Quote:
Originally posted by onetime2
Thanks for clarifying. Do you think this is the way it is now, or the way it "should" be? If it's the latter, that might be an interesting topic for it's own thread. If it's the former, I have to say I disagree.
Free speech currently applies beyond just voicing oposition (or support) for government. Protests occur against/for corporations, private groups, and private individuals all the time. So long as it doesn't cross the line into libel, you can say what you want about anyone/anything in the US right now.
I don't feel protesters have a "right to be heard" by the President. It doesn't spell that out in the Constitution and they certainly have other methods of voicing their opinions to the President beyond pickets and protests (still there's no guarantee that they'll be heard). They can write letters, get petitions together, take out ads in newspapers & magazines, and, of course, not vote for him when he's up for re-election.
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I think that how I explained the function of free speech is the minimum of how it should be. Our courts have constistently ruled that political speech has special status in regards to this right. The sticky point might be that abortion protestors feel they [i]are[/b] voicing political views.
In cases where the courts must strike a balance between the rights of protestors versus those of the clinic patients, I think that examining the intent of the framers is instructive. My understanding is that they wrote the constitution to govern citizens' relations with the government--not each other. Individual interactions are governed by local ordinances and civil law. Not until a good hundred and fifty years later did the courts start applying its rulings to individual relationships.
I'm TAing a federal law enforcement class right now so I can ask the professor if my perspective is historically correct. Also, my buddy is a constitutional scholar so I'll run it by him, too.
I don't want to get into a semantic debate about the right to speak versus the right to be heard. It appears to me that our framers figured that the latter is reasonably inferred from the former. Limiting where and when one can speak effectively nullifies one's voice.
EDIT:
I should clarify my point of the right to be heard. I don't mean that protestors (or supporters) have a right to walk into a room and be heard by the president. But they do have a right to stand in a public venue and feel as though their voice has a chance of being heard.
If I'm going to a particular public venue to express my outrage at a political decision but know I will be cordoned off into some area out of earshot or eyesight of the person who's opinion I'm trying to change, I might as well just stay home and yell at the sky for all the good my right to "speak" is going to do me.
I should also clarify that government's
ultimate (instead of
sole) responsibility is to the people. It obviously has other functions than responding to us. My point, however, was that it ultimately can not do anything the people do not want. In theory, at least, government is a function of the aggregate will of the people--not a distinct entity. As a result of it being an extension of the will of the people, some scholars argue that government can't possibly operate against their will. Others, however, claim that it can go awry and that the people then have a duty to correct its course of action.
I think this point would be a far more interesting theoretical debate on the role and operation of our government structure.