The First Ten Amendments of the Nation’s Constitution are notable admonitions against governmental interference with the enumerated rights of citizens and embody the foundational principles of our Republican Democracy. In our view, the protection of “Free Speech ” constitutes the most emblematic and signature expression of citizen liberty. This revered and definitional right, like all of the enunciated rights has its ultimate, and societally necessary limitations. One cannot, irresponsibly and falsely “cry fire in a crowded theater.” The limit on the Constitution’s broad grant of liberty, legally and empirically likewise ceases when one’s fist reaches the tip of the other’s nose.
One can confidently observe that the gravamen of most cases involving constitutional issues directly or indirectly concerns the application or the limitation of the relevant application of citizen rights. While judicial history may demonstrate temporal differences in temp[oral rulings, it is safe to say that the protection of the citizen’s right to free speech occupies an existentially significant place in the definitional and dynamic existence of democracy.
Any cursory examination of recent history would predictably and disturbingly, evidence the cynical and tactical misuse of constitutionally democratic rights in sundry attempts to destroy democracy and tactically institute an autocratic regime. The empirical vulnerability of democratic humanism is eternally challenged by the enemies of liberty, who exhibit, in their aspirational goals, draconian limitations on freedom of expression.
In our view, one of the most disturbing examples of the jejune and hapless vulnerability of our Nation to tactically pernicious efforts to destroy its humanistic democracy is evidenced by the nazi -inspired, violent Charlestonville demonstration, publically advertised, “Unite the Right.” The event was a violent, pro-nazi demonstration by self-identified acolytes of Adolph Hitler, carrying swastika-bearing flags, shouting anti-Semitic, tropes like “blood and soil,” and “we will not be replaced.” Ku Klux Klan vigilantes, and other sundry scoundrels, emitting prejudicial and atavistic slogans.
Another outstanding example of the Jejune and idealistic application of democratic permissiveness was seen in a similarly hateful demonstration of nazi-style hatred that occurred in Skokie Illinois, in 1977. The psychopathically hateful Nazi demonstration was tactically located in that specific venue, the residential venue of a large population of Holocaust survivors. It is thematically notable that the group’s March application was appropriately denied by the local authorities, but re-instated due to the naively ingenuous legal efforts of the local ACLU on the( thematic) grounds of freedom of speech. The principled but naive intention to extend basic American rights to the arch-enemies of democracy has proven naive and empirically destructive to those very principles.
The legal and moral unacceptability of the Trump Presidency, despite his relentless program of immoral, undemocratic, and authoritarian inclinations was empirically made possible, by the MAGA tactical and thematically inappropriate exploitation of the societal standards of constitutional permissiveness. in perverse support of the exercise of autocratic ambitions.
To be clear, we are dedicated and ardent supporters of free speech and the host of other democratically recognized rights and grants of human franchises. As observed above, however, the inalienable grants of citizen rights do have appropriate, and rational limitations..This is the foundational doctrine. similar to proscribing falsely shouting “fire” in a crowded theater..
We, affirmatively, oppose any limitations on the right of free speech; what we do recommend, is the proscription of hateful, anti-democratic, and discriminatory speech and activities (like “crying fire in a crowded theater”) in the pragmatic interest of protecting that right, and the other rights appropriate to a democracy. In its implementation, a wisely pragmatic standard of proof would be democratically salutary.
-p.
plinyblogdotcom 