It does not take much for many Christians to throw down the Christian Card and declare war on themselves. They loudly point out the freedom of religion clause of the First Amendment. But, many of them read “religion” as synonymous with “Christian” and “freedom” to abridge all other religions and non-theists. The War on Christmas, laws against sharia, and dismissal of rights for non-theists or atheists run hot and are but a few examples of their self-declared “War on Religion (or alternately, Christianity)” . They take the whole Onward Christian Soldiers thing very seriously in the same way the blitzkrieg was serious.
Tag Archives: First Amendment
Rush Limbaugh, The Man With No Toes
Rush Limbaugh has an uncanny knack for shooting himself in the foot every time he speaks – which is about as often as a continuous-fire Gatling gun with an inexhaustible supply of ammo. Quite frankly, I believe the man has no toes left. He lost the shriveled pea in his head long ago. Thank God, the rattling was driving me crazy.
Rush likes to exercise his First Amendment Right to free speech with extreme prejudice. He’s allowed to do that. The Constitution only talks about free speech. It says nothing about stupid speech. He can insult as much as he likes and he’d be legally right. Morally right is something with which Rush has only a nodding acquaintance.
In the panoply of things he’s said about others and that others have said about him, calling someone a slut and prostitute is pretty tepid. I’m sure George Carlin’s advice would be, “Hey, they’re only words man. They won’t hurt you.”
I agree. In fact, people have called me much worse and I didn’t get mad about it. It goes with the territory. But then, I have rhino-like skin and am very poorly socialized. I also like to piss off people like Rush and The Dittohead Nation, so any verbal havoc I can raise is icing on the cake baby. Still, I know others aren’t so thick-skinned and will be outraged when he says stupid things.
Jared Lee Loughner: A Gun Without a Trigger?
Now that Jared Lee Loughner’s bullets have stopped flying, the air is thick with new bullets in the form of accusations and denials, proposed legislative actions, and the pros and cons of the Second Amendment. But most of these rhetorical bullets are far off the mark.
There are many reasons to suspect that Loughner is severely mentally ill. And I should know, I’ve spent most of my life in close proximity to the severely mentally ill. Both my mother and grandmother were schizophrenic and my sister is severely bipolar. I suffer from bouts of clinical depression myself.
One of the things I’ve learned is that the mentally ill, particularly likely schizophrenics like Loughner, don’t live in the same dimension as you and I. They live in a dark mash-up of reality and hallucination that the initiated often have trouble grasping.
They can seem normal and rational one minute and the next arguing with a disembodied voice. They can lapse in an out of psychotic episodes separated by months or years or they can stay psychotic, as my grandmother did, nearly all their lives.
There are as many different presentations of mental illness as there are people who suffer from it. But, there’s one constant – trying to deal with the irrational through rational means is a long shot at best, and more often than not, doomed to failure.
Triggers Without Guns
The air’s already heavy with accusations that right-wing politicos fanned the flames of insanity. The Palinator says, ‘Gosh oh golly gee, I had no idea people would see that as a gun target. And, how did people jump to the conclusion that my statement about not retreating, but reloading is in any way violent?’
Well Sarah, they said so at the time – loudly – and you didn’t “explain” yourself until people died. Ditto Sharron Angle’s entreaty to take “Second Amendment” solutions if not getting her way. Both of these “explanations” are toilet paper-thin and should be used for exactly the same purpose.
However, claiming violent suggestions trigger violence is as specious as claiming that being gay makes you a pedophile. It’s almost impossible to tell if there is a trigger and what effect it has at all. It’s equally true it might have. In the end, it doesn’t matter. When the evil voices tell you to kill, you do and there is no rational explanation why.
That’s not to say the Palinistas were guiltless to throw “misunderstood” gun sights out there. The First Amendment guarantees that right, but the First Amendment doesn’t say word one about free speech being intelligent speech. At the very least, their actions lowered the national discourse by several notches.
As is often the case, the knee-jerk response to tragedies like this is to become a dynamo cranking out proposed laws guaranteed to stop the violence.
Legislation: Responding Rationally to the Irrational
Increase gun control to keep loony fingers off the trigger? Well, if a person hasn’t been diagnosed there is no way to tell if their finger is competent to grasp the trigger. And if they have, there’s no way to tell if the person’s demons are under control, especially when they can seem completely normal even while in a deep psychotic episode.
Besides, there are many more ways, other than guns, to kill. Some of them are even more efficient. You can bomb, stab, set on fire, or bludgeon your victims with exceptionally large heads of cabbage. If the voices say kill, the mentally ill kill – by any means necessary. Besides, you can’t control the sale of cabbages.
And for the drive all decisions to the state level crowd, no control works if all states have different rules. Otherwise, a gun bought on one side of a lenient state boundary will kill the same on the other.
It’s a uniquely American trait to pay scant attention to violence until the right someone gets killed. If this hadn’t involved a sitting member of Congress, the national anguish wouldn’t be so deep nor last so long.
