Took the Grand Jury all day to decide a nude statue isn't obscene in Kansas
 

It took a Johnson County, Kansas Grand Jury all day to figure out that a fairly cubist statue of a nude or partially nude hiker girl taking a picture of herself isn't obscene - and to me, the real news is that it took all day to reach that conclusion. Here's the story.

http://www.kshb.com/dpp/news/region_...ue-not-obscene

It took them all day to come to the conclusion that this highly stylized work that suggests vanity and narcissism, self-adultation and self-worship - which is after all the root of all of the problems that' have plagued humanity from the start - possesses serious artistic value? (And the absence of that "serious value" is one of the three things that must be proven to render any work obscene. No matter how prurient the appeal of the work, no matter how shockingly and patently the work offends contemporary community norms of what is permissible or accepted, IF it possesses serious artistic value, it cannot be obscene. Why? Because our Patriot forefathers correctly came to the judgment that all of society itself would become the victim - if any expression that adds to the debate about the basic questions about humanity - could be outlawed, criminalized, and taken out of society's view. That's a distinctively American value, what we invented, and what sets us apart from the rest of the world. Remember, it was a Statue of Liberty our immigrant ancestors looked up to when they arrived in New York harbor, not a Statue of "Decency".)

One hundred and fifty years ago, my Great Grandfather, then 16, was fighting insurgents all through Kansas in the Civil War, and forty years ago, I left 30 pounds behind as I trained to become an Army officer at Fort Riley. I'd like to think that we, and all of the others who've served in the military to protect American values, were fighting/serving for exactly this same right of every American to freely express and communicate their point of view through any means that can affect minds. Bravo to the Grand Jury. It's only tragic that the decision was not obvious to them in ten minutes.
http://www.xxxlaw.com/obscenity/index.html

When's the next book burning?

yeah pretty much...

two comments...

"Adultation"? ( gawd it's fun to nit pick)

And

http://timbuk3.com/statue-ashcroft01.jpg

:D

nice wasting of your money. hope they had fun

JO, I like your posts but this time you are kind of in error. This whole things is local to me and I have been following it for a while.

1. It did not take all day. The entire thing was completed in less than a day. That included Grand Jury selection, presentation and deliberations.

2. Just so everyone is clear. This is NOT a case where an authority (govt) called something obscene. A local woman got upset over the statue. She bitched to the city. They said tough, it is art, it stays. She went to the local "Moral Minority" folks who did a petition demanding a grand jury look at it. The grand jury did look and in less than a day said nope, it is art and it stays.

This is one of those rare cases when the local government was on the right side of the issue.


.

Sorry, but this is absolute shit, and is just one reason why Americans are hated around the world. The country is not even 250 years old, and people like you spew crap about how we invented liberty and democracy and civilization and free speech and apple pie. As if the rest of the world lived in caves until the USA (fuck yeah) appeared like a beacon to enlighten everyone with ideas that nobody had ever thought of before. Even the Statue Of Liberty is not American.

I'd hit it.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lu...1gywo1_500.png

the nude body is obscene ...

With respect, the First Amendment is a distinctly American innovation and was a reaction to England, continental Europe and a history of torturing men to death because of how they worshipped God. Try to debate fee elections in Beijing, or to defend a newspaper accused.of libelling a politician in Sydney or to by a copy of Mein Kampf in Prague and then get back to me aboutt the imperfections of free speech here. And yes, the idea started on these shores. In the meantime, I' ll be fighting for the repeal of obscenity laws in the US. Acquired the domains last week and.forming a.plan. Feel free to join me in that cause.

Johnny, what you've just said is a restatement of that old saying about how everybody is always talking about the weather but nobody ever does anything about it.

In general, the answer is hard work. Slavery did not end by itself and Civil Rights did not just grow like fruits on a tree. European Fascism and Communist tyranny did not just blow away. Safe workplaces and wage and hour protections didn't just happen. Hell, Hoover Dam didn't build itself. There's nothing that's good and decent that is impossible if people work hard and work together. What happened earlier this year to a good and honorable man, Ron Paul, should not have happened to a rabid dog.

If the mission is to be the increase of freedom and liberty, this industry and this board, is the place to start the work.

It's been a very long time since our teachers and politicians have spread the word that the first and most important purpose of the United States government is to extend liberty to as many people who live here as is possible. That fundamental truth is why the word "Liberty" or an image emblematic of it is required by law to be stamped into every coin. That's what this country is all about, that's why the Liberty Bell was its first icon, and that's why the French gave us that statue for New York Harbor - an acknowledgement that this principle is what we're all about, and that the light of Liberty should shine brightly here and illuminate the rest of the world. But that lamp has grown dim, and if we can work together, it's possible to rekindle it, at least in one modest area: the right to decide what we want to create and publish, and to select, read, and view.

With respect, it's absolutely ridiculous to even suggest ideas of freedom of speech or expression, or other ideas behind the Revolution, started on these shores. I'm astounded you're even attempting to argue that, when any schoolkid should know the founders of this country were so heavily influenced by Enlightenment thinkers in Britain and France.

