PROTECTING THE FIRST AMENDMENT

Amendment I

 Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

  I believe in the 1st Amendment as strongly as I do the 2nd Amendment and all rights covered under the Bill of Rights and I am not a believer in the left wing, or progressive idea that the Constitution is a living, breathing document. In my view the Constitution should be strictly adhered to. The beauty of it is that the founding Fathers gave us the means to change it through the Amendment process rather than through allowing a president, congressman, or federal judge to change it on a whim. This is exactly what the court has been doing since Marbury vs. Madison in 1803. It was then that Chief Justice John Marshall usurped the power of judicial review. A power not granted to the court by the Founding Fathers. To a point I like justice Oliver Wendell Holmes concept of a "Clear and Present Danger" but Holmes, unfortunately, was a believer in the concept of a living constitution. He believed, as I do, that there should be some limitations on speech. Holmes famously said in the supreme court case Schenck vs. the United States, "the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic." Like the 2nd Amendment the 1st Amendment has been under attack by the left for years. Especially in the area of freedom of religion and the right to express your opinions freely. The press and the media on the other hand have aggressively defended the freedom of the press clause in the 1st Amendment since the founding of our country. We are seeing the right of free speech attacked on our college campuses. The universities are where the right of free speech should be revered but of late they are becoming more fascist. I hate the concept of political correctness, hate speech and hate crimes. All three are Marxist in origin and designed to shut down free speech and intimidate anyone that holds a belief that differs from their own. Georg Hegel, a German philosopher of the early 1800's and the man that Karl Marx claimed as his mentor, believed that human history was moving toward the triumph of reason. That the solution to all of mans problems would be solved by mankind. The problem with this line of thinking is that who gets to define what reason is? This belief leads to rule by the  collective rather than by the individual. It defies the Founding Fathers belief that the individual has inalienable rights that come from God and not the state. America became more Hegelian beginning with Woodrow Wilson, who did not believe in natural rights of man or the original intent of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. This way of thinking was strengthened with the election of Franklin Roosevelt. Wilson was Roosevelt's idol and he was assistant secretary of the Navy under Wilson. Both had a tyrannical view of government and they vastly expanded it's power. They believed that rights were granted by the state and not by God. The Democrat Party of today is dominated by this thinking. They only believe in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution if it is a means to an end.

FREE SPEECH :  What is free speech? As Justice Holmes said there should be some restrictions on speech. I define it this way. If a stand up in a crowded theater and yell fire causing a panic I should go to jail. In the words of justice Holmes this would pose a clear and present danger to the safety of others. On the contrary if I stand on a street corner and say something like I hate faggots, niggers, crackers, spics, wetbacks, gooks, Jesus, Allah, Budha or anything else that I choose I should not be arrested. This speech, regardless of how offensive, is protected by the 1st Amendment. If I encourage people to kill, or harm anyone connected to the ethnic groups I described, or these religious groups I then become a clear and present danger to society and should be arrested. When I use these words and sentiments on my job and my boss decides to fire me, I would then have no legal recourse. The value of the 1st Amendment in this situation is that I cannot be arrested for saying these things but I can be fired for using offensive words as long as they do not present a clear and present danger to society. One of the things that I hear people say about the NFL, regarding players taking a knee during the national anthem is that they are exercising their 1st Amendment right and the NFL cannot fire them. This is not true. If the NFL had a spine they could say that the players will stand or they will be fired. The players are still protected by the 1st Amendment for disrespecting the flag, regardless of what action the NFL takes. For example they cannot be arrested but the NFL can fire them, fine them, or let them get away with it like they have done in the past. Many in their fan base like myself, have chosen not to watch anymore football games. We are exercising our right not to support them. There are some gray areas here on what constitutes grounds for discharging an employee. For example the type of bumper stickers you have on your car or what you say on social media when you are off work. If your speech does not present a clear and present danger to others then your job should not be able to fire you for what you say or how you express yourself when you are off work in my view. I do not think that your political opinions at work should be silenced unless it is an across the board prohibition. In other words if the owner of the business where you work is a Republican and they say that no politics can be discussed while you are on the job. That would be legal in my view. On the other hand if they say that only Republican's or Conservatives can talk about politics, but Democrats cannot, then you would probably have a lawsuit in my opinion.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS : We have allowed the left to define our language. For example take the term gay. When I was young man gay was a good word. If I described myself as young and gay nobody would have questioned my sexual orientation. The homosexual lobby has deprived us of that word today. In crazy California they are trying to outlaw the use of gender terms such as he and she and this movement is spreading to the rest of the country. If they have their way, ultimately you could be arrested for using words that the left considers offensive. When I was a child the proper word in reference to a Black person was Colored or Negro. This is what they preferred to be called. By the end of the 1960's the preferred word was Black. I always thought this was a fair trade because I have always been referred to as White so it was only fair to refer to them as Black. I draw the line at African-American and I refuse to use that term. The term African-American is not accurate if you are Black and born in America. It would be more correct to say that you are an American of African descent. A person that was born in Africa, but has become a naturalized American citizen, they would more correctly be identified as an African-American. The irony of this is that I have met several White African-Americans. When I was growing up in the age of segregation Blacks were fighting for the right to be considered American. Because of identity politics the left is trying to divide us by race, class, gender and sexual orientation. In my view we are all American. In regards to the issue of racial identification, political correctness has taught me that what is politically correct speech today will probably be politically incorrect ten or twenty years from now. When I think of political correctness for some reason I think of telling a joke. Sometimes I think to myself. Who was the originator of this joke? Somebody had to have come up with it and started the process telling it. When that person told it to someone it began to take on a life of its own by the retelling it over and over. If I hear a joke that I think is vulgar, inappropriate or distasteful I don't have to be a part of that process. I do not have to repeat it. In my everyday life I try not to use terms of speech that I consider politically correct. Words have power. By studying history I learned that Hitler used politically correct terms. Genocide of the Jews was called the Final Solution. Lebensraum in German means "Living space". This term was used to hide the fact that Hitler intended to conquer lands to the east of Germany by killing and forcibly removing the people living there and replace them with ethnic Germans.

