I got called out for this cartoon. My friend said, 'False analogy. Free speech is a a manmade idea that can be changed. It can be altered by people. Physics are natural laws that cannot be altered by people. If one supports all free speech that is not hate speech, laws can be written to make it so. However, physics is physics whether anyone supports it or not and no one can change it.:
I disagree with my friend. I think free speech is free speech, period. You either can or cannot speak freely. One either has free speech or one doesn't. It doesn't matter how any human being defines it. Free speech is one of those objective truths. As soon as you try to alter it and begin defining it as something other than itself, it is no longer free speech. When speech can be hedged in by law, it is no longer speech, however vile or repugnant the words may be.
I find much of what the left says to be repugnant. I find any defense of the right to murder an unborn child repugnant. I find any defense of restriction placed upon private practice of religion which causes no physical harm to any human being to be repugnant. I find the whole idea of bigger more powerful government and socialism to be repugnant. I find attempts to abolish the second amendment to be a dangerous idea.
At the same time, whatever my feelings on the words spoken, I find any attempt to restrict the left's right to speak out freely and say they believe these things to be every bit as repugnant. I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it.
There is a story about two men, one an American and the other a Russian living under the Soviet Union. The American brags, "We have free speech. I can go down to the steps of the Capitol and shout, 'The Congress are all idiots.'"
The Russian replied, "I too have free speech in Soviet Union. I can go down to Red Square and shout,
The Politburo are all idiots!"
The American was shocked. "Really. You can do that?
"Of course," said the Russian with a wink. "The only difference is that in America you have freedom AFTER speech."
As a conservative, I am not afraid of dissenting speech. I need not silence you. I believe my ideas are strong enough to go up against yours and that's the difference. Socialists have to silence the opposition in order to maintain power over a compliant populace and to hoodwink people into allowing socialism a foothold.
That said, I do not believe in free speech without consequences. My free speech ends where the end of your nose begins. It does NOT end at the lips of the speaker. This does not mean there are not consequences if your speech is the result of criminal intent or results in crime. If you shout fire in a crowded theater and people are hurt, you are to be punished for causing injury to others and for lying about the fire. Perjury IS a crime. Opinion is not. If you violate national security with your speech, when you have taken an oath to keep secrets, you CAN get punished for violating your oath. Free speech was merely the means by which you committed the violation. If you slander a person, by telling lies and it does damage to another. That person can sue you and the law can punish you for lying.
The matter of obscenity is a fuzzier issue. Certainly, nobody on the left worries about obscenity when used by their own folks. In facts, leftists take it as a violation of their rights if we even complain when they pollute the air saying "f#@!$" every other word. Leftists in media take great pride and delight in putting that word in the face of every decent moral person. So obviously obscenity is not restricted much at all in a land of free speech. In the past, it was argued that obscenity harmed children who heard it and I think such a case could still be made if anyone worried anymore about raising clean-speaking children.
Pornography is the same deal. The left would have a fit if you restricted dirty movies, nudity and all manner of filth their allies in the entertainment field produce. The only way you can punish pornographers is if you can prove the filmed subject of that pornography is a child or an unwilling exploited person enslaved against her or his will for that purpose. I'm all for punishing the heck out of sex slavers and child traffickers. But it is the act of abusing, not the speech that is punishable and punished.
If I directly command that my followers go to a Trump rally and beat up his supporters, I am culpable if they do so. If I tell them to go to a Ben Shapiro speech and attack people attending the speech (as ANTIFA has done repeatedly), then I am responsible for the result of my speech.
Free speech is one of those pesky things that post-modernist philosophers claim is not an objective truth. In fact they claim that all things are what you say they are and that, there is therefore no objective truth. So truth is what we decide it is. My friend reflects post-modernist thought exactly. This is handy if you're attempting to make a made-up Utopia without having to worry about human nature, sin, economics, morality or any of those things that are problematic in society at large.