References to Beijing are equally ridiculous, since every democracy in the world is clearly more free than China. And while I don't agree with banning books, I can understand that countries that suffered under the Nazis in ways we can't imagine might make an exception for Mein Kampf.

I seriously doubt the unavailability of that book is a practical hindrance to free speech for people in those countries, and I'm fairly sure schools, and maybe even libraries, in the US have banned more worthwhile books for political/religious reasons.

With regard to this particular event, one thing we unfortunately do have more of in the US is moral majority puritans. I seriously doubt this statue would even raise an eyebrow in most other countries of the world, let alone have people organizing and petitioning for its removal.

Helter Skelter - They talked about it, a little bit anyway.

We did it. And we were the first in the world to do so.

Like it or not.

haha dont you just love the law around the world in diff countries

http://www.herselfpics.com/images/hsp_fpa.jpg

How much will it cost for someone to add a sign for HerSelfPics.com on the base and take a picture ? ? ?

"Mein Kampf" is not illegal, you can buy it if you find a used one.

it's just that the copyright is owned by the state of Bavaria and they do not publish it. next year the copyright runs out and everyone who wants can print it.

It might be a question of months and so not have directly influenced the adoption of the first amendment, and I know it was in the chaos of post revolutionary France, but wasn't Rousseau's Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man pretty much a precursor to the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment?

I like to think these enlightened policies and pre- or post- constitutional legal and philosophical bases all came from the same vein of thinkers who conferred in these great discussions, privately and publicly, on an inter-continental level, so I might have to go back a bit to my readings, but from what I understand the two documents essentially grew from the same richly fertilized soil....

:D

Nobody is disputing we did it, and many Americans have tried to ignore and challenge, if not overturn, it since; I don't believe for one second the Constitution would be written even remotely the same way today.

We were lucky enough to be able to start with a clean slate, allowing us to take the very best pre-existing beliefs and laws on personal rights and freedoms, and use them as the foundation for the country. As British Prime Minister Gladstone put it:

"As the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from the womb and long gestation of progressive history, so the American Constitution is, so far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man."

To write off the democratic ideals and struggles of people in Europe, over preceding centuries, as simply 'talking a little' is risible.

Aside from 'mere' philosophizing, and the Enlightenment influence on the French Revolution, as Media Guy brought up, the Magna Carta, written over half a millennium before our Revolution, along with Petition Of Right and Bill Of Rights (following England's own Revolution) in the 17th century, along with established English common law, such as habeas corpus, had a huge and undeniable influence on the American Revolution and Constitution/Bill of Rights.

Their history was our history. Like it or not.

Kansas needs to be completely walled off. No one in, no one out.

Media Guy: The French Declaration was not a precursor. The opposite. One handy online source states:

"Many of the concepts introduced by the Declaration were from the principles and philosophies of the Age of Enlightenment. Addressing the social contract as established by John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau and stressing the importance of individualism within French society, the Declaration became the founding document of modern France. It borrowed heavily from the U.S. Declaration of Independence of 1776, and ironically its writer, Thomas Jefferson, was in France at the time of its adoption. He called it a "victory" for man. The document also laid the groundwork for the separation of powers as touted by Baron de Montesquieu, laying the groundwork for the constitution to come."

Read more: About the Declaration of the Rights of Man | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_4595914_de...#ixzz2AcPJiXyH

The US Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment were adopted by the House of Representatives on August 21, 1789.

The important difference, as I understand it, is this: The French declaration was a mere statement of principles, a broad announcement of political philosophy. In the United States, our Constitution is the fundamental organic law. At least since the principle was articulated in Marbury v. Madison, the courts may invalidate any law that violates the constitution even were it passed unanimously by each house of Congress and immediately signed into law by the President. Over time, French governments have toyed and adjusted what is and what isn't protected by simple laws, for example adding hate speech to a list of what is not protected expression. Similarly, in England, for something to be called "unconstitutional" does not mean that it can be invalidated by any legal institution, but merely that it's out of step with the traditions of the nation. We Americans invented the concept that when the fundamental rights of man as articulated in our constitution are violated, it is no law at all, and no one need obey it. That is fundamentally different from a statement of principles. The Bill of Rights is our ultimate and highest law. We elevate those fundamental principles protecting the individual above democracy. The First Amendment is fundamentally a contra-majorititarian charter. If all of society wishes the Nazi or Communist or Anarchist or Islamic Fundamentalist to shut up and go home, it is the duty of the courts to protect his right to speak, even if he is the only one to express his own very obnoxious opinion. That's what makes the US an innovator in this area.

Exceptions to Free Speech here? Yup. A small list of exceptions first articulated by the Supreme Court in Chaplinsky, and obscenity is among them. At least one State Supreme Court has held that freedom of speech, as the pioneers carried it into Oregon, contained no exception about obscenity. You will find a comprehensive collection of more than one hundred cases about this subject and my brief notes about their significance at http://www.xxxlaw.com/cases/index.html

The very most important thing on that page is the quotation from a very famous judge at the top of the page, Judge Learned Hand. In 1947 he said that Liberty most importantly lies in the hearts of men, and that when it died there, no constitution or law could save it. I believe that to be true.