HATE SPEECH : The problem with hate speech is who gets to determine what it is?  This goes back to the Hegelian concept of the triumph of reason. Who gets to decide what reason is? If someone is a preacher and they say that we should hate all homosexuals then I can agree that that would be hate speech but it would still fall under 1st Amendment protection. When the preacher urges his congregation to kill homosexuals then he is no longer protected by the 1st Amendment. This should also include a Muslim cleric who says this. You would more likely hear this kind of talk in a Mosque than from a Christian preacher yet the left tends to ignore Islam's excesses. The left is quick to point out the so-called Christian cleric who would do this.   If the preacher is preaching from the Word of God and he tells his congregation that homosexuality is a sin, based on the scriptures, or he says that same sex marriage is a sin the left is quick to call this hate speech also. That is because the left is trying to force mainstream society and Christianity to move beyond mere tolerance of homosexuality to full acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle. This would go against our moral conscience. What if the shoe was on the other foot and Conservatism was the the dominant philosophy in the mainstream media, academia, the arts & entertainment, and government? Lets say Conservatives started saying that atheists who speak out against Christianity would be guilty of hate speech and that the atheists should not only tolerate Christians but they should accept Christianity.  One big problem with people accepting this logic about homosexuality as hate speech is that it can can quickly morph into a hate crime. There are people on the left who actually consider a Trump MAGA hat as the moral equivalent of wearing a Klan hood. Wearing a shirt or hat supporting your political candidate is protected speech. I thought Obama was a traitor to our country and I had to fight the impulse to run people off the road when I saw an Obama sticker on their car but they have every right to support someone like Obama as president.The people that are hating the MAGA hat have determined in their own mind that when Trump is speaking out against illegal immigration, for example, he is doing it because he is intolerant of non-White people. They believe that he is throwing red meat  to his mostly White male constituency, or the "Deplorables" as Hillary described us. The left has also accepted the lie taught in our universities that in the 1960's all of the racists from the Democrat Party fled to the Republican Party after passage of the 1964 & 65 Civil Rights acts. The facts do not back this up. Polls show that the overwhelming majority of the American people, including Hispanics, Blacks and women are against illegal immigration. Most Americans who are against illegal immigration are strongly in favor of legal immigration. Most legal immigrants come from non-White countries. Trump and his supporters have repeatedly voiced their support of legal immigrants to no avail. The reason the left supports illegal immigration is that they know mainstream Americans do not support their agenda and they reject it at the polls. Eighty percent of illegals that vote support Democrat candidates. Do the math. The left looks at illegal immigration as a voter registration drive. They have an unholy alliance with the establishment Republican's and the Chamber of Commerce who view illegal immigration as a means to hire slave labor, at slave wages, thereby driving down the wages of American citizens.

