Free Speech Is Just That… Free Speech
I wanted to keep today a politics-free day (honestly, the way I’d prefer to keep every day), but our idiotPresident has decided that he was going to shred the Constitution just a little bit more today.
The president spoke after laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns. He ventured across the Potomac River on a sun-splashed Memorial Day just a short time after signing into law a bill that restricts protests at military funerals.
At the White House, Bush signed the Respect for America’s Fallen Heroes Act,” passed by Congress largely in response to the activities of a Kansas church group that has staged protests at military funerals around the country, claiming the deaths symbolized God’s anger at U.S. tolerance of homosexuals.
The new law bars protests within 300 feet of the entrance of a national cemetery and within 150 feet of a road into the cemetery. This restriction applies an hour before until an hour after a funeral. Those violating the act would face up to a $100,000 fine and up to a year in prison.
Look… The Phelps morons piss me off just as much as the next guy. In fact, I’ve had run-ins with them and I actually stood a foot from one of them and laughed right in his face as he repeated all kinds of vindictive and hateful crap that he swore was based on the Bible.
However, one thing that everyone seems to forget is the purpose of the first amendment to the Constitution. It’s sole overriding purpose with regards to speech is protecting every single word that’s as unpopular as possible. The idea is people should feel free to be able to say what’s in the deepest depths of their heart without fear of repurcussions.
In effect, the Congress by writing it and the President by passing it has criminalized two rights guaranteed by the Constitution: the right to free speech and the right to assemble in protest.
Whether you like it or not, as an American citizen, you’re going to be confronted on a regular basis with speech you don’t want to hear. Your obligation as an American citizen is to defend the nasty hateful hurtful speech as fervently as you would defend a flag waver.
Free speech is free speech. That’s what being an American is about, and the idea that a President in this country can lay a wreath on the tomb of soldiers who died for this country defending that right and then proceeds to do with a pen what people haven’t been able to do with bombs and bullets, is a clear demonstration of why he does not deserve to be President.
Technorati Tags: bush, us, memorial day, constitution, free speech, freedom of speech
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