| footfootfoot |
01-11-2015 12:39 PM |
Griff, you need to bone up on your first amendment. There are specific limits to free or protected speech.
Incitement to riot or to commit crimes is not protected speech.
http://www.minnesotalawreview.org/ar...se-incitement/
One of my teachers described the first amendment as a pie chart representing all types of speech or expression. Slowly, slice after slice representing expression that is not protected, e.g. obscenity, slander, libel, is removed we are left with a rather thin sliver that represents what is protected and where. For example, you have no first amendment rights in a private forum like a private club or school.
This isn't to defend Anonymous' actions; a blanket attack would wipe out their protected speech as well as their unprotected speech. The over-arching idea behind the first amendment is that there is a "market place of ideas" and the counter to unpopular speech isn't to remove it from the marketplace but to add more ideas to counter it. In other words more ideas not fewer. And fundamentalists of all stripes are in the fewer ideas camp and ultimately anti free speech. Which is highly ironic since they are claiming their rights under the very right they want to destroy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by http://nahmodlaw.com/2013/12/04/know-your-constitution-5-free-speech-and-hate-speech/
...One answer is that the First Amendment creates a marketplace of ideas in which everyone can participate. Everyone can try to sell his or her ideas to the marketplace and the buyers in the marketplace eventually decide which ideas have value and which do not, which ideas are truthful and which are not. We are all sellers and buyers in this marketplace.
~snip~
However, despite what I’ve just said, there are some communications that are not allowed in the marketplace of ideas. Obscene speech, for one, carefully defined by the Supreme Court, is excluded from the marketplace of ideas. Another kind of communication, child pornography, is also not allowed because its production involves child abuse. The reasons for these exceptions include history and the belief that these kinds of communications have little or no redeeming social value.
~snip~
The Supreme Court’s answer to this particular question is that even hate speech contains political ideas, however horrible these ideas may be. When you regulate such speech, you are also regulating ideas. Think of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and forbidden words. The Supreme Court has also made clear that just because speech offends people, this is never a justification under the First Amendment for punishing it. Furthermore, we are justifiably suspicious of government when it attempts to regulate speech and ideas. After all, government may have its own political agenda in regulating hate speech—which groups would be protected against hate speech and which not?
Finally, and perhaps most important, think about how the marketplace of ideas functions: even if hateful ideas are communicated, the theory (hope?) is that counter-speech will emerge to rebut it and to fight it. In other words, more speech rather than less is the remedy.
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TL;DR
It's a slippery slope. |
