Heaven forbid I have the temerity to disagree with a Supreme Court decision.
Here’s a newsflash, Scott. This is still a free country. And while I have to obey the law, and respect the law, I can still disagree with a law.
I’m still here, aren’t I?
I just have a different opinion on this law. No need to get snide.
One more point: if I understand how modern newspapers and magazines work, there’s no longer a printing press involved in the process. If we’re to interpret the first amendment so literally that only vocal grunts, buzzing, and sibilance is protected by freedom of speech, does this mean that only documents printed by pressing metal molds into ink and then onto paper is protected by freedom of the press?
Daniel
And I am free to disagree with your disagreement. I might not be doing so, if you had any logic, or stated reason to disagree with the decision.
Actually, I think it’s probably the best way to perceive it. Destroying an american flag is a quite obvious way to show that you don’t like the US policies without need for lenghty explanations, and a lot of people do like fire and have fun putting things on fire.
The statements about “it’s a proof they want to kill us all by fire” are just ludicrously laughable…
I really think a reply of this nature isn’t helpful. I’m arguing in good faith here.
The rest of your post made some good points worth considering.
I’m willing to concede that the question of whether or not flag burning is speech is arguable. My main point (which I suppose I could have just said rather than try to be clever) was meant to address your apparent dismissal of people’s concerns with the argument that there’s still plenty of ways to protest if flag burning is outlawed. It may be a true statement, but it’s equally true if applied to any other attempt to ban a specific form of protest (such as calling the President a ‘goat-felcher’).
I think LHoD is also arguing in good faith, and just trying to discover where your hard and firm stance that speech consists only of intelligible spoken words runs into reality.
Precisely. The idea that “speech” as protected by the first amendment consists only of “when you open up your mouth and say something” is on its surface ridiculous to me; I asked all these ridiculous questions to find out if that’s really what you mean.
If you DO think that ASL speech is protected by the first amendment, can you tell us what definition you offer for speech that includes ASL but does not include burning a flag?
If you’d like, I’ll formulate a definition. Something like: an act intended by the actor primarily to communicate a concept. I’ll further say that while speech itself is protected, the manner of speech may not be: an act of speech may have secondary effects (e.g., waking up the neighbors at 3 am when you run screaming epithets down the middle of teh street) which are not protected.
Daniel
Of course sign language is speech.
Someone carrying a sign is not speaking. He is demonstrating. That is also a right covered by the First Amendment, and it is expressive, but it is not speech.
In the same way, burning a flag can be covered under the right to demonstrate, IMHO. Would it be a “peaceable assembly” that the Constitution provides for? I think peaceable assemblies don’t include burning flags.
On that point, I likely differ in opinion with many folks here.
Could you then offer your definition of behavior that is protected by freedom of speech?
For example, if I understand what you’re saying, someone practicing rudimentary sign language (consisting of spelling words in the air letter by letter) is practicing speech, but someone carrying a sign with those same spelled letters is not. Is this correct?
What if they’re actively writing the sign, with exactly the same hand motions that the sign-language-communicator would use, except they’re holding a marker in their hand where the rudimentary sign-language communicator’s hands are empty? Is the former not speech, but the latter is?
I think if you offer your definition of speech, it might clarify the issue. As it is, it seems to me that you’re assuming a tortured definition that leads to absurdities. Perhaps I misunderstand what you mean by speech. Can you give your definition?
Daniel
D’oh!!! :smack: :smack: :smack:
Why can’t a peaceable assembly include a burning flag?
Is it the burning? If things on fire aren’t peaceable, perhaps cigarettes and lighters should be outlawed?
Or the fact that it’s a flag? Are you saying that anytime a flag is set on fire, the people around it will begin to murder each other, eventually forming a mob who will destroy everything around them? Are you saying that a burning flag has a magic power to incite immediate violence?
If a printed sign is not speech, as you say, how can newspapers be considered speech? Or books?
Bo
Newspapers aren’t speech, and neither are books, Bo. That is better understood as freedom of the press.
Can you give us your definition of speech, Mr. Moto? Bread and Circuses (I think that’s their name), for example, often uses silent puppet shows as a means of protest, and are nationally renowned for their art. Could the government constitutionally prohibit these puppet shows based on their content?
Your definition is pretty integral to continuing this argument.
Daniel
That’s my problem with this discussion. Many of you are hauling out every little thing and calling it speech, including many things nobody would regard as speech.
Now, lots of these things are worthy. Some of them are constitutionally protected, many of them by the First Amendment. But we really should be clear in our definitions here, in which speech is expression of a concept using language, generally in a verbal way.
By what sense should other conduct be considered speech, even if it is expressive? And note that I am not even asking this in a legal sense. Why must I call something speech when it isn’t?
And yet you’ve said that the expression of a concept using language on a sign is not speech: your definition does not seem to hold to how you’re using it.
I’m all for calling something “speech” if it holds to the definition I offered: its broad protection makes sure that everything necessary is covered wtihout creating problems by protecting harmful acts. It doesn’t lead to loopholes in which things that should be protected are not. It doesn’t lead to complicated questions about whether something really is speech.
You requirement that it use language is interesting, but it rapidly becomes complicated: linguists have extremely complex definitions of language, in which (for example) some forms of sign language would be protected and other forms would not be, in which an idea expressed in Esperanto might not qualify but the same concept expressed in English would qualify. We end up needing an authority to decide whether something is a real language–if artificial languages are allowed, what protestor worth his salt wouldn’t just invent the language of pyrosemaphore to get his flagburning protected, under your definition?
There’s no percentage in making things so complicated.
Daniel
It sounds quite snotty to say so, but I believe Moto’s position is the following. Everything currently thought of as speech is speech, except for flag-burning. No, I don’t see how I have to prove it, or care what logical knots that wraps me in. You guys have to prove me wrong. Extraordinary claims? What’s that?”
So we can also throw your “advertisements are speech” argument out the window?
When you feel like defining exactly what your criteria for speech are, feel free to let us know. Currently the criteria appear to be “things I want protected are speech, while things I don’t want protected aren’t.”
Yep. That is pretty snotty.
We might want to recall why the Framers put so much into the First Amendment. These rights were related, as they all pertained to freedom of conscience of individual persons. Yet they were not all encompasssing, so they had to be enumerated separately.
If freedom of speech could cover an individual all the way, the Framers would have stopped there. It doesn’t, as they well knew. Some of the worst depredations of the war, including the Boston Massacre, were gross violations of the right to assemble, so that right was enumerated separately. Similarly for freedom of the press, as a right to speak ones mind and the right to print it were traditionally covered by very different laws.
They’re all First Amendment freedoms, but they can’t all be properly described as freedom of speech. And so, if I seem to nitpick here, it’s not without reason.
Having done some research on the subject, it seems that political advertisements in print and broadcast media are treated as if they were other types of media entities. Libel laws, for example, apply.
Therefore, advertisements would seem to be covered by First Amendment protections, but protections pertaining to press freedom, not speech.
This makes a bit of sense to me.