What the left wants to do is tell me I cannot speak lest I hurt someone's feelings, but only if it is conservative speech. There are no calls from the left for people who say things like these to be silenced. Here are some examples and certainly not the more egregious ones:
- Kathy Griffin held a bloodied, decapitated Donald Trump head up for cameras, as part of her comedy act. Then she complained because her career tanked.
- Madonna – "I've thought a lot about blowing up the White House."
- Snoop Dogg "Shoots" Trump in the Head in Music Video
- Robert De Niro: "I'd Like to Punch Him in the Face"
- Joss Whedon: "I Want a Rhino to [F---] Paul Ryan to Death"
- Shakespeare in the Park play stabs 'Trump' to death in performance of 'Julius Caesar'.
- Rapper YG Threatens Trump with "[F---] Donald Trump" Song
- Marilyn Manson Kills 'Trump' in Music Video
- “Trump is a half term president, at most, especially if I ever get within 10 feet of that pussy,” Rep. Scott Hamann wrote in a lengthy Facebook tirade.
- Maxine Waters calls supporters to "...make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that (Trump) Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere."
- One month after President Trump’s inauguration, a group of young children in Chicago were filmed beating and tearing apart a President Trump pinata, while union members and leftist bullies cheered them on.
- Tom Arnold took to Twitter to call on fellow Democrats to threaten Barron Trump when Melania takes him to school.
- Peter Fonda targeted Barron Trump, saying “We should rip Barron Trump from his mother’s arms and put him in a cage with pedophiles and see if mother will stand up against the giant asshole she is married to…”
- Nebraska Democrat Phil Montag, a technology chairman was caught in an audio recording that was posted on YouTube, voicing how glad he was that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., got shot. Specifically what he said was, 'I'm glad that m@#$rf#$@r [Scalise] got f@#$%ing shot, I wish he was f@#$ing dead!'
- . Speaking of the baseball shooter, Trump-hating, Bernie Sanders supporter and domestic terrorist James T. Hodgkinson, 66, from Belleville, Illinois, was killed by Capitol Police after firing up to 100 rounds from an assault rifle at a baseball park in Alexandria, Virginia, leaving five injured including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise.
- Ex- Obama Attorney General, Eric Holder, who was arrested in college for participating in an armed takeover of the former Columbia ROTC office, told a crowd at a rally for Black gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams, “Michelle [Obama] always says ‘When they go low, we go high,'” Holder told the crowd. “No. No. When they go low, we kick them…”
- Hillary Clinton told CNN’s Cristiane Amanpour that you can’t be civil with a party who doesn’t agree with you. “That’s why I believe if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and/or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again. But until then, the only thing that the Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength.”
- "Michele (Bachmann), slit your wrist. Go ahead... or, do us all a better thing [sic]. Move that knife up about two feet. Start right at the collarbone." -- Montel Williams
- For real, if I met Donald Trump, I’d punch him in his f*@#$ng face. And that’s not a joke. Even if he did become president — watch out, Donald Trump, because I will punch you in your f!#@ing face if I ever meet you. Secret Service had better just f!@#$ing be on it. Don’t let me anywhere within a block.”– Rapper Everlast
- .I’m just saying if he (Dick Cheney) did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.” — Bill Maher
- "....I want to spit on them, take one of their “Obama Plan White Slavery” signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads.” — The Washington Post’s Courtland Milloy
- "F*** G@# D@#$d Joe the G@# D@#$d M@#$#rf@#ing plumber! I want M@#$#rf@#ing Joe the plumber dead.” — Liberal talk show host Charles Karel Bouley on the air.
- "...it’s about time that we have an intifada in this country that change[s] fundamentally the political dynamics in here. And we know every – They’re gonna say some Palestinian being too radical — well, you haven’t seen radicalism yet.” U.C. Berkeley Lecturer Hatem Bazian fires up the crowd at an anti-war rally by calling for an American intifada
- "That Scott down there that's running for governor of Florida. Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him." -- Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa
- “..And then there’s Rumsfeld.....We should put this S.O.B. up against a wall and say ‘This is one of our bad days’ and pull the trigger.” — From a fund raising ad put out by the St. Petersburg Democratic Club.