There are gang shootings that rival this one’s brutality and death toll, yet we don’t get in such a tizzy over them. How is this instance any different from a dangerously disgruntled right-to-lifer picking up a gun or bomb to carry out an assassination? What about Timothy McVey or a Kabul suicide bomber or the Va. Tech shooter? What about someone who carries a gun to a political event to “exercise their Second amendment rights” only to get into a one-sided duel with and overly agitated opponent in the crowd?
If the NRA is right about anything it really is that guns don’t kill people, people kill people…and there are a lot stupid, clumsy, and insane people out there. People I’d prefer not lug their guns everywhere for when they decide to “protect” themselves from an overly righteous Obama socialist.
There are dozens of rational responses we could take to keep this from happening again because most of us are sane and rational – if not a little overheated. Unfortunately, most would have about as much effect as prostate and colorectal exams for airplane passengers or tapping every phone on the planet to chase down a nut who lives in a cave and makes bad videos. It behooves us to choose wisely because the cure may be worse than the disease.
You can only control those things that are within your control. A person who literally hears the voice of the devil isn’t going to bend to your control. That’s not because they are unwilling or inherently bad people. It’s because they can’t.
And there lies the problem.
- Q Of The Day: Should I Be Able To Buy A Gun? (pinkbananaworld.com)
- Josh Horwitz: Tucson Shooting Shows True Face of NRA’s “Second Amendment Remedies” (huffingtonpost.com)
- Loughner and how America treats its Mentally Ill (pajamasmedia.com)
- Dr. Harold Koplewicz: Arizona Shooting: Treating Mental Illness Before it Kills (huffingtonpost.com)
- Giffords Attack Makes Joke of Gun Control: Roger Lowenstein (businessweek.com)
- Better Mental Health Care Won’t End Murder, But It Will Save Lives [Aftermath] (jezebel.com)
- Diagnosing Arizona: the quest for the mind of Jared Lee Loughner (guardian.co.uk)
- Carolyn McCarthy readies gun control bill (texasfred.net)
- “Jared Loughner shooting puts Arizona gun laws in the crosshairs” and related posts (personalmoneystore.com)
- The Sad Death of Gun Control [Blame] (gawker.com)
- Sarah Palin Doesn’t Kill People. Guns, On the Other Hand… (abovethelaw.com)
Abhorrent Speech is Still Free Speech
WHIPPIN’ UP FREE SPEECH – The Constitution doesn’t say a word about whether free speech has to be smart speech or inoffensive speech. it just says speech is free, even if some do decide to push the limits.
When it comes to the First Amendment, I’m a fundamentalist. First, I believe all other constitutional rights flow from the First. For example, you can’t have a Second Amendment without the First. Freedom of speech has to be fair and truly free for the gun opposition to debate their points and for the NRA to debate theirs. Without that back and forth, neither side could bring out valid points they each have. Laws without debate come out more flawed.
Second, for speech to be truly free it has to be unencumbered. There’s nothing in the First Amendment about speech not being stupid. People will do and say many things I think are outrageous, but that’s my opinion, not a certifiable fact. There is no easy way to determine what is truly over the top vs. just ignorant or offensive.
A local Tea Party group has a parade float depicting an Obama effigy wielding a whip against a prostrate figure known as “future taxpayer”. Not surprisingly, many have condemned it as hateful, racist speech. As someone who finds almost every stance by the Tea Party abhorrent, I tend to agree. However, I’m not sure my opinion would be different, even if someone else were sponsoring it.
It’s About Accountability?
The head of the group that sponsors the float said, “It’s ridiculous when people say it is racism. It has nothing to do with that. We need accountability.” In fact, the local NAACP agrees, “A lot of people will see it in different ways. I don’t see it as being racist.”
I’m not sure how the float makes anyone accountable, so I’m, perhaps, not as forgiving as the local NAACP. But, it doesn’t really matter whether I think its racist. As the NAACP spokesperson said, viva la difference. Whether it is racist depends on your opinion, not on what I think.
But don’t be surprised if someone attacks you as a racist when you’re on thin ice, which is where the floaters seem to be. It’s their opinion and both sides have free rhetorical reign to swing away.
Or, take the recent apology from the Portland, ME Press Herald for a front page, upbeat story on Muslims celebrating the end of Ramadan – coming this year on 9/11. Tempers flared. One reader commented, “I don’t want to here [sic] how caring the Muslim religion is on 9/11.”
Fair enough, but I’d wager Muslims are pretty sic [sic] of hearing about Muslim mosques supposedly from hell, filled with people who have no value for human life.
Gutless Apology
The paper took a rather gutless approach, I think, by apologizing for not presenting a story showing the opposing view. Not everything requires an opposing view and no one is obliged to offer one. That’s why some people watch Fox and others watch MSNBC. Not only do those “news” outlets not present opposing views, they frequently and vociferously shut them down whenever possible. Besides, I’d wager the Mainiac reader would’ve been just as offended by the Muslim view, even if a Christian view appeared directly alongside.