And that's why, for twelve years, whenever I've spoken to groups of Webmasters at each Internext and XBIX or Phoenix Forum show, I've always started by telling the group of adult webmasters that they are patriots on the forward edge of the battle area in defending fundamental freedoms in the United States.

HelterSkelter:

When was the last time that a Catholic Priest was hanged until nearly dead, castrated, disemboweled, his guts thrown into a fire, cut into four pieces, and his head placed on a pike as the result of the sentence of an American court? The Magna Carta was a great start, but it said little or nothing that protected freedom of the press, freedom of assembly or freedom of religion. The difference between what is called the British Constitution and the US Constitution is the force of law and the power of the courts to invalidate laws that violate fundamental human freedoms.

Well, check out which countries have jailed men for merely expressing their opinions about history in recent decades.

The list starts with Canada, Austria, and Germany.

Check out what nations have locked people up for peaceably assembling to petition for a redress of grievances. It won't find long to find some examples that will surprise you.

Please do look at the actuality.

There's always some reason articulated by the government to repress speech, and often it's just malarkey.

In the most unselfish act in recorded history, this nation invaded Europe in 1944, took down Fascism, left behind tens of thousands of dead young men, and left tens of thousands of others as cripples, and then rebuilt western Europe. We created democracies in our wake. Countries that had no tradition of freedom obtained them with American blood. Look at Japan. Take a look at today's freedoms in Germany and Austria. And when France asked us to leave twenty years later, we left. We stood guard on Freedom's Frontier for fifty years and gave hope to Poles and Hungarians and others. Czech the record. We did it for one and only one reason: that men might be free. I was one of the millions who served at the Iron Curtain, and I know why I chose to go there. Now we have the satisfaction of knowing that hundreds of millions live in a freedom they'd never known for decades, and my only wish is that they would enjoy freedom of speech at least to the extent we have it here. It can be made more perfect here, and that's the present purpose of my existence. It's not academic inquiry or debate about political philosophy, it's the point of what I do.

Yes, please look at the actuality.

Around many parts of the world, including Europe, but especially asia and the middle east, the actuality is that people are jailed just because of their historical and political opinions, and in some places, they are killed for them. Here, I can stand in front of a judge and argue that the fundamental law of the nation, above all other laws and democratic majorities, protects a man's right to speak his mind. That idea started here and nowhere else, and it is rare - not impossible, but rare - to find such unrestricted freedom of speech anywhere else. I don't want to hear about the "exceptions" that some cynics here find limited and unimportant - that's what's been said about restrictions on speech since the British were castrating priests.

Those tits are so fake.. but her nipples are always hard so... it's art.

What's especially cool is that it's like her camera uses a split-image rangefinder, she's way out of focus, and she has no clue about that as she takes a picture of herself. It's about narcissism run amok and a life that is out of touch with reality. Those boobs are meant to look fake - because she's lightyears away from being in touch with what's real, putting herself into the center of the world, but having no idea who she is or what the world around her is.

You tell me. Was it before or after 1776? The Magna Carta was written almost 1000 years ago, to address issues of that time, and yet it was arguably way ahead of its time. It's considered one of the most important legal documents in the history of democracy, and it's been said that without the Magna Carta there'd have been no Declaration of Independence.

It's a historical fact that before the Revolution we were 'British'. The Revolution was really just another milestone in the history of British people asserting their freedom and rights against an authority considered illegitimate.

Do you seriously think England, the mother of parliaments and originator of so many laws and beliefs that inspired Revolutionary Americans, is a country that lacks "fundamental freedoms"?

When was the last time people were being strung up from trees in Britain, or being denied the right to vote, or being forced to sit at the back of a bus, because of their race? I'm willing to bet, despite not having the same Constitution, that it has never happened. In the US those things were happening in the 20th Century. What good was the Constitution to those people? Or the slaves of the Founding Fathers?

Johnny, you need to balance your reading.

The decisions of the US Supreme Court are peppered with many stories of poor people from unpopular backgrounds who won big against the powers that be. In more than one famous case, the petition for review came handwritten in pencil, and I seem to recall that one was drafted by a prisoner on toilet paper. The Jehovah's witness cases involving the freedom to go door to door without a government license came from unpopular people without power, and even the fundamental cases involving equality in education came from poor "Negroes". Virtually every capital punishment case centers on someone who was a murderer or rapist, hated and reviled, and hardly the member of any elite.

This country has always offered smart, hardworking, creative people a chance to rise; the movers and shakers in Chicago who amount to its elite are the grandchildren of Russian Jewish pushcart peddlers and Irish steelworkers and Italian and Greek and Chinese railroad workers. Does social rank and money create advantage? Of course it does. That's the lure that inspires poor people to become part of it, and here, there's a shot do do that. But even the most hated, reviled, and poverty stricken can and do win big under the constitution.

