Legally, diddly squat, (an opinion I am confident the esteemed Dewey will concur). Which leads me to the guess its all for show, its kind of a ritual bonding sort of thing. It might have some marginal affect, on people who are or were wavering, but now figure they are “committed”. (You’d be amazed at the number of people who believe that anything you signed is enforceable.)
Well, you have to admit, as a general proposition it is a reliable presumption to make. 
You’re correct. I think it’s terrible the way protestors were herded away from the Fleet Center so as not to mar Senator Kerry’s coronation.
More seriously, both security and general order are a major concern at these sorts of things, and I have no problem with taking steps to ensure the delegates and other attendees have clear ingress and egress to and from the facilities, and to make sure protestors don’t interfere with the ordinary business of a city. I have no problem with your right to shout and sloganeer and carry signs and chant nifty rhymes, so long as you aren’t standing between me and my work or home. Actively interfere with my daily commute, and we’ve got problems. Your right to speak doesn’t mean I have to listen to you.
Methinks you are blinkered by partisanship. I’ve heard anecdotes from the Democratic side of the aisle along similar lines – some person dressed in pro-Republican garb or otherwise clearly in opposition to the candidate speaking being herded away, all the while screaming about the trampling of his rights by the evil Demmies. Of course, in those situations, as in this one, I suspect those folks’ plans were not to simply quietly absorb the content of the presenter’s message, but rather to disrupt the presentation and interfere with the ability of those who did come to listen to do so.
Frankly, I’ve seen enough speakers shouted down that I genuinely loathe the heckler’s veto, so much so that I cheer efforts to preemptively stop it from happening.
Brownshirt.
But you left off that he’s a hypocrite.
Warning is taken, I honestly didn’t believe/think that it was porn. It seems to be satire. I laughed instead of feeling any sort of sexual desire. And the supreme court defines porn as anything without artistic merit which is designed to cause sexual thoughts…
I’ll be more careful in the future, but I’d also appreciate it if you’d answer my email so I can get a better understanding of the rules. If you’d prefer, I can open a thread in the pit if you’d rather discuss it on the board instead of in email. (the pit is the correct place to discuss mod decisions, right?)
I honestly didn’t think I was breaking any rules. And I honestly don’t want to break any rules.
Thanks for your time.
[Hank Hill] This is baseball son, not lawyer ball. [/Hank Hill]
Whatever it may be… I had no intention of breaking any rules, including the ‘two click’ rule… so I’m kinda worried and don’t want to be getting in any trouble in the future.
Doesn’t seem like that big a deal to me; it’s typical petty political tricks.
Protestors: Heh heh: let’s get into the convention and fuck shit up!
Republicans: Let’s make them sign pledges in order to get in!
P: “Dick Hertz” Heh heh! FUCK SHIT UP!
R: Dear gentle public, do you see this? These people agreed that they supported our president and vice president, and we, poor trusting souls we are, took them at their word. Do you see now why the liberals are so dangerous? They lie at a whim! Their word means nothing to them! Vote Bush 2004!
It’s like a tango, only not sexy.
Daniel
Right, because I advocated physical violence against my political opponents, and suggested that their free speech rights should be taken away in their entirety. :rolleyes:
Oh, wait, I didn’t say anything like that. No, I actually said that a person’s political opponents should be given every opportunity to voice their political viewpoints – as long as they aren’t shouting people down or forcing themselves on unwilling listeners.
Indeed, the real brownshirts these days aren’t jackbooted government thugs, but loudmouthed protestors so certain of their own moral virtue that they see nothing wrong with actively disrupting the activities of their opponents. I’ve seen it happen far too often, and it sickens me every time. There is nothing so poisonous as the heckler’s veto.
Care to make an argument as to how I’m saying one thing but doing another? Or are you using words you don’t understand again?
Whaa??? He is a brownshirt and the little twerps who actually, literally, use brownshirt tactics of disrupting and shouting down dissent are not?
Actually, I think that the Brownshirts did things that would be illegal under the Constitution of the US.
I’m about a liberal as you and lucy, but I think that Dewey makes valid legal points on this one.
Not when he says that dissent should be stifled because he finds it annoying.
A Vice President giving a stump speech represents dissent. Dissent with what? How can the government be the dissenter?
Please do point out where I said dissent should be stifled. I support the right to protest. I also support my right to go about my business without interference. You have the right to speak. You don’t have the right to compel me to listen.
Dissent from them. You are avoiding the question.
Preemptively means before it happens, right?
In other words, you think that dissent should not only be squelched when it happens, but that anyone who even looks like they might dissent should be stifled.
There is no such thing as a right to not be heckled.
Political dissent means dissent from the status quo or the majority or from authority. The government can’t be the dissenter, at least not in any sense of the word as it is coventionally used regarding politics.
The protestors are the dissenters. Those who squelch them are the…ok, I won’t call them brownshirts, how about tanshirts.
I think that is valid for the organizers of a particular event. They are under no requirement to provide a platform for their opponents. It is not squelching dissent for them to tightly control the members of their audience.
Nor is it squelching dissent for law enforcement to ensure that the daily business of a city will go on unimpeded – that key roads and bridges are not blocked, that pedestrians are not harassed, and that people can generally get from point A to point B unimpeded. The world doesn’t stop just because you planned a protest. You have the right to speak, but not the right to compel me to listen.
There is a right to freely associate, and with it a correlative right to exclude, including the right to exclude those who you suspect might disrupt your event. But that’s neither here nor there; this isn’t a constitutional question, for the reasons I pointed out earlier.
No, I’m not talking about rights in the constitutional sense. I’m talking about values, namely the value of free and open discourse, and how that value is tarnished when the heckler’s veto is exercised. Shouting down your opponent is not conducive to such discourse, for reasons which should be fairly obvious.
Holy crap! You are still avoiding! Fine, forget the stupid question about the meaning of dissent.
Let me rephrase: