Constitution Daily: What’s Next For Free Speech?

Source:The Daily Review

I’ll tell what I hope happens next for free speech in America which is probably going to sound very sarcastic and cynical and hopefully funny and informative like a good comedian. And then I’ll tell you what I think is going to happen.

What I would like to see happen is the generation that sees socialism and I’m sure other forms of collectivism, what I would like them to do is to grow up. Finally graduate from college and quit one of their three jobs so they can get the hell out of college with a degree that is hopefully worth at least half of what they’re paying for it, on their personal debt card. Start experiencing the real world with a job so they can start paying off their college debt that they’ll probably leave their grandkids to pay off. And realize that not everything that anyone says about anyone, including oversensitive minorities and Socialists off all ethnic and racial backgrounds, is pleasant and nice.

And then also realize they also live in a liberal democracy with a liberal guaranteed right to free speech. And that includes saying negative things about anyone that they choose to. Also realize we live in a very funny country and probably are the comedy capital of the world and come from a long line of sarcastic smart asses. (I sure as hell do) And that not every joke that reflects some negative characteristic about someone or some different race of people from your own is bigoted. Generally it isn’t and someone with a good sense of humor will actually not only get the joke, like it and perhaps even wish they came up with it first. You’re actually doing someone a favor if you get them to laugh about themselves, because you’re actually giving them an opportunity at self-improvement.

So that is sort of my positive angle, or less cynical angle. But I got to tell you that the Millennial’s won’t be done with college at least the people who graduate on time until 2021-2022. So we’re looking at another 5-6 years of Starbucks and Red Bull junkies, protesting about someone wearing a Washington Redskins jersey on campus during Thanksgiving. Or Caucasian man dressing up as Santa Claus during Christmas, or Christmas being celebrated at all during Christmas instead of other religious holidays. Or protesting against Black Friday, because it’s not called Rainbow Friday. With the rest of country when they’re not laughing at these protests, wondering who did these kids have to sleep with to get into college. Or how many professors did their father’s pay off.

Young people especially just need to chill. Don’t drink the extra lathe or frappuccino, or give up that junk and the Red Bull to begin with and perhaps take up pot (where its legal) and relax. Let your brains settle down and even fully develop and with that might come with a sense of humor. And you’ll learn the difference between comedy, even comedy about culture and even lifestyle. And even comedy about ethnicity and race and how that is different from actual bigotry. Where you’re not making fun of characteristics of people and what they do, which is what comedy is. But literally making fun of people because of their complexion, or hair, how their nose is shaped, names, etc. And comedy when is done right regardless of the topic is funny. And bigotry is bigotry.

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The Steve Allen Show: Lenny Bruce (1959)

Source:The Daily Review– Comedian Lenny Bruce, on The Steve Allen Show in 1959

Source:The Daily Review

Steve Allen, right before he brought on Lenny Bruce, made a great comment and I realize he was being humorous, but he was damn right on it. He said and I’m paraphrasing, ‘we should just offend everybody so we don’t have worry about offending anyone. And Lenny Bruce is the comedian to do that.’ Because that is exactly what they meaning Steve Allen and Lenny Bruce, were talking about back then. Which was censorship and political correctness, but not from the Left, (the Far-Left really) but the Right. Lenny Bruce, had a message and his own act and issues he wanted to talk about. And he also believed in free speech, which all comedians really should. And he couldn’t give a damn if his act offended people, especially when it was just entertainment anyway.

Comedy, is not for oversensitive tight asses, who think fat jokes are anti-obesity. Or gay jokes are automatically homophobic, or religious jokes Christian, Muslim, whoever else, that person is some bigot towards that religious group. Comedy, is exactly that, a way to critique life and people in life. Including groups and even talk people and groups and their shortcomings. Not to say that every member of whatever group, has some clear flaw, but to point out humorous flaws about members of certain groups and even flaws that some groups carry as a group. The political correctness movement of the 1950s, didn’t want to hear jokes about sex, religion and sure as hell didn’t want to hear adult language. Especially since they still saw adults as kids for the most part who needed to be babysat.

The political correctness warriors of the 1950s, didn’t want to hear jokes about sex, because they believe sex didn’t exist or something. They didn’t want to hear jokes about narcotics, because they were on alcohol or marijuana highs and believed narcotics simply didn’t exist. Lenny Bruce, challenged the political correctness establishment in America and paid a hell of a price for it. All he was about was free speech and talking about issues and using adult language even that most Americans, at least outside of the Bible Belt used anyway, but did it in public. Did it in a way that simply wasn’t done back then for the most part and didn’t become mainstream at all, at least until the late 1960s. He was a true American, because he was an individual who felt the freedom to be himself. And express how he felt about issues even in public.

