Here I go again for the third time on this forum, repeating this:
“Nobody has the right to tell anybody else what he can publish.”
Odd, the way that simple and, I contend, unassailable truth gets European knickers in a twist. (Not you, Cleopatra, and thank you for your expression of love for freedom of speech. I never thought for a moment that you felt any other way.)
Objectors to the assertion that nobody has the right to curtail anybody’s else’s speech always bring up yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater, and follow it with “Yeah, and how about libel and slander?” U.S. laws against uttering menaces against public officials, specifically a serving president, generally follow. Then the objectors settle back delighted with their argument, and rebuttals bounce off them like dried peas off a bronze donkey.
The “Fire!” example (has that ever happened, by the way?) is useful. Such acts are criminalized because they’re an attempt to do something that is other than speech. Similarly (and more realistically), using a bullhorn to coordinate a mob would be participation in a violent act – something other than or more than speech.
Slander and libel are not crimes. They may be actionable under civil law, and you may be successfully sued for slander and libel, but only if the plaintiff can show that he’s suffered damage from what you published. (Laws that attempt to define criminal libel are still on the books here and there in the U.S., but I’ve never heard of them being used, except in one case where a white politician tried to silence a black politician who had criticized him. I doubt the case went very far.)
Uttering menaces against a politician is considered destructive of the peace, i.e., it’s something more than speech; the public good is assumed to be endangered by it. I think that’s pretty chancy law, but I guess I can see the point. (I was once had up for uttering menaces against a private citizen; I had to post a $500 bond. The case melted away in the hot light of certain facts, e.g., he’d fired a gun at me and then belted me with it.)
However, I love attempts at censorship, and I love censors for their laughable obtuseness. For example, I could print T-shirts bearing a picture of Alfred E. Neuman with a fresh bullet hole in his head, and everybody would know exactly what I meant – and Oh! how I would hope that some harrumphing Republican would try to get me in trouble for it!
Gurdur, I’m glad you’ve cracked Nazi heads. Sounds as if you went and did something other than and more than speech. (Next time, wear a jacket with a thick turned-up collar. Pack it with a folded magazine if you can. That will turn most knives, and may God bless your endeavors.)
Jocko, I know how your head feels after butting it against European brick. But just because you’re right, you shouldn’t get testy. Remember that their behavior is motivated by fear. No, not feat of Nazism; the Nazis had a lot of admirers all over Europe in their heyday. What Europeans fear, and have feared for centuries, is freedom of speech.
But not all of them. About that quote I started out with: I read that many years ago in a German book about censorship. It has a pithy bluntness that I admire very much, and I’m ashamed that it wasn’t an American who said it. You’ll never find an American who disagrees.
