From Freedom to Free-dumb of Speech
Yeah, I know I should be paying rapt attention to the latest developments in Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen. And I know I should be praying against any Franco-like defeat of the nascent republic in Libya by the same crushing force of mercenary thuggery as in Spain 1937. And, wait, let's not forget our daily bread of consternation for continuing Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Boy, if God put us here to find and drain aquifers of compassion, we're fulfilling our mission on earth and slowly turning our Earthen dessicated tear ducts into Martian deserts.
Nevertheless, the biggest fret on my mind this morning is landslide loss of reason and compassion manifest in Supreme Court's 8-to-1 landslide decision against Albert Snyder in his fight to stop criminal harassment by Christian zealots at GI funerals. If Baptists can wave "God hates fags!" signs with impunity across the street from churches where funeral services are being held for Iraq and Afghanistan war dead, why can professors be fired for calling Gaza bombings war crimes and genocide? When did the First Amendment cease to protect warranted outrage and intelligent dissent? When did it become thinly veiled, Supreme Court-guaranteed Second Amendment remedy used by hate groups to demonize foes and allow them to fire into dignified assemblies of those foes. Make no mistake. Westboro Baptist not only cried "Fire!" in a crowded theater; they set fire to it. Their hate speech was a form of open sniper fire. Albert Snyder was entitled to First Amendment protection more than Westboro Baptist Church because he was the victim of its harassment and rights abridgment. Hell, the church phoned the media and invited it to its hate fest.
I am disturbed by the inexorable encroachments of religious extremism and fundamentalism in our society. Bill O'Reilly called slain abortion doctor George Tiller "Tiller the Baby Killer" on 28 telecasts before someone took the hint and murdered him in his church. Of course, O'Reilly was quick to deplore the act and distance himself from any responsibility for it. But we all know in our heart of hearts that he is an accessory to the crime. My question remains: Was the unchecked use of incendiary language by a leading media figure a legal exercise of his First Amendment rights? If so, what does this say about freedom of speech? Is it only irrational hate-speech which enjoys this protection? I've seen Nobel Prize winners shamed into apologies for their angry condemnations of Gaza and West Bank indignities. Yet lawmakers openly hate-bait electorate to crimes against abortion clinics. They even legalize ostracism and hatred through the legislative process. When do words become bullets? When does slow, steady drip of contextualization for purposes of fear and prejudice further goals of demonization and incited hatred? When did the First Amendment become heavily-greased sliding board by which words are quickly converted into weapons used against the people and concepts they define?
We all feel an involuntary Pavlovian twinge of dread when we see or hear the words "Negro," "Jew" or "Communist." Call it historical conditioning. Now the twinges come with mere mention of "Muslim," "Gay," even "Zionist." I believe words that define ethnic groups or controversial philosophical concepts require semantic neutrality to function in rational discourse. The method of fascism is to deprive these essential classifying words of that neutrality by give them high hate-charges which magically desensitize users to the moral consequences of the demonization process.
Once weaponized, words for ethnic groups or key economic and philosophical concepts are put on a defensive from which they can never escape. How do we restore the near-sacred right of rational discourse to words once they are converted into highly charged units--either as epithets or euphemisms--of hate speech? Ideas like Medicare that on their own have vast majority support lose credibility once demonized with adjective of "Socialist," or "Marxist." So do those who espouse such ideas once they are labeled as "Socialists" or "Marxists."
To me, the Supreme Court has knowingly contributed to the weaponization of words that is being used to convert them from free to hate speech. What's a Jew being pursued by Nazis or a Palestinian pursued by Israelis going to call himself to merit re-humanization and the safety it brings? Demonization deprives the hated of rights to the refuge of synonyms such as "one of you," "humankind," "average Joes" to which most other groups have access. Fear-and-loathing semantics put groups and concepts into gulags that makes escape back to the mainland of rational discourse impossible.
The First Amendment was one of the fruits of the Enlightenment. Now it is being used as a cover for darkness.
