First Amendment, as used by American courts, is hypocritical

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Clearly, all it does is facilitate whatever authoritarian mood the country is in. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_v._United_States - convicted based on the writings of *others*, whereas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio acquits and treats the promotion of violence as if it's just cheesecakes being sold on the corner.

Theoretically the latter takes precedence (simply because it happened later), but that means what, that courts don't currently and in the future prosecute only those whose ideologies it disagrees? (Judge seemed to hate the fact they even got lawyers so much even the lawyers were prosecuted.)

Quite simply, at least based on those two, law seems to do nothing but fracture society and cause strife, that happens when the promotion of equality lands someone in jail while the promotion of violence and fascism is given a pat on the back and recited forevermore in legal history.

You really thought free speech was universal, did you?

Well no, it was because the lawyers committed contempt of court and attempted to use the trial to push propaganda.

From the Wikipedia article you quoted:



It was a dark time in America's history, but maybe if the lawyers had tried to win over the judge rather than piss him off then their clients would have got off.

Free speech is less and less of a thing universally,

You cannot be a culture of offense and have free speech,

Has anything good come from you always taking offense to something Mootoo?

No because we are a culture of offensive, I am offended and your offended, other members are offended and the mods are offended. Everyone is offended, nothing happens but arguing when we are offended. What if its possible that Trump could be a good president? That is an offensive thought for you maintain isn't it? Why? Why is that anymore offensive then Hillary? Why can you not respect some one with a different opinion?

Am I offensive? Good because that is exactly the point, if you judge a notion without even considering it then free speech has died and with it America has too.

Of course in my opinion America died in the civil war, is that an offensive idea to maintain? There are no lines and that is the problem. If I believe something, then I am going to want to express it but what happens when we can't express ourselves? What is the end result?

Think about that real long and hard.

Yes. Some Americans enjoy talking about how, before the Civil War, the United States were (as in the plural), but after the Civil War, the United States was (as in the singular). In other words, the United States became a single nation after that time, when before that time, it was "only" a federation of sovereign states.

Well, as a student of the Founders' ideas, I see value in being a federation where every state, commonwealth and territory enjoys more authority under the conditions of the Constitution over its own lands, people and legal interactions than the federal government does. Who created the United States? Well, the former Thirteen Colonies that existed at the time of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The very name of the United States of America (proposed by Thomas Paine) suggests that the founders designed a federation. Within the Federalist Papers, this design gains traction and is discussed by the Founders in detail, more so in the Anti-Federalist Papers. Later, the title of the Constitution for the United States of America also hints at a federation instead of a nation; so, too, does every word of the Constitution. The Founders intended and worked toward a federation, not a nation.

President Lincoln's attempt to redefine the United States as a "nation" smacks of gimmickry. He was very intelligent, and certainly knew better. But, his idea of "one nation" was propaganda at a time when he believed it would maintain the federal government. As a result, the Ninth and Tenth amendments to the Constitution have been all but forgotten.

Yes, America as a federation died with the Civil War.

How do I know not to be offended by this?

Is this okay?

Does freedom of speech protect this individual or do we need a more politically correct view to be acceptable?

Does it offended anyone? and if so why and how does this statement effect you? Can anyone disagree without having a insult-driven agenda?

Truth is never offensive; uncomfortable, maybe, but never offensive.

Has Mootoo ever attempted to lock someone in prison or otherwise deny them their rights because of their speech? Give a specific example.

Is saying you're offended protected by the First Amendment? I was under the impression it was, but I've been wrong about things in the past.

There remain a relative few from the last, say, decade of activists who claim the imagined constitutional right to be free from offense (based on the statements of others about race, gender, sexuality, etc.).

You're mentioning people who want to prohibit hate speech. Tell me, has Mootoo suggested banning hate speech? I've never seen them do so.

I haven't mentioned anyone in particular within this topic.

Dennis was a mistake.

Brandendburg was the later remedy for the mistake.

Simple as that.

Save your breath----Mootoo is not American / does not live here.

It's good to have you over here, DCJ----Raptor (I miss his posts, terribly) would be so proud of you!!

That strikes me as a somewhat absolutist position--the notion that any change to the division of powers between the federal and state governments is fatal to the federation.

It seems to me that in order for a federation to survive it must demonstrate the capacity to adapt to change. There are jurisdictions in the 21st century which simply did not exist in the 18th. A federation must figure out how to manage these jurisdictions in an effective fashion.

