Allahpundit @ Hot Air:
Pop quiz: Where does the boldfaced language in the excerpt below come from? Con law junkies will know, but anyone who’s been reading this site for the past two weeks should have a hunch.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority approved new guidelines for advertisements on Thursday, prohibiting those that it “reasonably foresees would imminently incite or provoke violence or other immediate breach of the peace.”
The 8-to-0 vote by the authority’s board came three days after pro-Israel ads characterizing Islamist opponents of the Jewish state as being “savage” began appearing in subway stations, setting off vandalism, denunciations of the authority and calls for the ads’ removal…
“We’ve gotten to a point where we needed to take action today,” Joseph J. Lhota, the authority’s chairman, said at a news conference on Thursday.
Give up? Re-read this post for the answer. It’s the “fighting words” exception to the First Amendment, the trojan horse by which anti-blasphemy laws and other fun “sensitivity” regulations will eventually be smuggled into American law. Here’s how the Supreme Court described the standard for “fighting words” when it first announced the doctrine in 1942:
Allowing the broadest scope to the language and purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment, it is well understood that the right of free speech is not absolute at all times and under all circumstances. There are certain well defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or “fighting” words — those which, by their very utterance, inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.
The “fighting words” exception, as I’ve said before, amounts to a heckler’s veto to your freedom of speech. It’s pernicious in two ways. One: It makes your First Amendment rights contingent upon the sensitivities of others. If the object of your criticism is prone to responding violently, then it’s incumbent upon you to shut up and not offend them. A “right” that disappears when someone gets especially angry about your exercise of it ain’t much of a right. Two: In practice, it operates as moral sanction by the state for vigilantism. The point of the “fighting words” doctrine is to let the cops step in and arrest an offensive speaker before any violence goes down; it’s essentially a form of appeasement to the insulted party, signaling that they don’t have to do anything crazy because the state will punish their enemy for them.
Can parents be banned from doing anything that might cause a tantrum in their children?
Because it is exactly the same thing.
Grow Up and you don’t have to have a temper tantrum when someone disagrees with your every weird belief.
I’ve said for years that if states and municipalites can defecate on the 2nd amendment, they would, in time do so on the 1st. A few years from now islime will be declared the one and only “religion” allowed in Dearborn or some other MI slum.
THEN THE MUSLIMS HAVE MURDER MORE THAN WE CAN COUNT IF YOU ADD AFGHANISTAN MILITARY SHOOTHING THE AMERICANS COWARDLY IN THE BACK,
SO NEW YORK SHOULD DEAL WITH THEM FIRST, AND GET APPOLOGY AND ACTIONS TO KILL THOSE SO CALLED OFFENDED WHO MURDER OUR SIDE,
WORDS DON’T KILL,
WORDS ARE A FORM OF PEACEFUL DEFENCE, IT’S TERRORIST MOB WHO HAVE DEMONSTRATED SUPREME VIOLENCE, WE TAKE THEM ACCOUNTABLE FOR WHO THEY ARE, NOW THEY ARE STARTING THE TACTICS THEY USED AT THE BEGINNING OF THEIR REVOLT TO OUTSEAT THE LEADERS OF THEIR COUNTRIES,
YES, THEY ARE STARTING HERE, THEIR INCITING BY MURDERING AMERICAN ,
AND OBAMA CANNOT DEAL WITH THEM, HE IS THEIR FRIEND, HIM AND THE MILLION MUSLIMS IN AMERICA, AND BLOOMBERG IS IN BUSYNESS WITH THE MUSLIMS,
HE IS USING HIS POSITION TO PLEASE THE MUSLIMS,
THEY SHOW WHAT SIDE THEY PREFER TO PROTECT,
Yesterday the Muslims of Dearborn[istan], Michigan rallied to protest the anti-Mohammed movie that Obama has been doing free promotion for saying that free speech that “insults” the “feelings” of Muslims must be curtailed. Ironically, signs that were anti-Jewish and anti-Israel were allowed at the “Halt Free Speech” rally.
No mention by the promoters of the rally about the freedom of Muslim women not to be stoned to death in Islamic nations, or the lynching of gays from construction cranes in Iran, or the practice of female mutilation in Islamic nations, or even the requirement that certain Muslim women in the U.S. be required, by their lords and husbands, to wear the bee-keeper outfit because Muslims believe that Muslim men cannot control themselves if forced to look upon the female body. Also what was missing was any discussion of Muslim hatred that facilitated the killings at Fort Hood and Little Rock, Arkansas.
Whoa… how could Allahpundit have such a misleading headline?? Did he not read the links and do some basic research? For shame…
First of all, no surprise that the person at the center of all this is Pam Geller, acting as her American Freedom Defense Initiative entity. What she wanted to do was put an ad in the subways.
Personally I don’t find it offensive. Then again, I don’t find it particularly informative either. I don’t know when she originally wanted these ads to appear, but the MTA originally rejected the ad content, so Geller took them to court. The federal courts ruled in her favor this past July. Therefore all this happened long before “the film” or the widespread protests, thus totally unrelated to today’s hypersensitive climate.
Allahpundit’s headline that says “NYC subway authority bans ads that might “provoke violence” isn’t correct because the federal courts ruled in Geller’s favor months ago. But as an entity that sells ad space, the MTA also has the perfect right to have guidelines for their ads, as long as they do not infringe upon anyone’s First Amendment rights.
So MTA’s response to the court’s ruling is that such ads will be accepted but must carry a disclaimer that the ads are not representative, or an endorsement, from the MTA. Fair enough.
Ergo… NYC did not “ban” anything, Geller’s ads will appear and simply must have a disclaimer attached.
Now the second perspective is, should any entity that is selling advertising space be forced to accept ads they do not wish to run? Apparently so… And you know, I’m not comfortable with that… anymore than I was comfortable for the courts railroading the Boy Scouts of America.
But as the MTA says, you fight free speech with free speech. And any entity selling ad space certainly has the right for guidelines for their advertising…. including common disclaimers.
Allahpundit got this wrong on just about every count.
JustAl
hi,
in NORWAY, LAST WEEK I heard of the MUSLIMS demanding. not asking, not suggesting,
but demanding their living quarters to BE name after them and become a COUNTRY OWN AND RUN BY THEIR SOLE RULE AND LEADER.
IS IN IT WHAT THEY ARE ALL SEEKING AND EMIGRATING IN THE FREE COUNTRIES FOR THAT SAME AGENDA DICTATED BY THEIR SUPREME LEADER IN THE MIDDLE EAST,
WE SHOULD NOT BE FOOL BY THOSE PEOPLE SOME CALLED
” NICE PEOPLE” WHEN THEY TURN ON YOU,
THEY DON’T STAB, THEY SHOOT YOU IN THE BACK,
LIKE THE MILITARY WHO CAME TO TRUST THEM, ARE BEING KILLED IN THE BACK IN AFGHANISTAN, BY THE SOLDIERS THEY WHERE TEACHING HOW TO PROTECT THEIR OWN,