I heard about this last night and ended up in a good natured discussion about free speech and the bill of rights. Basically there was this kid who skipped alot of school and did alot of drugs who (while skipping school) stopped by a parade for the Olympic torch that was being carried through his town. He held up a sign that proclaimed "Bong Rips for Jesus" and was subsequently punished by his principal. The desicion finally went to the supreme court which ruled against the boy in the case. Anyway the moral of the story and the main discussion point is whether or not inflammatory speech should be protected by the first amendment.
My argument is that the First amendment was put in place to allow people to speak out against what they view as corrupt or dangerous without the government being able to punish them. When people use the bill of rights to cover for them every time they do something stupid the first amendment loses some of its power to protect against important breaches of trust. Similar to yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater.
Anyway I wanted to hear what other people thought about this and I hope that we can try to maintain a civil discourse. (Ie: Be respectful and mature)

There is a very fine line that people can cross between excercising their rights and abusing their rights. In my opinion, a person loses the right to free speech if they are endangering themselves or others, like the fire in a movie theater example. People like that guy with the sign prompt me to roll my eyes and mourn for my generation, but I really don't think anyone has a legal right to punish him for it. Making people angry or upset is not the same as putting them in danger.

He can be punished for skipping school.
I don't really see why our 1st amendment has been violated, they're taking away freedom of speech we could like take the court to court....

The official decision ws that advocating the use of an illicit substance was not protected speech. I probably should have mentioned that part originally.

The guy never really skipped school. We discussed this in my English class a while back.

As the torch was passing through Jeaneu, Alaska, the students were permitted to leave class if they wanted to go watch, since it was passing just in front of the school. This student and his friends made the poster "Bong Hits for Jesus" to gain the attention of all the television cameras following the torch-runners.

The issue was only partly a free speech arguement, but mostly, it was whether the student whould be punished for advocating drug use while in school. The arguement is whether they were really "at" school, since the students were permitted to leave, or if it was at school because it was during school hours.

Either way, free speech is dangerous and dumb. Also impossible, since the idea of protected and non-protected speech sort of destroys any freedom by limiting it.

If the government doesn't like what you say, it should stop you saying it. Laws or no.

I can't tell if that was very dry sarcasm or not, Verby...

Since the school assumes legal responsibility for the student in question if he shows up to school from the moment he leaves his door in the morning until the moment he re-enters his home in the afternoon (unless he goes to some other public or private residence), the student was (in a legal sense) at school.

As for his sign, while the First Amendment is there to protect the right to free speech, it not only does not protect the right to abuse free speech, but in protecting the right to free speech (without abusing it) it does not protect you from the consequences of your free speech. If you were to, for example, advocate the death of your next door neighbor publicly, you'd be exercising your right to free speech all right, but not only could your neighbor have you arrested (on several charges, including harassment), but if your neighbor were to actually be killed (especially directly after your advocacy), you could also be brought up on additional charges (such as conspiracy to murder). This is why hate-speech isn't always protected, or other forms of expression for that matter. "Bong Hits for Jesus" advocates, what, exactly? Christians doing illegal drugs? (No, I'm not engaging in a debate about whether certain drugs should be legalized, the point is that they're illegal now.) The kid was dumb and the school would assume liability for any damages (including parents who would sue the school for allowing such a sign to be put on display by one of their students during school hours - "You let this kid out of your school and now my kid wants to do illegal drugs because he saw this sign!") There's a whole lot more that goes on than you might think.

One last thing... The First Amendment protects free speech, right? Why doesn't it protect the freedom of alcohol and cigarette salesmen (big business or small) to advertise their products in public? Maybe because they've been proven to cause harm to the body and are not legal to be bought by or sold to persons below a certain age. Since marketing to such people would not be legal, this student's actions could be interpreted (and probably was) as marketing an illegal substance publicly. Free speech, or public advertising... There is no free speech for business.

The free speech is issue is a thorny one indeed.

There are people who will say that advocating the death of your neighbor is not protected, but it is perfectly acceptable for Ann Coulter to advocate tha assassination of Middle Eastern leaders. It is not acceptable to advocate the usage of illegal substances by holding up a sign saying "Bong Hits for Jesus" but it is acceptable for Nate Dogg to say "Smoke weed every day" on a Dr. Dre song.

The decision on what is and is not protected varies depending on the 9 Justices that sit on the Supreme Court, the Court of Last Resort as political scientists refer to it. And since those Justices are appointed for life their rulings tend to have a long shelf-life before they are reversed, a good example would be Plessy v. Ferguson which ruled that segregation was perfectly acceptable until future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall successfully argued in Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas that seperate but equal was a fantasy.

The case of Larry Flynt, multi-millionaire publisher is another good example of the Free Speech debate. Mr. Flynt was sued by Jerry Falwell for an ad parody that stated that Falwell's first sexual encounter involved his mother, a bottle of Jim Beam, and an outhouse. The case was fought to the Supreme Court, and Flynt won.

Should the government restrict viewpoints it does not like? That wouldn't be very Democratic, now would it? Freedom comes with responsibility, and while it can be considered irresponsible to be offensive, sometimes you have to be in order to get your point across. Comedian Lenny Bruce's book "How to Talk Dirty and Influence People" still sells, as does Hunter S. Thompson's work. I am quite sure that many people in the US government were upset by the publication of "The Pentagon Papers" but does that mean they should never have been printed?

I personally agree with the publishers of the parody newspaper "The Onion" with regard to whether or not hate speech should be protected: Yes. Otherwise, how will you know who the douchebags are?

