What news is good news?
nemo_gravis has a raging debate on the limits of free speech. Nemo, the devil's advocate, says that gangsta rap (one of my least favorite forms of music) could be considered assault. Others take the quite popular position that "chilling effects" are the worst of all possible outcomes.
First, assault is a felony. Words can constitute assault if they strike fear into the alleged victim. Presumably, I can assault you by leaving a threatening letter on your doorstep. Certainly, sending harassing or threatening letters through the U.S. Post Office is a federal felony offense.
Got that? Felony. Fear. Words alone, remote. This is important.
Threatening or advocating violence against a person is criminal. So, too, then, is acting as a publicist for a violent organization. By acting as a publicist, one aids the spreading of the threats and harassment.
This is not speech. These are acts. Acts receive no First Amendment protection.
This is speaking strictly. In everyday life in modern America, we are used to a much looser standard. Violence is historically low over much of the U.S., so things are rather lax; we have a lot of slack in the system... for now.
Comes a man with a website celebrating a terrorist organization as freedom fighters. The government prosecutes. But we don't have much violence in America, just the usual nut jobs driving SUVs into crowds, blowing themselves up and shooting up a Jewish neighborhood center. Hardly a three-man crime wave. Is the government right to prosecute?
I think so, yes. If they don't, and violence escalates later, they will be charged with the failure; almost as serious a crime as actually committing it-just like 9/11.
Also like 9/11, sadly, is the knee-jerk response to tighter law enforcement as fascism. Of course, the left leaves out of their argument the fact that any crackdown after some future, serious, violent attack hits the media's grist mill will almost certainly be more broadly supported, more severe, and more pro-active.
Case in point: I have a post below wishing death on science fiction author Harlan Ellison. I hasten in that post, and repeat now, that I do not wish him murdered; I just think he's outlived his useful time on Earth. My hostility to him, who was once a great author, is entirely abstract: no Ellisons have murdered my family members, for instance, nor have I lost any parking spaces to him. I am not a member of a Death to Ellison Webring. I am not even a member of any Grievous Hangnails to Ellison Webrings, nor do I wish to be.
So, it's just funny, right? Yeah, it is... for now.
The fact remains, though, that should Ellison see the post, and should he decide not to simply fire off a letter or email to me in kind, I would one day receive a letter from his attorney(s) demanding an apology and its removal.
I would, and almost any lawyer I could find would insist on advising me so, have to take that post down, alter it, and/or apologize. Would a jury necessarily find me guilty? Probably not. But the post is hardly worth the possibility of six months (or more) probation or even jail time. I would be foolish not to comply.
In fact, now that I think on it, the heat of the moment long past, that I will change it.
Some people would call this chilling. I say, get over your dumb selves. We are no longer living in the Sixties. Most of the people whining about the Sixties weren't even alive then. That decade was great until about a year after the Civil Rights Act was passed, when people started getting gunned down like mad. King, Malcolm, RFK, even George Wallace: seeing death on TV like that is destabilizing even if the person is a jerk. And that is hardly what I want for America or any other country.1
Allow me to be blunt: the Anglo-Saxon common law has survived baronial insurrections, peasant uprisings, Scottish invasions, Shay's Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Civil War, the anarchists and the communists. George Washington tried and executed the ringleaders of a leveling faction in the Continental Army. The levelers have always claimed tyranny and almost always exaggerated. The threshold for assault is not written in stone but in sand, and may be revised at any time if the facts on the ground change significantly. You'd be amazed at how much authority a common law judge has in court. If, at any point, a judge gets threatened or killed by a terrorist, foreign or homegrown, you will see the greatest crackdown in court administration in the history of the U.S., and joke posts like my own will not be tolerated.
I would not like to see that, but better than violence in the streets and blood and threats all over the American side of the internet.
So I say: let the G-man cometh.
1 Yes, Aghanistan and Iraq are better off: no more walls dropped on homosexuals, no more murdered, headless prostitutes dropped off in front of their families' homes. Yes, I would like the U.S. forces to provide more security but I would far prefer that pressure be kept up on the Iraqi government to actually enforce public order. We can be a crutch; we cannot be their legs. My only concern is that the war is being pursued as hotly as possible.
