• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

When the 1st Clashes with the 2nd

calamity

Privileged
Supporting Member
DP Veteran
Monthly Donator
Joined
Feb 12, 2013
Messages
160,900
Reaction score
57,840
Gender
Undisclosed
Political Leaning
Centrist
People complain about how the locals and the state handled things in Charlottesville. Well, there was a reason for that. A big one.

Seen in isolation, Conrad’s order was grounded in solid First Amendment doctrine: Charlottesville could not, he ruled, relocate the racist demonstrators “based on the content of [their] speech.” This is textbook law, but...


The judge failed to answer the central question: When demonstrators plan to carry guns and cause fights, does the government have a compelling interest in regulating their expressive conduct more carefully than it’d be able to otherwise? This is not any one judge’s fault. It is a failure of our First Amendment jurisprudence to reckon with our Second Amendment reality.

The First and Second Amendments clashed in Charlottesville. The guns won.

So, one has to analyze this a bit. Free speech is a fundamental right, even crap Nazi speech. Carrying weapons is also a fundie right, granted, with some limitations. But...

What is not a right, IMO, is the right to terrorize or the right to make life a living hell for the people in a community, including law enforcement. So, where do we draw the line? And, what do we do if the speech is so egregious that physical and/or armed confrontations are almost inevitable...if not even the actual intent of said speech?
 
If the speech is not advocating violence and they aren't terrorizing people, then I see no reason for the authorities to shut it down, even if it's so disgusting and reprehensible.

Where I would draw the line is if they are actively trying to incite violence. That is a big no-no, and that is not (and shouldn't be) protected speech.
 
The author is an idiot. Not a thing bad that happened had a thing to do with the 1A or the 2A -- it was all already illegal -- and restricting either is a stupid, bad, reactionary impulse.

Restricting rights is not the answer. The impulse to do so is authoritarian.
 
Rights are guaranteed in the Constitution, and enforced through government, law enforcement, and the courts.

Since we are a Constitutional Republic, there really is no choice but to enforce the law regardless of the costs. We cannot constitutionally abridge rights due to difficulty in guaranteeing them. The only other choice, is to amend the Constitution. I found this last choice repugnant, if done to take the easy and lazy way out.

Freedom is not easy, folks. It takes a great deal of effort and courage. Otherwise, it tends to erode away ...
 
The author is an idiot. Not a thing bad that happened had a thing to do with the 1A or the 2A -- it was all already illegal -- and restricting either is a stupid, bad, reactionary impulse.

Restricting rights is not the answer. The impulse to do so is authoritarian.
:thumbs:
 
Rights are guaranteed in the Constitution, and enforced through government, law enforcement, and the courts.

Since we are a Constitutional Republic, there really is no choice but to enforce the law regardless of the costs. We cannot constitutionally abridge rights due to difficulty in guaranteeing them. The only other choice, is to amend the Constitution. I found this last choice repugnant, if done to take the easy and lazy way out.

Freedom is not easy, folks. It takes a great deal of effort and courage. Otherwise, it tends to erode away ...

Soooo many people seem to think it should be, and worse, because it isn't, it's not worth it.
 
People complain about how the locals and the state handled things in Charlottesville. Well, there was a reason for that. A big one.

So, one has to analyze this a bit. Free speech is a fundamental right, even crap Nazi speech. Carrying weapons is also a fundie right, granted, with some limitations. But...

What is not a right, IMO, is the right to terrorize or the right to make life a living hell for the people in a community, including law enforcement. So, where do we draw the line? And, what do we do if the speech is so egregious that physical and/or armed confrontations are almost inevitable...if not even the actual intent of said speech?

This is a great post. I say that because I was going to start a similar thread. Glad Indidnt. Your approach is better than the one I had in mind.

It's my understanding that more than a few demonstrators showed up in combat gear complete with body armor and guns slung over their shoulders. With baseball bats. Wearing masks. Would preventing this conduct be interfering with the 1st and 2nd? I'm not sure.

