Kansas City Star (blog) | Letting hate speech be heard is price of First Amendment | The ... Kansas City Star (blog) One of the problems with defending free speech, the celebrated author Salman Rushdie said, is you often have to defend people that you find to be outrageous ... |
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Letting hate speech be heard is price of First Amendment | The ... - Kansas City Star (blog)
But it doesnt hurt.
Our friends at the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications have invited Keillor to headline the 15th Annual First Amendment Awards, Oct. 5 at the Palace Theatre in Manchester.
Some of our readers dont like that Keillor has sharpened the tone of his homespun prairie punditry in response to President Donald Trump. But we must never take for granted the freedom that allows a writer to call out the head of our government.
Our late President and Publisher, Nackey Loeb, founded the Loeb School in 1999 to promote understanding and appreciation of the First Amendment, and to foster excellence in journalism.
Partisans who rarely agree on anything should be able to agree on the importance of those principles.
Tickets to the First Amendment Awards are on sale now at the Palace Theatre. We would encourage you to attend.
Were sure everyone in the audience will be above average.
Politics Social issues Editorial
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Welcome back, Garrison: Saluting the First Amendment - The Union Leader
August 21, 2017 6:30 AM By Jon Keller
BOSTON (CBS) Now that the dust has settled on Saturdays events down at the Common, thankfully with no serious injuries that I know of, we can start to take stock of what really happened.
It doesnt surprise me that my suggestion of last week that the community isolate and repudiate the protagonists by completely boycotting their pitiful rally was ignored.
Thousands of protesters march on Tremont Street in Boston against a Free Speech Rally on Boston Common, August 19, 2017. (WBZ-TV)
As we saw at the massive Womens March against Trump last winter and again on Saturday, there are many thousands of people in our community willing to show up and protest peacefully, and thats a good thing.
Thousands of counter protesters march to a Free Speech Rally on Boston Common on August 19, 2017. (Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
Its also not surprising that the crowd included a few hundred creepy wanna-be anarchists and others looking for trouble, who found it by roughing up a few Trump supporters and pointlessly confronting the cops.
Some counter demonstrators scuffled with Boston Police after the rally on the Common ended Saturday afternoon. (WBZ-TV)
If they managed to catch any of the creeps who allegedly threw bodily waste at the police, I call on the district court judges to come up with creative punishment.
Some protesters scuffled with riot police escorting conservative activists following a march in Boston against a free speech rally on August 19, 2017 in Boston. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
But the whole affair left me with a question: why did the City of Boston issue a permit for this travesty at all?
Given the size of the counter-protesting crowd, I can understand keeping them well away from the fringe rally.
An aerial view of protesters on Boston Common demonstrating against a so-called free speech rally on the Parkman Bandstand Saturday, August 19, 2017. (WBZ-TV)
But barring the media not even a pool camera was allowed effectively shut down any public access to the speeches.
That wasnt necessary to protect public safety.
The free speech rally was confined to the Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common Saturday as barriers and police held back a massive protest. (WBZ-TV)
It deprived the public of a good chance to hear how little these folks had to offer.
And it made a joke of the First Amendment just when it needs to be taken more seriously than ever.
Follow Jon on Twitter E-Mail Jon Keller Jon Keller is WBZ-TV News' Political Analyst, and his "Keller At Large" reports on a wide range of topics are regularly featured during WBZ-TV News at 6PM and 11PM. Keller also broadcasts morning dri...
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Keller @ Large: Making A Joke Of The First Amendment - CBS Boston / WBZ
According to Joseph Rizoli the First Amendment rights of free speech and assembly only extend to those with government-issued permits to exercise those rights (The real haters at Charlottesville, Aug. 15). Thus, the counter-protesters to the supposed non-haters had no right to assemble, no right to speak freely, only to stay home and shut up. Anything else is hate, according to Mr. Rizoli.
Of course, theres no excuse for either side throwing bricks or anything else at the other side, except perhaps insults, even without a permit. You, know, its the free speech thing. I notice, however, that Mr. Rizoli did not mention driving a car into the counter-protesting haters, apparently because having a permit to exercise ones First Amendment rights also allows attacking those without a permit with a 3,000-pound, deadly weapon.
The MetroWest News frequently publishes the First Amendment on the editorial page. Mr. Rizoli should read it, contemplate it, and try to understand it.
K. A. Boriskin
Bellingham
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Letter: Peculiar First Amendment interpretation - MetroWest Daily News
As a journalist, I like to think I know a little something about the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Like most students in the United States, I studied the Bill of Rights in grade school and learned the First Amendments protections by rote: freedom of speech, religion, assembly, petition and the press. (That last one is now my bread and butter.)
In later years, I dove a little deeper by reading landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions in college like Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District, in which the court found in 1969 that black armbands worn to protest the Vietnam War were protected symbolic speech.
That was the same year the court decided Brandenburg v. Ohio, and determined that government could not punish public speech, including that of KKK leader Clarence Brandenburg at a 1964 Klan rally, unless it is directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to spur such action.
Im no constitutional scholar, but I do know that protections exist even for hateful speech, the kind reported extensively in the aftermath of the white nationalist rally last weekend in Charlottesville, Va., where ensuing violence claimed the life of 32-year-old counter-protester Heather Heyer.
Even though most Americans would agree that the racist rhetoric spewed by Neo-Nazis, the KKK and other hate groups is vile and unsettling, many of us would likely also agree that it, too, must be shielded by the First Amendment to avoid creating an environment ripe for censorship and censure.
There it is, folks, the slippery-slope argument. End of story.
Well, not quite.
Im getting sort of sick and tired of all the absolute-constitutional-rights talk. Theres nothing absolute about constitutional rights, said Justin Brooks, a professor at California Western School of Law in San Diego.
Brooks said as much in a post he shared on Facebook last week, along with a photo of tiki-torch bearing white nationalists gathered on the University of Virginia campus. He added, Hate speech should not be protected speech.
The post attracted many responses and prompted a robust debate among friends and colleagues. It also prompted a call from the Union-Tribune.
Brooks said he disagrees with the U.S. Supreme Court, which has long held that there is no general exception for hate speech under the First Amendment, but has identified a few well-defined and narrowly limited exceptions that include obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement and true threats.
(The court) has drawn the line you have to be inciting violence in order for it to be restricted, Brooks said. What bothers me about this discussion is it doesnt recognize how hurtful some of that hate speech is. At a certain point, speech can actually cause harm to individuals.
He said he understands the fear many Americans and the courts feel about the prospect of regulating hate speech, because defining it is subjective. But he argued that it is possible to draw a narrow definition that regulates public displays of hate, based on race, gender, nationality, ethnicity and sexual preference.
There is no doubt that the hate speech promoted by the KKK and Nazis causes harm to the members of our community who are targeted, Brooks said. Therefore, it is appropriate to regulate that speech.
He didnt need social media to know his views on the subject are unpopular, particularly among others in legal community. (See: slippery slope.)
Recently, the American Civil Liberties Union represented Jason Kessler, organizer of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, in a lawsuit to keep the far-right groups permit to protest at a downtown park.
In response to criticism, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero wrote a statement explaining the nonprofits decision to represent white supremacist demonstrators in court. In it, he acknowledged that speech alone can have hurtful consequences, but argued that the airing of hateful speech allows people of good will to confront the implications of such speech and reject bigotry, discrimination and hate.
Preventing the government from controlling speech is absolutely necessary to the promotion of equality, he wrote.
dana.littlefield@sduniontribune.com
Twitter: @danalittlefield
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How far do the First Amendment's protections go when it comes to hate speech? - The San Diego Union-Tribune