What is the solution to end censorship that violates our First Amendment right? We need a federal law that fundamentally kills all raucous calls to censor with one stone, just like the First Amendment was intended. This is possible with a fundamentally scientific approach in phrasing. It is possible if we shape it phrasing around the following idea: Censor only expression that creates a real threat. A real threat means that it must be proven that the expression (or an expression fundamentally equivalent) has caused significant harm in the past. We also need to restrict the use of words such as: offensive, lascivious, prurient interest, etc. Those kinds of words are moral preference oriented and should not be used to legislate. We only need to be concerned with expression that causes real harm. For example, causing lust in someone has never in human history, in and of itself, harmed a human being in anyway and is nonsense legislation.
what we could do to AVOID censorship is to give mums and dads more power over what they're kids watch, i hate censorship and i think it is a big bag of rubbish, i have 3 kids and i know from expierinece that if you let them lsiten to a song that is censored every other word they will go and find the uncensored song and listen to it, you cannot stop people from swearing
The First U.S. Supreme Court Ruling on Flag Desecration (1907): Most early flag desecration statutes prohibited marking or otherwise defacing a flag design, using the flag in commercial advertising, and showing "contempt" for flag in any way--by publicly burning, trampling on it, spitting on it, or otherwise showing a lack of respect for it. In Halter v. Nebraska (1907), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld these statutes as constitutional. Summary: Halter v. Nebraska (1907)http://atheism.about.com/od/flagburningcourtcases/a/HalterNebraska.htm This division has existed from the country's beginning. The position of the Federalist Party of President John Adams was that of the English jurist William Blackstone. According to Blackstone, "where blasphemous, immoral, treasonable, schismatical, seditious, or scandalous libels are punished by the English law . . . the liberty of the press, properly understood, is by no means infringed or violated." For Blackstone, freedom of speech was extremely limited, extending only to prohibit governmental restraints on speech prior to publication. Freedom of the press, he wrote, merely "consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications." When the First Amendment was ratified in 1791, Blackstone's theory of prior restraint was arguably the beginning and the end of what most Americans understood freedom of speech to mean. With Blackstone's logic at the party's roots, the Federalists in Congress passed the highly repressive Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, out of the conviction that national survival hinged on snuffing out the perceived seditious diatribes of German, Irish, and French immigrants who opposed the Adams Administration's foreign policy, which they viewed as skewed toward England and against France. The Federalists used the law to hound Republican politicians and opinion leaders, indicting 15 leaders of the party, including prominent newspaper editors. A look at Abraham Lincoln helps show the tensions. In defending his 1861 suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, an act he undertook as president without the participation or assent of Congress, Lincoln asked, "Are all laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself to go to pieces, lest that one be violated?" In Schenck v. United States, the 1919 case in which Holmes first articulated the test, he said explicitly that freedom of speech was less free during wartime, thus justifying his decision to send Schenck to jail. Holmes wrote, "When a nation is at war many things that might be said in time of peace are of such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right." The opinion in Schenck was an exercise in balancing national security against freedom of speech, with the balance tilted strongly toward security. Like John Adams and Abraham Lincoln before him, Holmes seemed to believe that, in wartime, it is better for America to err on the side of suppression than freedom. http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/January-February-2005/review_smolla_janfeb05.msp
First Amendment Rights At Stake in Ashcroft Case Against Greenpeace In Miami, a trial involving the Justice Department and Greenpeace begins today that could have a wide reaching impact on the future of protest in the country. The Justice Department is using an obscure 1872 law that forbids sailor mongering to prosecute Greenpeace for the actions of two of its members. [includes rush transcript] In Miami, a trial has just begun involving the Justice Department and Greenpeace that could have a wide reaching impact on the future of protest in the country. The Justice Department is using an obscure 1872 law that forbid sailor mongering to prosecute Greenpeace for the actions of two of its members. http://www.democracynow.org/2004/5/18/first_amendment_rights_at_stake_in $815,000 Settlement Validating Police Sergeant Jonathan Wender's Right to Speak out Against Drug Prohibition http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php