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New America Foundation: Double Take- Speaking on Freedom of Speech

Source:The Daily Review

At risk of sounding like a nationalist, but people right and left have debated whether America is exceptional or not the last ten years or so and debating what is called American Exceptionalism. Is America an exceptional place or not and if we are, are we exceptional in a positive sense. Do we represent as Americans the right values or not. Our First Amendment which of course is our guaranteed constitutional right to Freedom of Speech, is one example of why we are exceptional. Along with our diversity which is across the board and our other guaranteed civil liberties and constitutional rights.

No constitutional right is absolute and that includes both the First Amendment and the Second Amendment. But what it means is that Americans essentially have unlimited free speech and free expression rights and basically and unlimited ability to express ourselves and how we feel about things, places, issues, culture and even people. Short of inciting violence, violently harassing people, or falsely libeling people. And then others have the same right to express how they feel about us. Which means Donald Trump can run his nonsensical reality show disguised as a presidential campaign and say all sorts of garbage about groups of Americans. And the rest of the country has the same right to express out they feel about The Donald. The Captain of Reality TV.

Free Speech, is not a threat to America. The opposite is the truth, which is fascism in the form of political correctness, whether it comes from the Far-Left or Far-Right. That says the political correctness warriors knows best what is acceptable and unacceptable speech. And they’ll decide what people should think and what we can say. You can’t have a liberal democracy without free speech and a liberal right to free speech. Put all the views out there and then let the people weigh in on what the speakers and thinkers are saying. Correct the falsehoods, reward the truth tellers and critique the liars. That is how liberal democracy and free speech works. Instead of having some Board of Experts deciding what is appropriate and improper speech in a developed society.

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Paul Richards: The Free Speech Movement: Civil Disobedience in Berkeley 1964

Source: This piece was originally posted at The Daily Review: Paul Richards: The Free Speech Movement: Civil Disobedience in Berkeley 1964

I hate as a Liberal hearing California being called a liberal state and some bastion of liberalism. And just go back to the 1960s and how they came down on students who were simply looking to express their free speech rights on campus and get involved in politics. If you go to the last ten years or so and they were one of the first states to pass a same-sex marriage ban and I believe they had at one time a ban on homosexuality, at least as it relates to sex. Ronald Reagan, was Governor of California there and served two terms from 1967-75. They recalled a moderate Democratic Governor in Gray Davis in 2003 and replaced him with a modern Republican in Arnold Schwarzenegger.

California, even with their individualistic hippie movement in the 1960s that was based in Northern California and a certain extent Southern California, was at the heart in support of the political correctness movement, but coming from the right-wing in America. Especially at the state level in the California State Government. And trying to ban students from protesting and speaking out against the political issues of the day. Now they’re reversed course and still support political correctness, but do it from the Far-Left instead of the Far-Right. And will deny right-wing speakers from speaking on their campus’s and even left-wing speakers like Bill Maher, if they don’t like what he has to say. His views on Islam in late 2014, is an excellent example of that.

What the free speech movement of the 1960s especially the mid 60s starting around 1963 and going through 64 and 65 and through the Vietnam War, was about was free speech. The right for American citizens who happen to be in college to express themselves on the issues. Protest in favor of equal and civil rights for all Americans and protest against the Vietnam War. The political correctness warriors back then, were on the Right. Who still believed it was 1956 or something and that all Americans looked at America and American culture and the world the same way and if there was anyone who didn’t share those cultural and political views. they needed to be shut up. Which is how the New-Left in America reacts when people disagree with them on cultural issues today.

The free speech movement back then and I at least believe still does today when you look at Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins, to use as examples and you have Conservative Libertarians on the Right as well, but back then at least the free speech movement came from the Left. From people who loved being Americans and America, but especially loved the rights, freedom and responsibility that came with being an American. Like Freedom of Speech and choice, the right for Americans to be themselves. And not have to either by legal, or cultural force to live life the way that the so-called establishment believes that they should. Which is what the hippie movement and the free speech movement, gay right and so-forth. The right for Americans to be Americans which are individuals. And not clones of the establishment.

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Associated Press: Lynne Hollander-Savio- Berkley’s Campus Free Speech Movement at 50

Source: This piece was originally posted at The Daily Review: Associated Press: Lynne Hollander-Savio- Berkley’s Campus Free Speech Movement at 50

The Millennial’s today who are still in college, the so-called Social Justice Warriors who want to establish their form of political correctness on the entire country who believe that minority Americans, are entitled to never having to hear anything that offends them, could learn so much from the Baby Boomers of the 1960s. The Hippies, who weren’t fighting for collectivism and censorship, political correctness, but instead were fighting for individual freedom and Freedom of Speech. The right for Free Americans to express exactly how they feel about issues. On and off campus.

