Freedom of Speech...

[John Bull]

Originally Posted by TexTushHog

The bold and underlined portion of the sentence is just plain wrong. There are numerous categories of speech besides political speech that cannot be regulated by the government. The most notable of those is commercial speech, although there are others such as artistic expression. The Courts have held that the protection of speech is broadest when it comes to political speech, but many more categories of speech are protected.

However, you comment that the right to free speech, like all rights, is held only against the government is correct. It is also, unfortunately, not widely understood.

I was speaking of the Constitution as written, not as interpreted by various judges. We Libertarians tend to be that way.

[charlestudor2005]

Originally Posted by John Bull

I was speaking of the Constitution as written, not as interpreted by various judges. We Libertarians tend to be that way.

Actually, JB, when I read your original post & TTH's response, I was going to leave it to TTH to refute you, but feel compelled to join in.

Just one example of protected speech is that that occurs in testimony before a court (or in deposition). It is not political, but it is protected. The constitution doesn't speak to it, but I doubt you would find any libertarian proposing an opposite public policy or regulation.

[John Bull]

But there is no law involved with testimony save that it be truthful.

[WTF]

Originally Posted by John Bull

But there is no law involved with testimony save that it be truthful.

Well thats a pretty broad law!

[Rudyard K]

Originally Posted by TexTushHog

There are numerous categories of speech besides political speech that cannot be regulated by the government. The most notable of those is commercial speech

While I'm not implying that there shouldn't be regulation by making the following statement...but I don't understand how DTPA is not regulating commercial speech.

[charlestudor2005]

Originally Posted by Rudyard K

While I'm not implying that there shouldn't be regulation by making the following statement...but I don't understand how DTPA is not regulating commercial speech.

It doesn't regulate speech. It just establishes penalties for making false representations. You can still make true and false representations. You just suffer the penalties for the false ones.

[Sisyphus]

Originally Posted by WTF

I think I speak for all when I say the Clap is what frightens us the most

No argument there...it certainly won't kill you...but you'll wish you were dead...

[TexTushHog]

Originally Posted by John Bull

I was speaking of the Constitution as written, not as interpreted by various judges. We Libertarians tend to be that way.

Bullshit! The word political appears nowhere in the First Amendment. It says "Congress shall make no law. . . ." Under your claimed interpretation -- just read the language -- the First Amendment would protect commercial speech, falsely shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, defamatory speech, and perjury. So don't give me this crap about we just take it the way it's written.

[DFW5Traveler]

Originally Posted by TexTushHog

Bullshit! The word political appears nowhere in the First Amendment. It says "Congress shall make no law. . . ." Under your claimed interpretation -- just read the language -- the First Amendment would protect commercial speech, falsely shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, defamatory speech, and perjury. So don't give me this crap about we just take it the way it's written.

Shouting fire in a crowded theater should be a common sense thing, but I don't see that as a free speach issue and laws have been written justifiably to prevent somone from enciting a panic. Speech in it's context of the Bill of Rights would be having the ability to speak out against the government, et.al. without reciprocity. There is a huge difference between the two.

The First Amendment also has a provision to redress our, the civilian populations', grievances, which some on the left seem to forget when we speak out against the current regime. We did not stop the left from speaking out against the last regime, nor did we shout Fairness Doctorine when offended. It seems that the only people shouting that rubish is the left when they get their panties in a wad. You cannot force liberalism/socialism on a free market or a free society when the majority is neither.

[John Bull]

C'mon TTH, quote the whole passage. Where does it say commercial? Where does it say perjury? Come on, get your copy out and quote it. LOL

[John Bull]