It is one thing to demonstrate. It is quite another to intimidate and assemble loaded for bear. It doesn't seem as if we have much common sense in this regard. "You can't do that! would be the reaction I'd expect to hear if cops turned away people dressed like this. On private property, one can most certainly regulate dress and acoutrements. Example: banks. Public property would seem to be the rub.

OTOH, you couldn't go into a courthouse so attired. Or a post office. Perhaps the most sensible approach would be to look at how gvmt could restrict participants at these demonstrations. Certainly common sense says we should. But, frankly, I doubt it would pass Supreme Court muster.

I do sincerely believe, though, that a committee of constitutional lawyers ought to give it a go...
 
There were news reports and photos of heavily armed demonstrators. They weren't id'd as far as right, left or center. Were the numbers over reported? With people fighting and armed with firearms, I am impressed no one was killed by gunfire.
 
People complain about how the locals and the state handled things in Charlottesville. Well, there was a reason for that. A big one.



So, one has to analyze this a bit. Free speech is a fundamental right, even crap Nazi speech. Carrying weapons is also a fundie right, granted, with some limitations. But...

What is not a right, IMO, is the right to terrorize or the right to make life a living hell for the people in a community, including law enforcement. So, where do we draw the line? And, what do we do if the speech is so egregious that physical and/or armed confrontations are almost inevitable...if not even the actual intent of said speech?

For me it boils down to this: Is the movement (KKK, BLM, AntiFA, MADD, MRA, PETA, Balding blind midgets against mullets, whatever) seeking to correct an inequality or impose an inequality. Further, there should be no grey area, and one should err on the side of free speech, if this question is difficult to answer, until it can be determined that the movement is seeking to impose an inequality.

However, the moment that a movement has been correctly determined to seek the imposing of inequality, all bets are off. This does not mean they cannot write their twisted manifestos in dark basements on old typewriters, but they should be given no permission to use public land paid for by taxes collected from the people they wish to marginalize, nor should any private venue be obliged to host them, and if they do then no security should be provided by publicly funded services (aka, the police), except to contain them and prevent them from harming others.

If this rule of thumb were applied, then the KKK, who clearly seek to impose inequality, would never have had their rally, AntiFa never would have shown up, and three people would still be alive.
 
There were news reports and photos of heavily armed demonstrators. They weren't id'd as far as right, left or center. Were the numbers over reported? With people fighting and armed with firearms, I am impressed no one was killed by gunfire.

I read reports of weapons caches stashed all over the city, which even included a battering ram. Pretty nuts, IMO.
 
Soooo many people seem to think it should be, and worse, because it isn't, it's not worth it.
Yep.

Abridging rights out of expediency, is never the answer. It is the utmost insult and disrespect to those, the families, and the progeny, of those Americans that shed their blood for the Constitution. It is also turning our backs on our children, and our children's children.

Count me & mine out of anything to do with abridging Constitutional Rights!
 
The author is an idiot. Not a thing bad that happened had a thing to do with the 1A or the 2A -- it was all already illegal -- and restricting either is a stupid, bad, reactionary impulse.

Restricting rights is not the answer. The impulse to do so is authoritarian.

We restrict gang fights all the time, stopping them before they begin. How was this any different from staging a good old fashioned rumble?
 
There were news reports and photos of heavily armed demonstrators. They weren't id'd as far as right, left or center. Were the numbers over reported? With people fighting and armed with firearms, I am impressed no one was killed by gunfire.
Exactly!

For all the hoopla, there was no gunfire. So it seems the 1st & 2nd managed to coexist.
 
Rights are guaranteed in the Constitution, and enforced through government, law enforcement, and the courts.

Since we are a Constitutional Republic, there really is no choice but to enforce the law regardless of the costs. We cannot constitutionally abridge rights due to difficulty in guaranteeing them. The only other choice, is to amend the Constitution. I found this last choice repugnant, if done to take the easy and lazy way out.