I'm not in love with the system either. I've represented a gas station against an oil company that wrote his lease and put all the toxic cleanup on him in an unfair lease, and years later, steam comes out of my ears when I remember the oil company lawyer telling me that the Golden Rule was that the guy with the gold writes the rules. But it's not close to as dismal as you paint it.

Back to the inspiration of the Bill of Rights for a second. The influence of the religious persections, including hanging drawing, and quartering was really profound on the drafters. The body of the constitution prohibits religious tests for public office and the Bill of Rights not only protects speech and religion, but the Eighth Amendment goes on to prohibit "cruel and unusual punishments". The body of the document also prohibits any punishment working a forfeiture of blood, meaning punishment/forfeiture that goes on to one's heirs. You will find prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures and a requirement of a judicial warrant. You will find a requirement that cases must be tried in the same district where the crime took place. The right to due process of law before a taking. Yes, England had a big influence on the Bill of Rights and that influence is seen in many other parts of the document: the influence was negative, creating guarantees that the worst part of English jurisprudence would never be tolerated here. Our Bill of Rights is a reaction to British abuse of the fundamental rights of human beings. We experienced those abuses. Read the fine print in the declaration of independence. It lays them out in detail. Our patriot ancestors believed that the British government had betrayed the duties it owed its subjects, rights which are fundamental and come from God, and which cannot be taken away by any high and mighty government. That belief is the cornerstone of the American political tradition.

Incredible.

How about members of the American Communist Party jailed in the 40s and 50s?

This is absolutely ridiculous. The contribution of the US to the defeat of Germany and Japan was great, but it was not even remotely unselfish, let alone the most unselfish act in recorded history, a statement so laughable you can't possibly be serious.

Britain and France declaring war on Germany when it invaded a country on the other side of Europe was unselfish. Britain remaining at war with the most powerful and dangerous tyranny in history, alone, even when Hitler wanted to make peace or ally with Britain, was unselfish.

The policy of the USA was to stand idly by while the Nazis, with whom American companies were happily doing business, crushed democratic countries across Europe, and then screw Britain out of its gold and other assets to such a monumental extent that Britain only paid off its financial debt to the US about 5 years ago.

How unselfish of us.

WTF are you talking about? Germany was a democracy under the Weimar Republic. Whereas after WWII half of it was a dictatorship, thanks to the world's only nuclear superpower agreeing to sell out half of Europe to a Soviet tyrant.

I can't believe anyone could write that and actually seriously mean it. I know what the Czechs and Hungarians did in 1968 and 1956. What did we do?

Please do. Because whatever Hollywood movie you're getting your material from is embarrassing.

You seem to have a huge axe to grind about Britain and seem obsessed with the British 'castrating priests'. When was this, exactly?

1. Provide the names of any Communist who went to jail merely for possessing and expressing an opinion about history as the result of an American court. Espionage doesn't count at "merely expressing an opnion" in my book.

2. The Brits were heroic and I admire their stand. The scale of American heroism in the invasion of Europe is, however, objectively, in both numbers of troops and cost, and in consideration of the remoteness of Hitler's threat to US shores, of an order of magnitude that makes it unique in the annals of history. We did not idly stand by. You've not heard of lend-lease? Of American convoys that armed Britan? Not heard of the term, "the arsenal of democracy"? Perhaps you should read Hitler's speech to the Reichstag asking for declaration of war against the United States that gives several hours worth of material on what the US military was doing in the Atlantic to provoke war from Hitler, including shooting on German vessels on the high seas long before Pearl Harbor.

3. Germany's brief experience with democracy was a disaster that ended in Hitler. And it was brief, indeed, ending in Hitler.

4. What did we do during the cold war? We set a line, defended it, and put enough Americans on that line to establish that the cost of further expansion would be nuclear war. Please read careful and balanced accounts of the story of Berlin during the Cold War. We placed them there with the knowledge that if the Russians attempted to take the City (please also read the story of the Berlin Blockade and our Berlin Airlift) our brigade would have made a sacrifice of the lives of each soldier within in days. But their presence kept millions of Berliners free. Tell me what we sought to gain economically from that? We gave hope to the enslaved people of Eastern Europe. Ronald Reagan and others worked behind the scenes to bankrupt and demoralize the communist empire. And we brought it down. Ask a contemporary Pole or Czech or Hungarian. And we did it without firing a shot. I too regret that it took fifty years. But it did not fall like a ripe apple when it was ready. We engineered a plan and it worked.

5. Not me obsessed with castrated priests as much as the framers of our constitution. You want names and details? Some were beheaded as an act of mercy. The others were hanged, drawn, and quatered, which included castration and the drawing of the bowels out with a hook through the anus. Feel free to read the luriid details which so shocked the framers that they addressed these abuses - and also abuses by a Catholic monarch of England against protestants - by at least three provisions in the Constitution:

Thomas More heads the list, though he was beheaded rather than hanged, drawn, and quartered.