First, assault is a felony. Words can constitute assault if they strike fear into the alleged victim. Presumably, I can assault you by leaving a threatening letter on your doorstep. Certainly, sending harassing or threatening letters through the U.S. Post Office is a federal felony offense.
Got that? Felony. Fear. Words alone, remote. This is important.
Threatening or advocating violence against a person is criminal. So, too, then, is acting as a publicist for a violent organization. By acting as a publicist, one aids the spreading of the threats and harassment.
This is not speech. These are acts. Acts receive no First Amendment protection.
This is speaking strictly. In everyday life in modern America, we are used to a much looser standard. Violence is historically low over much of the U.S., so things are rather lax; we have a lot of slack in the system... for now.
Comes a man with a website celebrating a terrorist organization as freedom fighters. The government prosecutes. But we don't have much violence in America, just the usual nut jobs driving SUVs into crowds, blowing themselves up and shooting up a Jewish neighborhood center. Hardly a three-man crime wave. Is the government right to prosecute?
I think so, yes. If they don't, and violence escalates later, they will be charged with the failure; almost as serious a crime as actually committing it-just like 9/11.
Also like 9/11, sadly, is the knee-jerk response to tighter law enforcement as fascism. Of course, the left leaves out of their argument the fact that any crackdown after some future, serious, violent attack hits the media's grist mill will almost certainly be more broadly supported, more severe, and more pro-active.
Case in point: I have a post below wishing death on science fiction author Harlan Ellison. I hasten in that post, and repeat now, that I do not wish him murdered; I just think he's outlived his useful time on Earth. My hostility to him, who was once a great author, is entirely abstract: no Ellisons have murdered my family members, for instance, nor have I lost any parking spaces to him. I am not a member of a Death to Ellison Webring. I am not even a member of any Grievous Hangnails to Ellison Webrings, nor do I wish to be.
So, it's just funny, right? Yeah, it is... for now.
The fact remains, though, that should Ellison see the post, and should he decide not to simply fire off a letter or email to me in kind, I would one day receive a letter from his attorney(s) demanding an apology and its removal.
I would, and almost any lawyer I could find would insist on advising me so, have to take that post down, alter it, and/or apologize. Would a jury necessarily find me guilty? Probably not. But the post is hardly worth the possibility of six months (or more) probation or even jail time. I would be foolish not to comply.
In fact, now that I think on it, the heat of the moment long past, that I will change it.
Some people would call this chilling. I say, get over your dumb selves. We are no longer living in the Sixties. Most of the people whining about the Sixties weren't even alive then. That decade was great until about a year after the Civil Rights Act was passed, when people started getting gunned down like mad. King, Malcolm, RFK, even George Wallace: seeing death on TV like that is destabilizing even if the person is a jerk. And that is hardly what I want for America or any other country.1
Allow me to be blunt: the Anglo-Saxon common law has survived baronial insurrections, peasant uprisings, Scottish invasions, Shay's Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Civil War, the anarchists and the communists. George Washington tried and executed the ringleaders of a leveling faction in the Continental Army. The levelers have always claimed tyranny and almost always exaggerated. The threshold for assault is not written in stone but in sand, and may be revised at any time if the facts on the ground change significantly. You'd be amazed at how much authority a common law judge has in court. If, at any point, a judge gets threatened or killed by a terrorist, foreign or homegrown, you will see the greatest crackdown in court administration in the history of the U.S., and joke posts like my own will not be tolerated.
I would not like to see that, but better than violence in the streets and blood and threats all over the American side of the internet.
So I say: let the G-man cometh.
1 Yes, Aghanistan and Iraq are better off: no more walls dropped on homosexuals, no more murdered, headless prostitutes dropped off in front of their families' homes. Yes, I would like the U.S. forces to provide more security but I would far prefer that pressure be kept up on the Iraqi government to actually enforce public order. We can be a crutch; we cannot be their legs. My only concern is that the war is being pursued as hotly as possible.