The Hippies, the long beards of the 1960s, the Baby Boomers, were fighting against the right-wing establishment who believe America was still in the 1950s. When individualism and individuality, were still not common and if anything looked down upon. Where people were told how to think, instead of taught how to learn and then base their own views on what they just learned. Where individual freedom and free speech were only tolerated if people were doing, saying and believing what the establishment approved of.

Again, free speech is exactly that. Take it for what its worth, because it by itself is not designed to make you feel good or bad, but to express how someone feels and when done right inform people as well. ‘This is where you’re doing well and this is where you need improvement. This is what you should do less of if not stop all together. This is what you should be doing more of.’ And these are just some examples of what free speech is. Which is something the long beards of today, the Millennial’s who are in college simply don’t understand and approve of.

It means that you have the constitutional right to express how you feel about someone, or some group, or something, but that person next to you and everyone else not only have the constitutional right to not only tell you what they think about what you have to say, but express their own views on the same subject, or any other subject that they want to talk about. And you have the same constitutional right to express how you feel about what they have to say about whatever they’re talking about as well.

Just because America has a history of racial and ethnic discrimination, which is the worst part of our national history, doesn’t protect ethnic, racial and religious minorities from having to hear anything critical about themselves or their group in the future. Especially when the criticism is accurate. There’s nothing bigoted about the truth and even when someone delivers half-truths about people perhaps to make partisan points and even racial or ethnic points to make a group seem worst than they actually are, you can always present the rest of the story and point out whatever hypocrisy the commentator is making.

There’s nothing bigoted about saying that women and gays are treated like second-class citizens and slaves, or risk death if they try to convert from Islam in the Arab and broader Muslim World, since those things are actually true. Just like gays and women are treated like second-class citizens in the Bible Belt in America. Free speech, is free and facts don’t lie and when someone is actually offended by the truth, then they have a real problem with dealing with reality. And have real self-improvement issues to deal with beyond whatever negative facts that have already come out about them. But that is no reason from censoring the truth and free speech. Especially in a liberal democracy like America.

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Constitution Daily: Staff- The First Amendment Speech Debate on College Campuses

Source: This piece was originally posted at The Daily Review

This point has been made several times before and I am one of those bloggers whose made this point over and over, but college is about learning new ideas, thoughts and expressions. If its censorship that you want, then perhaps you need to create time machine or something that will take you back to the 1950s when the words damn and hell were essentially forbidden in public. Well at least on TV and in the movies. And if it’s just a nice polite world that you’re looking for, well for minorities that is, leaving majorities subjected to whatever everyone else wants to say about them for good and bad, then perhaps you need to create your own country. Perhaps Paradise Island or someplace in the Pacific or Caribbean where there isn’t any hate or bigotry. At least towards minorities that is.

To paraphrase President Andrew Shepard from The American President. America, is not easy. You have to want it bad in order live and make it here. Because we’re a country where you can essentially whatever the hell you want to short of inciting violence, falsely accusing people, or harassing people. Americans, have the constitutional right to be enlightened, but we also have a constitutional right to be assholes. We also have the constitutional to be truth tellers even if what we have to say may tend to offend people who we’re talking about.

That is called America, that is called liberal democracy, that is called the land of the free. This is what a liberal society and free society is about. The right for people to be free and live freely even if what we’re doing and what we have to say may tend to offend people who are oversensitive, or have much more culturally conservative perspective on life. America is not a good place for tight asses and people who can’t take a joke and who always find the one cloud on a beautiful sunny day. America, is about freedom and individuality and free expression. Even if that may tend to offend people who can’t ether take a joke and even understand criticism, let alone take it.

I’m almost to the point that I believe everyone who attends college in America should be required to pass a class on both the U.S. Constitution and First Amendment and Bill of Rights in general. Because apparently they didn’t bother to learn those things in high school. I had to take and pass a government course in high school in Maryland in the early nineties just to graduate from high school. When most of these students weren’t even born yet. Gives you a little idea how old I am. And I’m glad I did do that, because it’s a reason why I’m a political junky and blogger today.

But I guess today’s students were too busy texting the student who sits right next to them, or listening to their I-Pod in class, or googling what shoes Khloe Kardashian wore with her new bag when she went shopping in Beverly Hills last weekend. Or whatever else they might have done when they should have been paying attention to their teacher’s lecture on American history and social studies. You want to know why Americans get stereotyped as stupid? I’ll tell you anyway. Because we now have a generation of Americans who don’t understand their country’s history and form of government and their own constitutional rights. Like Freedom of Speech.

