I Can Say Whatever I Want

I wonder what would happen to me if I ran into a crowded theater and ran down the aisle shouting, “Fire, fire?”  Since by this time I would be at the front of the theater, I could watch all of the people screaming, shouting and clawing their way back up the aisles, perhaps trampling on others who were slower moving to get away from the supposed fire.  So, a few people were injured, or maybe killed in the ensuing stampede. So what?

I wonder what would happen if a bunch of us got together at some gathering and began to use language that incited a riot, thereby causing injury to life, limb and property?  Or went to a peaceful protest of some kind, and used language to incite that peaceful protest to turn violent?  Or used speech with someone to urge them to commit a crime?

Under these circumstances do I have the right to say anything I want, anywhere I want, and is my right to free speech unequivocally guaranteed in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?

These are generally accepted as probable crimes, and I could be prosecuted for committing them.  So what is the difference with what occurred in Garland, TX, this past week when that anti-Muslim woman, Geller, knowingly and willingly convened a contest for cartoonists to come up with a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammad?  I say knowingly and willingly because anyone who follows the news at all should know by this time, Muslim or not, that to depict in any art form a depiction of the Prophet will cause radical-right Islamists (similar to radical-right Christians) to freak out and perhaps cause violence.

Closer to home, does the attorney, Matthew McLaughlin, from Orange County, California, have the right to advocate killing any gay person who touches another for sexual gratification?  What is the difference between conspiring to have someone else commit a crime that you want committed and deliberating creating situations – the cartoon convention in Texas or the attorney paying his $200 in California to get his petition on the ballot to kill gays – that will if carried out result in injury or death to someone, even though that someone is not a specific person. 

Probably the thing that is missing here is the realization, which many of us instinctively have, that with every right guaranteed in the Constitution, comes a corresponding responsibility to use that right carefully.  Thus, we don’t cry ‘fire’ in a crowded theater; we don’t deliberately incite a riot; we don’t conspire to have a surrogate commit our desired crime; we don’t deliberately enflame people on the radical fringes of a religion, knowing they may resort to violence, for example.   

Rational people do not react to provocation, regardless of their cultural background.  We are not talking about the responses of rational people however.  We are talking about the irrational responses of irrational people to irrational people!  Our right to free speech must be absolutely protected.  But it cannot be abused.  Rational minds need to work this one out pretty damn fast, or irrational people will start putting irrational restrictions on our rights.