A tale of two amendments - part 2

As I mentioned in my previous post, my post today is a continuation of my ideas on the shooting in Tucson on January 8  and how many people are using it to frame their arguments about the Constitution. The previous post concerned my feeling that some people are incorrectly tying this tragedy in with the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Today I'll weigh in on the people who are incorrectly saying that this tragedy shows how we should limit free speech because it brings about such terrible events. In this way, I believe, these people are not living up to the First Amendment to the Constitution.

We've all heard the old story about how free speech must be limited in cases like shouting "fire" in a crowded theater. Well, it's not illegal to shout "fire" in a crowded theater if there really is a fire in the theater. As explained here, the real quote is that it would be illegal to falsely shout "fire" in a theater. Gabrielle Giffords is a US Representative to Congress. The calls for blame in this shooting come from a campaign advertisement that placed Ms Giffords' district under a crosshairs symbol (as in a target of a gun) on a map. You can see it here at Gawker.com with a bit more explanation of how the man running against Ms. Giffords added more worrisome actions to this. While I call this "stupid speech", I wouldn't call for it to be illegal. I think the people who use these kinds of images and words to attack their opponent can be brought to light and argued (after all, we, too, have freedom of speech), the demand that all of this kind of speech be outlawed is wrong.

We all say stupid things. When the anonymity of the Internet is thrown in, we may say some really stupid things. The worst part of the "crosshairs campaign ad" story is that while the woman who authorized the advertisement took it down after the shooting, she never apologized or admitted to being wrong. Of course, this same woman is a loud-mouthed quitter who used to be a governor but left the office and now only seeks attention. No matter what overweight radio talk show hosts or governors-who-quit say, their speech and ideas should not be banned. But we should always argue with them about their speech. We need to stand up to people who lie or imply that other people are "dangerous" and need to be removed - forcibly if necessary.

I saw a very interesting article the other day written by a columnist, Jeff Pearlman, for Sports Illustrated. In the article (available here), he mentioned how writing about sports for a widely read publication opens him up to a lot of abuse. He's gotten used to it and usually just moves on. But one especially bad incident led him to try to find the people who were delivering such vile comments. When he finally tracked them down, with their anonymity removed, they were apologetic. They couldn't really explain why they had been so cruel with their words. My guess is that they wouldn't have done it if they'd known him or were talking to him face to face. It's our job to keep the people who spout this kind of talk, be they talk show hosts, governors who quit or anyone else, responsible. We need to remind them that they are talking about real people who are just as vulnerable as they are.

The picture above, of the Bill of Rights, is a slightly enhanced version of the one from the National Archives here.