You will find several hundred other names at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._Reformatio n

Here's a brief extract:


Elizabeth I's government had passed a number of anti-Catholic decrees in 1571, including the following:

* forbidding anyone from maintaining the jurisdiction of the pope by word, deed or act
* compulsory use of the Book of Common Prayer in all cathedrals, churches and chapels, as well as the forbiddance of criticism of it
* forbidding the publication of any bull, writing or instrument of the Holy See (the death penalty was assigned to this)
* the importing of Agnus Dei images, crosses, pictures, beads or other things from the Bishop of Rome was forbidden

] Later laws

* to draw anyone away from the state religion was forbidden
* non-attendance at a Church of England church was legally forbidden
* raising children with teachers that were not licensed by an Anglican diocesan bishop was not allowed
* the Catholic Mass was forbidden

In 1585 a new decree was issued that made it a crime punishable by death to go overseas to receive the sacrament of Ordination to the Catholic priesthood or permanent diaconate. Nicholas Devereux (who went by the alias of Nicholas Woodfen) and Edward Barber (see below Edward Stransham) were both put to death in 1586 under this law. William Thompson and Richard Lea (see below Richard Sergeant) were hanged, disembowelled and quartered under the same law. In 1588, eight priests and six laymen at Newgate were condemned and executed under this law.

1561?1600

* John Ackridge, priest, 1585
* Thomas Ackridge, Franciscan, 1583
* John Adams, priest, 1586; beatified 1987
* Thomas Alfield, priest, 1585
* John Almond, Cistercian, 1585
* John Amias, priest, 1589
* Robert Anderton, priest, 1586
* William Andleby, priest, 1597

* William Baldwin (Bawden), priest, 1588
* Christopher Bales, priest, 1590
* Thomas Bedal, priest, 1590
* George Beesley, priest, 1591; beatified 1987
* Thomas Belson, layman, 1589; beatified 1987
* Robert Bickerdike, layman, 1586; beatified 1987
* William Blackburne, priest, 1586
* Alexander Blake, layman, 1590; beatified 1987
* John Bodey, priest, 1583
* John Boste, priest, 1594; canonised 1970
* Marmaduke Bowes, layman, 1585; beatified 1987
* Richard Bowes, priest, 1590
* John Bretton, layman, 1598; beatified 1987
* Alexander Briant, Jesuit priest, 1581; canonised 1970
* James Brushford, priest, 1593
* Edmund Burden, priest, 1588; beatified 1987
* Christopher Buxton, priest, died Canterbury, 1588; beatified 1929[5]

* Edmund Campion, Jesuit priest, 1581; beatified 1886, canonised 1970.


So much for the Maga Carta. If England inspired the First Amendment, it was by putting religious men to death because of their respective choices of religion, most Catholic, but a good many Protestants as well.

Now, if you'll be so kind, show me the list of American Communists convicted and imprisoned for nothing more than expressing their sincere beliefs about history.

All kind regards,

JD

Just a tad off topic but it needs to be said:

If you EVER get the chance to hear JD Obenberger speak, don't miss it, he is brilliant and an amazing speaker.

MUCH respect to JD who is one of my all time favs and probably the best this biz has.

Your source is semi-informative but evidences some bias. But it's not incorrect.

What I'm saying is Jefferson's involvement with the French, and his inspiration from Rousseau's "Social Contract" which came out in the 1750's or a little later, but definitely before the Constitution, are what tell me the US Constitution is perhaps not a watermark in social and political evolution, but a logical extension and probably an elbow to it's ultimate articulation (a future event or part of an infinite refinement of the philosophy).

Besides, we weren't talking Constitution, but First Amendment.

I already mentioned my reservations about that source. But You can follow the roots back even beyond the Enlightenment. You mentioned Montesquieu, for example...

1789 is also the date the Declaration of the Rights of Man were adopted by the New French Assembly (?) or whatever it was. I would have to check on the precise date, but considering there was no internet or telephone back then, you just have to assume the ideas were evolved simultaneously as well as in parallel...

The Declaration wasn't as you mention "organic law" in France yet, but since when has the legislation and application ever been conversant?

I will not argue that the Republic of the United States of America were an innovator on those terms.

However as I said prior, we were not relating to Constitution as much as First amendment..

I love this kind of material!

I believe it to be true as well... and frankly believe that Liberty has been dying a slow death in the hearts of men (and women and American citizens) for the last three decades...

From Rousseau's "Social Contract" the same thing can be quoted (from memory, from the French): Generally, and I can't remember the direct quote, but each citizen takes on a responsibility to the whole, but the whole protects the individual sovereignty of each citizen. The republic's (a new re-definition at the time) independence and strength relied on the individual's sovereignty and freedom within the republic for the society's overall strength.

And that's why I've always loved and been honored by your presence at the shows and seminars - because you have this understanding (and what I've always described as a nearly hippie-esque ken-keseyian approach) of the community and it's essential stance against the "straight" world (to borrow some beat terms).

At the Qwebec Expo I must admit that you were subtly but appropriately circumspect about not delving into terms like "patriot" and such and keeping it to a general "front line in the war for liberty of expression" (circum-quoting from memory here :P).

