Four New York state senators recently released a report (pdf) called “Cyberbullying: A Report on Bullying in a Digital Age” which addresses the – very modern – problem of cyberbullying, particularly among teenagers, and looks at possible solutions.
One particular statement, delivered almost in passing, addresses the issue of free speech:
Proponents of a more refined First Amendment argue that this freedom should be treated not as a right but as a privilege – a special entitlement granted by the state on a conditional basis that can be revoked if it is ever abused or maltreated.
Why not? This “refined” approach to speech has always worked out so well in other countries, hasn’t it?
(h/t Dave Blount at Moonbattery)
Who’s conditions?
Uh oh………………………
Once you have something in place like this absurd Law. The possibility of turning it back is zero. They just included the repeal as a red herring. The Marxists favorite ploy.When have you ever heard of a totalitarian law reversed?
Besides its fundamentally against Democracy. We do NOT get our rights from Government. We get them from Natural law & Religious tried morals , from thousands of years of experience.
We the people who make up the electorate decide whats needed. Not an Elitist Political class. This is all about destroy free speech, than later our other Natural rights as the ruling class sees fit. Its a gate to hell to destroy any Constitutional law to replace it with the leader or fads of the day.
To get rid of one evil they would destroy the whole edifice of Freedom. This is not a coincidence. This is a plan using peoples sense of Justice to destroy their own Liberty.
All complaints must be presented in a respectful and subservient fashion, otherwise they will not be entertained.
One can only imagine what the founding fathers would think of such a statement.
I once watched a show on HBO, of all places, on free speech. The host had a quote along the lines of ‘if you take all my rights, save one, I would choose free speech, because with that I could return all the others’.
Could someone help me out with who said that? I’ve googled, but nothing, likely as I’ve paraphrased. I had John Adams in my head.
That said, I too think that free speech is our most important right and governments don’t give rights, people come with rights, governments only take them away.
The most disturbing thing about this piece is not even the proposal to limit free speech. The most dangerous thing here is the woefully mistaken notion that our rights are derived from, or granted, by the State. This is a patently false, dangerous, anti-democratic and totalitarian notion. The signers of the Declaration of Independence understood this clearly and the correctly stated the source of human rights in the first paragraph. Human rights come from a transcendent source that is personal in nature and that stands above any and all human governments. The sole purpose of government is to protect those rights and the moment that a government ceases to do so and instead usurps the authority to create and dispense rights to itself, then it needs to go the way of George III’s rule over the 13 colonies. Any elected officials, local, state or federal, who do not get this are already in violation of their oaths to uphold the Constitution (which is logically dependent upon the Declaration) and need to be summarily removed from office. The sad thing is the woeful state of ignorance that allows our elected officials and fellow citizens to hold to such views.
As long as the nanny state believes it can modify behavior with a never ending parade of rules and regulations they will continue stumble from one brick wall into another. All the rules ever needed are already in place.
There are some things nanny MUST do.
Put dicipline back in the classroom. Bring back the strap and use it.
Give the parents back the authority to dicipline their own kids. That means tan little johnnies ass when he needs it.
If a kid is a little hellion then give teachers permission to turf his/her sorry ass out of school and give the parent(s) a little pamphlet on how to home school. (everyone gets a second chance with this one, but no third)
Rip the 1 800 number for help against brutal adult intolerance off the wall and burn it. There are criminal laws in place for real abuse.
Stop the social engineering. Not every kid is special or number 1.
Fire half the social workers involved in the school system. You would still have far too many but at least it’s a start.
Put all Al Gore/Suzuki/Spock books into the fiction catagory in the school library.
There we go…….a small start to a better school year.
Posted by: ambrs57 at October 5, 2011 11:42 PM
Well-said. The Framers believed that such basic rights that came from G0d could not be usurped by man; this is likely another reason why religion (Christianity, especially) is hated by the weasels on the Left.
mhb23re
Derek, your question led me to a google search. I did not find the quotation you referred to but I did find these–some of which seem appropriate to this situation and to others.
“In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all — security, comfort, and freedom. When … the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free.” — Sir Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
“The sacred rights of property are to be guarded at every point. I call them sacred, because, if they are unprotected, all other rights become worthless or visionary. What is personal liberty, if it does not draw after it the right to enjoy the fruits of our own industry? What is political liberty, if it imparts only perpetual poverty to us and all our posterity? What is the privilege of a vote, if the majority of the hour may sweep away the earnings of our whole lives, to gratify the rapacity of the indolent, the cunning, or the profligate, who are borne into power upon the tide of a temporary popularity?” — Judge Joseph Story, 1852
“It’s important to realize that whenever you give power to politicians or bureaucrats, it will be used for what they want, not for what you want.”– Harry Browne
“Force always attracts men of low morality.” — Albert Einstein
“Do we really think that a government-dominated education is going to produce citizens capable of dominating their government, as the education of a truly vigilant self-governing people requires?” — Alan Keyes
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.” – Thomas Pynchon
Heyyyyy, what’s that big star doing to the little star?