NATION
One Family's Fight Against the Westboro Baptist Church
Mar 2, 2011 – 4:01 PM
AOL
Theunis Bates
Contributor
On March 10, 2006, more than 1,200 people gathered at St. John's Catholic Church in Westminster, Md., to say their farewells to Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder. The 20-year-old Marine had died a week earlier, when his Humvee rolled over in western Iraq while he was manning the gun turret.
His father, Albert Snyder, later told the Marine Corps Times how beautiful it was to see strangers come out on the streets of Westminster and salute the funeral procession as it drove to a nearby veterans cemetery. "I've never seen a funeral like this in my life," Snyder said. "It was just amazing to see."
Amy Davis, Baltimore Sun / MCT
Albert Snyder, center, supported by his attorney, Sean Summers, left, and Kansas City Attorney General Steve Six, speaks to the media after opening arguments in Snyder v. Phelps were made at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 6.
But the presence of seven uninvited guests from Kansas meant that his memories of that day are forever tarnished and led to a long legal battle that ended with defeat today in the U.S. Supreme Court for Snyder and his family.
A small group of religious extremists from the Westboro Baptist Church traveled 1,100 miles from their home in Topeka to stage a shocking celebration outside St. John's. The group of adults and children waved signs declaring "Thank God for dead soldiers" and "God hates fags" and shouted offensive slogans -- part of their bizarre gospel, which states that soldiers will continue to die so long as America tolerates gays, Jews and Catholics.
Snyder didn't see those hate-spewing protesters that day. The church windows had been blocked out and the Patriot Guard Riders -- a team of motorcyclists who attend military funerals around the country and separate the Westboro mob from mourners -- shielded the cemetery. But he saw their crude signs later during television news reports. And two weeks after the funeral, he read a rant titled "The Burden of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder" posted on the Westboro website.
The essay accused Matthew's parents of raising their son "for the devil" and teaching him about adultery and divorce. (His parents are separated.) It also said they supported "the largest pedophile machine in the history of the entire world, the Roman Catholic monstrosity." Snyder told CNN that he felt physically sick after read that online tirade.
The 55-year-old father of three has described himself in interviews as a quiet man who attempted to avoid confrontation all his life. But he wasn't prepared to stand by and allow the Phelps clan, who run the Westboro church, to slander his family. "They are very sick individuals," Snyder said to CNN. "It comes down to dignity. No one should be buried with what the Phelps did. Everyone deserves to be buried with dignity."
His fight back started straight away. On June 5, 2006, he sued the Westboro church for defamation, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of distress. The suit didn't ask for money, but stated that the Phelps should pay emotional damages, Snyder's court costs as well as punitive damages for "reprehensible actions." Albert's plan was to cripple the church financially and put an end to its campaign of hate and bigotry.
A jury accepted Snyder's claim, and in 2007 his family was awarded $2.9 million in compensatory damages, plus $8 million in punitive damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress and intrusion upon seclusion. A year after that verdict, a federal judge in Baltimore reduced the total damages to $5 million.
But in 2009, that judgment was overturned by an appeals court in Richmond, Va., which ruled that Snyder would have to pay $16,000 toward the Phelps' legal costs. (Fox News' Bill O'Reilly offered to cover those costs.) Despite those massive setbacks, Albert refused to back down. His lawyers petitioned the Supreme Court, and in March 2010, it agreed to hear his case.
"[Albert] knows what Matt went through in Iraq, and he feels like he can't back down just because this is getting tough, because Matt didn't back down," Craig Trebilcock, one of two lawyers representing Snyder pro bono, told The Baltimore Sun last year. "He's tougher than when we started out. Kind of like something that's been hit so many times, it's become tougher."
Snyder hasn't yet commented on today's Supreme Court ruling -- his attorney Sean Summers said, "It's not the decision [Snyder] wanted -- he realized there was a fair risk that he might lose the case. Albert said last year that the tireless support he received from people across the country, and from his two daughters, inspired him to keep fighting." His legal bills have been covered thanks to donations from thousands of people, meaning that the battle against Westboro won't bankrupt the electronics salesman, who earns $43,000 a year.