- "Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don’t give a hoot about human beings, either can’t or won’t. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.” — The Village Voice’s Michael Feingold, in a theater review.
- "Thalasinos was an anti-government, anti-Islam, pro-NRA, rabidly anti-Planned Parenthood kinda guy, who posted that it would be “Freaking Awesome” if hateful Ann Coulter was named head of Homeland Security.” — Linda Stasi, New York Daily News,on a victim murdered in the San Bernadino terrorist attack
- “Cheney deserves same final end he gave Saddam. Hope there are cell cams.” — Rep. Chuck Kruger (D-Thomaston)
- “If I had my way, I would see Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell strapped down to electric chairs and lit up like Christmas trees. The better to light the way for American Democracy and American Freedom!” — Democratic Talk Radio’s Stephen Crockett
- “May your children all die from debilitating, painful and incurable diseases.” — Allan Brauer, the communications chair of the Democratic Party of Sacramento County to Ted Cruz staffer Amanda Carpenter
- “But, you know, the NRA members are the current incarnation of the brownshirts from Germany back in the early ’30s, late ’20s, early ’30s. Now, of course, there came the Night of the Long Knives when the brownshirts were slaughtered and dumped in the nearest ditches when the power structure finally got tired of them. So I look forward to that day.” — Mike Malloy
- "Or pick up a baseball bat and take out every f*cking republican and independent I see. #f*cktrump, #f*cktheGOP, #f*ckstraightwhiteamerica, #f*ckyourprivilege." -- Orange is the New Black star Lea DeLaria responding to a meme about using music to deal with violence
- “I wish they (Republicans) were all f*@#$g dead!” — Dan Savage
- Azealia Banks advocates raping Sarah Palin over a fake news story (the language was too brutal to disguise).
The left has been doing this kind of hate speech for decades without the media ginning up any outrage at all. Often in fact, the media contributed to the calls for violence against conservatives. Yet right now it's suddenly imperative that conservative voices be discouraged and where possible silenced. Their reason for defining speech which challenges their opinions is that such speech hurts someone's feeling. DOES ANYBODY THINK THESE HATE-FILLED COMMENTS DIDN'T HURT SOMEONE'S FEELINGS? Ah, but these were only conservative and Republican feelings, so no harm/no foul.
Look at the Prager University videos which have been blocked from being viewed by anyone 17 or under on YouTube. The language is clean in the Prager videos. The speeches are by highly respected individuals from politics, entertainment, journalism and academia are historical, political, philosophical and journalistic commentary with references. Facebook has decided that because Prager U deviates from progressive orthodoxy, it must be censored, suppressed and demonetized.
How long after progressive politicians seize the power to silence people based on their agreement with our dear leaders before they start silencing us for our religious beliefs? Freedom is a dangerous thing. Bad people can use their freedom to hurt their fellow citizens. They can, through free speech, threaten the jobs of sitting political figures and parties in power as they did in the 2016 election.
A free people are difficult for their betters to control. That was kind of the point of the Constitution. Former President Obama, lamented that the Constitution was all about what the government cannot do. Obama called it a charter of "negative" liberties. Clearly progressives such as the ex-president are far more concerned with the rights and responsibilities of government than they were about the rights of individuals.
In America people have rights. Governments are not permitted to restrict our natural rights which are outlined in the Bill of Rights. The Constitution doesn't trust government any more than I do. The Bill of Rights were written not to grant us rights as the Magna Carta and virtually every other country's founding documents do, but to forbid the government from restricting rights we already possess. Other countries' governments and sovereigns pretend to grant rights to citizens. The right to trial by jury in England is granted to Britishers by the Queen and technically may be withdrawn at her will. She doesn't have the power to do it, but if she were somehow to seize that power, the monarchy claims that your rights belong to them.
It may be that this is too nit-pickey an argument for those who would find reason to shut up people who challenge their progressive notions. The rage from the left over conservative speech is telling. It is the anger of the spoiled child over being denied something it wants.
I have something to say about that.
© 2019 by Tom King
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