Free Speech and Death Threats

So I really like this.
'Godless' Billboard Moved After Threats Against Owner
I wonder if God told the person to send death threats?
Love thy neighbor, as long as they believe what I do.

Kentucky Census Worker Hanged: "Fed" Written on Body

I can understand the merits of free speech and political opposition. But free speech does not allow one to exclaim "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. So, contemporary conservative pundits who essentially exclaim "Fire!" within a crowded political sphere seem to be going beyond "free speech" and rather are "encouraging homicide". We can have teabaggers and birthers. Maybe we can even allow people to legally carry guns at political rallys, maybe. But when census workers are hanged and 'Fed' is scrawled on their corpse? It’s time to tell Glenn Beck to shut the god damned hell up.


Source:

The FBI is investigating the hanging death of a U.S. Census worker near a Kentucky cemetery, and a law enforcement official told The Associated Press the word ‘fed” was scrawled on the dead man’s chest.

The body of Bill Sparkman, a 51-year-old part-time Census field worker and occasional teacher, was found Sept. 12 in a remote patch of the Daniel Boone National Forest in rural southeast Kentucky. The Census has suspended door-to-door interviews in rural Clay County, where the body was found, pending the outcome of the investigation.

I’ve no idea what The Right will do in reaction to this. Perhaps they will ignore it. Perhaps they will try to spin it as an isolated act. Perhaps they will take credit for it and celebrate. I’ve no idea. But what I do know is that shitheads like Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachman are anything but innocent with regard to the death of Bill Sparkman:



I get it. Feeding false information to conspiracy theorists and conservative survivalists grows ratings. FOX News exists to grow ratings and so profit off of advertising. I understand how the business model works. But FOX viewers obviously do not take the false information to be entertainment; FOX viewers obviously are not rationally minded political participants simply attempting to gain a greater understanding of the world. FOX viewers are shitheads. FOX viewers are dangerous. And FOX viewers killed a U.S. Census worker.

These are people who think “How many toilets do you have” is a threatening question.
These are people who think it rational to kill a census worker.
These are not people to humor and incite.

So Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachman need to shut the god damned fuck up.

*Update: Apparently it was a very poorly executed hanging*

Hanover College Community-

As members of the fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta, the Greek community, and Hanover College, we would like to extend our sincerest apologies with regards to the Pirate Party shirts that have been seen throughout campus. We realize the shirts were offensive and while they were done in good fun, they still represent a stereotype that our organization does not want to embody. To all of those who were offended, we are truly sorry, but again they are only t-shirts for a theme party and in no way express the values and morals of Phi Gamma Delta. We are going to begin working internally to prevent such offensive or degrading slogans from appearing on our upcoming apparel. Any further questions, comments, or concerns can be sent to the email address below.

Sincerely,

The Fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta

Editors Note: Hanover College is home to the Tau Chapter of the Phi Gamma Delta.

David Irving and Free Speech

Free Speech is a logical extreme. Free Speech can only truly exist without censorship, without limitations. The problem is that human beings want both free speech and censorship, they desire the ideal as well as its negation. Human beings, as always, want to maintain their cake and at the same time consume their cake. This brings us to David Irving and the Oxford Debating Society.

The Oxford Union Debating Society invited David Irving and Nick Griffin to speak at a debate about Free Speech. This pissed off many, many people. Among those who were pissed off and so protested was one David Block, co-president of Oxford's Jewish Society, who supplied this delightful quote:

"My main grievance about this debate is the accusation that we want to deny people free speech. We just don’t want to give them any more platforms to air their views, which are disgraceful."

At the risk of invoking the wratch of David Block's schmutz'd schmeckle I'm going to go ahead and call him a dipshit, or "putz". Why? If you don't want David Irving to spout his idiocy at your university then you don't want free speech. Censorship denies free speech. And everyone wants censorship.

No? Think about it. I am fine with an absense of censorship in many ways: I think a person ought to be able to yell "fire!" in crowded mall if they so choose (it will make the mall less crowded). I think people ought to be able to say "fuck" and "nigger" if they so choose. But I do not think creationism ought to be taught in science classes. I want to limit what a science professor says in a science class. Granted, the position that science professors ought to only teach science in science class is reasonable and, dare I say, correct. But it is a limit to free speech; it is censorship.

I think humanity ought to rid itself of the rhetoric of "free speech". No one wants free speech. No one wants everyone to be able to say anything they want at any time. Even the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States doesn't really mean "free speech". Slander and Libel, for example, are not protected.

It is possible to want a reasonable degree of "free" speech; one can argue for the ability to say things within a context of limitations. But no one wants "free speech". No one wants absolutely no limits, ever, on what a person can say. So qualifying your protest of free speech by saying that you really do want free speech is simply idiotic. You do not want free speech.

So fucking say so.