"It kind of restores your faith in mankind after dealing with this wacko church," Snyder told The Baltimore Sun last March. "Win or lose, I'll know that I did everything I could for Matt, and for all the soldiers and Marines who are still coming home dying."
Nevertheless, the biggest fret on my mind this morning is landslide loss of reason and compassion manifest in Supreme Court's 8-to-1 landslide decision against Albert Snyder in his fight to stop criminal harassment by Christian zealots at GI funerals. If Baptists can wave "God hates fags!" signs with impunity across the street from churches where funeral services are being held for Iraq and Afghanistan war dead, why can professors be fired for calling Gaza bombings war crimes and genocide? When did the First Amendment cease to protect warranted outrage and intelligent dissent? When did it become thinly veiled, Supreme Court-guaranteed Second Amendment remedy used by hate groups to demonize foes and allow them to fire into dignified assemblies of those foes. Make no mistake. Westboro Baptist not only cried "Fire!" in a crowded theater; they set fire to it. Their hate speech was a form of open sniper fire. Albert Snyder was entitled to First Amendment protection more than Westboro Baptist Church because he was the victim of its harassment and rights abridgment. Hell, the church phoned the media and invited it to its hate fest.
I am disturbed by the inexorable encroachments of religious extremism and fundamentalism in our society. Bill O'Reilly called slain abortion doctor George Tiller "Tiller the Baby Killer" on 28 telecasts before someone took the hint and murdered him in his church. Of course, O'Reilly was quick to deplore the act and distance himself from any responsibility for it. But we all know in our heart of hearts that he is an accessory to the crime. My question remains: Was the unchecked use of incendiary language by a leading media figure a legal exercise of his First Amendment rights? If so, what does this say about freedom of speech? Is it only irrational hate-speech which enjoys this protection? I've seen Nobel Prize winners shamed into apologies for their angry condemnations of Gaza and West Bank indignities. Yet lawmakers openly hate-bait electorate to crimes against abortion clinics. They even legalize ostracism and hatred through the legislative process. When do words become bullets? When does slow, steady drip of contextualization for purposes of fear and prejudice further goals of demonization and incited hatred? When did the First Amendment become heavily-greased sliding board by which words are quickly converted into weapons used against the people and concepts they define?
We all feel an involuntary Pavlovian twinge of dread when we see or hear the words "Negro," "Jew" or "Communist." Call it historical conditioning. Now the twinges come with mere mention of "Muslim," "Gay," even "Zionist." I believe words that define ethnic groups or controversial philosophical concepts require semantic neutrality to function in rational discourse. The method of fascism is to deprive these essential classifying words of that neutrality by give them high hate-charges which magically desensitize users to the moral consequences of the demonization process.
Once weaponized, words for ethnic groups or key economic and philosophical concepts are put on a defensive from which they can never escape. How do we restore the near-sacred right of rational discourse to words once they are converted into highly charged units--either as epithets or euphemisms--of hate speech? Ideas like Medicare that on their own have vast majority support lose credibility once demonized with adjective of "Socialist," or "Marxist." So do those who espouse such ideas once they are labeled as "Socialists" or "Marxists."
To me, the Supreme Court has knowingly contributed to the weaponization of words that is being used to convert them from free to hate speech. What's a Jew being pursued by Nazis or a Palestinian pursued by Israelis going to call himself to merit re-humanization and the safety it brings? Demonization deprives the hated of rights to the refuge of synonyms such as "one of you," "humankind," "average Joes" to which most other groups have access. Fear-and-loathing semantics put groups and concepts into gulags that makes escape back to the mainland of rational discourse impossible.
The First Amendment was one of the fruits of the Enlightenment. Now it is being used as a cover for darkness.
NATION
One Family's Fight Against the Westboro Baptist Church
Mar 2, 2011 – 4:01 PM
AOL
Theunis Bates
Contributor
On March 10, 2006, more than 1,200 people gathered at St. John's Catholic Church in Westminster, Md., to say their farewells to Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder. The 20-year-old Marine had died a week earlier, when his Humvee rolled over in western Iraq while he was manning the gun turret.
