A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that pro-lifers who created Wild West-style posters and a Web site targeting abortion doctors are liable because their works were illegal threats and not free speech.
Look, I’m not crazy about wanted posters and targets. But I get nervous when courts start saying your free speech makes others uncomfortable so you don’t get free speech anymore. And not only that, the court is making the pro-lifers pay. The original jury ordered the dozen pro-lifers to pay $108.5 million in punitive damages to four abortion doctors and two clinics who sued, according to the AP.
But what bugs me is that there won’t likely be any scrutiny given to threatening language of liberals. No word yet on whether the Black Panthers putting a bounty on the head of George Zimmerman or Spike Lee tweeting what he thought Zimmerman’s address was will be considered similarly?
March 29, 2012 at 9:20 pm
2Timothy 3:1-5
March 29, 2012 at 10:21 pm
Recently exposed: A twitter feed with death threats to Zimmerman ( https://twitter.com/#!/KillZimmerman ) and Roseanne Barr's tweet of the real address of Zimmerman's parents, taken down because even her own fans shook their heads. But I'm sure they're all just joshin'. They don't really mean it, so George Zimmerman's parents shouldn't be uncomfortable.
March 30, 2012 at 3:29 am
Personally, I have no problem with holding everyone accountable for threats—though the Black Panthers not-at-all jokingly putting a price on a man's head is definitely more like a threat than a metaphorical wanted poster.
But then, I do not believe that if I interfere with people's "free speech", I will be dragged off by the ghosts of the Founding Fathers. That view of speech is only possible to the monstrously insincere; less decadent societies know that if you express nothing but hatred for someone, he'd probably be wise to keep an eye on you.
Of course, the real irony is, the Founding Fathers only intended the 1st Amendment to protect political criticisms; not only did they have no problem with blasphemy or obscenity laws, but at least one of them killed a man in a duel over a verbal insult.
March 30, 2012 at 5:17 am
Anti-blasphemy and or anti-obscenity laws are compatible with the fundamental principle of free speech. It is not an absolute.
March 30, 2012 at 9:01 am
@ Lynda: yes, I know that, but tell it to the fetishists who currently interpret the First Amendment. The only thing categorically protected by the Constitution is political discourse, and what else is or is not protected is a question on which serious scholars are very far from a consensus.
And whether or not something is protected by the Constitution is ultimately irrelevant, because the Constitution, like any positive law, has no actual authority, except where it merely recapitulates Natural Law. Yes, it is the law of the land and can't simply be tossed out, without anarchy ensuing, but it is no more a definitive description of reality than the warranty on your fridge. You still want the warranty, nevertheless, as long as you've got the fridge.
March 30, 2012 at 12:44 pm
The court could have found for the complaintants and awarded them $1. The heavy fine imposed will silence the defendants' free speech. The court evidently is prejudiced against pro-life people and the judges ought to have recused themselves, but that would require humility and a love for JUSTICE. The judges are complicit in abortion. Abortion is treason against our constitutional posterity.
March 30, 2012 at 7:03 pm
@Sophia's Favorite: "The only thing categorically protected by the Constitution is political discourse". If anti-abortion placards are not political discourse, what is? Abortion is a political maneuver and anything said about abortion is political discourse.
March 30, 2012 at 11:28 pm
Wanted posters with people on them are not political discourse, they are intrepreted as a bounty. The New black panthers are wrong, those that put out wanted posters for legal activities (even if viewed as wrong by some), that is also wrong.
March 31, 2012 at 10:23 am
@ Mary De Voe: Anonymous is more or less correct, although the New Black Panthers obviously meant their "bounty", while this pro-life group obviously didn't. While the crackdown on the latter and not the former is clearly politically motivated, this is a useful object lesson in not saying anything one doesn't mean.
Abortion is not a political maneuver. Support for abortion is a political position, but the actual act of getting one is only very rarely directly political (and when it is, is also a form of human sacrifice). Similarly, support for sharia law's death-to-apostates is a political position, but actually killing an apostate isn't a political maneuver (usually), it's just a murder.
The interesting thing is, putting a "bounty" on an abortionist, even in deadly earnest, is not necessarily wrong. Killing an abortionist is, similarly, not murder from a moral standpoint—more like an unauthorized execution, just like killing any other murderer. But, the way civil society and the "rule of law" function, is that one only takes vengeance into one's own hands if the entire state is wholly corrupt and unworkable. To kill an abortionist, or advocate that others do the same, is tantamount to saying "there is no state or law here, save that which can be built by a man's right arm". Private violence of that kind is essentially insurrection against the government.
It doesn't even have to be abortion, that one is taking up arms against; it could be some run-of-the-mill murder, or rape, or whatever. If anyone says, in the old Scottish formula, "I am in the land of the barbarians, and must take justice with my own dirk", they are ipso facto declaring war upon the government that they have, by that act, declared to be illegitimate.