And as always, I thank you for that...

:D

Please pardon any bad typing, but I'm not good typing on a.mobil device. I am glad we.can end on fundamental agreement. Roussou, Hobbes, and Locke all importantly influended the framers.without doubt. But it requires more than erudition to risk one's life n extending freedom. And more.than nust plain.smarts to create a.system of checks, balances, and distribution of.powers to keep it alive for.centuries. it took inspired genius. Has it eroded? Damn straight! That's why contemporary patriots fight today for the freedom of our kids and grandchildren - including the right to choose and watch porn. :-)

Have to agree on the "fundamental agreement". However, those who articulated those thoughts and philosophies in their time prior to the Framers in those other less-enlightened societies probably risked more than those who were "in power" in the new Republic by publishing. So to whose genius are we referring here?

And the erosion is an unfortunate result, in my view, of what Mussolini defined as "corporatism" (?) I think, where the executive branch is prone to influences external to the population, or supposedly the "power base" of the republic....

:D

Or, you could just steal it from your close neighbors, the Iroquois :thumbsup


.

Just Google the Smith Act Trials. Those people were tried purely because of their Communist beliefs.

That's not objective at all, it's simply your opinion. Hitler had no interest in war with Britain, had enormous respect for Britain and the British Empire and saw Britain as his natural ally. It was in the interests of Britain not to go to war with Germany, but they did so anyway, because, despite being absolutely the wrong thing for Britain, it was the right thing to do for Europe and the World. OTOH, even when Germany's ally attacked Pearl Harbor the US did not declare war on Germany. Germany had to declare war on us.

Lend Lease, or to give its actual, and more accurate, title:
An Act to Further Promote the Defense of the United States

We enacted Lend Lease when it became less likely that Britain would be defeated, and could therefore pay us back, and because we had already bled them dry of their gold and other assets. Additionally, Britain was also forced to surrender rights and royalties for many of its scientific innovations in the fields of radar, antibiotics, jet aircraft, and so on. As I said in my last post, our demands were so vast that the Brits only just finished paying us back about five years ago.

You seem to believe that Lend Lease was charity, when in fact we were acting out of pure, naked self-interest. Now that's fine, but it doesn't quite qualify as 'unselfish'; quite the opposite.

If Britain had acted in her own self-interest, and not gone to war with Hitler, she would have remained a superpower with an Empire spanning one quarter of the planet, and the United States would have remained an isolated backwater. At least until December 7 1941.

Gorbachev is the man who brought the wall down, because by that time the Soviet Union, a house of cards anyway, was on the brink of collapse due to its lengthy misadventure in Afghanistan. Gorby hoped to try and save it in some form by perestroika, but he probably just hastened its inevitable demise.

Far from being a beacon of democracy during the Cold War, we destabilized and overthrew countless democratic governments, and supported numerous dictators.

So it's probably reasonable to assume that in the ~200 years the US Constitution has been protecting Americans in a world of tyranny, Britain, without a First Amendment, has castrated about the same number of priests we have: zero.

How about slavery? If anything was unconstitutional, that was. And yet the Brits, without a Constitution, abolished slavery decades before we got around to it. And they didn't have to wipe out 2% of their population in a bloody civil war to get it done either.

So how about the 20th century? How well did the Constitution, or any of the Amendments, protect people from being lynched, or being denied their right to vote, or even where to sit on a bus simply because of their race?

Rhetorical question, of course. And while the Constitution did nothing to prevent that happening, in Britain, without a Constitution to protect its citizens, it did not happen.

I'm not denying the Constitution is a fine work that should be protected at all costs, of course it should. And it's unrivaled in the world. But I consider losing right to buy Mein Kampf slightly less important than losing the right to vote, or to live, or access to a free trial, because of race or beliefs.

Don't get me started on the Iroquois. You can't mention their name and freedom of religion/speech in the same breath!

"However, the Iroquois began to win their war with the Hurons. They destroyed a large Huron village in 1648 and on March 16, 1649, 1200 Iroquois captured the mission of St. Ignace and then a few hours later captured another Huron village where they seized Brébeuf and his fellow Jesuit Gabriel Lalemant and brought them back to St. Ignace. There they were fastened to stakes and tortured to death by scalping, mock-baptism using boiling water, fire, necklaces of red hot hatchets and mutilation. According to Catholic tradition, Brébeuf did not make a single outcry while he was being tortured and he astounded the Iroquois, who later cut out his heart and ate it in hopes of gaining his courage.[1] Brébeuf was fifty-five years old."

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_de_Br%C3%A9beuf

How a people treat captors during war is hardly an example to look to, which you know of course. If we judge our standard of Free speech on how we apply it to those we defeat or take captive in war then we would have to say we have none.

Look at the way we treated the Indians in general, 200 + years of genocide as official policy.

Look at how our troops (or at least some of them) treated the Vietnamese. My Lai was NOT an exception necessarilly.

