When does political hate speech become domestic terrorism?

[WhoWee]

If they can find out who started the false rumors then they could bring about law suits for defamation. Beck and Sean Hannity are all propaganda. They provide no real value in news other then to bash a president for ratings.

I find it interesting that Beck led the charge against Van Jones - used Jones own video taped statements against him - and Jones made 2 apologies, then resigned.

Where was the propoganda? Was Beck spreading propoganda or was the propoganda the story that all of Beck's advertisers were pulling out?

 

[WhoWee]

Calling the president a Nazi that wants to create death panels are very clear indications of defamation. I don't see how you could argue against that.

Can you produce a link of one of the aforementioned calling Obama a Nazi? I believe Nancy Pelosi might have used that phrase to characterize people attending town hall meetings though.

 

[russ_watters]

Those articles make very important points—that health care was nationalized in Nazi Germany as well.

No, that is going too far. Those images are exactly the point of the propaganda of calling someone's plan a "nazi plan". They are designed to cause people to draw false connections like the one you just made. Hitler also used a toilet - that doesn't make everyone who uses a toilet a nazi.

 

[WhoWee]

http://news.google.com/news?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=obama nazi".

I don't see any links to Beck or Hannity on the list - do you REALLY want to cite bloggers? Statement content by Left Wing bloggers could be very embarrassing to certain posters on this thread.

 

[Choronzon]

Plenty of famous people made rather disparaging comments about Bush on television and radio, many of them actors who could probably get a press conference going quicker than they could make the requisite phone calls most anyone else would have to make.

At any rate, I don't think people should be arrested or sued in either case. I just like to point out that both sides are hypocrites when it comes to freedom of speech. A couple short years ago you would hear liberals being called unamerican and unpatriotic for not supporting the conservative president and calling him names and making caricatures of him. And there was outrage from liberals who thought their right to free speech was being infringed. Now we have conservatives being called unamerican and racist for not supporting the liberal president and calling him names and making caricatures of him. And we have conservatives complaining about their right to free speech.

Its absurd. My two assistants should be arriving with my apparatus any day now.

I don't agree. I don't think there is something wrong with calling an opponent unamerican, or unpatriotic. I do think there is something inherently wrong in calling it terrorism and imprisoning them for it.

However much conservatives insulted liberals during Bush's presidency, it seems to me that his administration pretty much endured the insults.

And just incase you think I'm being hypocritical now, for calling "foul" while a Democrat is in office, I'm not criticizing people calling President Obama's opponents racists, or haters, or whatever—I'm criticizing Ivan's idea of charging them with terrorism.

 

[WhoWee]

Obama was called a Nazi and a racists. Beck clearly started the racists comment and he could see a possible defamation lawsuit without the backing of Fox News lawyers.

Can you support this claim with a link?

 

[Choronzon]

No, that is going too far. Those images are exactly the point of the propaganda of calling someone's plan a "nazi plan". They are designed to cause people to draw false connections like the one you just made. Hitler also used a toilet - that doesn't make everyone who uses a toilet a nazi.

I'm not trying to equate the two, only to illustrate the possible outcomes of government power. President Obama could be a wise and gentle man who will take extreme care with the power we invest in his office, but that would be cold comfort if the next guy who gets elected turns out to believe that AIDS is a punishment from God meant for drug-users and sodomites. I merely believe that the power that the people grant the government should be doled out by the teaspoonful, not by gallons, and only in the gravest necessity.

 

[mheslep]

I consider this important because Ivan is not alone in being like this. This problem is extremely common among democrats. ...

I'd generalize democrats to leftists; no, replace it with leftists. We don't see old school democrats like Lieberman calling for speech codes. We do see a lot of it in Europe.

 

[russ_watters]

I'd generalize democrats to leftists; no, replace it with leftists. We don't see old school democrats like Lieberman calling for speech codes. We do see a lot of it in Europe.

Not sure exactly what you are saying, however...