I used to read the Onion all the time... you can't find it in a middle-of-the-Boons, Jesus-junkie town like the one I'm in now... *sigh* I can't even hear the Onion radio news.

Elect me president and find out!


Completely true and, quite frankly, a beautiful symmetry in a system that is usually so stilted and ugly.

"Not only are you free to say what you want, we're free to arrest you for it! Twice the freedom!"

What the First Amendment says is that you can say what you like but you'll see punishments if you say the wrong thing. It's just a weak form of tyranny, and nobody likes weaklings.

"With all freedom comes the freedom to take the consequences. In fact it is the freedom on which all the others are based." - Lord Vetinari (Fictional, Terry Pratchett)

"Freedom is so precious that it must be rationed." -Vladimir Lenin

"Give me liberty of give me death." -- Patrick Henry

There are a few good quotes in Starship Troopers but I'm too lazy to find it.

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

--John Milton

"The best thing about Freedom of Speech is that it gives everyone a voice. The worst thing about Freedom of Speech is that it gives people who clearly have no idea what they are talking about the freedom to spout any sort of nonsense that comes to mind on any topic. The best examples of this being, just to pull something out of the air, free speech and gun control." Vesper Aeon

I think Quinn deserves a high five.

wow quinn that quote is perfect and it sums up just about all of it. now my 2 cents on the whole thing is that since we are in fact a hipocracy and not a democracy and the current state of our justice system nearly anything is possible. i wouldn't be suprised if a person got shot in the leg and went to jail instead of the person that shot him for no reason whatsoever. any number of things could have influenced the decision for the bong hits for jesus case most likely the judges needed to get some *right* decisions on their record so if anyone trys to take them off the supreme court they can't. and yes i cannot see any reason the kid should have got in trouble except for if the parade was delayed heavily otherwise from what i've heard no one got shot no fights none of that it was just a person expressing themselves yet it offended people.
and yes you can bring up the fact about supporting illicit substances but i don't see 40 narcotics and drug raids in the news everyday in a war on drugs its just politicians and judges trying to stay in good standing with the public. plus theres the wo knows how many illegal things supported in songs boosk etc. but i don't see them in prisons so really this was nothing but supporting the worlds view of us as hippocrites.

I find that funny, I really do. We're a country of hypocrites, keeban. "America" stole this country from the people who were living here before the Europeans came. Portions of our economy were built on the backs of slaves. We've managed to violate the rights of just about every socio-ethnic group we could think of, and we're still trying to get things right.

The kid was an idiot. His sign isn't protected under the First Amendment, 'cause along with the concept of "freedom of speech", there's this little brother trailing after it that most people don't acknowledge... The case Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) found that the US government could restrict free speech only if it was "likely to incite imminent lawless action". I'm pretty sure that promoting bong hits could be considered to fall under that category, since it promotes a lawless action. Heck, they might have even argued that in court. Whether or not you agree with the fact that the kid had the "right" to make the sign and display it during the parade, it's pretty clear that having done so was not his wisest decision.

I leave you with two (yes, two) quotes, just to keep up the trend:

• "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought, which they avoid." - Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
• "Aren't people absurd! They never use the freedoms they do have, but demand those they don't have; they have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech." - Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, Diapsalmata, Either/Or (1843).

Allow me to begin by making it abundantly clear that I am not a lawyer. I am, however, a very good researcher. Having never heard of the case of Brandenberg V. Ohio and not being completely familiar with the background of the Bong Hits Supreme Court case, I decided to do some checking. This is what I have found:

Brandenberg's conviction under Ohio's laws was overturned by the Supreme Court because while Brandenberg was advocating violence, he was doing so in a vague manner not in a way that provided a clear and present danger, therefore he was simply exercising his constitutional right to be a hate-monger.

To learn more, you can read one of the following links:

http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/comm/free...randenburg.html

or for the Wikipedia lover in you...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

Moving on to the Bong Hitter...officially known as Morse v. Frederick

According to what I have read, the Supreme Court decided that the appellate's right to free speech was trumped by the school's right to keep order and discipline. Had Frederick not been going to school that day the case most likely would have been decided differently. Unfortunately, the students were allowed to exit school to watch the parade thus making it a school function and thereby subject to the rules of the school. It should be noted that this was not a unanimous decision by the Court, and that Justice Stephen Bryer both concurred in part and dissented in part.

While there is a great deal of hypocrisy to be found in the US Government, I confess that I am unable to find any in the case of Morse v. Frederick.

I hope this has helped to settle matters somewhat.

I've had near about enough hearing about how the natives (of any colonised place) or the slaves (of any culture) have had such a rough go of it. Wah, wah, wah. If you didn't want to be enslaved or what have you, you should have won the war. Let's not pretend that the native Americans didn't have more than enough chances. There were a couple of places that did go poof because the natives didn't like how it went with Whitey.

This guilt that is taught to white children is ridiculous. Why should we feel bad about what we've done to other people because their skin is a different colour? Whatever it is, we've done it to other white people too. We're an idustrious skin pigmentation.

Don't get me wrong. I'm opposed to slavery (as it has been present in the world to date) but more because it's been so wasteful. They ruin so many human resources with indiscriminate slavery.

But enough about slavery. Up with tyrrany in all its forms.

I could be mistaken here...but....am I to understand that writing racist, insensitive, inflammatory posts are perfectly acceptable? I just need to know for future reference, because...as someone majoring in Political Science and Minoring in Human Rights, I find the previous post offensive on many levels...