The Best of Reason: 'The Constitution Is Not a Suicide Pact'

How a 1949 Supreme Court dissent gave birth to a meme that subverts free speech and civil liberties.

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The Best of Reason: 'The Constitution Is Not a Suicide Pact'

This week's featured article is "'The Constitution Is Not a Suicide Pact'" by Jacob Sullum.

This audio was generated using AI trained on the voice of Katherine Mangu-Ward.

Music credits: "Deep in Thought" by CTRL S and "Sunsettling" by Man With Roses

Comments

[Don't look at me!]

The Constitution Is Not a Suicide Pact

Sure it is, it’s right the in the penumbras.

[Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP)]

The roots of the Constitution are embedded in the the Declaration of Independence and the DoL was absolutely a suicide pact. Everyone that signed it was a declared traitor to the Crown and could have been executed had the British been victorious.

[Gaear Grimsrud]

The best huh? Jacob Sullum? Pretty fucking sad.

[Rick James]

Breaking: MSNBC's DEI-pick president just stepped down.

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

We are actuallyl talking about conduct (which tangentially involves speech )

Terminiello v. Chicago

Better you use National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie--- all these years later I think it was wrong to allow that march. KKK is national ,they have a zillion places they can march where the local populous wouldn't be as personally offended.
Community standards. As Clarence Thomas said in the cross-burning case (and everyone knows this is true)

"In our culture, cross burning has almost invariably meant lawlessness and understandably instills in its victims well-grounded fear of physical violence. . . ."

"Accordingly, this statute prohibits only conduct, not expression. And, just as one cannot burn down someone’s house to make a political point and then seek refuge in the First Amendment, those who hate cannot terrorize and intimidate to make their point. In light of my conclusion that the statute here addresses only conduct, there is no need to analyze it under any of our First Amendment tests. . . ."[ virginai v black ]

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

See, many of these comments ,no matter whether agreement or not, are violated when that commentor is talking abouit a suject they don't like and to make it a religious case they call it 'religous.
So if I think gays are perverted or abortion is killing a human life you say 'that is religious' [ which is not true in my case ] and expect to win because of YOUR characterization of my act [ which happens to be false characterization anyway ]
And this is the achilles heel of Libertraianism. You almost always label FIRST and then argue