From: matt@smoke.brl.mil (Matthew Rosenblatt)
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Subject: Re: Hate Speech Okay, says the Supreme Court
Summary: Leftist speech would be the first to be censored.
Keywords: Excellence In Broadcasting
Date: 29 Jul 92 18:08:11 GMT
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.

In article <1992Jul26.064106.3512@eff.org> mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin) 
writes:

>One of the ironies of the whole "hate speech" controversy is that those
>who advocate "hate-speech" restrictions are typically members of political
>or ethnic or racial or religious minorities. These very minorities are 
>invariably the *first* to lose their free-speech rights once a society
>decides that freedom of speech is too dangerous to allow.  [Mike Godwin]

Let me second Mr. Godwin's remarks.  And in keeping with "Godwin's Law"
that any discussion here sooner or later winds up with someone's citing
Hitler and his Nazis, let me present an excerpt from Peter J. Boyer's 
article on Rush Limbaugh, published in the May '92 issue of _Vanity Fair_ 
magazine, p. 159:

     "I don't want to compare him to Hitler," echoes Gloria Allred,
   a feminist lawyer in Los Angeles, and a convinced Limbaughphobe
   who denounced him on a recent _60 Minutes_.  "But I will say
   that I wish Hitler had been taken more seriously in the begin-
   ning.  You know what I'm saying?  I just don't think we can wait
   until the damage is done before we start to ask, 'How did this
   happen?'"
     Limbaugh has heard it all before.  "I think if Gloria Allred
   thinks, which she has also said, that I should be off the air,
   that's one of the quintessential aspects of political correct-
   ness.  'Hey, the First Amendment's fine, as long as we control
   who has access to it.  But, well, this guy's too dangerous.'
   Of course I'm dangerous to their mission.  And proud to be 
   dangerous to their mission."

No one bothers trying to suppress ineffective speech.  It is precisely
because feminism is like the Emperor's New Clothes, unable to stand
once reasonable men and women hear the truth about it, that feminists
(and their counterparts in the rest of the "professional victim" industry)
want to suppress such effective speech as Mr. Limbaugh's program that
reaches over eleven million listeners daily with its anti-feminist,
anti-affirmative-action, anti-victimology message.

When _Ms._ magazine did its feature on Andrea Dworkin's proposed
anti-pornography law, it quoted one feminist who asked whether the
would-be censors realized that if censorship based on political
content ever came to this country, it would be feminist publications
like _Ms._ and _Off Our Backs_ that would be the first to be censored.

(What irony!  Pronounce the letters in the magazine's name, and you get
_emes_.  Yet the whole magazine is based on and filled with _sheker_.)

Fortunately, Judge Sarah Evans Barker of the U. S. Circuit Court of
Appeals recognized that the purpose of Miss Dworkin's law, as enacted
by the City of Indianapolis, was to suppress the graphic advocacy of
a political position with which Miss Dworkin disagrees, viz., that 
women ought to be subordinated sexually.  With that as its admitted 
purpose, Judge Barker ruled that the law ran afoul of the First Amendment 
to the U. S. Constitution, and she struck it down.  Her ruling was upheld
by the United States Supreme Court.

					-- Matt Rosenblatt
                                        (matt@amsaa.brl.mil)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
    "White feminists say that they are the sisters of Black women,
     Ask you to join their women's movement,
     And then they want to give you five hundred reasons why
     You should leave your Black man
     And let them eat your . . ."
           -- Sister Souljah
Newsgroups: misc.legal