From Wikipedia
Speech critical of the government

The Supreme Court never ruled on the constitutionality of any federal law regarding the Free Speech Clause until the 20th century. The Supreme Court never ruled on the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, whose speech provisions expired in 1801.[8] The leading critics of the law, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, argued for the Acts' unconstitutionality based on the First Amendment, among other Constitutional provisions (e.g. Tenth Amendment).[9] In retrospect, dicta from New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964) acknowledges that, "[a]lthough the Sedition Act was never tested in this Court, the attack upon its validity has carried the day in the court of history."[10]
The Espionage Act of 1917 imposed a maximum sentence of twenty years for anyone who caused or attempted to cause "insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States." Over two thousand were convicted under the Act. One filmmaker was sentenced to ten years imprisonment because his portrayal of British soldiers in a movie about the American Revolution impugned the good faith of an American ally, the United Kingdom.[11] The Sedition Act of 1918 went even further, criminalizing "disloyal," "scurrilous" or "abusive" language against the government.
In the midst of World War I, Charles Schenck, then the general secretary of the Socialist party, was found guilty of violating the Espionage Act after a search of the Socialist headquarters revealed a book of Executive Committee minutes. The book contained a resolution, dated August 13, 1917, to print 15,000 leaflets to be mailed to men who had passed exemption boards.[12] The contents of these leaflets intimated a fervent opposition to the draft, comparing conscripts to convicts and urging potential draftees to "not submit to intimidation."[13] Schenck's appeal of his conviction reached the Supreme Court as Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919). According to Schenck, the Espionage Act violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court unanimously rejected Schenck's appeal and affirmed his conviction. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., writing for the Court, explained that "the question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent."[14]
The "clear and present danger" test of Schenck was elaborated in Debs v. United States, 249 U.S. 211 (1919). On June 16, 1918, Eugene V. Debs, a political activist, delivered a speech in Canton, Ohio, the main theme of which "was socialism, its growth, and a prophecy of its ultimate success."[15] Debs spoke with pride of the devotion with which his "most loyal comrades were paying the penalty to the working class — these being Wagenknecht, Baker and Ruthenberg, who had been convicted of aiding and abetting another in failing to register for the draft."[16] Moreover, hours earlier, Debs had spoken with approval of an Anti-War Proclamation and Program adopted at St. Louis in April, 1917 which advocated a "continuous, active, and public opposition to the war, through demonstrations, mass petitions, and all other means within [their] power."[17] Following his speech, Debs was charged and convicted under the Espionage Act. In upholding his conviction, the Court reasoned that although he had not spoken any words that posed a "clear and present danger," taken in context, the speech had a "natural tendency and a probable effect to obstruct the recruiting services[.]"[17]
Benjamin Gitlow was convicted of criminal anarchy after he was found advocating the "necessity and propriety of overthrowing and overturning organized government by force, violence and unlawful means" in the Left Wing Manifesto, as well as publishing and circulating a radical newspaper called The Revolutionary Age advocating similar ideas.[18] In arguing before the Supreme Court, Gitlow contended that "the statute as construed and applied by the trial court penalize[d] the mere utterance, as such, of 'doctrine' having no quality of incitement, without regard to the circumstances of its utterance or to the likelihood of the unlawful sequences[.]"[19] While acknowledging "liberty of expression 'is not absolute,'" he maintained "it may be restrained 'only in instances where its exercise bears a causal relation with some substantive evil, consummated, attempted or likely[.]'"[19] As the statute took no account of the circumstances under which the offending literature was written, it violated the First Amendment. The Court rejected Gitlow's reasoning. Writing for the majority, Justice Edward Sanford declared that "utterances inciting to the overthrow of organized government by unlawful means, present a sufficient danger of substantive evil to bring their punishment within the range of legislative discretion....Such utterances, by their very nature, involve danger to the public peace and to the security of the state."[20] Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925) greatly expanded Schenck and Debs but established the general opinion of the Court that the First Amendment is incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment to apply to the states.[21]
In 1940, Congress enacted the Smith Act, making it illegal to advocate "the propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force and violence."[22] The law provided law enforcement a tool to combat Communist leaders. After Eugene Dennis was convicted for attempting to organize a Communist Party in the United States pursuant to the Smith Act § 2, he petitioned for certiorari, which the Supreme Court granted.[23] In Dennis v. United States 341 U.S. 494 (1951), the Court upheld the law 6-2 (Justice Tom C. Clark did not participate because he had ordered the prosecutions when he was Attorney General). Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson explicitly relied on Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s "clear and present danger" test as adapted by Learned Hand: "In each case [courts] must ask whether the gravity of the 'evil,' discounted by its improbability, justifies such invasion of free speech as necessary to avoid the danger."[24] Clearly, Vinson suggested, clear and present danger did not intimate "that before the Government may act, it must wait until the putsch is about to be executed, the plans have been laid and the signal is awaited."[25]
Dennis has never been explicitly overruled by the Court, but its relevance within First Amendment jurisprudence has been considerably diminished by subsequent rulings. Six years after Dennis, the Court changed its interpretation of the Smith Act. In Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298 (1957). the Court ruled that the Act was aimed at "the advocacy of action, not ideas."[26] Advocacy of abstract doctrine remains protected while speech explicitly inciting the forcible overthrow of the government is punishable under the Smith Act.
During the Vietnam Era, the Courts position on public criticism of the government changed drastically. Though the Court upheld a law prohibiting the forgery, mutilation, or destruction of draft cards in United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367 (1968), fearing that burning draft cards would interfere with the "smooth and efficient functioning" of the draft system,[27][28] the next year, the court handed down its decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), expressly overruling Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927) (a case in which a woman was imprisoned for aiding the Communist Party).[29] Now the Supreme Court referred to the right to speak openly of violent action and revolution in broad terms:

[Our] decisions have fashioned the principle that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not allow a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or cause such action.[30]

Brandenburg discarded the "clear and present danger" test introduced in Schenck and further eroded Dennis.[31] By 1971, wearing a jacket reading "Fuck the Draft" in the corridors of the Los Angeles County courthouse was no longer punishable.[32]
Political speech

Anonymous speech

In Talley v. California, 362 U.S. 60 (1960), the Court struck down a Los Angeles city ordinance that made it a crime to distribute anonymous pamphlets. In McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, 514 U.S. 334 (1995), the Court struck down an Ohio statute that made it a crime to distribute anonymous campaign literature. However, in Meese v. Keene,, 481 U.S. 465 (1987), the Court upheld the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, under which several Canadian films were defined as "political propaganda," requiring their sponsors to be identified.

After reading this list of Court decisions, I change my opinion. Thanks to the lawyers, there is no freedom of speech, political or otherwise, in this country.

[TexTongue]

Sorry, I just started reading this thread so I'm behind, but...

Originally Posted by charlestudor2005

Hate speech (in the US) has been a crime for a long time.

Really? I don't think that is correct. Actually, your statement violates the 1st Amendment: "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."

I like this thread, gonna have to read more.

[Valerie]

Originally Posted by John Bull

After reading this list of Court decisions, I change my opinion. Thanks to the lawyers, there is no freedom of speech, political or otherwise, in this country.

Sure seems to be going down that road unfortunately....