Saturday, July 08, 2006
More free speech
Yet another Hero of the Left waxes poetical about the evils of Amerikkka. Is this speech protected by the infinitely elastic First Amendment? Or does Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution have any meaning when prohibiting "aid and comfort to the enemy"? You know for sure where the Left will come down on this.
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14 comments:
you think he should be silenced?
"Hero of the Left" is just an insider joke -- but yes, he is the sort of guy I can see Moore, Churchill, and Chomsky swooning over. Becoming the little Goebbels for the enemy is the sort of thing the Left loves, non?
BTW, I read somewhere that Gadahn helps run the AQ studio where they make the snuff movies (you know the genre -- beheading the infidel) and the propaganda speeches by Binnie & Co. No doubt, more free speech protected by the 1st Amendment, right? Yeah, sure.
hate speech is not protected so this isn't a real concern. more interestingly is whether run of the mill anti-war rhetoric ought to be protected or whether you believe it should be restricted as one may argue it provides some level of comfort to the enemy.
This is not a question of "hate speech". Rather. of an American citizen taking arms against his own country, and giving aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war. I know this is an impossible notion to grasp for people on the Left -- after all, they much prefer strutting on an enemy gun, pointing it towards US aviators (à la Hanoi Jane). But, believe it or not, the Constitution has an express clause covering such a situation (right there, in the original body, in Section 3). And, it's not a question of rhetoric in this case, but, of concrete actions on behalf of a deadly enemy.
hey that's fine - i don't know of anyone arguing for this guy and I am certainly not: you are just setting up a darking of the left straw man here.
Again, what is your take on garden-variety anti-war rhetoric ?
Well, depends on what "garden-variety" means. If it's the usual Bush=Hitler, blood-for-oil, Halliburton-Cheney, Amerikkka=bad, blah, blah, blah nonsense, it don't bother me, it's just background noise, devoid of all meaning. Let the likes of Momma Sheehan shout themselves hoarse, for all I care.
But when a guy like Ward Churchill calls everyone who perished in the Twin Towers "little Eichmanns", thereby inciting the crazies to kill us all (by implication, moi and my family), that really bothers me. I don't think that's protected speech -- it's as bad or worse as shouting "fire" in a crowded theater.
And when a guy like Johnnie Walker or this Adam Gadahn literally adheres to the enemy (as stipulated in the treason clause of the Constitution) that bothers me enormously.
>>the usual Bush=Hitler, blood-for-oil, Halliburton-Cheney, Amerikkka=bad, blah, blah
it's just background noise, devoid of all meaning
you are right - but you are referring to your caricature of the anti-war movement. I don't know anyone whose line of argumentation reduces to such simplistic rhetoric.
In other words, i think reducing arguments to a caricature and attacking the caricature you made is not intellectually honest.
Is this a caricature? By and large, this is the level of discourse I hear or read about all the time from the Left. As I said, take Michael Moore, Ward Churchill, Noam Chomsky, or any one of their cohorts, and you'll see pretty much the same cacophony. I still have to see a semi-cogent critique of the War on Terror (or its important component, the War in Iraq) -- I very much doubt an intelectually honest case can be made. I must have read dozens if not hundreds of such critiques, and with perhaps a few that came close to having a point (Derb's agony was touching), none made sense to me, basically because pretty much all start from a patently false premise, to wit, that there is no existential threat to our civilization.
Aahhh, the joys of free speech! Don't these guys have a ball?
The audience laughs as Omar Brooks, a British Muslim convert who also uses the name Abu Izzadeen, makes fun of non-Muslims as “animals” and “cowards”.
Brooks — who has previously described the London bombers as “completely praiseworthy” — identifies with the views of Mohammad Sidique Khan, the ringleader of the London attacks.
He contrasts the supposed bravery of Khan’s suicide to the “kuffar” (non-Muslims) who are characterised as debauched binge-drinkers who vomit and urinate in the street.
The speech is peppered with jokes that bring laughter from his audience at the Small Heath youth and community centre in Birmingham, where it was filmed last Sunday.
At one point he announces dramatically that the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center “changed many people’s lives”. After a pause, he brings the house down by adding: “Especially those inside.”
The Michael Moore Left would die laughing. Very funny.
>>basically because pretty much all start from a patently false premise, to wit, that there is no existential threat to our civilization.
i raised this question a while back but got no coherent answer from you &/or aa. I made the point that for the threat to west civ exist, there had to be 1. intent 2. means. I argued that whie there was abundance of #1, AQ patently lacks in the #2 department. What do you
find lacking in this argument?
OK, we finally have a sound basis for discussion, if we agree, and it seems we do, that intent is there. By the way, there are many on both Left and right who don't even agree with this basic premise, in which case, all further discussion is a dialogue des sourds.
As for the means, OK, that's a delicate argument to make. I'll do it another time, after I watch the France-Italy game. I'm with JJ on that -- Forza Azzurri!
there is no doubt that intent is there! whether or not to the entirety of western civ is debatable, but certainly to the anglo-saxon subset. It doesn't matter much though: without means, intent is little more than a distraction.
wopspankfest 'round the corner.
Wopspankfest? Hah! Getting back to that cartoon with the bull and the rooster (which I finally understood!), methinks le coq l'aura dans le baba, this time around.
Hah! I got it right!!
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