First Amendment Free Speech and the Florida Pastor

Anyone who knows me or has followed my blogs knows that I am a big supporter of behavioral freedoms. These are the ones that let you do what you want as long as you aren’t harming anyone else. Freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom of assembly. It also includes equality under the law for all demographic categories (gender, age, race, gender identity, etc.). (Note - It doesn’t include things like freedom from disease or freedom from hunger because that requires someone else to provide you with the health care or food, significantly complicating the problem. That is a debate for another time).

This doesn’t mean you can yell “Fire” in a movie theater because that leads to harm of other people. Same thing for false advertising claims or fraudulent financial dealings. These don’t conform to the principle.

This leads to some unfortunate side effects, such as the right to be an idiot, bigot, overall bad person in your private matters. For example, it allows that pastor in Florida to hold a public trial accusing the Koran of being evil and then burning it. It gives neo-nazi groups the right to march and protest just as often and publicly as any other group.

It scares me when I see politicians trying to find exceptions. I heard a Republican on the CBS morning show who wanted to make burning the Koran illegal because it incites Muslims to violence. He also wanted to make burning national flags illegal for the same reason. We can’t let extremists limit our freedoms just by reacting badly. A better response would be not to give them any publicity. I loved it when the media refused to cover the Koran burning because they knew they were being manipulated. Unfortunately, a single blogger in Afghanistan put it on the Internet and all hell broke loose. But better that than the alternative. Those who sacrifice freedom for safety end up with neither [I think that’s Ben Franklin].