Freedom is not easy, folks. It takes a great deal of effort and courage. Otherwise, it tends to erode away ...

Yep. This is the cost of living in a free society. But I am more than willing to live with that cost, than have our rights restricted.
 
Exactly!

For all the hoopla, there was no gunfire. So it seems the 1st & 2nd managed to coexist.

I would not want to keep testing the theory.
 
Yep.

Abridging rights out of expediency, is never the answer. It is the utmost insult and disrespect to those, the families, and the progeny, of those Americans that shed their blood for the Constitution. It is also turning our backs on our children, and our children's children.

Count me & mine out of anything to do with abridging Constitutional Rights!

As Jefferson said, better to live with the problems of too much freedom than those of too little.
 
It would have been perfectly legal for the authorities to ban all guns from the demonstration, just as authorities can ban guns at other political rallies. Guns can be banned from state government property without violating the 2nd Amendment, especially when there are safety concerns.

How many people want to bet that the same authorities would never condone a Black Lives Matter group to show up more heavily armed than the police, as the neo-Nazis did here?

The authorities have an obligation to also protect the free-speech rights of the counter-demonstrators, and that includes making sure that they are not intimidated by neo-Nazis being more heavily armed than the police. The neo-Nazis intentionally show up armed as they did in the hopes that this will intimidate people to the point that they will not show up to counter-protest them, which effectively denies them their freedom of assembly under the First Amendment.

First Amendment rights have always been given greater protection than Second Amendment rights.
 
For me it boils down to this: Is the movement (KKK, BLM, AntiFA, MADD, MRA, PETA, Balding blind midgets against mullets, whatever) seeking to correct an inequality or impose an inequality. Further, there should be no grey area, and one should err on the side of free speech, if this question is difficult to answer, until it can be determined that the movement is seeking to impose an inequality.

However, the moment that a movement has been correctly determined to seek the imposing of inequality, all bets are off. This does not mean they cannot write their twisted manifestos in dark basements on old typewriters, but they should be given no permission to use public land paid for by taxes collected from the people they wish to marginalize, nor should any private venue be obliged to host them, and if they do then no security should be provided by publicly funded services (aka, the police), except to contain them and prevent them from harming others.

If this rule of thumb were applied, then the KKK, who clearly seek to impose inequality, would never have had their rally, AntiFa never would have shown up, and three people would still be alive.

IMO, free speech covers all the gauntlets, and it should never be suppressed. However, as in real life, if what you say pisses people off to the point that they want to kick your ass, well, expect an ass-kicking. You shout at black people, calling them N-words, or shout at Jews that they need to stoke the ovens, you know you are asking for an ass-kicking. Hell, you walk up to Joe on the street, call him a mother****er who eats dry horse****, chances are one out 5 is gonna kick your ass.

So, the argument is---do people have a right to knowingly instigate a gang fight, an armed gang fight at that?
 
Yep. This is the cost of living in a free society. But I am more than willing to live with that cost, than have our rights restricted.
Exactly.

Freedom has it's cost!

It sounds to me like this small town's law enforcement was simply overwhelmed. So do we eliminate rights due to a defect in our ability to enforce the law? Or do we do a better job enforcing the law and protecting rights? That is the question posed here.

In practical terms you have to bring in more law enforcement, perhaps from the state level or even from the feds. This is what was done during the Civil Rights era. We didn't rollover, then. Rather, we rose to the occasion.
 
Last edited:
It would have been perfectly legal for the authorities to ban all guns from the demonstration, just as authorities can ban guns at other political rallies. Guns can be banned from state government property without violating the 2nd Amendment, especially when there are safety concerns.
If that's true, it may come into play at some point.
In this case, was there a history of gun violence at such protests? If no, I think it would be hard to justify. But if it is the state's call legally, their call, and they may also be challenged on it. If that became a nationally highlighted battle, with guns coming out on top, maybe it would have been better to just let it be. Guns and such don't seem to have been the root cause or even an important factor.