As for lies, it’s a tough call – that’s why slander and libel suits are notoriously hard to win. Most cases of this type aren’t about truth and falsehood, but the wide band of subjective truthiness that fills the gulf between them. One person’s “fact” is another’s “opinion” and inconclusively determining where a lie came from is damnably hard. Admissibility tends to default to “free” in the truest form of the word. This is as it should be.
Holding a fundamentalist view of the First is sometimes a retching, clothes pin-on-the-nose job. You find yourself defending people who can and do say the most crapweaselish things, but even the crapweasels deserve their day. They deserve it because if we limit them today, someone will eventually come along to limit us tomorrow. The day we prohibit abhorrent speech is the day we can kiss the rest of our freedoms goodbye.
Kiss very freely, you understand.
- The War On Marty, Ctd (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
- Freedom Of Expression Has No Bounds argues Stephen Hoffman (tfa.net)
- Politico Publishing Hate Speech? (riehlworldview.com)
- Brandeis students, alumni demand Peretz apology (jta.org)
- We’re not racist, you racists (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
- Palin and the First Amendment (jilliancyork.com)
- Justice Breyer: No right to burn Korans in First Amendment? (hotair.com)
- Bill O’Reilly And The NAACP’s Hilary Shelton Discuss TeaPartyTracker.Org (mediaite.com)
- An Apology From Marty (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
Dear Marty, The First Amendment is Not Optional
WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE? - A Sharia-like movement is afoot to deprive Muslims of everything from the right to build religious centers to their First Amendment protections. Burning Korans is not the answer to violent Muslim extremism.
The Anti-Mosque That Ain’t a Mosque crowd seems to be going all Sharia on America’s ass. You’d think the possibility – not the certainty mind you – of building a Muslim community center amongst the strip clubs and bars of Manhattan is a worse offense than knocking the WTC down to begin with.
We have idiots closing community centers in Kentucky ostensibly for lack of parking because according to the property owner, Muslims can’t be trusted to adhere to no parking signs. Florida’s Dove World Outreach Center, a violation of truth in advertising laws if there ever was one, is reaching out to Muslims by burning Korans. Now, New Republic editor-in-chief Marty Peretz says Muslims are unworthy of First Amendment protection, presumably regardless of whether they are citizens or not.
Marty the Magnificent Sez…
Says Marty the Magnificent, “…frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.”
Gee Marty, my gut – hell, every fiber of my being – tells me you would abuse First Amendment protections too. No, wait! You already have by suggesting the First Amendment is an option like the automatic transmission on your Ford Crown Vic. The same goes for your toxic brethren like the book burning “Doves” and the spreading community of knotheads elsewhere around the country.
Marty, can you not see the irony of exercising your First Amendment rights by saying someone else should be deprived of theirs? Screeching Doves, can you not see the same by the light of your Constitutional bonfire?
Whether Muslims “raise a fuss” is their call, not yours. To speak or not to speak are both protected rights. Besides, my gut also tells me that condemning their “brotherhood” wouldn’t make one iota of difference in your opinion.
The Lonesome Doves and Tim McVey
And Lonesome Doves, would you be burning Bibles if an inbred clan of Timothy McVey wannabes had rammed the WTC? I’m an atheist and I’d be quite happy if someone burned all the holy books, regardless of whatever holier than thou sect dreamt them up.
But wait! No, I wouldn’t! I believe in the First Amendment.
It isn’t optional because I despise you and what you’re saying. It isn’t optional because some lunkhead’s book isn’t as holy as you believe yours is. It isn’t optional because your gut tells you they don’t value human life. It isn’t optional because they are Muslim, Baptist, or Druid nor because some of their members were bat shit crazy and wanted to kill people for things like, gee, I dunno, disrespecting the Koran (see David Petraeus). In this country, people can say what they want and worship or not worship as they see fit – despite cockamamie faux “wars on Christmas” or people being gay in the privacy of their own homes or carbuncles on the ass of humanity who think their shit is infinitely less odoriferous than others are.
THE FIRST AMENDMENT IS NOT OPTIONAL!
…and the day it becomes so is the day we lose the privilege of calling ourselves American.
- New Republic owner Marty Peretz sick of pretending Muslims “are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment” (salon.com)
- Martin Peretz of The New Republic’s Vile Attack Against Muslim-Americans (alan.com)
- In His Gut (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)
- “Petraeus says Koran burning could endanger troops” and related posts (blackfive.net)
- Florida preacher vows to burn Korans despite death threats and condemnation (theglobeandmail.com)
- Tuesday’s Mini-Report (washingtonmonthly.com)
- After All, Only People Deserve Rights: (brothersjuddblog.com)
