Bob Owens makes some very good points about the first and second amendments:
Perhaps they should be required to only spread ideas using quill and parchment; after all, that's what the Founders had. They couldn't have imagined high-speed modern printing presses, television, radio, or the Internet's instant global reach.
Or perhaps they would eagerly submit to having a federal background check before being allowed to own an iPhone, BlackBerry, typewriter, computer, printer, or word-processing program, and would agree to the imposition of a 500-character limit on the amount of text they can type or words they can say before a government alert is triggered.
After all, if the pen is truly mightier than the sword, shouldn't the dissemination of potentially inflammatory thought be regulated more tightly than mere ammunition?
Of course, these same journalists would fight such restrictions on their First Amendment right to free speech and having the tools to spread their thoughts, with all the ferocity they could muster against the cruel tyranny of a far too powerful, far too intrusive state. They'd likely want to take up arms themselves against a totalitarian state and its bureau of speech.
It's too bad that under the same tyranny they encourage such arms could not exist.
The great tyrannies of the 20th century that killed so many millions of people were created first by the force of words, not arms. Lenin, Hitler and Mao created their regimes, which went on to create their own satellite tyrannies in other nations, by gaining mass public support for their ideas. It was (de facto, if not de jure) freedom of speech that enabled Lenin to organize, speak to rallies, distribute propaganda, etc. that allowed the Bolsheviks to become a force to be reckoned with. The NASDAP and Chinese Communist Party have similar origins as well. Most of the oppressed states of the Warsaw Pact and other satellites of these countries can trace the origins of their own tyrannization to the free flow of terrible ideas from men and women of dark and sinister moral character.
Ideas have consequences, and some ideas have consequences that can sweep away the lives of millions of people; small arms-related deaths seem quaint by comparison. People often get caught up in the actions of the people afterward, which often include censorship, as they are unable to accept the fact that it was the free flow of ideas, not access to weapons and money, that got them there in the first place. Censorship is dangerous in its own right for many reasons, but so is the free flow of ideas when people forget that ideas have consequences.
These same regimes became censorship superstates. They realized that if they could bring down governments by freely speaking out against said governments' abuses, their own people could do the same.
I guess the question is how does one prevent the infinite progress of upheaval if one wants to preserve freedom of speech? I think the Founders also pondered that same question.
(I am also assuming that there are no people who start shit just because they want to disrupt society and not because of any legitimate grievances. But that's a VERY generous assumption).
I don't think that there is anything that can be done about this problem, except to drown out bad ideas with good ideas. What libertarians need is a sensible Rush Limbaugh-like libertarian speaker who can take these arguments and break them down into the sort of soundbytes that the average person can easily grok over a lunch break at work or on the ride home.
<i>What libertarians need is a sensible Rush Limbaugh-like </i>
You mean like Neal Boortz? Or Glenn Beck?
I was referring more to someone with that level of audience. BTW, I have a rich text editor in the comment field now. You don't need to put your own HTML in the editor anymore.
Hey, I think your code thingy is broke. It didn't recognize my HTML tags.
Reminds me of the bumper sticker:
"GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, CHUCK NORRIS KILLS PEOPLE"
It's not broken. You don't have to enter your own HTML anymore. At the bottom of the editor you should see a few controls like bold, italics, etc. Once I get some time to figure out how to configure TinyMCE better, I'll modify it to make it more powerful.
I tried codes again and it still isn't working. It saddens me to see you do this for a living.
I tried codes again and it still isn't working.
As I said, you no longer enter your own HTML. The editor has a toolbar at the bottom which will insert them for you. You select some text, and click on one of the buttons, and it will manage the HTML for you.
It saddens me to see you do this for a living.
What's that supposed to mean?
I knew what you were talking about all along. I was just pulling your chain.
That's what I thought, but text is usually not a good medium for sarcasm.
I can see the 1st Amendment bumper stickers now:
"Words don't Kill People. I Kill People"
I agree; ideas and information are far more significant than force of arms. I think federal regulation of the airwaves is one of the more offensive violations of freedom.
I seem to recall reading a proposition once for free-market solutions to ending that regulation, but the details elude me...
I seem to recall reading a proposition once for free-market solutions to ending that regulation
The only thing I can think of would be commoditizing off the frequency slots; trading them like stock, and the owner of the slot gets to do what he wants to do with it.
Yet I fail to see how this would be any different than what we have today...our speech would still be throttled by the same class of people who populate the large media congomerates.
BTW, Mike, the text editor is nice. I like not having to hand-jam my own html...but I've been doing it for so long I don't even notice anymore...
I think the solution is to shut down the TV broadcasts and devote all bandwidth not used for radio communications to wireless Internet. I want to have a console in my car which can receive RSS or Atom streams with podcasts and Internet radio, dammit!