Freedom of Speech Made Simple - Through CRUSH Videos

Run time: 02:26 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CYVxP0DEAI   Posted on YouTube: May 07, 2010 By YouTube Member: MaxFolger Views on YouTube: 86   Posted on DU: May 08, 2010 By DU Member: bondwooley Views on DU: 1189

 
Turns out it's easier than you might think to exercise your Supreme Court-sanctioned right of expression, thanks to a recent ruling.

Did the most conservative court in the history of the United States actually get something right?

normally fascist Alito who broke ranks and voted against.

I just don't see how animal torture videos could be construed as legitimate free speech, any more than kiddie porn videos.

... I was amazed to find that many crush videos involve vegetables, not tiny animals. And I think that crushing small animals is disgusting - however, as long as Sarah Palin has the right to shoot big animals from helicopters, and we all have the right to set out glue traps for mice, maybe they came down on the right side regard existing law.

If someone's crushing a vegetable, they're not committing a crime. Pest control and herd culling (and hunting) and animal experimentation are recognized "rights" with some regulations and other purpose--not the orgasm of the consumer.

If you can't get your head around how this animal snuff isn't someone else's free speech, think of it as a public health issue. People who are conditioning their sexuality to the destruction of life will be that much more receptive to human snuff films. That alone ought to get it overturned.

... and I'm certainly not supporting any type of killing ... but do you really think that these videos lead to snuff films? Isn't that like assuming that marijuana automatically leads to crack addiction because it's a "gateway" drug? I really don't think that these videos automatically convert someone into a snuff fan - I think they cater to to a specific audience.

What I feel about that audience, however, is another matter.

But I think the deliberate cruelty to animals is horrible enough on its own and presumably illegal in most states. The SCOTUS decision is bizarre to me, and I hope the new legislation recently introduced in Congress is passed.

Maybe I develop a fetish, to, I don't know, watch cars get set on fire. So an industry forms where half-drugged, naked 19-year-old females are "hired" to set fire to people's cars while pretending to orgasm. Destroying others' cars is illegal, but according to SCOTUS, filming and distributing it isn't.

Why is my right to this supposed fetish more important than someone else's right to property and peace? Why, if a large swath of society tracks down such YouTube videos and identifies who set these cars alight in an attempt to arrest them, are instead the car-arsonists protected in the name of their "right to speech?" Why would my right to get my jollies off of destroying someone else's property be more important than their right to have their car left alone? Why isn't the primary issue here that crimes are being committed, rather than that the criminals and the voyeurs have some inherent right to "express" themselves through enacting a crime and then selling a video of it so that another population can condition their orgasm to it?

And to those who would object that a car is property, why is the right to that property more sacred than the right of a mammal, bird, or advanced reptile to its life or at least a life free from sustained, deliberate cruelty?

Catharine MacKinnon put it best, and I'm paraphrasing. Just like in the Dred Scott case in the 19th c . . . Saying Blacks weren't property, ever, was not the same as depriving whites of property rights. And saying that abused, coerced adults, any children, and any animals, aren't someone else's free "symbol" to manipulate, violate, and even kill as they will, is not the same as depriving those people of their free speech. They aren't "speaking" when they're doing that. They're committing a crime.

All crimes could be said to communicate an ideology--battering, murder, even Madoff's fraud. That doesn't make them any less a prosecutable crime.

Hope this helps.

I think think you've nailed it.

documenting all kinds of things people really should know about

it's a bit more complicated than crushing

The law was written so broadly (and clumsily) that, if SCOTUS let it stand, it would have made it illegal to read a hunting magazine in Washington, D.C. That there are limits to the First Amendment is without question (see slander and kiddie porn) but SCOTUS is correct to err on the side of free speech, even (especially?) unpopular speech.

I get what you're saying about this particular decision, and while I do, generally, feel that the Court should always err on the side of free speech, the concept brings up Citizen United ... in that instance, they went as far as to give corporations free speech, translating into political influence. Perhaps free speech should be reserved for human beings? Some kind of line has to be drawn.

... it makes it more of complex issue, in that case. I was starting to agree with another poster on this page who saw it as allowing the documentation of a crime. Have to think about that.