{"id":11332,"date":"2010-09-10T19:53:23","date_gmt":"2010-09-10T19:53:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/09\/10\/what-one-has-a-right-to-do-is-not-always-right-to-do\/"},"modified":"2010-09-10T19:53:23","modified_gmt":"2010-09-10T19:53:23","slug":"what-one-has-a-right-to-do-is-not-always-right-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2010\/09\/10\/what-one-has-a-right-to-do-is-not-always-right-to-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Legality and Propriety: What One Has a Right to Do is Not Always Right to Do"},"content":{"rendered":"

What do the following have in common:  Flag burning, Koran burning, suspending a crucifix in urine and calling it art, building a mosque near Ground Zero, calling a black person 'nigger,' affixing a 'Fuck Your Honor Student' bumpersticker on your car?<\/font><\/p>\n

They are all offensive, but they are all legal.<\/font><\/p>\n

Flag burning.<\/em>  If you steal my flag and burn it, then you violate my property rights and do something illegal.  If you burn a public flag, then that is illegal on grounds of vandalism.  If you burn a flag you own but in a way that causes a public disturbance or endangers members of the public, then  those acts fall under other existing statutes.  But if you buy an American flag and burn it on your property, then you are within your legal rights.  You are in the vast majority of cases a contemptible punk if you do so, and I have a right to my opinion on this score.  But you are within the law.  That is why calls for a flag-burning (or rather anti-flag-burning) amendment to the U. S. Constitution are pointless and just so much political grandstanding. Such appeals are just another way politicians evade the job of making tough decisions about matters of moment.<\/font><\/p>\n

Ought flag burning come under the rubric of protected speech?  Logically prior question: Is it speech at all?  What if I make some such rude gesture in your face as 'giving you the finger.'  Is that speech?  If it is, I would like to know what proposition it expresses.  'Fuck you!' does not express a proposition.  Likewise for the corresponding gesture with the middle finger.  And if some punk burns a flag, I would like to know what proposition the punk is expressing.  The Founders were interested in protecting reasoned dissent, but the typical act of flag burning by the typical leftist punk does not rise to that level.  Without going any further into this issue, let me just express my skepticism at arguments that try to subsume gestures and physical actions under speech.  But the main point is that we don't need a flag-burning amendment and we ought not have a general legal prohibition on the burning or other desecration of privately owned national symbols if the burning or other desecration is done in a way that does not violate existing laws.<\/font><\/p>\n

Koran burning.<\/em>  If it is legal to burn the flag in certain circumstances, then it it legal to burn the Koran or any book in similar circumstances.  If you own a copy of the book, you can do anything you want with it.  You can use it for toilet paper.  So if the Gainesville yahoo wants to organize a Koran burning on private property with privately-owned copies of the Muslim holy book, that must be tolerated no matter how stupid and offensive it is.<\/font><\/p>\n

But there must be no double standards.  If you condemn Koran burning, then you ought to condemn crucifix desecration and flag burning.  And if you tolerate the latter, then you ought to tolerate the former.<\/font><\/p>\n

The media both Left and Right are piling on Terry Jones, the Gainesville pastor, while failing to see that his brand of red-necked push-back is exactly what one should expect in the face of Islamist provocation.<\/font><\/p>\n

And there must be no kow-towing to Muslim hypersensitivity.  <\/font><\/p>\n

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\n<\/font><\/p>\n

Piss-Christ.<\/em>  The schlockster Andres Serrano has a legal right to purvey the junk he calls 'art' just as I have a right to call him a decadent schlockster.  But if he receives public funds through the National Endowment for the Arts, say, or shows his pieces in public galleries, then that is morally wrong, even if legal.  For more on Serrano, see my post <\/font>Decadent Art.<\/font><\/a><\/p>\n

Building a mosque near Ground Zero.<\/em>  Here again the issue is not legality but propriety.  Just as it is stupid and offensive, though legal, to burn the Koran, it is stupid and offensive, though legal, to build a mosque near the site where almost 3000 Americans were slaughtered by Muslim terrorists.  It is stupid because it can only serve to inflame passions and impede the very sort of interfaith understanding that Feisal Abdul Rauf and associates claim is their purpose.  The very fact that their plan is so patently stupid gives us good reason to believe that that  isn't their purpose after all, a view I am reinforced in by the latest turn of events, namely, the rejection by Feisal et al. of Donald Trump's <\/font>generous offer<\/font><\/a> to buy the property.  <\/font><\/p>\n

Calling a black person 'nigger.'<\/em>   To the politically correct this word is uniquely offensive, so much so that its mere mention<\/em> (as opposed to use<\/em>) will get one tarred a 'racist' by the typical liberal these days.  Just ask Dr. Laura.  Well, it is not uniquely<\/em> offensive, even though it is plenty offensive and ought to be avoided.  But its use is legal.  <\/font><\/p>\n

Offensive Bumperstickers.<\/em>  There has been a terrible decline in civility since the '60s.  What kind of a person  puts a 'Fuck Snowbirds' sign on his car?  A scumbag exercising his free speech rights.  Put up up with it while exercising your free speech rights in denouncing him.  <\/font><\/p>\n

We are tolerant in the West, very tolerant.  Anyone who plans to immigrate here from the lands of intolerance should understand that and be prepared to assimilate<\/em>.  We don't want your anti-Western values; we have our own values and we know them to be superior to yours.  And so while we are very tolerant, there is a limit to our toleration: we will not tolerate having our Enlightenment values trashed by your intolerance.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What do the following have in common:  Flag burning, Koran burning, suspending a crucifix in urine and calling it art, building a mosque near Ground Zero, calling a black person 'nigger,' affixing a 'Fuck Your Honor Student' bumpersticker on your car? They are all offensive, but they are all legal. Flag burning.  If you steal my … Continue reading “Legality and Propriety: What One Has a Right to Do is Not Always Right to Do”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,231,119,136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs","category-free-speech","category-islamism","category-toleration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}