I will never pretend that there is a right to advocate genocide and murder. To do that is the negation of rights and a forfeiture of rights, not a right. The genocides of the 20th century, those of our previous century should have proved that hardest of realities.
The simple, slogan based understanding of the role that speech plays in egalitarian democracy used by "civil liberties" advocates in the past century, including what has been consistently identified as a right to advocate the denial of life and equal rights to innocent people on the basis of their race, their ethnicity, their religion, their gender their gender identity, is inadequate and based on willful ignorance and stupidity. Its simplicity is attractive and easy, its results have been catastrophic, especially for those who are not rich and members of non-targeted groups. That is certainly no surprise to those who have been victimized through the advocacy of violence, discrimination (inevitably imposed through violence) and those who are the focus of media-wide lie campaigns.
After the 20th century when real genocidal campaigns killed tens of millions of people, after the American history with the not infrequently deadly violence of slavery, of Jim Crow, of other campaigns of racism and subjugation of women, etc. CONDUCTED UNDER THE BILL OF RIGHTS AND, AS CAN BE SEEN THROUGH THE BILL OF RIGHTS AS INTERPRETED BY THE SUPREME COURT AT THE BEHEST OF GROUPS LIKE THE ACLU, THE RUTHERFORD INSTITUTE, ETC. It's long, long past time to come up with something that protects people against the results of such speech.
That is especially true now that the decades long barrage of anti-liberal hate speech on cable TV and hate-talk radio has put Donald Trump in office and, after his treason is exposed, after his placement of a white supremacist in the office of Attorney General, after his hiring of actual Nazis to work in the White House, we still have the same idiots who brought the cases on behalf of well financed extreme right-wing groups that resulted in Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United still spouting the same enabling lines that have brought us past the point of that fabled "Constitutional crisis" from the ongoing and never mentioned crisis of Democracy.
The theory of "free speech" such "civil libertarians" has been made the law of the land and the results are a crisis for democracy which could, well, finish off American democracy. And the idiots have learned nothing, they are enabling Nazis, the KKK, and other enemies of the American People, Black People, Latinos, Women, LGBT People, Jews, liberals, and yesterday they announced after last week that they've finally, decades after a campaign of violence which includes the largest mass murder of Americans before 9-11 that, maybe, it's not a good idea to have people who bring guns to rallies as clients - though if it had not turned bad for publicity, I doubt they'd have noticed. And they'll still, no doubt, take their side in court if they claim they won't bring their guns to another one. But it was a car that was used to kill and maim people this time.
The lawyers, judges and "justices" who have enabled this situation, both privileging the billionaires boys club, the right wing media moguls on the upper scale and the Nazis, KKK and white supremacists on the bottom have driven this country into this crisis through their favored interpretation of articles in the Bill of Rights, the First and Second Amendments and others. They show no sign of taking any responsibility for what has resulted, not even the supposed liberals among them. They don't even seem to notice the problem.
The only reason that free speech is politically important, its ultimate legal importance is to protect the rights and lives of people on an equal basis, to create a decent, peaceful life for all of us. Its secondary importance is to produce effective and just self-governance by a population on the basis of accurate information and an expression of their good will, an expression of their intention to have, promote and maintain egalitarian democracy with just laws that apply equally. The ACLU with its "free speech" fetish is only one part of the American legal establishment and judicial system which has actively worked against that. The results are a product of the theorizing of law scholars, none of them poor, relatively few of them living lives where they have to worry about Nazis, the KKK or white supremacists, none of those who act to enable them believing that they are really the ones in danger from them. Lots of people don't have that luxury.
I noted the other day that the ACLU spoke out of both sides of its mouth about how the police were strong handed in trying to keep the order in the KKK rally in Charlottesville in July and, then, that they didn't do enough to keep the peace when their Nazi clients turned as ugly as they had always intended to get, they complained they weren't strong handed enough. They want it all ways, in every way, and they deny any responsibility for any of it, even as they enable the worst of the worst among us and create publicity for their organization and get Hollywood idiots to raise money for them on that basis. There was talk of a big post-Oscar party for them to raise money for the ACLU to protest Trump's regime. That they would raise money for an organization which, through their "money equals speech" advocacy had done so much to make it possible to put Trump in office only shows how successful the ACLU PR job has been. The left won't defeat Trump with that kind of willful blindness as to the effect that group and others like it have in real life instead of pious PR.
If the First Amendment is what leads us ever farther to the right and right into fascism, as it has already produced the once unthinkable Trump "presidency" there is something very wrong with it, just as there is, clearly, something wrong with the Second Amendment. The ACLU exists to promote everything wrong with it on the basis of pretending the law can't distinguish between the Civil Rights Movement and Nazis. Anyone who can't do that is too stupid to be running a legal system and a judicial system. And they claim they are that stupid. We should believe them and act to protect ourselves from them. You can't support the billionaire boys club's destruction of our elections, swamping the media, and the ability of Nazis, the KKK and other violent hate groups and honestly claim to promote democracy and the equal justice before the law. Not honestly.
It was politicians, even Republican ones, along with Democrats, who tried to get big money out of our elections. It took the lawyer and judges and justices to put it right back in If you want to see how Nazis came to be working in the White House, they're the one who enabled that. Including the big role in that by the sacred ACLU. Remember that if the Boston and other "free speech" Nazi rallies turn ugly enough to get in the news.
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