Judge Joseph Story had it right.
The attempts to take away freedoms seems to be escalating everywhere you look in our democracy.
We need to keep freedom in our hearts and minds, no matter how many chains they attempt wrap us up in. Like the chained prisoner in the rail car in the movie Dr. Zhivago said to his guard, “I am a free man, lick spittle”.
They always do it for our own good though.
Rita, I enjoyed reading through your quotes. I rather enjoy quote reading. Getting people to implement them is another matter.
I to wound up looking and reading through a fair amount of articles including the Declaration of Independence itself. The preface is quite breathtaking.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,[75] that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
It is clear that the framers of this article clearly laid out their belief that government is formed to protect the people, not control them.
It is, therefore, no coincidence, that it is the FIRST amendment that addresses the right to freedom of speech.
‘if you take all my rights, save one, I would choose free speech, because with that I could return all the others’.
Nope.
The 2nd Amendment guarantees the 1st Amendment, freedom of speech.
“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
~Mao Tse-Tung
“Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).”
~Ayn Rand
The purpose of government is to protect individual rights. But rights are not granted by the state; they derive from the nature of man’s existence and his requirements for survival. Read Ayn Rand for full details.
Mark Twain, I think, said that outlawing free speech because some can’t handle it is like outlawing steak because a baby can’t chew it.
The issue is nearly perfect knowledge of these incidents in a country of 300 million people. It is like being able to detect arsenic at 1 part per trillion, some people can’t handle the information.
The First Amendment does not say that you are absolved of responsibility for the consequences arising from your exercise of freedom of speech.
Free speech is a foundation of freedom. While it is interesting to debate free speech as it applies to US government, in Canada our rights to free speech in under attack. On October 12th the Supreme Court of Canada will be asked to decide whether it is permissible in Canada to express religious convictions that others find offensive.
Do we have the freedom to proclaim biblical truth in the public square or will our speech be restricted to that which no one finds troubling? In Canada, do we have true religious freedom or only the freedom to believe but not to speak about our beliefs if theses beliefs do not offend others?
This affects everyone’s freedoms. How much of a stretch is it to go from offending someone with biblical quotes to offending someone with expressing conservative ideas?
http://www.evangelicalfellowship.ca/page.aspx?pid=7655
Free Speech is the only weapon we have available to us to use against he political left, if they can take away that right they know they can be the political elites for eternity.
The First Amendment does not say that you are absolved of responsibility for the consequences arising from your exercise of freedom of speech.
It does say you are absolved of consequences imposed by the state. If you want to say bad things about Jews you aren’t absolved from the consequences such as public ridicule and being shunned by decent human beings, but it does mean you are free from a criminal charge by the state.
It is not the consequences but who imposes them that the right to free speech addresses.
re the rat: “It (the 1st) does say you are absolved of consequences imposed by the state.” Not sure of that: what about, oh, slander, libel, calumny, perjury, calling in a false bomb report, etc. plus that oldie but goodie – shouting “Fire” in crowded theater just for fun? You’ll hear (rightly) from some branch or other of the state.
Shut up they explained.
Y’all do know what this means, right? It means what we are doing is working. It means we are screwing up the gameplan of the Ruling Class just by -talking-. Not even any hitting, just pointing and laughing at the Wall Street “protesters”/astroturfers, fact checking the gun control wankers, exposing frauds in the AGW farce, and of course doing the job the main stream media is getting bribed not to do.
They need to make us SHUT UP or they are going to be out of power in the Western world. Not just the USA, but here in Canada, Europe, etc.
And you know what? They -can’t-. Its physically impossible.
@The Phantom
Ah, yes – that reminds me. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, Andrew Klavan’s position on the matter (from a couple of years ago):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWHgUE9AD4s
There was a horse I rode a few times when I was young misnamed “Honey”. At every excuse she would try to head back for the barn.
A car goes by? Pretend to startle and head back to the barn. Crossing a bridge? Same thing. Bird chirps? You guessed it. Unfortunately I wasn’t a good enough enough ride to deal with it effectively.
Governments are the same way. Every conceivable excuse is used to introduce laws to limit the citizenry, whether it makes sense or not. They just can’t stomach the thought of people doing what they will.
Free speech a privelage? And what bureaucrat is going to police my use of my privelage? After all, the first use I would make of this privelage is tell them to eff off.
slander, libel, calumny, perjury, calling in a false bomb report, etc. plus that oldie but goodie – shouting “Fire” in crowded theater just for fun? You’ll hear (rightly) from some branch or other of the state.
The first few are not punished by the state but are civil actions. Perjury is lying under oath and you do have the right to remain silent. As for shouting fire in a crowded theatre (or calling in false bomb threats), that’s old, tired, and used by too many people to justify too much censorship. If that’s the best argument you have against unfettered free speech I’m willing to risk the chance of a stampede.
And to add insult to injury HRCs here in Canada have ruled that truth is not a valid defense.
In true Orwellian fashion skepticism is now deemed as denial.