Perhaps "leftist" should have more common usage in the US, but it doesn't. It is sometimes used as a synonym for "left wing", though I don't think the term "left wing" has nearly the extremist implications as "leftist" does. In either case, the opinion in the OP is quite extremist. It is well beyond most of what would qualify as "left wing". The word doesn't have a clear definition, but I'd consider "left wing" to be perhaps the left-most 10-20% of the country. Ie, outside the mainstream, but not a lot and not too extremist (Obama fits in there). The OP's position has to be a 1%'er or less (I sure hope so!).

 

[russ_watters]

I'm not trying to equate the two, only to illustrate the possible outcomes of government power.

If you consider that outcome possible, then you are equating them.

 

[Choronzon]

If you consider that outcome possible, then you are equating them.

I admit I'm pretty stunned that you think it's impossible.

P.S.: I'd also like to remind everyone of the Bush administration's ban on funding for certain stem-cell research. Imagine how much more powerful such a restriction would be if Government had a monopoly on health care.

 

[WhoWee]

False claims made by extreme right-wing players on the US political scene are designed to terrorize people. For example, how many false claims have been made about Obama; that he is a socialist, a communist, a terrorist, etc. He wants death panels. He want's to pull the plug on grandma. He is brainwashing our children. etc etc etc. We even find a "minister" who is praying for Obama to die and go to hell while openly admitting that he is trying to light a fire under his brainwashed congregation; one of which showed up to greet Obama with a loaded AK-47. Then we go back to the invasion of Iran and the claims that WMDs were a slam dunk and the strongly enforced suggestion that we were attacked by Saddam when there was no evidence to support that assertion.

Where does free speech end and domestic terrorism begin? We all know there is a line that cannot be crossed, and it doesn't only apply to yelling "fire" in crowded theaters. In my opinion, Palin, Limbaugh, Savage [who is banned from entry to the UK as a danger to society], Beck, and a number of others, esp from the talk radio scene, are essentially domestic terrorists.

This is quite a rant Ivan.

Sean Hannity spoke nightly about Obama's connections to Bill Ayers during the run up to the election. However, the media largely ignored the story and McCain chose not to make it an issue.

Do Ayers comments on 9/11 fit your description - do you think he's encouraging anyone to blow up the Pentagon or a Police station?

Bill Ayers on September 11, 2001

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/11/b...protester-talks-life-with.html?pagewanted=all

"No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen
By DINITIA SMITH
Published: Tuesday, September 11, 2001

''I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough.'' Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970's as a fugitive in the Weather Underground, was sitting in the kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century stone house in the Hyde Park district of Chicago. The long curly locks in his Wanted poster are shorn, though he wears earrings. He still has tattooed on his neck the rainbow-and-lightning Weathermen logo that appeared on letters taking responsibility for bombings. And he still has the ebullient, ingratiating manner, the apparently intense interest in other people, that made him a charismatic figure in the radical student movement.

Now he has written a book, ''Fugitive Days'' (Beacon Press, September). Mr. Ayers, who is 56, calls it a memoir, somewhat coyly perhaps, since he also says some of it is fiction. He writes that he participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972. But Mr. Ayers also seems to want to have it both ways, taking responsibility for daring acts in his youth, then deflecting it.

''Is this, then, the truth?,'' he writes. ''Not exactly. Although it feels entirely honest to me.''

But why would someone want to read a memoir parts of which are admittedly not true? Mr. Ayers was asked.

''Obviously, the point is it's a reflection on memory,'' he answered. ''It's true as I remember it.''

Mr. Ayers is probably safe from prosecution anyway. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department said there was a five-year statute of limitations on Federal crimes except in cases of murder or when a person has been indicted.

Mr. Ayers, who in 1970 was said to have summed up the Weatherman philosophy as: ''Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at,'' is today distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. And he says he doesn't actually remember suggesting that rich people be killed or that people kill their parents, but ''it's been quoted so many times I'm beginning to think I did,'' he said. ''It was a joke about the distribution of wealth.''
He went underground in 1970, after his girlfriend, Diana Oughton, and two other people were killed when bombs they were making exploded in a Greenwich Village town house. With him in the Weather Underground was Bernardine Dohrn, who was put on the F.B.I.'s 10 Most Wanted List. J. Edgar Hoover called her ''the most dangerous woman in America'' and ''la Pasionara of the Lunatic Left.'' Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn later married.

