But not this part. I think it’s more than reasonable to cut the authors some slack since they didn’t want their embassy burned down, but I’m not sure about this idea of abusing your right to free speech or about the idea of speech "hurting’ someone else’s beliefs. That being said, most of the uproar over the statement itself is based on lies, particularly the lie that it was put out after the violence started rather than before it.
I guess my problem with the whole thing is that the statement was kind of pointless. How many of the protestors speak English, let alone read the press release? Hell, does anyone think the mob would calm down and disperse if the ambassador went outside and said, “we denounce the film!”
Regardless of how word got out, someone was going to ask them to say something about the movie at some point and making their position clear was the sensible thing to do.
Okay. Can you think of any reason - whether or not it’s the actual reason - why they would do that? I’m sure we’d all agree that governments engage in disinformation all the time, but they don’t do it for fun.
No, I don’t think he does. The word “abuse” is central to the complaint (this has been discussed a few different times in this thread). Saying the movie sucks and was a bad idea is not the same as saying it’s an abuse of First Amendment rights. It’s also not the same as saying the movie hurts someone else’s beliefs, which one of the most bizarre notions I’ve ever heard. It’s very disrespectful of their beliefs, sure, but how can a belief or a “religious feeling?” be hurt?
My guess is nobody from the big cheese himself on down is really too sure what to make of it right now. And there are elements of everything from the publicly obvious to the absolute Top Secret mixed up in it. It’s spun out of control.
But the trigger event was a pretext-ed (movie) pre-planned attack to kill Americans.
You appear to have elided Mitt’s statement that it is “not right” to do it. How is saying that it is not right to exercise a right in a particular manner different from saying that it is an abuse of a right?
You can say that a particular action is wrong without asserting you’ve abused your Constitutional rights by doing it. Somewhat ironically the convicted con artist “Bacile” may in fact have violated the terms of an earlier plea deal, so he may have abused something.
Then you’re using the term “abuse” in the same way the OP originally did, but in a different way from what several others of us in this thread have been arguing for.
I addressed this back in post 188 of the thread in an exchange with aldiboronti, which I’ll just quote here instead of paraphrasing:
That is, the filmmakers abused their right of free speech in using it to promote ignorance, hatred and resentment via religious bigotry. But their act still fell within their right of free speech, rather than exceeding it or going outside it.
You, on the other hand, seem to be using “abuse” to mean “violate” or “go beyond the prescribed limits of”, as in your suggestion that Bacile “may have abused something” in the sense that he actually transgressed a legal restriction.