Moments of Permanence - The gathering storm

From: elspethdixon Date: June 11th, 2009 04:47 pm (UTC) (Link)

In America, a constitutional amendment that refers directly to a well-regulated militia is somehow interpreted to mean that unregulated access to automatic weapons is a fundamental right of all citizens.

That's not 100% true. The Federal ban on automatic weapon unfortunately expired in 2004 (they're trying to re-instate it) but multiple states have assault weapon bans of their own, as does the Distric of Columbia, where the shooting took place. DC actually had a complete ban on guns until 2008, when said ban was unsurprisingly declared unconstitutional. They're now in a kind of legal limbo over hand guns until they get new legislation passed, but owning automatic and semi-automatic weapons is still prohibited there. Maryland and Virginia will let you own assault rifles (you'd think they'd change their minds about that after the sniper shootings a few years ago, but no!), but you have to be registered with the state police to do so, and there's a background check involved that this guy wouldn't have been able to pass.

There are places like Texas and Alaska that basically hand guns out like candy, though. Texas hands out concealed carry permits like there's no tomorrow, too. My sister was amazed at how easy it was to get one when she was stationed there -- they're tightly restricted in Maryland, where we grew up.

The shooter in this case wouldn't have been able to legally buy a gun of any kind anywhere, though, since by federal law nobody who's been convicted of a felony can legally own a gun, and this guy had already been convicted of various "I am a psycho white supremacist" federal crimes in the past. He had to have gotten them illegally. Unfortunately, that's not very hard to do.

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From: nicki Date: June 11th, 2009 05:08 pm (UTC) (Link)

Even if I do not agree with what someone else says, I will fight tooth and nail to allow them to say it. Freedom of speech is one of the founding values of the US and it is not acceptable to limit anything other than actual threat speech. There is always someone out there who will disagree with what you say and if ALL speech isn't protected, when the ball rolls around to the other side, protest speech that I approve of may be limitted.

OTOH, I am pro the assault weapons ban and it should be reinstated. The right to bare arms doesn't necessarily include assault weapons.

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From: sami Date: June 11th, 2009 05:36 pm (UTC) (Link)

Freedom of speech is one thing, but hate speech, the speech that foments violence, the speech that brought the conditions that killed Tiller?

Incitement to hatred and violence shouldn't be legal, and I'm frankly glad that where I live, it isn't. Indirect harm is still harm. The people who agitate for white supremacy, who set about persuading others that all their troubles are the fault of the Jews and Negros, are the people who fostered such a rage and resentment in this man that he opened fire in the Holocaust Museum.

A major problem with the United States of America is that the principles espoused by its founders in reaction to an oppressive imperial government have been taken to extremes. The men who wrote the United States Constitution were too intelligent to see things in absolutist terms.

Look at the actual text of the First Amendment. Think about the free speech part both in the context of the sentence and the context of history.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This is about Congress not trying to control the press and the right to criticise the government. This is written by men who'd experienced a government that allowed no dissent, no criticism, no complaint of injustice. No protests, however peaceful.

I am quite sure that these same men - who were just men, by the way, and therefore fully capable of writing a constitution that wasn't ACTUALLY a perfect and flawless document, and who were writing it OVER TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO, who couldn't have anticipated the rise of hate speech and, I'm pretty confident, who would have disapproved of it - did not intend to enshrine the right of bigots to foment violence aimed at SUPPRESSING freedom of ideas.

I just... no. Freedom of speech is not an all-or-nothing proposition, as demonstrated by the fact that "freedom of speech" is not an enshrined right in Australia or Britain, and you know what? So long as it is not, in fact, hate speech, which is defined as that which incites hatred and/or violence, you can say what you want. You can criticise who you want. Sure, if you say something unpopular, you'll be criticised for it, but that's all.

Protest speech you approve of will not be limited, unless you approve of protest speech that incites hatred and/or violence, because THAT is what is illegal. You don't need to guarantee absolute free speech, you just define what is unacceptable, and apply that evenly.

And if legislation is attempted to redefine that in ways that are unreasonable, then it gets shut down by mass disapproval, because guess what: parliamentary democracy? Still democracy. Somehow, our centuries of non-unrestricted free speech haven't resulted in totalitarian dictatorship.

America's way is not the only way, and you know how I can tell our way is better?

We don't have a Rush Limbaugh. We don't have an Ann Coulter.

And we don't have domestic terrorists. The culture of hate that's taken over parts of America just doesn't have an equal or even a parallel here.

We also have gun control. This, too, has not resulted in fascist dictatorship; it's just resulted in almost-nonexistent rates of gun crime.

In 2007, in a country of approximately twenty million people, exactly 16 people died as a result of firearm assault.

Sixteen. In the entire country, in an entire year. The right to bear arms shouldn't be a right at all.

America's a lovely country and all, but neither the country nor its constitution is flawless.

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From: elspethdixon Date: June 11th, 2009 09:28 pm (UTC) Oh God, this is epically tl;dr. Sorry. (Link)

I wouldn't say that Britain doesn't have domestic terrorists. The IRA certainly qualified in the 70s/80s/90s.

The US Constitution's first amendment is actually pretty uncompromising. Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech (Freedom of the press is generally considered a slightly seperate though connected freedom). No law. Flat out. It doesn't even provide for exceptions like "save in time of war, to preserve to common good," or whatever.

