From: sethb@fid.morgan.com (Seth Breidbart)
Subject: Re: Hate Speech Okay, says the Supreme Court
Organization: my opinions only
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 21:30:44 GMT

In article <1992Jul15.164024.24944@Princeton.EDU>
egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges) writes:
>In article <1992Jul15.145613.24643@samba.oit.unc.edu> Chuck.Lavazzi@bbs.oit.unc.edu (Chuck Lavazzi) writes:
>>In article <1992Jul15.003025.25925@Princeton.EDU> egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges) writes:
>>>>
>>	You coulda fooled me, too.  Tell you what, Ed: go out in the street
>>tomorrow and ask the first 50 people you meet if they "approve of cross
>>burnings".  See how many say yes.
>
>Saying one thing and doing another is quite common in our society,

Therefore, Ed knows what people think much better than they do.
Anybody who says something that disagrees with Ed must be either a
liar or mistaken about his own beliefs.

>>>...until he pisses Seth off enough, or America goes to war,or ...
>>	Thank you, Mr. Ad Hominem.  Seth hhas never said anything to justify
>>that particular cheap shot.  And I didn't notice any lack of protest during
>>the Gulf War, despite it's overwhelming popular support.
>
>Had the Gulf War lasted, civilian censorship would have begun.

Ed is also good at predicting the future (well, the contrafactual
future).  How are you on the Stock Market, Ed?

>  As it happened,
>freedom of speech WAS limited during the Gulf War in the form of extreme
>military control of journalists, essentially limiting them to canned
>briefings at Club Scud.

I think it's reasonable for the military not to allow the press into a
war zone, since the press will reposrt things that can cost lives.

>  As to my assumption that civilian censorship
>would have been introduced during a longer war, I have the experience of
>America during each previous wars (jailing of antiwar IWW dissidents
>during WWI,

Censorship?  Did only those who spoke publicly get jailed, or were
many people jailed for being "enemies"?

> imprisonment of the Nisei

Not because they _said_ anything in particular.

> and muzzling of journalists during
>WWII,

Military secrecy, again?

> Korea's McCarthyism,

Censorship?  (I didn't know there was any McCarthyism in Korea.  Do
you mean McCarthyism during the Korean War period?  McCarthyism was
opposed to "enemies"; it was a violation of rights, and is known to
everybody as such.)

> and domestic offensives against Vietnam,
>protests.)  

In which they didn't generally try to stop the protests.

>Lemme turn UPPER CASE ON SO YOU UNDERSTAND IT.  I WILL ALSO TRY TO USE
>WORDS OF ONE SYLLABLE (SYLL-ABLE).  ROBERT A. VIKTORA, THE JERKFACED
>HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUT WHOSE CRIME INSPIRED THIS BAD DECISION, BURNED A
>CROSS ON A BLACK FAMILY'S LAWN, FORCING THEM TO MOVE TO CHICAGO.  THERE
>SEEMS TO BE A CONCERTED EFFORT TO CONCEAL THIS FACT AND TO PRETEND THAT
>THE DECISION IS ABOUT SOMEONE WHO BURNED A CROSS ON ** HIS ** LAWN.
>
>THE ATTEMPT TO MOVE THE FACTS OF THE CASE TO ONE'S "OWN" LAWN IS A LIE,
>PURE AND SIMPLE.

I'm not going to engage in a shouting match, but Ed, please read the
following paragraph until you understand.  Get someone else to explain
it to you, if necessary.

Nobody on the net is defending Viktora's action.  We are defending the
action of the Supreme Court, in striking down a law that prohibited
certain expressions.  The fact that the application of the law in
question was to somebody who was vicious, stupid, evil, and criminal
(for numerous other reasons) is irrelevant.  The law that was struck
down was a bad law.

Exaggerated analogy:  St. Paul passes a law against wearing a red
shirt.  While wearing a red shirt, John Smith murders 6 people.  He is
arrested and tried for wearing a red shirt, and convicted.  The
Supreme Court eventually strikes down the law against wearing a red
shirt.  Most of us feel that the Supreme Court did the right thing; Ed
Nilges gets all upset because a murderer's conviction was overturned.
The rest of us still want John Smith convicted of murder (and Viktora
convicted of _his_ crimes); it's just that wearing a red shirt (and
burning a cross, per se) is not a crime.

>It is no less a lie because nobody on this net will come out and make
>the false claim that Viktora burned a cross on his own lawn (a claim
>easily disproved.)  Instead, the discussion is continually phrased in
>the form of hypotheticals in a deliberate, almost Stalinist, attempt to
>conceal the truth and confuse the issue.

No, the discussion is phrased in the form of hypotheticals because the
law in question would criminalize a making Hollywood movie about
Reconstruction if a cross were to be burned in the process of making
that movie.  That's why the law was a bad one, and was overturned.

>  If
>(contrary to the facts of the Viktora case) I burn a cross on my lawn
>in hopes that my black neighbors see it and become fearful of battery,
>the black family has a cause of action for assault

If they can prove that's the reason you burned it.  Suppose you burned
it because you just bought the house, you're a devout Muslim or Jew,
and you refuse to own any symbols of another religion?

> (and since black
>families have special difficulties in this area and bad historical
>memories, I say, more power in the form of extra laws to them. The sins
>of the father ARE visited upon the children, there ARE intergenerational
>torts.)

According to the way the US works, a _person_ is considered innocent
until that _person_ is proven guilty.  It doesn't matter what that
person's father may have done.  It doesn't matter what somebody that
person never met, but who happens to have the same skin color, hair
color, or eye color as that person, may have done.

Seth		sethb@fid.morgan.com
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.clinton