In his book Mr. Ayers describes the Weathermen descending into a ''whirlpool of violence.''

''Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon,'' he writes. But then comes a disclaimer: ''Even though I didn't actually bomb the Pentagon -- we bombed it, in the sense that Weathermen organized it and claimed it.'' He goes on to provide details about the manufacture of the bomb and how a woman he calls Anna placed the bomb in a restroom. No one was killed or injured, though damage was extensive.
Between 1970 and 1974 the Weathermen took responsibility for 12 bombings, Mr. Ayers writes, and also helped spring Timothy Leary (sentenced on marijuana charges) from jail.

Today, Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn, 59, who is director of the Legal Clinic's Children and Family Justice Center of Northwestern University, seem like typical baby boomers, caring for aging parents, suffering the empty-nest syndrome. Their son, Malik, 21, is at the University of California, San Diego; Zayd, 24, teaches at Boston University. They have also brought up Chesa Boudin, 21, the son of David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin, who are serving prison terms for a 1981 robbery of a Brinks truck in Rockland County, N.Y., that left four people dead. Last month, Ms. Boudin's application for parole was rejected.

So, would Mr. Ayers do it all again, he is asked? ''I don't want to discount the possibility,'' he said.
''I don't think you can understand a single thing we did without understanding the violence of the Vietnam War,'' he said, and the fact that ''the enduring scar of racism was fully in flower.'' Mr. Ayers pointed to Bob Kerrey, former Democratic Senator from Nebraska, who has admitted leading a raid in 1969 in which Vietnamese women and children were killed. ''He committed an act of terrorism,'' Mr. Ayers said. ''I didn't kill innocent people.''

Mr. Ayers has always been known as a ''rich kid radical.'' His father, Thomas, now 86, was chairman and chief executive officer of Commonwealth Edison of Chicago, chairman of Northwestern University and of the Chicago Symphony. When someone mentions his father's prominence, Mr. Ayers is quick to say that his father did not become wealthy until the son was a teenager. He says that he got some of his interest in social activism from his father. He notes that his father promoted racial equality in Chicago and was acceptable as a mediator to Mayor Richard Daley and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966 when King marched in Cicero, Ill., to protest housing segregation.

All in all, Mr. Ayers had ''a golden childhood,'' he said, though he did have a love affair with explosives. On July 4, he writes, ''my brothers and I loved everything about the wild displays of noise and color, the flares, the surprising candle bombs, but we trembled mostly for the Big Ones, the loud concussions.''

The love affair seems to have continued into adulthood. Even today, he finds ''a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance,'' he writes.

He attended Lake Forest Academy in Lake Forest, Ill., then the University of Michigan but dropped out to join Students for a Democratic Society.

In 1967 he met Ms. Dohrn in Ann Arbor, Mich. She had a law degree from the University of Chicago and was a magnetic speaker who often wore thigh-high boots and miniskirts. In 1969, after the Manson family murders in Beverly Hills, Ms. Dohrn told an S.D.S. audience: ''Dig it! Manson killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they shoved a fork into a victim's stomach.''

In Chicago recently, Ms. Dohrn said of her remarks: ''It was a joke. We were mocking violence in America. Even in my most inflamed moment I never supported a racist mass murderer.''

Ms. Dohrn, Mr. Ayers and others eventually broke with S.D.S. to form the more radical Weathermen, and in 1969 Ms. Dohrn was arrested and charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer during the Days of Rage protests against the trial of the Chicago Eight -- antiwar militants accused of conspiracy to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

In 1970 came the town house explosion in Greenwich Village. Ms. Dohrn failed to appear in court in the Days of Rage case, and she and Mr. Ayers went underground, though there were no charges against Mr. Ayers. Later that spring the couple were indicted along with others in Federal Court for crossing state lines to incite a riot during the Days of Rage, and following that for ''conspiracy to bomb police stations and government buildings.'' Those charges were dropped in 1974 because of prosecutorial misconduct, including illegal surveillance.

