Don’t want to shock anyone or anything, but there are aspects of Libertarianism I absolutely agree with. In fact, I agree with most of it * ** in theory ** *. The problem is, practice makes for one big mess, so I can’t support it for that reason. (My issues are primarily environmental, gun laws [my father the Libertarian, when fecetiously asked whether people should be allowed to have nuclear weapons in their back yards, said "sure! Why not?- that was the moment when I realized that Libertarian practice just won’t work.] and worker protection. In a truly Libertarian society, it would be perfectly legal to put 6 year olds to work. I happen to be a fan of child labor laws and other protections. What libertarians like my dad don’t like to admit when they say that the markets will take care of themselves and corporations will be good because it is good business to be good, is that it is not true. Most laws protecting workers came into being because people were being endangered and exploited. How’s that for a parenthtical statment? Do you suppose I should have just committed to a new paragraph? Too late now!)
By the way, yelling ‘Fire’ in a crowded theatre is no longer the guiding legal standard for the restriction of speech. The Justice who crafted that metaphor, Oliver Wendell Holmes, basically reversed his position on the matter one year later, moving from a restrictive interpretation of his own “clear and present danger” test to one which was far more tolerant of ‘dangerous’ speech.
I don’t think there should be any such thing as slander, or that private suits of one individual against another for what that person said should ever, ever, ever be allowed.
The problem is that someone with lots of money can simply sue someone without money into silence. Libel laws are, in my opinion, a grave sin against the First Amendment.
I’m aware that case law is dead set against me.
Gotta second Stoidela on this one. Clearly, if one were deciding on a system of government based on elegance and simplicity, then libertarianism would be very appealing to me (on the other hand, pure communism would probably be too). Unfortunately, the realuty of the consequences of these elegant theories has reared their ugly heads. It is admittedly somewhat inelegant to have to say that I support maximum liberty…well, nearly so…when it comes to civil liberties, but that I support more government intervention when it comes to the economic realm. Unfortunately, it seems that if one allows “economic liberty” then it leads to vast inequities where those at the top of the economic ladder are free but others are not really so in any very meaningful sense of the word (besides issues of externalites, etc.).
We don’t really have freedom of speech in the USA. The only speech fully protected is political speech, unfortunately. Obscenity, for example, is considered “low value speech” by the Sureme Court and it is not protected if it offends community standards and is solely appealing to prurient interests and not of meaningful artistic value. The government can also ban the use of those seven words on TV.
I don’t really have a problem with banning inflamatory hate speech. If our democratic way of life can survive the banning of obscenity, why would adding hate speech to the list of banned speech cause any problem? I think several European democracies ban hate speech (Scandinavia?) and they have not devolved into totalitarian societies. Hate speech has the potential to harm people (it may lead to some murders), and in the case of Germany, it led to totalitarianism.
I really see no problem with banning hate speech. On the other hand, I would really like to see us expanding the protection of other kinds of free expression.
Are you kidding? I see a BIG problem with it! There can be no more political speech than hate speech! And who decides what is hate speech and what is simply political dissent? NO THANK YOU.
I am for all speech being free. Every person should be able to decide for themselves what sort of speech they want to hear.
If we were to strictly follow the constitution it should be possible to “vote” ourselves into totaltarianism. It would require a lot of work busting up the constitution, though.
Being fond of slippery slopes, I think its happening anyway.
Actually it is quite simple.
The key to the Constitution is Article 5, the amendment clause. A single amendment to set up more favorable amending terms and you are off and running. Once you can amend at will the SCOTUS is toothless. If they object then you just change the Constitution.
Getting the initial amendment passed would be a bitch so I’m not saying that this would be easy, just that it is not all that complex. I discovered this argument in Daniel Lazare’s The Frozen Republic, how the Constitution is paralyzing democracy ( Harcourt Brace 1996 ). You can buy a paperback copy on Amazon.com for $14. I recomend the book.
I think we have to distinguish between two results of speech: physical and mental consequences. The physical consequences of speech would be things like causing a stampede by yelling Fire!, or having a mob so under your charismatic sway that if you tell them to burn down the city they will do so. Those ought to be subject to ordinary penalties.