What greater power? In the United States, at least, parents have all manner of tools at their disposal, but fewer use them than you would, to hear all the uproar about sex and violence in media, expect. Personally, I don't worry about what's on the radio. On the one hand, when I listen to the radio around my daughter, it's usually one of two NPR stations in town, or else our listener-supported, world-renowned independent music station. The worst she hears on those would be a heavy dose of blues, or maybe some punk. Given her druthers, she would rather listen to The Flaming Lips or Peter Gabriel. Whatever horrid pop music her mother subjects her to is none of my business. Not that I'm indifferent, but her mother will do whatever the hell she wants. As to movies and television, well, I think some of the PBS kids' fare is pretty repugnant. Not that I'm worried about sex or violence, but have you ever seen Dragon Tales? That shit will turn your brain to pabulum. But I've taken the attitude that it's best to get certain things out of the way. Hard comedy? Funny story, there: When she was two and learning to speak, one of her first complete sentences was, "I need a Jew". As in that ridiculous song that Peter sings in the "banned" episode of Family Guy. And she laughs her ass off to Bart's skateboarding streak in The Simpsons' Movie. Violence? I can't say she's into action films, but she did eventually find my GTA disc, and you should see her go on a shooting spree, or go gonzo in a big-assed roadster. Mostly, though, she liked the fact that you can change the character's clothes. That will keep her amused for hours. Indeed, with SSX (snowboarding) she just does the same run over and over again, and has figured out how to get to the lodge in order to change clothes. She adores kicking the shit out of bad guys in Oni, and played Max Payne as long as I left it accessible in the dock. Believe it or not, some of that seems to make certain things easier. If she sees war footage on the news, she understands that people are hurt, and is sad that some of them aren't going home again. Still, though, let her run loose as Chewbacca in Star Wars Lego II and she'll laugh maniacally as she tears people's arms off. I can't shield her from these things forever, so I'd rather take the time I have before other influences challenge my primacy in her perspective to shape her response to things. Lois and Peter dressed in S&M gear; Porco Rosso punching it out with Donald Curtis; Derek Wildstar shooting it out with Gamilons; Starbuck fragging Cylons. The thing is that if she asks what's going on, or why something happens, and you actually take the time to explain it to her, answer her questions, and treat the moment like an adult conversation, she's in. She'll hang on your words, and keep pressing after each explanation until the issue is reduced to something she can understand. I don't think she's unique in this. Then again, she adores The Mark Steel Lectures. Can't say it's her absolute favorite, but it's right up there. Freud, Marx, Einstein, Mary Shelly, Darwin, Harriet Tubman, Rene Descartes ... it's hard to complain. The only downside is that if I'm wrong—and I certainly will be, and the only question is how wrong—I won't be able to blame it on Hollywood. And I think that's a persuasive factor for many Americans: it's easier to blame someone else. I don't know anyone who locks their television. And I don't know anyone who sits down and reads the lyrics and liner notes of an album with their kids. Maybe that's not how it is in "middle America", or "the heartland", or whatever, but I really don't understand the widespread complaints in this country about media corrupting our kids. Seriously, in a couple of years, I'll be taking my daughter to see Floater or The Flaming Lips, and if the Phish reunion holds up, I'd like her to experience that, too. And if she absolutely must get hooked on the skanque du jour, like a Britney or Girls Aloud, or whatever the fuck, I'll deal with it then. Having said all that, I would ask what power you would hope to have.
Greenpeace acquitted of civil disobedience under 1872 law http://www.mongabay.com/external/greenpeace_acquitted.htm
Where do you live? Who has prevented you from speaking the truth to others? Who has prevented you from saying what you need to say about things here in this forum? :shrug:
The US flag doesn't represent pure actions of a utopia government without error. The expression of burning a flag or an advertised flag cannot be proven to cause any harm to those viewing such an expression. The First Amendment protects the ability of a government to evolve it's laws and policies; without it, the system retards. The government has the right to repsond in argument to justify any actions under criticism. Criticism of the governement in and of itself cannot be proven to harm the government. Democracy is of the people, not a God which says, "Do not test the Lord thy God." Erroring on the side of suppression means the leadership is too intellectually disabled to express a convincing argument for their actions. This is not democracy, it's tyranny of retards who cannot speak for the people.
Parents too often want to put all the blame on lack of censorship in society. When parents abdicate their responsibility to guide their children by paying attention to what they are being exposed to in their life, they throw this off on the societal censorship rules. These uncaring parents want a censorship law to be a cure all for their latchkey, lazy, uninvolved attitude. It is not the programming they want censored that causes the harm; it is the absent parent who isn't there doing their job of how to respond to things in life the child will imminently experience. It is parental abdication and retards a child's intellectual development that is the real harm. A parent and child could view any expression, and it is not the expression that harms, it would be the parents interaction or lack of interaction that would be the deteminer of cause of harm. Parenting is not about hiding reality, it's about teaching how to respond to reality.
Swarm has stated a falsehood. The debate is whether or not pedophilia is pseudo-science. The is no advocation of pedophilia. Swarm is advocating the trolling of threads. Troll as you will, your credibility takes a hit. If you lie here, what makes people think you don't are not lying elsewhere?
