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A Monopoly On Speech

Flanders

Council Member
The very definition of monopoly was written for a free press:

monopoly (noun)
plural monopolies

1. Exclusive control by one group of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service.

2. Law. A right granted by a government giving exclusive control over a specified commercial activity to a single party.

3. a. A company or group having exclusive control over a commercial activity. b. A commodity or service so controlled.

4. a. Exclusive possession or control: arrogantly claims to have a monopoly on the truth. b. Something that is exclusively possessed or controlled: showed that scientific achievement is not a male monopoly.

They even have schools protecting their monopoly:

DeWayne Hickham, the dean of Morgan State’s J-school, isn’t demanding a “Mohammed exception” to the First Amendment. He’s demanding an exception for all speech that would make the audience so angry that they might react violently — exactly the sort of slippery slope on censorship that people like you and me worry about when images of Mohammed are suppressed. Actual line from this op-ed, regarding the new cover of Charlie Hebdo: “The once little-known French satirical news weekly crossed the line that separates free speech from toxic talk.”​

Media income always depended upon controlling whatever the public hears. A free press monopoly over free speech enriching press barons worked suitably from the day the country was founded. Indeed, the monopoly got stronger, and wealthier, when television came along. In truth, media moguls saw Charlie Hebdo as a moral stick they could use to beat free speech to death.

NOTE: Media moralists and priests are the only ones looking for an excuse to diminish free speech for everybody else. Anyone with a lick of sense give not a rat’s ass about giving moralists of any stripe an exemption from criticism.

Bottom line: Wealthy tax dollar propagandists are not building responsible barricades because fringe publications poke fun at Islam, or any religion for that matter. The Internet broke the media's freedom of speech monopoly. That is why media mouths and the government are sweating bullets.

Look who else is stomping on freedom of speech:


Pope Francis has said of the magazine, “You cannot make fun of the faith of others.”…​

The pope can exercise his own free speech in any way he chooses, but his opposition to freedom of speech in America carry’s no weight in our law or culture. My only regret is that absolute freedom of speech might silence every priest.

The crux of the matter


In 1919, the Supreme Court ruled speech that presents a “clear and present danger” is not protected by the First Amendment. Crying “fire” in a quiet, uninhabited place is one thing, the court said. But “the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.”

Twenty-two years later, the Supreme Court ruled that forms of expression that “inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace” are fighting words that are not protected by the First Amendment.

Journalism school dean: The First Amendment ends at insulting Mohammed
posted at 8:01 pm on January 21, 2015 by Allahpundit

http://hotair.com/archives/2015/01/21/journalism-school-dean-the-first-amendment-ends-at-insulting-mohammed/

In the real world it is offensive speech that requires the most protection, not kissy-kissy, touchy-feely, sermons.

The things you cannot say, and the things you must say, is clearly an evolutionary step in America’s culture. In bygone decades the opponents of speech confined their attacks to silencing free speech for average Americans. The long-running debate used to be about the government shutting up people. Now, go back to Oliver Wendell Holmes’ often misquoted opinion: "Falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater.”, and come forward. You’ll see that before the Fairness Doctrine (1949 - 1987) was implemented no one was required to listen. Nowadays, freedom of speech is still as much as about making people listen as much as it is about shutting them up.

Parenthetically, Justice Holmes never told us how freedom of speech traveled from the year 1791 to the year 1919 without his opinion guiding the country. To me, “political freedom of speech” is absolute, or at least it should be. If an individual’s constitutional Rights are not as absolute as the government’s Rights the individual has no Rights at all. At best, individual’s constitutional Rights become nothing more than lawyers’ laws dressed up to look prettier than they actually are.

Fire!

It is a bit of a stretch to say that falsely yelling Fire! in a crowded theater would cause thinking humans trampling one another in a rush to the exits. Since the Fire! ruling was overturned, I have not heard that millions of American theatergoers were trampled to death every year. As a matter of fact no one was trampling each other when they knew the Twin Towers were burning.

What protected theatergoers before 1919?

My perception of the Fire restraint on free speech is that political free speech would remain absolute, but not all speech would be so blessed. At least that is what the High Court seemed to be saying at the time. That one prohibition appeared to be reasonable on the face of it, but now political free speech is no longer absolute; right along with the other kind. Would the Nifty Nine from a bygone era have made that pronouncement had they known that Intelligent Design, campaign finance reform, and banning politically incorrect speech would follow? It is impossible to say.

One unshakable fact about speech is universal. All speech, by its very nature, is most closely related to “Let the buyer beware.”

Incidentally, how many times did the words “limited speech” appear in print, commentaries, High Court decisions, etc., prior to 1919? How many times did James Madison invoke those words?

It is no secret that all governments just love protecting meaningless speech, while all governments claim the absolute Right to define “clear and present danger.” In every form of government do not falsely shout FIRE in a crowded theater becomes do not shout FIRE in an empty theater. Then it becomes do not shout FIRE! And finally do not speak at all.

Finally, whatever is going wrong with freedom of speech in this country today can be laid at Harvard’s doorstep along with journalism schools. All of the other institutions of higher learning combined do not corrupt this country as much as does Harvard.

Harvard graduates bounce back and forth between government and the academy in greater number than do all of the graduates from all of the other universities combined. Our courts have gone bad because of Harvard lawyers.

Starting with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in 1902 the Supreme Court was transformed into a pantheon of liberalism. Just to name a few off the top of my average American head. Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, Earl Warren, William Brennan, William Powell, Jr., Harry Blackmun, Louis Powell, Jr., Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, David Souter, Jr, Sonia Sotomyer, Elena Kagan, and of course John Roberts who gave us the ACA who is not finished yet.

NOTE: Antonin Scalia is also a Harvard lawyer. I don’t know how in hell he fell in with a pack of scoundrels. (Happy to report that Clarence Thomas did not go to Harvard.)

Combine the awesome influence of Harvard’s well-known bunch with aspiring liberals who made it to the Supreme Court from lesser schools and you cannot fail to see that something is wrong. Add in Harvard grads who sit on lower courts, plus an overwhelming number of Harvard grads who clerk for Supreme Court justices, and you have a judicial cabal headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
 
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