During his fugitive years, Mr. Ayers said, he lived in 15 states, taking names of dead babies in cemeteries who were born in the same year as he. He describes the typical safe house: there were usually books by Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara's picture in the bedroom; fermented Vietnamese fish sauce in the refrigerator, and live sourdough starter donated by a Native American that was reputed to have passed from hand to hand over a century.

He also writes about the Weathermen's sexual experimentation as they tried to ''smash monogamy.'' The Weathermen were ''an army of lovers,'' he says, and describes having had different sexual partners, including his best male friend.

''Fugitive Days'' does have moments of self-mockery, for instance when Mr. Ayers describes watching ''Underground,'' Emile De Antonio's 1976 documentary about the Weathermen. He was ''embarrassed by the arrogance, the solipsism, the absolute certainty that we and we alone knew the way,'' he writes. ''The rigidity and the narcissism.''

In the mid-1970's the Weathermen began quarreling. One faction, including Ms. Boudin, wanted to join the Black Liberation Army. Others, including Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers, favored surrendering. Ms. Boudin and Ms. Dohrn had had an intense friendship but broke apart. Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn were purged from the group.

Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers had a son, Zayd, in 1977. After the birth of Malik, in 1980, they decided to surface. Ms. Dohrn pleaded guilty to the original Days of Rage charge, received three years probation and was fined $1,500. The Federal charges against Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn had already been dropped.

Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn tried to persuade Ms. Boudin to surrender because she was pregnant. But she refused, and went on to participate in the Brink's robbery. When she was arrested, Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers volunteered to care for Chesa, then 14 months old, and became his legal guardians.

A few months later Ms. Dohrn was called to testify about the robbery. Ms. Dohrn had not seen Ms. Boudin for a year, she said, and knew nothing of it. Ms. Dohrn was asked to give a handwriting sample, and refused, she said, because the F.B.I. already had one in its possession. ''I felt grand juries were illegal and coercive,'' she said. For refusing to testify, she was jailed for seven months, and she and Mr. Ayers married during a furlough.

Once again, Chesa was without a mother. ''It was one of the hardest things I did,'' said Ms. Dohrn of going to jail.

In the interview, Mr. Ayers called Chesa ''a very damaged kid.'' ''He had real serious emotional problems,'' he said. But after extensive therapy, ''became a brilliant and wonderful human being.'' .

After the couple surfaced, Ms. Dohrn tried to practice law, taking the bar exam in New York. But she was turned down by the Bar Association's character committee because of her political activities.

Ms. Dohrn said she was aware of the contradictions between her radical past and the comforts of her present existence. ''This is where we raised our kids and are taking care of our aging parents,'' she said. ''We could live much more simply, and well we might.''

And as for settling into marriage after efforts to smash monogamy, Ms. Dohrn said, ''You're always trying to balance your understanding of who you are and what you need, and your longing and imaginings of freedom.''

''Happily for me, Billy keeps me laughing, he keeps me growing,'' she said.

Mr. Ayers said he had some of the same conflicts about marriage. ''We have to learn how to be committed,'' he said, ''and hold out the possibility of endless reinventions.''

As Mr. Ayers mellows into middle age, he finds himself thinking about truth and reconciliation, he said. He would like to see a Truth and Reconciliation Commission about Vietnam, he said, like South Africa's. He can imagine Mr. Kerrey and Ms. Boudin taking part.

And if there were another Vietnam, he is asked, would he participate again in the Weathermen bombings?

By way of an answer, Mr. Ayers quoted from ''The Cure at Troy,'' Seamus Heaney's retelling of Sophocles' ''Philoctetes:'' '' 'Human beings suffer,/ They torture one another./ They get hurt and get hard.' ''

He continued to recite:

History says, Don't hope

On this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed-for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up

And hope and history rhyme.

