guilty of this himself, banning those that are critical of fire starters and using the opportunity to extract control over freedom of speech.
Hypocrite.
Here’s an alternate scenario;
An abortion doctor performs an abortion at an abortion clinic. An anti-abortion extremist hears this and then bombs that abortion clinic. Some innocent bystanders get killed in the blast. Do we claim the doctor, the nurses and/or the patient violated the 1st Amendment because they incited violence?
While that scenario seems pretty far-fetched, this is what seems to be happening to me right now with this video “controversy”. The Muslims in other countries use this video as a reason to protest and riot (which would have happened no matter which party was in control of the WH). But because we have a situation that potentially damages the Democrat President, Democrat supporters rally. These supporters do all they can to divert attention away from him by claiming the video is the reason for the rioters/violence. And because of the violence the video creator has somehow violated the 1st Amendment, Imminence Standard.
Both scenarios seem pretty ridiculous to me, but because Barack Obama is in a fight for reelection, we get these absurd 1st Amendment violation posts/articles.
Also, why haven’t we heard of the many US Muslims who have rioted? Oh right…
[…] and simply encourages them, and sends the message that violence will get them what they want. As Professor Jacobson says, empowering people who set fires to define the limits of free speech is how free speech […]
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