HATE CRIMES : I absolutely hate the concept of a hate crime. There was a time that White people, especially in the South could get away with some of the most heinous crimes against Black people. The murder of Emmett Till is a prime example. That was definitely a hate crime. Murder has usually always been a crime in the United States punishable by death, a life sentence or very long prison sentences. If a person gets off lightly it is usually because of a bleeding heart leftist judge. So lets go back to Emmett Till. For the sake of argument lets say that the all White jury that let Till's murderers off of the hook did the right thing and sentenced them to death. Lets say than within a reasonable time the state of Mississippi carried through on the execution. Full justice would have been served to these monsters. Does anyone believe that Emmett Tills parents would have cared what the jury looked like or what state the murder occurred in. In their mind justice was served. Justice served is not closure for someone who has lost a loved one, however. Nothing can ever compensate for that. Lets turn it around. For the sake of argument lets say Till was the monster here. What if he had taken that White woman hostage, that he supposedly flirted with, and brutally raped, tortured her, and threw her dismembered body in the same river that his body was found in. Does anyone believe that Till would not have been arrested, tried and executed for his crimes. At that time in our history he would have been lucky if he was given a trial. It is probable that a lynch mob would have hung him from the nearest tree. The reason that I give you these examples is that the powers that be decide what is justice and what is not. They can also decide what is a hate crime and what is not. You have heard the saying one mans junk is another man's treasure. You could also say one mans crime is another mans hate crime. On June 7, 1998 when George W. Bush was governor of Texas, a Black man, named James Byrd Jr. was dragged to death behind a pick-up truck by three White supremacists. Two of the men were condemned to death and one received a life sentence. One of the men has been executed and the other is due to be executed on April 24, 2019. The man sentenced to life in prison, Shawn Berry, will be eligible for parole in 2038. Berry claimed that he had nothing to do with the crime. Since there was no way to verify his claim the jury sentenced him to life instead of execution. He spends 23 out of 24 hours a day in solitary confinement. Bush was criticized because he did not support the hate crime legislation passed in the Texas legislature that was prompted by this murder. I agree with Bush. How would a hate crime law have affected the outcome of this case? In my view these men received the maximum punishment. Because of the Texas hate crime law does the state now get to spit on their grave? What more can you do to them? Rightfully so the Byrd murder received a huge amount of publicity in the national media for days and weeks. I can name two murders in Tennessee that could be classified as hate crimes but were virtually ignored by the mainstream media. In 1995 a young White man and his wife stopped at a convenience store near Guthrie Kentucky. The White man, 19 year old Michael Westerman, was flying a Confederate battle flag from the bed of his pick-up truck. Three Black teenagers angered by the flag followed Westerman out of the parking lot with the intent to stop him and fight but when they pulled up beside him they fired a pistol into the truck mortally wounding Westerman. Two of the teens were later sentenced to life in prison. In Knoxville on January 6, 2007  a White couple, Hugh Newsom Jr. 23, and his 19 year old girlfriend Channon Christian, were carjacked and both were brutally raped, tortured and murdered in a horrific manner. Christian's body was left in a trash can and Newsom's burnt body was found on a railroad track. Both bodies were found on January 9th, three days after the carjacking. All five suspects were Black. Four males and one female. Only one of the suspects received the death penalty. The rest received life sentences except for the female who got a lighter sentence. Due to the barbarity of this crime and the fact that the perpetrators were Black and the victims were White it could easily be classified as a hate crime. I guarantee you that if Whites murdered Black people, homosexuals, Muslims or any other minority in the manner that this young couple was killed there would be a clamor to classify it as a hate crime.  Unlike the James Byrd crime in Texas the mainstream national media ignored this crime. I didn't find out about it until years later on a Conservative talk radio station. If someone robs and shoots me, regardless of what race or gender I am, does this crime not involved hate? They surely don't love me to commit a crime like that. Here is a novel idea. How about that we just follow the law in all criminal activity? To me the White monsters who killed James Byrd in Texas deserve death as well as the Black monsters who killed the young couple in Knoxville. Hate speech and hate crimes are designed in my opinion to intimidate political opposition into silence.

James Byrd

Channon Christian & Hugh Newsom

On a personal level I have tried to uphold the concept of free speech in my personal life. I don't allow myself to get angry when I have a difference of opinion with someone. If I have a debate with someone, regardless of how passionate I get, I can still walk away friends with them at the end. Regardless of the subject up for debate but I have found that many people are not capable of doing that. On Facebook I have been unfriended by people simply because they disagree with me. One man unfriended me the night Trump was elected. I have never unfriended anyone because of differences of opinion and I never will. We need to live by the quote of Evelyn Beatrice Hall, a biographer of Voltaire, which is mistakenly attributed to Voltaire himself.  "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" Americans have always been divided over issues but I can't remember a time when America has been this divided unless it was the Civil War. If we shield ourselves from conflicting ideas we are no longer being challenged. Being challenged is how we arrive at the truth. A good example of this is a Mormon friend who challenged me on scripture and certain Mormon beliefs. I had no answer to many of his questions and this compelled me to dig deeper into the Bible which in turn strengthened my faith and knowledge of the Bible. 

The following are a few Voltaire quotes worthy of reflection.

Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.

Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.

Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.

Common sense is not so common.

Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.

The more often a stupidity is repeated, the more it gets the appearance of wisdom.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.