Look at the officially sanctioned torture of the "terrorists" captured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We afforded none of them the right to free speech much less the right to life.

The Iroquois were vicious warriors but they has a tradition of free speech, tolerance of other's beliefs and democracy within their society and our founders were quite familiar with the Iroquois government and it's structures.

.

HelterSkeleter -

1. I'm still waiting for that list of people who went to prison in the United States merely because of their opinion about history and for merely expressing it. You will not find one. If you had one, you'd mention it.

One and precisely one man went to prison under the provision of the Smith Act because of his membership in the Communist party, one man sentenced because of its prohibition against membership in an organization that planned the violent overthrow of the United States government. (Other American communists were convicted of conspiracy to violently overthrow the government, but one and only one was sent to prison for membership in an organization devoted to that end. He was pardoned on Christmas 1962.) The Europeans and Canadians convict and imprison men for writing books and giving speeches that differ with the Established History as taught by the state. You are definitely smart enough to see that difference. The Smith Act was upheld by a 5-4 split decision of the United States Supreme Court. My opinion is that the majority got it wrong. The did so a short time after Nikita Khrushchev pounded his shoe on a table at the UN and pledged, "we will bury you", a relatively short time after Warsaw Pact forces invaded Hungary, betrayed a promise of safe passage for and took the Patriot Hungarian Imre Nagy to Romania where, in a secret trial, he was convicted of anti-socialist misdeeds, and was slowly strangled to death with no drop. (Yes, I've visited his grave.) An era in which soviet nuclear weapons - developed with technology stolen from our nuclear program by American communist Julius Eisenberg and others - were mounted on rockets aimed at, among other things, Capitol Hill.

2. Americans have had through most of their history a policy of neutrality, attributable to certain wisdom expressed by George Washington in his Farewell Address. That explains why it was hard for Wilson to involve us in WWI and why the American people would never have accepted participation in another European war without direct provocation. We declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941. Germany complied with its treaty obligations with Japan and then declared war on the US. On December 11, we declared war on Germany. There had been a defacto state of hostilities between the US and Germany all during 1941. We had closed its consulates, frozen its assets here, seized one of its ships on the high seas and taken it to port, and fired on another German vessel. http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v08/v08p389_Hitler.html The role of the US policeman of the world seems to have started there, a role many both outside and inside the United States do not find agreeable. Our purpose in Europe in World War II was noble, cost many lives, and was largely fought thousands of miles from our shores.

3. The subject of US economic support for the UK in Britain is complex. Before the war broke out we sold fifty destroyers to Britain and obtained some bases. I don't think that in Berlin, it looked like we were sitting this out in neutrality. After the war, we lent the UK 8 Billion, which in current money is 56 Billion. Two percent interest. The UK seems to have had the right to suspend payments, which they did in 1956, 1957, 1964, 1965, 1968 and 1976. 656 (nearly ten percent) was written off by the US. So, it was paid in Pounds Sterling considerably lesser in value than at the time the loans were extended. It looks to me that the UK did pretty well in the end. Additionally, the Lend Lease materials remaining in the UK after the war were discounted to a value of ten percent on the dollar. All of this kept the UK afloat and from where I sit, it looks to be an act of remarkable generosity and charity. Two percent? Fifty years to pay? The right to suspend payments when it was tough on their economy? Discount to ten percent? Where you find injustice in all of this, or how it relates to free speech is beyond me. I guess you think that the US should have borne all of the economic costs of defeating Hitler alone. I can't imagine anything unfair or unreasonable about requiring England to pay at least a small portion of the costs of its own defense, and that's what they did in the end. American casualties were 418,000 in that war.

4. No, slavery was not unconstitutional until the passage of the XIII Amendment and was expressly taken into account in the Constitution after long debate about whether slaves should be counted in congressional apportionment. Many of those slaves were sold to us as colonists during the roughly one hundred and fifty years before the Brits abolished the slave trade in 1807. England sold us many of those slaves. They didn't get around to abolishing slavery in all ends of their empire until 1843. Your error is applying contemporary values to times when people did not share them. Values do change, the history of slavery is ancient, and it did not go down without a fight.

5. You need to check your facts about religious liberty in England - and about cruel and unusual punishment. In 1789, England was still burning women. Our Bill of Rights addresses the sadism of English justice in the Eighth Amendment. The last priest was murdered by the British state on account of his faith in 1681, but it was not lawful for any catholic to sit in Parliament until 1828. Our prohibition on religious tests beat that by thirty years, though anti-catholicism was as rampant here as it was in the mother country. Until 1846 Jews in the UK had to wear a distinctive Jew Uniform. England, long before Hitler, expelled its Jews in 1290. After that, Jews in England had to go underground. They briefly had civil rights for a short time in 1759. It's disputed when they first acquired to sit in Parliament, but it's dated to 1829 or 1858. Say whatever you want to compare British liberty to our in the US, but we've never expelled the Jews and we've never required them to go around in Hebraic Costume. And, yes, England did hang, castrate, draw entrails, and finally dissect Catholic priest until at least 1681.

