{"id":39,"date":"2018-05-23T22:40:32","date_gmt":"2018-05-23T22:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/is-with.us\/?p=39"},"modified":"2018-05-23T22:40:32","modified_gmt":"2018-05-23T22:40:32","slug":"meaning-of-the-first-amendment-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/is-with.us\/?p=39","title":{"rendered":"Meaning of the First Amendment ~ part two"},"content":{"rendered":"

Free speech and redressing grievances without getting beat up???<\/strong><\/p>\n

In part one, <\/strong>we examined the concept of “Natural Law”, and the three basic rights that are given to men by nature and nature’s God: life, liberty and property.\u00a0 When people think of the First Amendment, the liberty<\/em> of being able to speak their minds and voice their opinions is the first thing that comes to mind.\u00a0 That “freedom of speech” is specifically protected because there is often disagreement and even offense taken over facts and opinions people voice.\u00a0 Particularly when the facts or opinions voiced go against the “main stream” popular opinion, or against the government itself, or against some “taboo” of a group, religion, political party or popular person.
\nThe essence of “freedom of speech” is not to protect speech that “everyone” agrees with, or that agrees with the government, but to protect speech that is unpopular, disagreeable, offensive and even subversive.<\/strong>\u00a0 Because speech that is agreeable and inoffensive doesn’t need to be protected.<\/p>\n

To be clear,<\/strong> you have the right to disagree, argue with, voice dissenting opinions, even to the point of “offense”, to anyone whether they be your neighbor, politicians, pundits, religious figures or popular “personalities”.\u00a0 The only limitation is deliberate “slander” or “libel”, meant to destroy the reputation of people or groups and consisting of deliberate lies.\u00a0 Even that isn’t a true limitation, because it has to be proven in a court of law.<\/p>\n

“Offensive speech” is protected speech.<\/strong>\u00a0 There is no right to be free from offense, to be free from being “offended”. Offense is something taken, not given.\u00a0 Even if someone\u00a0 deliberately tries to offend you with what they say, you can choose not to take offense.\u00a0 The phrase “offensive speech” is a straw man, a logical fallacy used to prevent speech about, and actual debate of controversial topics.\u00a0 It is similar to another long touted straw man: “shouting fire in a crowed theater”.\u00a0 Logically, if the theater is on fire that is the most rational response along with vacating the theater as fast as possible.\u00a0 If you are mistaken, you at least erred on the side of caution and not getting burned.\u00a0 If you are deliberately trying to cause havoc, social and legal consequences will be paid.\u00a0 There is no need to make such speech illegal, as any such law would not prevent an actual fire, but may prevent the rational response.\u00a0 The same with calling any type of speech “offensive”.\u00a0 If you stated a simple fact “the sky is blue”, a person with the opinion that the sky is green could take offense at that.\u00a0 A simple debate, color charts, and science would prove the truth of that fact, so the defense of the indefensible is to take offense and demand you be silenced.<\/p>\n

“Offensive speech” is a rationalization for violence and censorship.<\/strong>\u00a0 Where voicing a political, social, or religious opinion, because of it’s content, is deemed offensive (by whoever, usually some “authority”) it is often called “hate speech”<\/strong>. This is done whether or not the content of the speech actually advocates hating any\u00a0 person, group or religion.\u00a0 Even voicing simple facts backed up by evidence, science and rational thought can be considered “hate speech” by people who wish to deny those\u00a0 facts.\u00a0 “Hate” <\/strong>in this context is considered an aggressive act, provoking a defensive response, often invoking aggressive policing, even irrational aggression against the speaker.\u00a0 Speech, no matter what it’s contents, cannot cause harm, injure physically, or destroy anything.\u00a0 Someone saying “I hate you” doesn’t hurt you, you can disagree, debate, or even close your ears and ignore it.\u00a0 Advocating violence, hatred of people or groups can always be countered by advocating peace and love.\u00a0 Silencing speech of any kind is only effective in protecting ideas that have no rational defense, and maintaining control<\/strong> over the people that accept them.
\nTo maintain a lie, it is necessary to conceal the truth.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”<\/strong>\u00a0 From the beginning of our nation, real offenses against freedom have existed, often perpetrated and protected by our own government.\u00a0 Our government was formed by “We the people” in response to the English government’s suppression of the right to petition against it.\u00a0 Often the response was violent suppression using the military and repressive law enforcement.\u00a0 One such act March 5th, 1770 was the “Boston Massacre”.\u00a0 Speech against the government is often considered “seditious” by <\/em>the government and it’s minions, which is why it is protected by law (The Constitution IS law).\u00a0 Because private entities often take the place of government in our lives (such as corporations, unions etc.) that right also pertains to them as well.
\nThe right of the people to peaceably assemble is not limited to petitioning the government, but is in addition to.\u00a0 That is why the “and” is in the text.\u00a0 There is no such thing as an “unlawful assembly” as long as it is peaceable.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Any authority declaring a peaceful group of protestors an “unlawful assembly” is going against the text and spirit of the first amendment.<\/p>\n

<Next, The meaning of the Second Amendment><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Free speech and redressing grievances without getting beat up???<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-bs","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/is-with.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/is-with.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/is-with.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/is-with.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/is-with.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/is-with.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40,"href":"https:\/\/is-with.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions\/40"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/is-with.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/is-with.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/is-with.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}