And when these kids finally get to college after finally completing summer school, it suddenly occurred to them that some Americans say some rough things about other Americans including minority Americans and some of those negative things are negative facts. And they’ve decided they’re going to try to force their sense of decency on the rest of the country. But America simply doesn’t work that way. America, again is that gigantic melting pot of a country. The largest, the most diverse, most beautiful, the freest melting pot in the world. Where all sorts of people have the right to express their own views. And they can’t be shut up for telling the truth. Or because people can’t take a joke, or simply don’t like what someone has to say.

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Movie Clips Classic Trailer Vault: ‘Lenny Official Trailer- Dustin Hoffman Movie (1974)’

Source:Movie Clips Classic Trailers– from the trailer for Lenny.

Source:The Daily Review

“Lenny Trailer – Directed by Bob Fosse and starring Dustin Hoffman, Stanley Beck, Frankie Man, Gary Morton, Guy Rennie. The story of acerbic 1960s comic Lenny Bruce, whose groundbreaking, no-holds-barred style and social commentary was often deemed by the Establishment as too obscene for the public.”

From Movie Clips Classic Trailers

Lenny Bruce, was a comedian who used humor to talk about everyday American life. And part of how Americans live is how we interact with each other even in the most personal of ways. Including, marriage divorce, family and yes, even sex. All he did was talked about how Americans lived, but he did it in public. He said things in the public that right-wing culturally conservative establishment who perhaps thought we were a Middle Eastern fundamentalist country and not a Western liberal democracy, didn’t believe Americans should be allowed to hear or say.

As I mentioned yesterday had Lenny came out 10-20 years later, he probably never spends a day in jail for his act. At least outside of the Bible Belt. He actually had a significant criminal record as a thief and dealing with drugs, but when it came to his comedy act he was arrested for literally using adult language in public. Which is clearly unconstitutional under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. He wasn’t libeling people, he was inciting violence, he wasn’t calling for violence to come against anyone. Even the cops who arrested him for using adult language. He was simply using adult language in public as part of his comedy routine.

People tend to think of political correctness as censorship against language that may tend to offend certain groups of people. And that is true obviously, but political correctness in the 1950s and early 1960s was used against people who used language that lets say the most religiously conservative of Americans not only find offensive, but immoral.

And when that language is used they believe the people who say those things should literally be arrested. Today political correctness is used against comedians and other commentators who say negative things even if they’re true against minority groups in America. Lenny Bruce was a victim of 1950s and 1960s right-wing political correctness fascism.

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Paye Yer: Lenny Bruce- Mysteries and Scandals

Source:Paye Er– this is from a Mysteries and Scandals episode about comedian Lenny Bruce.

Source:The New Democrat  

“Lenny Bruce TV Documentary pt 1”

From Paye Yer

Source:The New Democrat – Lenny Bruce’s free speech rights under assault.

Keep in mind that Lenny Bruce’s act came out in the 1950s and up until the early 1960s when we were still living in this Leave it to Beaver Pleasantville, where a lot of Americans are supposed to live on the farm, or out West, type of culture.

The 1950s idea of political correctness was not saying anything that went against this establishment. Where sex and divorce wasn’t talked about, where government officials were considered gods and looked up too, where women’s place was in the home and where gays place was in the closet, jail, or a mental institution. Where everyone at least was supposed to take their parents word as gold and if you questioned them, you were committing a sin.

Imagine if you’re Lenny Bruce and this is the culture you live and work in and your act is not ahead of its time, but you might be twenty-years ahead of your time. Your act would be mainstream in 1975 or so and to a certain extent in the late 1960s in certain places, but you’re starting out in the early and mid 1950s where America was still supposed to be Pleasantville.

You have a comedian in Pleasantville whose literally being arrested and you have cops going to his shows for talking about things that the supposed culture and establishment of the time sees as unacceptable. Even with our liberal free speech and first amendment rights.

Lenny Bruce, was using swear words in a culture where words like damn, hell, bitch, bastard, ass, words that were very mainstream by the mid 1970s or so, that were considered very sinful and immoral in 1955, or so.

Lenny, wasn’t getting in trouble for calling for people to be hurt, or murdered, or libeling people, things that aren’t protected by the First Amendment. Bruce was being harassed and prosecuted by government for using adult language. And talking about adult topics like marriage, divorce, sex and using adult language. All things that are protected by our first amendment.