His father, Albert Snyder, later told the Marine Corps Times how beautiful it was to see strangers come out on the streets of Westminster and salute the funeral procession as it drove to a nearby veterans cemetery. "I've never seen a funeral like this in my life," Snyder said. "It was just amazing to see."
Amy Davis, Baltimore Sun / MCT
Albert Snyder, center, supported by his attorney, Sean Summers, left, and Kansas City Attorney General Steve Six, speaks to the media after opening arguments in Snyder v. Phelps were made at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 6.
But the presence of seven uninvited guests from Kansas meant that his memories of that day are forever tarnished and led to a long legal battle that ended with defeat today in the U.S. Supreme Court for Snyder and his family.
A small group of religious extremists from the Westboro Baptist Church traveled 1,100 miles from their home in Topeka to stage a shocking celebration outside St. John's. The group of adults and children waved signs declaring "Thank God for dead soldiers" and "God hates fags" and shouted offensive slogans -- part of their bizarre gospel, which states that soldiers will continue to die so long as America tolerates gays, Jews and Catholics.
Snyder didn't see those hate-spewing protesters that day. The church windows had been blocked out and the Patriot Guard Riders -- a team of motorcyclists who attend military funerals around the country and separate the Westboro mob from mourners -- shielded the cemetery. But he saw their crude signs later during television news reports. And two weeks after the funeral, he read a rant titled "The Burden of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder" posted on the Westboro website.
The essay accused Matthew's parents of raising their son "for the devil" and teaching him about adultery and divorce. (His parents are separated.) It also said they supported "the largest pedophile machine in the history of the entire world, the Roman Catholic monstrosity." Snyder told CNN that he felt physically sick after read that online tirade.
The 55-year-old father of three has described himself in interviews as a quiet man who attempted to avoid confrontation all his life. But he wasn't prepared to stand by and allow the Phelps clan, who run the Westboro church, to slander his family. "They are very sick individuals," Snyder said to CNN. "It comes down to dignity. No one should be buried with what the Phelps did. Everyone deserves to be buried with dignity."
His fight back started straight away. On June 5, 2006, he sued the Westboro church for defamation, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of distress. The suit didn't ask for money, but stated that the Phelps should pay emotional damages, Snyder's court costs as well as punitive damages for "reprehensible actions." Albert's plan was to cripple the church financially and put an end to its campaign of hate and bigotry.
A jury accepted Snyder's claim, and in 2007 his family was awarded $2.9 million in compensatory damages, plus $8 million in punitive damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress and intrusion upon seclusion. A year after that verdict, a federal judge in Baltimore reduced the total damages to $5 million.
But in 2009, that judgment was overturned by an appeals court in Richmond, Va., which ruled that Snyder would have to pay $16,000 toward the Phelps' legal costs. (Fox News' Bill O'Reilly offered to cover those costs.) Despite those massive setbacks, Albert refused to back down. His lawyers petitioned the Supreme Court, and in March 2010, it agreed to hear his case.
"[Albert] knows what Matt went through in Iraq, and he feels like he can't back down just because this is getting tough, because Matt didn't back down," Craig Trebilcock, one of two lawyers representing Snyder pro bono, told The Baltimore Sun last year. "He's tougher than when we started out. Kind of like something that's been hit so many times, it's become tougher."
Snyder hasn't yet commented on today's Supreme Court ruling -- his attorney Sean Summers said, "It's not the decision [Snyder] wanted -- he realized there was a fair risk that he might lose the case. Albert said last year that the tireless support he received from people across the country, and from his two daughters, inspired him to keep fighting." His legal bills have been covered thanks to donations from thousands of people, meaning that the battle against Westboro won't bankrupt the electronics salesman, who earns $43,000 a year.
"It kind of restores your faith in mankind after dealing with this wacko church," Snyder told The Baltimore Sun last March. "Win or lose, I'll know that I did everything I could for Matt, and for all the soldiers and Marines who are still coming home dying."
posted by David Federman @ 6:57 AM
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