I think there is some plausibility in saying that if a small town doesn't feel equipped/experience with such tinder boxes of violence, they may need to put restrictions to ensure safety. In this case, they probably should have, considering they seem to agree they simply didn't have enough LEO and had almost no control over ingress/egress and the protest area itself, to ensure safety. But how does one predict that? Easy to say in hindsight.
 
If that's true, it may come into play at some point.
In this case, was there a history of gun violence at such protests? If no, I think it would be hard to justify. But if it is the state's call legally, their call, and they may also be challenged on it. If that became a nationally highlighted battle, with guns coming out on top, maybe it would have been better to just let it be. Guns and such don't seem to have been the root cause or even an important factor.

I think there is some plausibility in saying that if a small town doesn't feel equipped/experience with such tinder boxes of violence, they may need to put restrictions to ensure safety. In this case, they probably should have, considering they seem to agree they simply didn't have enough LEO and had almost no control over ingress/egress and the protest area itself, to ensure safety. But how does one predict that? Easy to say in hindsight.

The KKK and neo-Nazis have a long history of using criminal violence against others. Secondly, the display of weapons is used to silence others, which affects other people's first amendment rights, and they have no requirement in protecting their first amendment rights of showing that the guns will actually be fired. The presence of neo-Nazis and KKK members being more heavily armed than the police is enough for a court to order a weapons ban, to preserve first amendment rights. After all, one does not need a gun to speak. Far from it.

You are right, the town did not have the resources to protect everyone's safety -- including the KKK people.

You may not believe this, but there is also a line of legal reasoning that weighs the value of the speech in determining how big the demonstration can be. During the civil rights movement, courts allowed protestors for civil rights to even block road ways. One of the basis given by the courts for allowing that was because the demonstrations were trying to gain equal civil liberty for people of color. By the same reasoning, this actually gives a legal basis for limiting a neo-Nazi demonstration that is supporting racism, and the elimination of our present form of government. It's weird because one would think that should not be a factor in a first-amendment decision, but the courts have used this line of reasoning for decades. The courts have simply adopted Aristotle's virtue ethics as part of their legal reasoning.

Bottom line --- the issue is legally more complicated and nuanced than many on social media realize. I'm not an expert in first amendment law, but am an expert in other legal areas. I'm still somewhat familiar with the court decisions on the first amendment.
 
Well said ...

Not really. Basically what we have here is speech which is intended to cause violent reaction. In effect, those making said speech are expecting the State to not only protect their speech, but are asking said state to protect them from violence which may ensue from said speech. Well, it doesn't work that way. And, these Nazis know it. So, they come armed to their teeth. Which brings up the next issue...

Can I exercise my free speech rights on the street corner and call everyone walking by a mother****er who sucks turtle piss and then shoot the first guy who tries to punch me in the face? "Hey, self defense."
 
what do we do if the speech is so egregious that physical and/or armed confrontations are almost inevitable...if not even the actual intent of said speech?

You can't yell fire in a theater. Nazis and Klan members parading through town carrying guns is about as obviously likely to cause panic, disorder, and violence I'd say.
 
IMO, free speech covers all the gauntlets, and it should never be suppressed. However, as in real life, if what you say pisses people off to the point that they want to kick your ass, well, expect an ass-kicking. You shout at black people, calling them N-words, or shout at Jews that they need to stoke the ovens, you know you are asking for an ass-kicking. Hell, you walk up to Joe on the street, call him a mother****er who eats dry horse****, chances are one out 5 is gonna kick your ass.

So, the argument is---do people have a right to knowingly instigate a gang fight, an armed gang fight at that?

But free speech on it's own is not restricted...write a book, create a vlog. No, I don't think people should have the right to knowingly instigate a gang fight, which is why I say that public venues should not be available and private venues should not be obliged to host. If some nutter wants to hold a rally on their own property, go for it. Out of site, out of mind, no one gets hurt.
 
Back
Top Bottom