Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to " A mouth full of styrofoam would have been better."

Free speech

I think you have a strange idea of what this means. The First Amendment reads as follows:

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.


This has an exact meaning. It means the Federal government is not permitted to pass laws in this regard.

An amazing number of people seem to have reinterpreted this to mean that a person has the right to go anywhere, anytime, under any circumstances, and shoot their mouth off or otherwise make a stink.

This is not true.

Kerry was holding an event at a college sponsored by a student speaking association, funded by student government. If they had wanted to, they could have decided that nobody could ask questions, that all the questions needed to be given in Sanskrit, or that only red-headed people would be allowed in the hall. And the Constitution wouldn't have one damn thing to say about it.

This idiot being hauled out was not a violation of his "free speech," except under the weird and invalid expansion of the concept that grants permission for protestors to act like dyspeptic warthogs in civilized company and on private property.

The idiot was zapped because he was an idiot throwing a fit. In three separate non-news TV programs my son was watching the day after, the first word that seemed to come to mind for anyone commenting on the incident was "douche."

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