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Originally Posted by alansmithee
By your definition, it takes a majority. Here's your majority:
Excuse the bad formatting, original poll on link. Great deal + Moderate=43. Not much+not at all = 53. A majority.
By your reasoning, there can be no proof of anything's impact on society. By your logic, showing statistics for the genocide of Jews during Nazi Germany is not proof of that society's evil, because some people might not feel that killing Jews is bad.
I would assume the majority of society agrees that NAMBLA is bad, the other cases are more judgement based. If my opinion of a better society IS a better society, then the ACLU is harmful. Again, using your reasoning we can make NO judgement basis about the effects of anything on anything dealing with society, because nobody knows for certain.
Here is a quote of yours from a different thread:
You have no proof for any of that, by your very reasoning. You are discussing what YOU think is society's beliefs. YOU state that hate is displeasing. YOU state that killing someone because they are gay/black/white/etc is a displeasing motivation.
I did that above. Your whole premise seems to be that people cannot state any society judgements because they are individuals, and not self-contained societies. You might be correct, but your assumption is worthless, because it eliminates any potential for debate. Or, if we use your earlier definition of society (a majority of people) there should be opinion polls on every subject to discuss it's relevance. And any opinion that isn't backed up by a majority opinion is worthless.
You are disproved by legal precedent, inciting riots is not protected speech. Also, Charles Manson is serving a lengthy criminal sentence for murder, yet he just told others to kill-he killed nobody. It is you who seem to lack understanding of constitutional law, as avocation of certain illegal acts IS limited. All you stated after in relation to that assumption is invalid.
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alansmithee, I know that your comments quoted above were directed at Manx, who originally jumped in to counter some points that you had made in an exchange of posts with me.
I want to point out that ignorance or incomplete understanding of the restrictions put on government as to it's power to restrict freedom of speech and expression, as stated in the U.S. Constitution and in it's initial amendments, (the Bill of Rights), are just that......a shortcoming in the opinions of many people living in the U.S. today.
alansmithee, here's a <a href="http://www.aclu-mass.org/legal/docket_2002-2003.asp">link</a> to the issues list that the ACLU Massachusetts chapter was involved in from 7/2002 to 6/2003, including "Curley v. Nambla".
The ACLU is in a place in time now that may have a lot in common with the place that Abu Ghraib whistleblower Josep M. Darby finds himself in. His community is polarized in it's reaction to his act of conscience. How would you treat him if he came home to your town? Your opinion of the ACLU FOIA efforts seems ripe for revision. It seems un-American. If you disagree, what do you see our military "fighting for" in Iraq ? What principles do we stand for, and expect our troops to stand for ? How do we postpone investigating the possible torture and abuse of prisoners, and the possible illegal acts of the Bush administration, and still maintain and display our American values and integrity to our enlisted ranks in the military, to the Iraqi people, and to a world that is watching intently to see whether we are a fair and benevolent superpower, or something else ?
Since you have yet to propose an immediate replacement for the ACLU, and you stated that U.S. war crimes do not fall into a category of our timely "right to know", I won't be surprised if you don't take the time to examine the list and post comments about it. I thought of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam when I read your justification for postponing the people's oversight of government's prosecution of war. You make statments that help to persuade me that you are a blinded by a misplaced patriotic sense that it is not possible for you federal government's leaders to be war criminals and perpetrators of an illegal war of aggression, and.....more alarming.....that the assertion by the ACLU of all of our legal rights, in the use of the federal courts to compel the government to disclose the paper record of what it is involved in as far as the prosecution of that possibly illegal war, somehow "undermines" our military, so those inquiries should be postponed until "later"?
Mull over the possibility, however remote it may be to your way of thinking, that nothing undermines our military more signifigantly than the waging of illegal war of aggression and the torture and abuse of those detained by our military in the course of waging this war, and the destruction of evidence by the military of the commission of war crimes, and the failure to investigate reports of these crimes in a timely and honest way. Here is what can happen when the military and the citizens are not committed to the principles set forth by Justice Robert Jackson at Nuremberg in 1946:
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<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32048-2004May16?language=printer">http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32048-2004May16?language=printer</a>
When Joseph Comes Marching Home
In a Western Maryland Town, Ambivalence About the Son Who Blew the Whistle at Abu Ghraib
By Hanna Rosin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 17, 2004; Page C01
CORRIGANVILLE, Md.
On TV, Spec. Joseph Darby's neighbors here in the Allegheny Mountains have heard him called a hero, a brave soldier who tipped off superiors to the abuses at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison. And given the way small towns usually honor their soldiers, you might expect preparations for a proper homecoming, maybe even an impromptu parade.
But at the bar in the community center just down the road from Darby's house, near the trailer where his mother and younger brother live, none of the handful of patrons is in a parade kind of mood.
"If I were [Darby], I'd be sneaking in through the back door at midnight," says Janette Jones, who lives just across the border in Pennsylvania and stopped here at midday with her daughter for a Pepsi and a smoke.