The mental consequences - i.e. whatever ideas may be transmitted by speech - ought to be protected absolutely. No good has ever come of censoring ideas, to my knowledge. Good or bad, ideas persist despite all attempts to ban them. An idea can only be destroyed by being ignored.
That’s exactly the sort of sentiment I’d expect from a witless cow-buggerer like you.
I don’t really mean that, of course, I’m just rying to prove a point. Say I had a printing press and covered your neighborhood in posters saying that you had been caught in flagrante bovino, and all your neighbors starting avoiding you, hiding their kids when you come by, your boss fires you 'cause he doesn’t want perverts working for him, your landlord won’t renew your lease, all this and you’ve never even touched an actual cow. Now, if this happened to you, wouldn’t you want the right to sue my ass in court for making up lies about your sex life.
When you add politics and a free press to the mix, it just gets nastier. Say Senator Smith wants tighter enviromental regulation on paper processing plants. Wealthy newspaper magnate Covington Pierpont IV has millions of dollars tied up in paper manufacture, so he runs a headline saying Sen. Smith is a coke-sniffing Communist who beats his wife. The Senator loses his seat, and Mr. Pierpont can keep dumping all that mercury into the water supply. Libel laws can be your friend, too, Pantom.
That’s pigfucker to you, Nimune. (In flagrante bovino. Has a certain ring to it, I must admit.)
In public debate, if a Covington says something like this about a Smith, Smith is going to have his defenders from his party and perhaps other constituents who owe him a favor. The more likely scenario is that Smith says something nasty about Covington, and gets himself hauled into court for saying it, and finds himself facing a man with unlimited resources to carry on the suit for as long as it takes.
However, especially in my neighborhood (a more witless bunch you never saw, and the thing is the rest of my town is filled with the nicest people I ever met, and the smartest. One day I will figure this out.) I could see your point from the first paragraph. At the very least, though, public figures should have to jump through a lot of hoops before they can even think about bringing up a libel suit, because if a private citizen says something nasty in public about a public figure with considerable resources behind him and then has to haul himself into court with a privately hired lawyer in order to prove it isn’t slander, well, this will have a considerable chilling effect on free speech. I’m sure it already does.
Pantom: I’m just about the farthest thing from a lawyer, but from what I understood from The People vs. Larry Flynt, the burden of proof in lible cases is much heavier for public figures than for private citizens. You’ve got a better chance at sueing, say, Matt Damon for lible than vice-versa.
But the thing is, if you’re a private citizen, you’ve got to get to the end of the trial first. Unless you can somehow get the ACLU or some other organization to back you up while the public figure puts you through the wringer, you’re either going to have to a) give up, or b) go bankrupt and probably lose your job and your marriage trying to defend yourself against the slander suit. It’s the mere filing of the suit and getting it to court that is enough to stop lots of other people from saying anything in public about public figures.
I dunno, Pantom. Sounds like a pretty big assumption there. Filing a libel suit doesn’t suppress the slander, it merely punishes the slanderer. If I call George Jr. an incompetant coke-head whose rich daddy stole the election for him, and the prez-elect takes me to court over it, its going to be in all the papers, along with my allegations, and analysis over wether my claims have merit or not. Wether or not he wins the case, the alleged slander has already gotten wider circulation than it would have if he’d ignored me. Plus, it’ll generate a lot of negative publicity for Junior, because he’s going to look like a bully and an opponent of free speech. On top of that, America loves an underdog. If a wealthy pulic figure came after some average Joe with a massive slander lawsuit, Average Joe is going to get all kinds of public support, not the least of which will be the ACLU. And, of course, there is always the danger that I might win the suit, and it will therefore be proved in a court of law that George Bush Jr is an incompetant coke-head whose rich daddy stole the election for him. Libel suits are almost never filed by a public figure against a private citizen. Most libel suits are filed by celebrities against tabloid newspapers. So, in practice, slander lawsuits are fought out between two groups of people we’re all better off ignoring, anyway. I wouldn’t loss much sleep over it.