But that wasn’t the argument (as I understood it).** Moto ** wasn’t saying that restraints on assembly are fine because you’ve always had restraints on assembly. He was arguing that the idea of a slippery slope arising from restraints aren’t likely because you already have restraints and that hasn’t happend. It’s not saying “A is fine because we’ve always done A”, it’s “A won’t lead to B, because we already have A and it hasn’t led to B”.
Okay. 
Then I’ll start over.
Addressing the highlighted assertion (my highlighting), I’d say that it doesn’t follow. For one thing, it is false. Free-speech zones are exactly the sort of escalation in restrictions that the assertion denies has happened. It is one thing to miss something in hindsight, but missing it right before your very eyes is unconscionable because the present is all you can change. You can’t change what happened in the past, and you can’t change the future. But you can damn well make a stand and say, “Hell, no. Not this restriction. Not this time.”
The problem with telling Phelps that he can’t protest near a funeral for safety reasons is that now you’ve established assembly as something dangerous not just for appearances of high profile officials, but for ordinary everyday events. There is nothing (including no precedent) to stop any arbitrary event as being vulnerable to the dangers of free assembly. That means that if the right-wing is in power, you might not be able to protest within 2 miles of a church. And if the left-wing is in power, you might not be able to protest within 2 miles of an abortion clinic. (The distance is as arbitrary as the event.) That’s not a slippery slope; that’s an extrapolation of inferences to a logical end — whatever principle it is that allows frivolous restrictions for one event allows them for any other simply by finding some random commonality between them.
I’m not claiming it’s necessarily a *good * argument. I personally wouldn’t be for a restraint on the Phelp’s activity, unpleasant as they are, for the interpretation reason you mention. I’m just saying that Moto’s argument doesn’t involve an appeal to tradition fallacy (as I understand it).
As much as I loathe the Phelps clan, I agree that this is a violation of the First Amendment.
She and her son have every right to tramp on the flag-for whatever reason.
Sorry for my absence. I’d like to thank the many here with kind words of support. I have yet to be at a service were the Phelps assholes have shown up though twice we had word they were coming. We also had very specific instructions not to take any physical action against them if they did show up.
Thank you to Sunrazor and Phlosphr and others. Your support means a lot.
As stated earlier in words I couldn’t improve on, Loach points out that we are not a Phelps-following all service organization. As to the question about were we were for the extended time Phelps was mainly gay bashing. Where were you? When he targeted veterans he in turn was targeted. I am not a spokesman for Patriot Guard and do not seek to dignify some other questions but feel a personal need to reply to a couple of statements.
Originaly Posted by Diogenes the Cynic
There is little glory in leaving home early in the morning on a rainy and foggy day on a motorcycle. There is little to be said for standing for hours in the rain and/or cold and seeing the grieving family members move past you. When the elderly parents come down the line and shake our hands with tears in their eyes and voices too choked to speak, it is hard to see the glory or note how easy it has been. When I watched the little four year old girl in her best Sunday dress hold her Grandfathers hand and tell him not to cry it was truly a breeze and an easy grab for glory.
I wonder if you can imagine how fucking little I care what would impress you more.
It’s not about you.
I finally saw a picture of Shirley Phelps-Roper (sometimes Wikipedia is NOT my friend!)- YIPES! Looks like the old man in drag! The old man himself looks like the creepy minister from Poltergeist II!
I’m late to the party, but sunrazor nailed it. Thanks Nic.
Miller –
I apologize for any snarkiness on my part up until now, Miller, but I actually am curious about this. Am I understanding you correctly: that you believe that the fundamental reason for the increased level of outrage caused by Phelp & co. is that some people care less about gay deaths than hetero deaths?
If so, what leads you to this conclusion? Doesn’t it seem more likely that the disparity is caused by the fact that our war-dead are particularly exalted in this country? Yes, in general Americans do care more about servicemen than homosexuals, but I think that’s got nothing to do with the gays: Americans care more about servicemen than almost everybody else.
What is Phelps’s reasoning for picketing the soldier’s funerals in particular? I’ve only browsed the Wikipedia article on the Westboro Baptist Church, and I couldn’t quite figure it out. The article said that WBC feels soldier deaths are the result of God’s wrath towards America. At the soldiers’ funerals, do they specifically say bad things about the soldiers themselves (the way they do at the funerals of homosexuals or their supposed supporters), or are they just trying to “raise awareness” for their twisted ideas about why America’s soldiers are dying?
They say abhorred things about the soldiers. Things like: Thank God of IED’s and Thank God of Dead Soldiers…
Nuff said.
Poor Phelps, he won’t have enough to pay the piper when his time has come.
Understood. I would say to Mr. Moto that the only way to support these restrictions with logical consistency is to hold the first amendment itself to be flawed. He has to take an authoritarian view.
Certainly not. None of the rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights are absolute ones - they are all rights subject to regulation by reasonable law.
Rights, as given to man by nature or God, do not conflict and need no regulation. No person has a natural right to commit aggression against another, and as Jefferson said, this is all from which the law ought to restrain him. I do not trust authoritarians to determine what laws are reasonable. And neither will you when those who are your political opposite take power.
Protesting a funeral doesn’t count as aggression to you? Does to me.
One of the main reasons we protect speech is that it is, by definition, not aggression.
If we all agree that the Phelps crowd are delusional idiots, then why should anyone at all care what they say at a funeral? They’re only being disruptive if you allow them to bother you.
Again, settled law does not bear this novel theory out. The “fighting words” doctrine is proof of that, and those laws are generally seen as constitutional as long as they are reasonable.
The fighting words doctrine is quite narrow and I see no reason to expect that it would be extended to Phelps’s nonsense. And I’m pretty damn confident that Chaplinsky, if it went to court today, would be decided differently. What did he actually do? Call a cop a fascist and a racketeer. You’d be laughed out of court for prosecuting someone for that today. And his underlying crime was preaching. How many people today are going to stand for that kind of restriction on free speech?
I don’t think think there are many recent applications of the doctrine, and if it came up again, my guess would be that it would be either severely narrowed or eliminated altogether. The fighting words doctrine is, in my view, pretty damn outdated and as obsolescent as blasphemy laws.
The very notion that mere words are likely to incite a disturbance is a rather primitive one for a rather intolerant society.
Puts the lie to your assertion that speech cannot be aggression, though. Clearly it can be.
No, it definitely doesn’t put the lie to anything I said. Court cases have, in the past, have expressed that opinion. I expressed the opinion that they were wrong. And it seems to me rather precarious to perch a “funeral protection” law on such a slim base.
And I really don’t get the need here. Sure, such activity upsets the family and friends of a dead person, but we don’t need the government protecting people from being upset by someone’s political speech, especially at the funeral of someone who carried out government policy as a member of the military and especially at a publicly owned cemetery.
You claimed earlier that limiting the time and place that funeral protests can occur doesn’t affect their message. If so, then even if a protest were held in accordance with the new law, it would still count as aggression, wouldn’t it?