Expression of oneself using strong, even expletive-laced, provocative, words = legitimate and legal and protected.
Expression of oneself by means of burning your own property = legitimate and legal and protected, though admittedly a tad nutty.
Expression of oneself by means of burning someone’s sorry fuckin’ ass right down to the ground = illegitimate and illegal and unprotected. And being civilized people, we’d be perfectly justified in throwing your sorry fuckin’ ass right in jail. Which, I assume, is why you don’t go burn down the good Pastor’s, er, ass.
See it’s the “control of (their) facilities” part that distinguishes the frothing crazies from the violent crazies of the world.
OK so there is this tense standoff with a swat team surrounding a hostage situation. A black man has a gun to his wife’s head and is accusing her of infidelity. The police are trying to calm him down so he will release the hostage. Suddenly a bystander walks out of the croud screaming “Go ahead and shoot you idiot nigger! What are you waiting for!? are you chicken. She’s a slut she probably slept with the whole town! Hell I’ve had her a time or two!” The hostage taker than proceeds to shoot his wife and himself in quick succession.
The bystander then claims that he was just using his constitutional right of free speech. If the gunman over reacted it isn’t his fault, its just that all blacks are violent murderers who should be rounded up by the police.
So call me a moron and explain. mhendo’s said the same thing you did over in the GD thread. The primary difference is a question of immediacy, I get that, but that seems to me to be only a matter of degree, not “not remotely the same thing.”
Because in his example, the free-speaker (who apparently needs to be an outspoken racist to make the hypothetical seem more “edgy”) is directly encouraging a specific person to commit violence---- unlike Pastor Buckethead, who didn’t tell anyone to do anything, least of all a gaggle of unknown dipshits thousands of miles away?
You could say it’s the “same thing,” in the sense that in both cases, something happened and people ended up dead. Beyond that, not a whole lot of commonality.
To expand on Vinyl Turnip’s point, Charles Manson never directly participated in any of the murders for which he now incarcerated. Yet, there he sits. Turns out that directing someone within your realm of influence to commit a crime is, in the eyes of the law, the same as if you’d committed the crime yourself.
What crime did Pastor Jones commit? What crime did he encourage others to commit? He burned a religious item. Yes, he probably knew that some people would go nuts when they heard the news. Martin Luther King surely knew that there’d be a backlash when he gave speeches calling for racial equality. Does he therefore bear some of the blame for the subsequent attacks against innocent black people? Or do the perpetrators of the violence bear 100% of the blame?
This wording implies that if you assign even an ounce of responsibility to a third party, the direct perpetrators suddenly bear 99% of some fixed amount of blame, and therefore should be blamed less. That’s not the case.
Yeah, MLK probably set off racists. He bears some responsibility for that. The risks he took were in service of a greater good and were worth taking, but that doesn’t mean he’s absolved of all responsibility.
These attempts to disconnect Jones from what happened are utterly asinine. I don’t want to bring legal action against Jones, I don’t even care to condemn him very much. But pretending that Jones burning the book and the perpetrators committing the murders have as much connection as my decision on what to eat for breakfast today and Buck Godot deciding to make his post, as so many people here have been pretending, is just completely stupid.
I see what you’re saying, and you’ve given me something to think about. However, at first glance I think you’re confusing responsibility with involvement.
As is, your statement is equivalent to: It was MLK’s duty, obligation and burden to beat blacks staging a sit in.
That seems like a narrow definition of responsibility. Think of it like a leader’s burden. Because I can foresee how people will respond to my actions, I have power and the responsibility to use that power wisely.
Obama, or any president or leader, bears responsibility for the troops he sends in to fight a war, even though the people actually doing the killing are the enemy.
MLK bears responsibility for the blacks who were negatively affected by his civil rights advocacy, even though MLK had no direct control over the people harming them.
Jones bears responsibility for the people who were killed by his burning the Koran, even though he had no direct control over the people who killed them.
All of these include foreseeable consequences of the originator’s actions. They have to decide whether the cause they’re fighting for is worth the indirect harm their actions will cause.
My problem with Jones is that he does not have an appreciably worthy cause, if he has one at all. And I don’t believe that’s logically inconsistent. We honor the lives lost during wars fought for good reasons, and we damn Presidents who get people killed needlessly. In the same administration people accepted operations in Afghanistan and hated operations in Iraq. It’s possible in the same way to recognize that MLK was fighting a good fight and that Jones had little thought beyond giving Muslims the finger, all the while recognizing that they are similarly responsible for the outcome of their actions.
Obama is the Commander-in-Chief, MLK was a civil rights leader so in that respect alone the lives and welfare of their followers/subordinates is their responsibility. If this pastor was in Afghanistan and his congregation lost 8 people in this uproar then your analogy would work.
The point is that he could manipulate people. He could predict their reactions. Maybe he wouldn’t have known that THOSE extremists would kill THOSE victims, but he knew he could manipulate them. That gives him power, which he used irresponsibly.
“I didn’t know the people I think are savage barbarians would act like savage barbarians!”
Gotta say, the ability to (possibly) make random foreigners spontaneously kill innocent bystanders at some point because they can’t get to you and are pissed off about it has to be one of the lamest superpowers ever— right up there with Aquaman’s fluency in fish-lingo.
I’ve never seen pastor Dickhead and after his shitty little attention getting stunt, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to, but when I first read his VT’Spost I laughed my ass off.
But dude, if you could work an Axe like that would you try to subjugate a bunch of retards if you could speak freakin’ volumes without a word leaving your lips?
If penis size relates to hand size that jokers hung J. Holmes + 3.
To the point, I see a lot of jokers still playing the “RIGHTS” card.
Yeah, we’re in America, Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, but what the flyin’ fuck, take responsibility, greasy FUCK STAIN.
I can’t believe this shit stain, only fucking tards would follow this demented piece of shit.
I’ve been on both sides of that coin and their’s only one way – and that’s the fucking right one.
This illustrates just how hard it is for the Islamists to carry out Jihad within the United States. Three or four Muslim terrorists could quite easily wipe out this pastor and his whole congregation – but they don’t, because the logistics are so hard getting the terrorists into the U.S.
But yes, that would be a big change and not something I’d just make up in the middle of a thread.