What would you do about the First Amendment?

I hear what you're saying, but what do you actually want to do about it?

But I think the beginning has to be an agreement that certain things are out of bounds.

Fascism has caused the world enough trouble.

It does not deserve a place at the table.

It does not deserve to be treated as a legitimate viewpoint.

If we, the public, as well as the news media would settle on just those points, I think we'd have a start.

You wouldn't ever expect to hear ANYONE go on TV and say that the terrorists from other countries have a legitimate view and we just need to let them have their say. And we should not tolerate it when it comes from within.

I know the slippery slope argument and would probably be making it myself in other circumstances, but we won't have a democracy to defend -- and therefore no Bill of Rights to even discuss -- if this isn't stopped.

These "people" know no limits. They think "Gott mit uns". There's no such thing as going too far if it means stopping them.

We destroyed the Nazis in WWII. We should do no less now.

and say the military sided with them instead of you, are you prepared to see your friends and family lined up above ditches and shot? Because that's how it usually ends with violent conflict: the losers lose big. And I don't see them having any mercy.

That's why dialogue is always preferable to force. The losers get voted out, they don't get purged.

But while we're trying to talk, they are literally running us down.

Who wins that game in the end?

It's a slippery slope to start banning speech that doesn't pose a direct and imminent danger to someone.

A free society means we have to allow those with whom we might disagree.

Cause that's where it is now and where it's always been headed.

Freedom of speech is also an essential contributor to the American belief in government confined by a system of checks and balances, operating as a restraint on tyranny, corruption and ineptitude. For much of the world’s history, governments, following the impulse described by Justice Holmes, have presumed to play the role of benevolent but firm censor, on the theory that the wise governance of men proceeds from the wise governance of their opinions. But the United States was founded on the more cantankerous revolutionary principles of John Locke, who taught that under the social compact sovereignty always rests with the people, who never surrender their natural right to protest, or even revolt, when the state exceeds the limits of legitimate authority. Speech is thus a means of "people-power," through which the people may ferret out corruption and discourage tyrannical excesses.

Counter-intuitively, influential American voices have also often argued that robust protection of freedom of speech, including speech advocating crime and revolution, actually works to make the country more stable, increasing rather than decreasing our ability to maintain law and order. Again the words of Justice Brandeis in Whitney v. California are especially resonant, with his admonition that the framers of the Constitution "knew that order cannot be secured merely through fear of punishment for its infraction; that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones." If a society as wide-open and pluralistic as America is not to explode from festering tensions and conflicts, there must be valves through which citizens with discontent may blow off steam. In America we have come to accept the wisdom that openness fosters resiliency, that peaceful protest displaces more violence than it triggers, and that free debate dissipates more hate than it stirs.

http://www.lincoln.edu/criminaljustice/hr/Speech.htm

People died and were seriously injured today because of hatred, not because of Dodge Chargers.

nt

Hatred burns in hearts - but free speech offers the best chance to express it non-violently. Repression just bottles it up and makes terror events even more likely.