That's not to say the centralization is the only valid route to address new jurisdictions, but fiscal federalism will, inevitably, lead to significant centralization. It has happened in every federation since Rome, and will continue to be the case so long as central governments hold greater spending flexibility than subordinate orders of government.

Would the USA be better off with a looser federation? That's a speculative exercise, but I suggest that Europe is providing us an example of a federation that is failing. Although euroskeptics continue to push the message that European nations are losing power to Brussels, the reality seems to be that Brussels is powerless to respond to the forces that are working to pull the EU apart.

I posit that the United States would have ceased to exist in the first half of the twentieth century. The 1907 Financial Crisis demonstrated the need for coordinated response to economic shocks. In the absence of a strong central government, I think it unlikely the USA could have recovered intact from the Great Depression. Now, perhaps we would all have been better off with several blocs of states rather than the US monolith, but I think the Second World War would have ended rather differently in the absence of full American participation.

Notwithstanding the doomsaying of the last several decades, the true fact is that the United States continues to demonstrate an enormous capacity to change and adapt to changes in the world. For all that economic inequality is a toxin that is currently poisoning the US economy, the reality is that the United States has been here before, and has emerged from it. I maintain full faith that it will do so again.

Not so much absolutist as empirical. Remember that the 13 American colonies, and a few "territories," existed for 167 years before they coordinated their experiences, successes and failures into a workable idea for a new nation. During that time, each colony and territory was an incubator of various successes which were then shared among the others. This organic development of a new political system owed nothing to England which had been the cause of many mistakes in the colonies and territories.

The Constitution for the United States of America has been described as a "delicate balance" of competing hopes and expectations. The American experience taught these colonies and territories that most laws affect the people in their communities. Therefore, local governments should balance the need for this authority to be shared between local and state governments, while the federal government would primarily coordinate between states and other nations.

While many tweaks to this delicate balance have been adopted over the years, I amn't alone in believing that some of the changes have been detrimental to local and state governments, and, by extension, the federal government, too. People are outraged with the militarization of our local police agencies. Perhaps that delicate balance, once tweaked, isn't so balanced, after all.

When I say that I support a federal government, it is precisley the local-state-federal (bottom-up) model that I hope can be returned to the United States as much as many citizens of the European Union hope to regain, too. Almost all forms of a federal-state-local (top-down) model of government seem to fail eventually. All the globalists horses and all the globalists men can't seem to hold it together except by brute force.

Making the U.S. economy dictate the form of government has been tried several times in its history. Despite what the Broadway musical suggests, Alexander Hamilton was despised for many things, primary among them was his driven intention to create a central bank. No less than Thomas Jefferson succeeded in blocking that plan ... for a while. After Jefferson, Andrew Jackson took probably the broadest attempt to dismantle the central-bank idea by succeeding in destroying its intention to manage the economy from afar. By Christmas Eve, 1913, the Congress was ready again to try for a third central bank with its creation of the Federal Reserve System; a legally "private" bank with only minimal connections to the U.S. Government. It is as "federal" as Federal Express.

Since the Federal Reserve System was created, the purchase power of the dollar has fallen 2,332.9 percent. By the end of this year, the federal government debt will be $22.5 trillion. These are convincing proofs that the federal government is unable to lead in any economic, let alone administrative, way. It, therefore, should be the last level of government where anyone could find systemic stability and fidelity.

Yes, the federal government has changed and adapted. But, a look at polls of the citizenry show that just 19 percent of Americans trust their federal government "most of the time." And, only nine percent of Americans have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the U.S. Congress. Clearly, then, the changes and adaptations have failed miserably and don't reflect the ideas and values of its citizens.

No, perhaps the first thing the federal government can do to better its people is to repeal all laws and regulations that have put us in this position, and re-evaluate from then on.

There are limits to free speech, we all know you cannot yell fire in a crowded movie theater. Advocating for terrorism or violent insurrection is not okay, someone should be allowed to openly support ISIS for example. We're pretty far removed from it now so we look at it as an ideology but at a time most terrorism on this planet was from Communists, there really was a foreign entity pulling strings behind the scenes and while maybe the west was not innocent in their actions(far from it), it is moral relativism taken too far to compare it to one of the greatest evils in human history.