What captures their attention this day is not Darby but the ubiquitous photo of another young man, Nicholas Berg, handcuffed and stooped in his orange jumpsuit, moments before he is beheaded by Islamic militants who claimed to be avenging the humiliations suffered by Iraqis at Abu Ghraib.
"Maybe if [Darby] hadn't turned them in, that boy would still be alive," Jones says.
"Come on, Mom, you can't blame him," says her daughter Janice, giving a friendly shove. "They'd hate us no matter what."
Janette Jones's husband was in the service, and so was her son-in-law. The Joneses live not far from Spec. Jeremy Sivits, a military police officer involved in the prison scandal who will face a special court-martial Wednesday. They knew Sivits, 24, growing up: He was a "nice guy, a quiet guy," says the elder Jones. She remembers he once helped her with the barbecue when the coals wouldn't light.
"Who knows what those boys were going through out there," she says. "The Iraqis did to us worse than we did to them."
In this mountain range where three states meet -- Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia -- everyone seems to have a brother or uncle or grandfather in the armed services, especially since the coal and steel industries collapsed. Every small town has a war memorial honoring local fallen soldiers. Veterans Day is a serious affair.
Wives used to trade stories about finding someone to talk to in Korea or the right chocolate bars in Germany. Lately they talk about the latest funeral. The shame brought on by the prison scandal centered on the 372nd Military Police Company, based one town over in Cresaptown, has only made them cling to each other more.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld praised Darby for his "honorable actions." But Washington is a universe away. "They can call him what they want," says Mike Simico, a veteran visiting relatives in Cresaptown. "I call him a rat."
The sentiment is so deeply felt that even those who praise him do so only anonymously, or with many reservations.
"That boy's got a lot of courage," says Alan St. Clair, who lives down the road from Darby's high school home. "But when you go against your fellow man like that, I don't know. Some people won't like it."
The feeling is starting to bubble up elsewhere, too, among people who feel that what Darby did was unpatriotic, un-American, even faintly treasonous. "Hero A Two-Timing Rat," reads a headline from last week's New York Post. The story is about his personal life, but the metaphor lingers.
The Army says it's considering giving Darby a medal, although Army spokesman Dov Schwartz said it can't say when. It took the Army 30 years and the intervention of a dogged professor to give a medal to Hugh Thompson, who reported to his commanders what came to be known as the My Lai massacre.
In the meantime, members of Darby's family find themselves in a situation not unlike the Sivitses' -- refusing interviews, hiding from neighbors and strangers alike. Events have shoved them into history but not yet sorted out their individual fates.
Darby's mother, Margaret Blank, has had cancer and diabetes, and lost one eye. Her husband died a few years back. She now lives in a cramped trailer steps from a railroad track, at the edge of a line of trim clapboard houses.
"I'm proud of -- " Blank yells out her car window at a reporter as she pulls onto the grass by her trailer, having just picked up Montana, her younger son, from school.
Then abruptly she changes her mind "Get the [expletive] off my property. Now. Before I call the police."
"He said that he could not stand the atrocities that he had stumbled upon," Blank told ABC News on May 6. "He said he kept thinking, what if it was my mom, my grandmother, my brother or my wife."
For the family, however, pride is tainted with fear. His sister-in-law, Maxine Carroll, who's served as the family spokeswoman for the last couple of weeks, told reporters she's "worried about his safety," about "repercussions." "It scares you a little," she told the Associated Press, when asked if some might consider him a traitor. On May 8, she and her husband slipped away from their housing complex in Windber, Pa., to an undisclosed location.
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<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/01/31/students.amendment.ap/">http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/01/31/students.amendment.ap/</a>Freedom of what?
First Amendment no big deal, students say
Monday, January 31, 2005 Posted: 4:09 PM EST (2109 GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The way many high school students see it, government censorship of newspapers may not be a bad thing, and flag burning is hardly protected free speech.
It turns out the First Amendment is a second-rate issue to many of those nearing their own adult independence, according to a study of high school attitudes released Monday.
The original amendment to the Constitution is the cornerstone of the way of life in the United States, promising citizens the freedoms of religion, speech, press and assembly.
Yet, when told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes "too far" in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.
"These results are not only disturbing; they are dangerous," said Hodding Carter III, president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which sponsored the $1 million study. "Ignorance about the basics of this free society is a danger to our nation's future."
The students are even more restrictive in their views than their elders, the study says.
When asked whether people should be allowed to express unpopular views, 97 percent of teachers and 99 percent of school principals said yes. Only 83 percent of students did.
The results reflected indifference, with almost three in four students saying they took the First Amendment for granted or didn't know how they felt about it. It was also clear that many students do not understand what is protected by the bedrock of the Bill of Rights.
Three in four students said flag burning is illegal. It's not. About half the students said the government can restrict any indecent material on the Internet. It can't.
"Schools don't do enough to teach the First Amendment. Students often don't know the rights it protects," Linda Puntney, executive director of the Journalism Education Association, said in the report. "This all comes at a time when there is decreasing passion for much of anything. And, you have to be passionate about the First Amendment."
The partners in the project, including organizations of newspaper editors and radio and television news directors, share a clear advocacy for First Amendment issues............
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