6. The whole point of our revolution was that 1. England was denying the colonists their fundamental rights as they existed in the traditions of English law and 2. in the minds of many, those rights did not go far enough to protect the individual. English abuse inspired the Framers.

7. No, the constitution did not prevent any lynchings. No document can control a mob, and anyone who thinks that a law or constitution can stop lynchings has not thought the issue through.

8. The Fourteenth Amendment is, of course, silent about schools and buses. It talks about the equal protection of the law. And for a very long time, Amendment was interpreted to require just what it says, equality of treatment, no more no less, and racial segregation was permitted. I'm unaware of any laws that said that Black people would be denied a right to a free and compulsory education (and people like Justice Thurgood Marshal and other quite accomplished Black figures were the product of segregated schools) or denied an equal right to sit on a bus. The issue is whether equality of opportunity can practically exist when segregation exists. That issue was not put to a popular vote. Our Supreme Court, in 1954, determined that the very fact of segregation was likely to psychologically convince Black people that they were inferior, and that circumstance resulted in an insoluble problem of equal protection that might only be resolved by the abolition of segregation. Whether they were correct as a matter of fact is no longer relevant, this principle is now firmly established in US law, but their conclusion could hardly be considered an obvious or uncontroversial truth at the time, and many smart and sincere people rejected it.

People came here for a reason, and while that reason was often economic, it was intermixed with a desire to breathe free air. Ask any Iraqi or Palestinian Christian or any Russian Jew why he or she came here. We continue to inspire the world, because, afflicted as we are with problems, we still offer freedom and opportunity on a scale that's rare in the world. There will be hundreds of thousands going to sleep around the world tonight wishing that they'd been born in the United States; I am damn proud of the United States and how it's changed the world for the better. I am proud of the relief it offers to the victims of tragedy all around the world, about the support it gives to freedom and against repression. There are clearly policies and actions and parts of history that shame me - Guantanamo is one of them - and Abu Grab is another - and moral censorship is another - and drug laws are another - but in balance, in a world where no human institution can ever be more perfect that we humongously imperfect human beings who created it, it is a glorious and inspiring nation. When this nation was involved in bloody combat in the jungles of southeast Asia in 1972 to extend liberty against those who would force state atheism on helpless people, I raised my right hand and swore an oath that put my life in hands of the United States, to be used in its discretion. Between that and other similar subsequent oaths, I surrendered my own freedom of choice for 11 years for the purpose of defending this nation and the principles upon which it was built. I would do that again in a heartbeat, despite my strong opposition to the purposes for which the military is being used around the world tonight.

I'm now done responding to all of this because it's come far afield of what I'm interested in, and that's the growth of Liberty.

And you think that a three-minute limit for oral comments to the city council in a city of 310,651 is so unreasonable as to violated the fundamental rights of human beings? Were every resident of that City to show up and speak for the three minutes permitted under the rule, the public comments portion of the meeting would extend 931,953 minutes, or 15,532 hours or something over 647 continuous days. Lots of luck finding anyone to sit in those chairs who'd take two years out of their lives to conduct one meeting! And I say that as one who was elected twice Alderman and who served as Mayor pro tem of my town. Even in a town of 6,000, sometimes hundreds would show up for important meetings, and sometimes we had to move the meeting to a gym. It does not violate the fundamental rights of man if there is no right at all to address a sitting legislative body. Try showing up at Congress or Parliament and demand unlimited time - or for that matter, any time at all to address the body. This lady would be escorted to a security cell in the Capitol before she spoke her first word to the US Senate and that hardly makes the First Amendment a sham nor does it render our government a tyranny. It does not take three minutes to speak any basic sentiment and hand over a detailed writing that lays the matter out in detail with evidence - and that kind of limit is a reasonable rule for big cities and it offends the sense of justice of very few. No one resident has an unlimited right to hijack a public meeting to speak as long as they wish and hold up public business.

Our Bill of Rights was written by practical men rather than doctrinaire absolutists and all of its protections have limits. It's where those limits lie that is the battleground - and this lady's claim to have the right to unlimited time isn't, in my opinion, even close to the front lines.

/thread and obliterate the 50+ political rants that came after it. This was a non-issue and treated as well as the law could.

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/...investigations

Johnson County is the kind of place where convenience store owners get indicted by the grand jury because they have porn on the shelf, get intimidated into taking it down, and where "community values" come from the top down and get imposed on the people. We went through a very scary period in Johnson County just a few years ago. If you don't think what's branded obscene in Johnson County counts, if you don't keep your eye on Johnson County grand juries and what they do and how long it takes them to do it, you're just not seriously interested in obscenity law in the United States.

Kansas is the kind of place where judges get removed from office because they watch porn: http://www.xxxlaw.com/articles/robertson.html How can any judge decide an obscenity case, depending on community standards of acceptance, if watching what the other people in his county can watch and do watch online, will cause him to lose his office? This stuff in Kansas is important in determining where the risks exist for this industry, and that's why it can't be so easily dismissed as trivia.