That hasn't stopped unconstitutional laws restricting freedom of speech from being passed in the past, generally during wartime. The Sedition Act of 1918, which banned "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" re the Us government or armed forces, made the Patriot Act look tame, and enabled the government to throw people in jail for protesting WWI or the draft and the postal service to refuse to deliver mail to or for people suspected of sedition. Hundreds of people were jailed for criticizing the war or the draft or the government in general, many of them union/labor activists.

Federal laws restricting freedom of speech tend to be in that vein (restricting civil liberties for 'national security' reasons), and Americans tend to be suspicious of them in no small part for that reason. And of course, the fact that if you pass laws prohibiting people from saying things you don't like, it makes it that much easier for someone to pass similar laws affecting you. In fandom's case... well, anything dealing with sex or homosexuality is often first thing up against the wall (women's health was a frequent victim in the past, too. Margaret Sanger had to lecture with a gag over her mouth, writing on a chalkboard instead of speaking, because describing birth control aloud violated obscenity laws). Once the foot is in the door, pre-existing societal biases often dictatc who gets to speak and who gets silenced. The priviledged are always less likely to be silenced.

IMO, the presence of people like Michael Savage and Ann Coulter and the Westboro Baptist Souless Monsters animated only by hate who may not actually be human Church is a necessary evil in order for people to protest the war in Iraq, to protest Prop 8, to march for gay pride, to speak out against racism. In the hands of people whose main interest is shutting PoC up, for example, an awful lot of the angrier and more aggressive speech against white priviledge could be labeled "hate speech" against whites and silenced (many of Malcom X's speeches would probably qualify, I bet, had hate speech as a concept existed in the 50s/60s). Think the tone argument applied in a legal setting. Or anyway, that's what I tell myself when I start spitefully thinking that fundamentalist Christianity should be illegal (it would be wrong, it would be wrong, but God, there are time when it starts to seem like not entirely a bad idea).

Actually, the fear that freedom of speech or freedom of religion might be abridged has kept numrous hate crimes bills from being passed here, because even though they generally specifically state that they apply only to *criminal actions*, there's always scare mongering that including gays and lesbians under hate crime laws will mean that religions like Catholicism or the Baptist Church would be criminalized for preaching their beliefs. Usually this scare-mongering is done by hypocritical anti-gay rights people who know perfectly well that they're spreading lies, but it works, because it's an issue that's very important to Americans (well, to many of us, at least. I can't speak for all of us, and it clearly wasn't a top priority for the Bush administration).

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From: lady_ganesh Date: June 12th, 2009 01:03 am (UTC) Re: Oh God, this is epically tl;dr. Sorry. (Link)

In the hands of people whose main interest is shutting PoC up, for example, an awful lot of the angrier and more aggressive speech against white priviledge could be labeled "hate speech" against whites and silenced (many of Malcom X's speeches would probably qualify, I bet, had hate speech as a concept existed in the 50s/60s).

THIS. In fact, the history of censorship in the US and other countries indicates that it usually is the 'deviant' that gets censored far more than the haters or bigots.

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From: nicki Date: June 12th, 2009 05:28 pm (UTC) (Link)

The Constitution was exactly set up intending to limit government interference as much as possible and still keep the country strong and functional and our founding fathers did that intentionally. Freedom of speech is explicitly unrestricted because they understood that what I consider protest is what Joe Public down the block thinks is hate speech. I don't know how much the rest of the world saw of this, but in 2002/2003/2004 there was serious ranting on the more conservative side of the spectrum about how people should be forced to shut up and not protest/criticize the government during war time and what protects our right to do that is freedom of speech (I would also argue that fear of infringement is one of the things that created quiet concern that led to Obama's election). Political cartoons are protected by freedom of speech. Art is protected by freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is THE key principle to the country IMO because it protects something that a majority of people might hate and oppress and allows those who are hated and opressed by the majority to scream as loud as necessary about it.

One of the things we signed up for in our odd little rebellion was the constant need to balance freedom and safety that would be tipped to the freedom side. We have 350,000,000 people in the US and our domestic terrorism is almost non-existent considering that. Yes, our murder rate is high for a developed country, but most of that isn't hate crime related at all and has nothing to do with freedom of speech. I don't like Coulter or Limbaugh, but the freedom that allows them allows speech that I consider necessary and no, Britain and Australia don't have totalitarian dictatorships, and I don't know much about how Australia works, but Britain does things (that stupid Bush thought were fabulous ideas) that I find to be totally unacceptable and one of the things that limits that more here is freedom of speech.

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From: elspethdixon Date: June 11th, 2009 09:34 pm (UTC) (Link)

Michael Savage isn't even allowed into the United Kingdom

This fact makes me happy. His radio show is a thing of horror (seriously, I've listened to it. It makes Fox News sound liberal and John Ringo novels read like left-wing utopian tracts). Fred Phleps and his ilk being likewise banned from numerous European countries also makes me happy. Because I'm all for freedom of speech, but there's something seductively pleasant about seeing people you despise get the real life equivalent of a banhammer.

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From: lady_ganesh Date: June 12th, 2009 01:06 am (UTC) (Link)

As much as Michael Savage's ban from the UK makes me grin, you have to admit it didn't stop the BNP from winning those seats. (I still hate that man like burning, though.)

In America, angry, bitter racists are armed.

You forget: They're not the only ones who are.

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From: mmoa_writes Date: June 13th, 2009 06:27 pm (UTC) Pedant on a mission intercepts... here. (Link)

...you have to admit it didn't stop the BNP from winning those seats.

True, but those seats were won because most of us didn't vote as opposed to more people voting for the BNP.

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