j0frenzy said:
AntiChri5 said:
This is what confuses me about America. So zealously guarding everyone's right to be an unbelievable asshole, because stopping them would give the government too much power, when your government already has the ability to kill you if you break certain laws.
Why is the right to free speech more important then the right to life? Why can the government take one but not the other?
Assuming that one does support one and not the other (I personally rather dislike the death penalty for a long list of reasons, but that is not the point of the thread) one is a right written into our constitution ("Congress shall make no laws...abridging the freedom of speech"). The other is a right that was never understood to be in the minds of the framers and was never expected to be protected in our Constitution.
......and? Sorry, i always tend to dismiss arguments based on reverence of certain texts. Whether it is a holy scripture or a constitition. It just seems silly, since the world changes so quickly and such things get outdated.
But, to be fair, you have amendments so you are allowed to update the thing.
So, if there had been something in the constitution about how life was sacred and no government had a right to take it away, you think Americans would be as opposed to the death penalty as they are limiting freedom of speech? I like to think people are more independant then that, that they aren't so completely shaped by their forefathers decisions.
Bah, ignore my rambling. Now, to drunkenly stumble back into the direction of the topic......
The space where someones right to freedom of speech ends and someone elses right to be free of persecution begins is very grey. Humans are too variable for any definitive line to be drawn. At one side of the spectrum, you have poncy wankers who get offended at everything and anything. On the other, you have these Westboro fuckwads who make it their lifes mission to be as offensive as possible.
We must be able to find a way to shut the dickheads up without giving the poncy wankers the ability to cry at every imagined slight.
Perhaps America can institute a system in which people vote to revoke the freedom of speech of those who have proven themselves incapable of living with the responsobility of such a freedom. If 95% of voters say yes, the group in question are legally declared "Gibbering fuckwads" and are told to shut the fuck up in public.