I think the closest comedian to compare Lenny Bruce with would be George Carlin. Who came onto the scene about ten-years after Bruce. But they have similar styles and the ability to take on the system, or establishment and inform people that America and their country isn’t as perfect as their government wants them to think it is.

The America that the 1950s Political Correctness Police, had real issues and concerns that need to be dealt with. And that talking about things even adult subjects issues that all Americans do in private at least is okay to talk about those things in public as well. And besides, we have a First Amendment that protects this speech anyway.

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Lyle Denniston: Is The First Amendment on The Side of a Pro Football Team’s Name?

Source:The New Democrat

I’ve sort of gone out of my way to avoid getting into this debate because I quite frankly find it stupid. It’s now 2014 and Americans and the U.S. Government has just discovered that the Redskins is a racist name. Even though the franchise has been around since what, 1933 or 32. Give me a break, if Redskins was a racist name, which is what Nigger would be for people of African descent, that it would’ve been thrown out a long time ago. Saying the Redskins is a racist name, is like calling Bill Maher towards Muslims because he criticizes Islam, even though Muslim is not a race, but Muslims are followers of the Islāmic religion. It’s not even worth considering.

But that is just the practical argument. How about this little thing called the First Amendment that protects all Americans right to free speech and allows for people to call themselves essentially whatever the hell they want to and that includes organizations. But even if you say the federal trademark law about profiting from names that some Americans may tend to find offensive, again where was this 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years ago. Why is the name Redskins offensive in 2012-13 when this controversy started and not again decades ago. This is really nothing more than pop culture correctness at its worst.

The Redskins are now getting the Bill Maher treatment from the Far-Left and being labeled as racists. Not by Bill Maher who I imagine is on the side of the Redskins here for First Amendment protections. But a man who just back in September was considered a hero on the Far-Left, is now considered to be a “White Devil” or something. But if you put all of this aside, the fact that Congress is not very good at writing laws and people wonder why they are so unpopular, because even when they do pass laws, they don’t write them very well, but lets the trademark law is constitutional for a second. The fact that they didn’t define what is racially offensive in a name, means the Redskins at the very least will probably, win on a technicality.

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Raymond Fisher: ‘Martin Luther King and Malcolm X Debate’

Source:Raymond Fisher– Minister Malcolm X, I believe being interviewed at Berkeley, California in the 1960s.

Source:The Daily Press

“American history as it’s usually taught likes to focus on rivalries, and there are many involving big personalities and major historical stakes. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington. These figures are set up to represent the “both sides” we expect of every political question. While the issues are oversimplified (there are always more than two sides and politics isn’t a sport) the figures in question genuinely represented very different perspectives on power and progress.

When it comes to the history of the Civil Rights movement, we are given another such rivalry, between Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. Their ideas and influence are pitted against each other as though they had shared a debate stage. In fact, the two leaders met only once, during Senate debates on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “King was stepping out of a news conference,” writes DeNeen L. Brown at The Washington Post, when Malcolm X, dressed in an elegant black overcoat and wearing his signature horn-rimmed glasses, greeted him.”

From Open Culture

“Martin Luther King and Malcolm X Debate”

Source:Raymond Fisher– Nation of Islam Minister Malcolm X, at the University of California Berkeley, in 1963.

From Raymond Fisher 

This was the ultimate debate (that never happened in person between Reverend King and Minister Malcolm X) as it related to the civil rights movement and perhaps generally as well, because it involved the two most effective and intelligent spokespeople when it came to civil rights and equal rights. And two of the most effective spokespeople when it came to individual freedom in general.

Before the civil rights legislation of the 1960s and to a certain extent after that, African-Americans didn’t have the same freedom as Caucasian-Americans. Even though they had the same constitutional rights under law as every other American in the country.

African-Americans simply weren’t getting their constitutional rights enforced. Which is exactly what Dr. Martin King and Minister Malcolm X were trying to accomplish. They wanted African-Americans to have the same freedom as any other American in the country, they just had two different approaches.

The MLK approach was to show the country that they were freedom fighters fighting for freedom, but they weren’t trying to destroy the country. Just the system that held them down and we’re going to accomplish it by exercising their constitutional rights of Freedom of Speech and Assembly.

Malcolm X’s approach was different, that the way to destroy the system, was by any means necessary, even if that means violence. That what they were fighting for which was their own freedom just as the Caucasian community had, should already be there’s. And that the racists should just get-out-of-the-way, or they’ll be run over. That there wasn’t any negotiation, because African-Americans already had the freedom under law and under the Constitution that every other community had in America. Which meant that racist Southern Anglo-Saxon bigots and other racist Caucasians, should either step aside, or they’ll be forcefully removed by the African-American community.

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