Thinking back on his life , Mr. Ayers said, ''I was a child of privilege and I woke up to a world on fire. And hope and history rhymed.''"

 

[ideasrule]

Those articles make very important points—that health care was nationalized in Nazi Germany as well. You might think that President Obama wouldn't abuse the massive powers that you are all willing to just hand him, but do you trust the next Republican administration with that same power?

What's wrong with the Nazi health care system? It was quite effective until the very end of the war.

Does it really seem so unlikely to you that ten or twenty years from now a conservative government's health service might decide not to provide treatment to AIDS patients who were infected through intravenous drug use or homosexual sex? There are many people in this country who would agree with such a policy.

Is the situation in the U.S. really that bad? I would have thought that only extremists would agree with a policy like that, considering that even child rapists in prison get medical treatment when they need it.

 

[kyleb]

Now I listened to Representative Frank and he said something which I strongly disagree with. He called this current legislative effort an attempt "to increase health care."

The bill is what congress makes it, and I am no expert on what they have going at this point, but Obama's push to increase heath care though improving efficiency has been widely reported, http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/15/obama.ama/index.html" .

Does that contain a point?

I adressed this https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2338761&postcount=29".

Not so. Liberals/democrats claim to be the party that most represents the rights of the people. It is perhaps the central point of their campaigning. The reality of their censorship is a huge contrast and stark hypocrisy. Pointing out this reality and getting people to see the hypocrisy for what it is is important.

Obama won the presidency because people hated Bush but also because people believed the things that he said. The trust pendulum swung toward the democrats in that election. But as soon as he got into power, we see the pendulum swinging back because only when you are in power can you fail to live up to the ideals you champion.

I consider this important because Ivan is not alone in being like this. This problem is extremely common among democrats. The generalization may have been overly broad and non-specific but the point is important: the point is that there is a lot of hypocrisy among democrats on this issue.

Wouldn't it be better to make a separate thread for this discussion if you insist on having it?

Please note that there is a difference between calling something a "nazi plan" and calling Obama himself a Nazi. The assertion made was that Obama himself was called a Nazi. Do you have any actual examples of that?

Please note what the characterization created by drawing a Hitler mustache on a picture of someone represents.

I don't see any links to Beck or Hannity on the list - do you REALLY want to cite bloggers?

I had quoted some reports from MSM and presented a clip from Beck https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2338701&postcount=21", but I can see why you wouldn't want to address that.

 

[kyleb]

Plenty of famous people made rather disparaging comments about Bush on television and radio, many of them actors who could probably get a press conference going quicker than they could make the requisite phone calls most anyone else would have to make.

Surely we should prioritize the present over the past or the possibilities?

 

[ideasrule]

Some time ago a PF'er accused atheists of genocide; religious fanatics use "murder" to describe abortion; string theory and evolution are often called "religions"; and now people are calling Obama's plans Nazi-like and Ivan is accusing people of terrorism. The problem in all of these cases is that emotionally-charged words are being used outside their intended meanings, even though they may technically be applicable. By all means call the people who slander Obama idiots, liars, or character assassins, but not terrorists; that doesn't have the right connotation.

 

[Choronzon]

Some time ago a PF'er accused atheists of genocide; religious fanatics use "murder" to describe abortion; string theory and evolution are often called "religions"; and now people are calling Obama's plans Nazi-like and Ivan is accusing people of terrorism. The problem in all of these cases is that emotionally-charged words are being used outside their intended meanings, even though they may technically be applicable. By all means call the people who slander Obama idiots, liars, or character assassins, but not terrorists; that doesn't have the right connotation.

If the only thing Ivan was trying to do was call people names, it wouldn't bother me at all.

I guess it's possible I misunderstood, but it seems to me that he believes what these people are saying isn't protected by the First Amendment, and that they are domestic terrorists and should be prosecuted as such. At least, that's what I took from his comparing it to shouting fire in a crowded theater—that it wasn't protected speech but a prosecutable crime.

