for the effects of that speech. If your lies cause someone to behave a certain way and do certain things they otherwise would not have done, the you bare some responsibility for the outcome. Rmoney and the other defenders of anti-Muslim bigotry fail to acknowledge this.

Someone who tells a lie or says something offensive is not responsible for the actions of people who kill others over a lie or an offensive statement.

But that's simplyfing a complicated situation. Yes, they have legal rights, yes they are not responsible for others behavior. Now what? Does the public keep defending them and their rights.

It's like magazines with skinny girls on the cover. They aren't responsible for teenage eating disorders. But for God's sake at some point we have to look at what we are doing, why we are doing it and how it will effect the whole. None of us live in a bubble especially in this mass media internet world.

Everything has consequences and the makers of this movie are not exempt from that. They will rightfully suffer unpleasant consequences as well.

'what we are doing'. Would you think it fair if someone took the hate speech of some Imam and claimed it was 'what Muslims are doing' or 'what the Egyptian people are doing'? I sure as hell don't. That piece of shit video, made by an Egyptian immigrant is not the cover of a published magazine, it is equal to a graffitti or the ramblings of an insane person on a street corner, not to Cosmo. No one buys this shit here, it is not in the marketplace, to even make his few minutes the Egyptian Coptic guy had to lie to every single provider of services he needed for his hate graffitti.
So frankly, it is hugely insulting to point to some criminal who came to this country with old world axes to grind, and claim to the world that what he did is what 'we are doing'. That's purest of bullshit. If it is not, then any action by any criminal idiot in any country counts as 'what they are doing'. Is that how you think? I find it, to use a popular word, very offensive. What is done by the worst among any people is not 'what they did'. It is what some asshole did. Just like the murders were not 'what they did' but what the murderers did. Using the actions of the worst to define the whole is just wrong and it is in fact the seed of prejudice waiting to sprout.

not to make but distribute this clip. Right here on DU. I suggest that it comports less with a liberal perspective on the world than an absolutist Libertarian one, which of course Ron Paul would endorse gladly. It is comprised both of a fundamentalist adherence to the "liberty" of free speech while denying any consequences, as well as an odd kind of isolationist perspective, in which we bear no responsibility for what happens abroad, and should not even concern ourselves about it. I reject that perspective. And I do not think it is part of the true liberal ideology.

There was a very intriguing, highly acclaimed book I read a few years ago called Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters, published by Yale University Press and written by the lawyer Louis Begley. It's an engaging, page-turning, legal look into the details of the famous trial that sent a brilliant Jewish artillery officer to life imprisonment on Devil's Island for a crime of treason he did not commit. One issue I remember, however, was a discussion of the enormous role of the press of the time in the outcome of this historically important affair. The constant publication of anti-Semitic material in newspapers and elsewhere was what permitted French Society to accept the clearly flawed legal case (and even the triers to believe it themselves). And of course this would persist for fifty years ... in France and elsewhere in Europe until ... well, we know the outcome.

We are free to speak our own words, but outlets such as YouTube (owned by Google) have a responsibility to abide by their own Terms of Service, which state:

You will not submit falsehoods or misrepresentations that could damage YouTube or any third party.
You will also not submit any material which is obscene, defamatory or otherwise objectionable, or unlawful.

If we don't speak out against defamatory, false, and objectionable material forcefully, we bear the responsibility of its consequences ... no matter how irrational those consequences may be.

I don't see anyone defending its content or the emerging list of those who were involved

As it stands, no one of authority has called for arrest or deportation.

If they are prosecuted, keep in mind, our laws are organic. Often certain extremes cases can be used to tweek a law to be more in keeping with the current situation. No internet, 24 hour news or YouTube when it was written.

(Sure would be nice if they tweeked the 2nd Ammendment, since it was established for muskets which took five minutes to load, not automatic weapons....)

for blood are media types (Bill Press for example) so its getting support from more than some of the DU posters.


Note a musket could be fired 4 times a minute by an experienced user...I've done in in 20 seconds myself.