 

[Choronzon]

The bill is what congress makes it, and I am no expert on what they have going at this point, but Obama's push to increase heath care though improving efficiency has been widely reported, http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/15/obama.ama/index.html" .

I still can't bring myself to agree. It seems to me that he isn't "increasing health care", so much as "increasing health coverage". There is a finite amount of it out there, and President Obama (and many with similar views) believe that it should be the government that decides who gets what.

Now, if he was proposing something like doubling the number of doctors in the next twenty years, building more clinics and hospitals, and research funding geared towards lowering the cost of medical procedures, I would vocally support him in that, even if it was expensive and saw my taxes rise as a consequence.

 

[kyleb]

I guess it's possible I misunderstood, but it seems to me that he believes what these people are saying isn't protected by the First Amendment, and that they are domestic terrorists and should be prosecuted as such.

Well he is asking if there should be a line some where, though I agree with you that there shouldn't. Using the classic example of shouting fire in a crowded theater, I don't consider it a crime if no one believes it. However, I do contend that people should be held responsible for their speech, someone shouting fire in a crowded theater resulting in people getting trampled is little different than someone constantly demonizing someone until he is murdered.

 

[kyleb]

... President Obama (and many with similar views) believe that it should be the government that decides who gets what.

How did you derive this conclusion?

 

[Choronzon]

Well he is asking if there should be a line some where, though I agree with you that there shouldn't. Using the classic example of shouting fire in a crowded theater, I don't consider it a crime if no one believes it. However, I do contend that people should be held responsible for their speech, someone shouting fire in a crowded theater resulting in people getting trampled is little different than someone constantly demonizing someone until he is murdered.

How far would you take it? Would there be a truth defense? For instance, when O'Reilly was excoriating Dr. Tiller on the air, I don't believe he said anything untrue—Dr. Tiller didkill thousands of organisms that were babies to some and fetuses to others.

If you think O'Reilly should be held responsible for his murder (I have no idea whether you do or not), should it be the same for a person who decries a pedophile or rapist who is later murdered? If I were to break off a relationship with some one in a cruel manner and that person killed themselves, would I be responsible for their suicide?

 

[drankin]

How did you derive this conclusion?

Are you serious? It's exactly what Obama is doing. Allowing the government to step in and decide who gets what, often referred to as "Obamacare".

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I don't agree. I don't think there is something wrong with calling an opponent unamerican, or unpatriotic. I do think there is something inherently wrong in calling it terrorism and imprisoning them for it.

However much conservatives insulted liberals during Bush's presidency, it seems to me that his administration pretty much endured the insults.

And just incase you think I'm being hypocritical now, for calling "foul" while a Democrat is in office, I'm not criticizing people calling President Obama's opponents racists, or haters, or whatever—I'm criticizing Ivan's idea of charging them with terrorism.

I am specifically referring to people who complain about suggestions of curtailing their freedom of speech in certain situations and suggest that the freedom of speech of others be curtailed in other situations. This is the only kind of 'calling foul' I am referring to as hypocritical. Though there is also some hypocrisy involved in the ridiculous claims made about the presidents and people's reactions to them.

Surely we should prioritize the present over the past or the possibilities?

Of course! Now that people we agree with are in power and the people we do not agree with are the critics it seems the most convenient way to go about things doesn't it?
Sounds kind of like a banana republic.

 

[Choronzon]

How did you derive this conclusion?

I think it's manifestly obvious. But here's a link, and you can hear it right from his mouth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-_SGGcJu_c&feature=related"

 

[kyleb]

Of course! Now that people we agree with are in power and the people we do not agree with are the critics it seems the most convenient way to go about things doesn't it?
Sounds kind of like a banana republic.

You've mischaracterized my position to argue a strawman.

I think it's manifestly obvious. But here's a link, and you can hear it right from his mouth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-_SGGcJu_c&feature=related"

Ah, it seems you are conflating here.

 

[Choronzon]

Ah, it seems you are conflating here.

I don't understand your remark.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

You've mischaracterized my position to argue a strawman.

A technical answer to the question you posed would be that older cases would be pushed first due to issues of statutory limitations.

Not going after older cases first would push them to the back, limitations would run out, and the cases would just generally grow stale and irrelevant.

So with the current party in power pushing for 'slanderers' (current) to be prosecuted it would have the effect of marginalizing, and criminalizing, the more zealous and outspoken of their political opponents, possibly strengthening their hold on power, while paying little to no notice to the use of similar tactics by their own supporters to supplant the previous power holder. Hence my reference to banana republics.

And my comment about it being convenient to do now is because I am quite certain that no one in the thread advocating such a practice would have been supporting it if we had been talking about suing the people who slander the president pre2009.

Please let me know where I have mischaracterized anything and what exactly the strawman I am arguing is.

 

[russ_watters]

I admit I'm pretty stunned that you think it's impossible.

Well I'm stunned that you are equating the two. Our government survived many things over the past 200 years, including Lincoln suspending much of the Bill of Rights for the purpose of keeping the union together. We haven't moved in the direction of dictatorship and there is no good reason to believe we will.

 

[russ_watters]

I adressed this https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2338761&postcount=29".

"I did not ask him to address free speech zones." That just says what your point isn't. So then you are confirming that you don't have a point?

 

[russ_watters]

Please note what the characterization created by drawing a Hitler mustache on a picture of someone represents.

No one has given an example of that - do you have one?

We're really straying from the OP here, though. While I'm sure you can find a random blogger or t-shirt maker doing that, the OP was about some of the louder voices of the right wing conducting terrorism. I think you should at least provide some connection to the OP with this line of argument.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

When does political hate speech become domestic terrorism?

Are you terrified by free speech? According to the song, this is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. For you it seems to be neither.

 

[WhoWee]

Where does free speech end and domestic terrorism begin? We all know there is a line that cannot be crossed, and it doesn't only apply to yelling "fire" in crowded theaters. In my opinion, Palin, Limbaugh, Savage [who is banned from entry to the UK as a danger to society], Beck, and a number of others, esp from the talk radio scene, are essentially domestic terrorists.

Ivan, this is my second attempt to obtain your response.

Is Bill Ayers a danger to society (as per this thread)?

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/11/b...protester-talks-life-with.html?pagewanted=all

"''I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough.'' Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970's as a fugitive in the Weather Underground, was sitting in the kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century stone house in the Hyde Park district of Chicago."

This is your thread, please respond.

 

[Al68]

False claims made by extreme right-wing players on the US political scene are designed to terrorize people. For example, how many false claims have been made about Obama; that he is a socialist, a communist, a terrorist, etc. He wants death panels. He want's to pull the plug on grandma. He is brainwashing our children. etc etc etc. We even find a "minister" who is praying for Obama to die and go to hell while openly admitting that he is trying to light a fire under his brainwashed congregation; one of which showed up to greet Obama with a loaded AK-47. Then we go back to the invasion of Iran and the claims that WMDs were a slam dunk and the strongly enforced suggestion that we were attacked by Saddam when there was no evidence to support that assertion.

Where does free speech end and domestic terrorism begin? We all know there is a line that cannot be crossed, and it doesn't only apply to yelling "fire" in crowded theaters. In my opinion, Palin, Limbaugh, Savage [who is banned from entry to the UK as a danger to society], Beck, and a number of others, esp from the talk radio scene, are essentially domestic terrorists.

This coming from the most prolific spewer of hatred in this forum? This post is more hateful than anything on "right-wing" radio. Of course hate speech from the so called left has been their bread and butter for decades.

Where would the Democratic Party be without hate speech? If they refrained from accusing their opponents of being for the rich, not caring about poor people, and other hateful absurdities? They would be left with nothing to say, I suppose.

The funny thing is you refer to a small group of people who's speech is mild in comparison to mainstream Democrats. Stirring up hatred for Republicans is the only way they have gotten elected for decades.

How do you know if a Democrat is spewing hatred? Their mouth is open.