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Ukraine's AZOV Battalion: NAZIS or Just Nationalist ?
 [Mercer] Let us be clear on what free speech truly is. The words people speak, write, tweet; the beliefs they are known to hold, the flags they fly, the symbolic, non-violent ceremonies and rituals they enact, the insignia, paraphernalia, the goose-stepping, Hitler salutes they dick around with—all that is protected speech, licit in natural law.So long as these oddities and idiosyncrasies, whether performed alone or in groups, thoughts harbored or shared in public—so long as no violence accompanies such speech or behavior (prohibited here is violence visited on animals as well); so long as mitts stop at the next man’s face: SPEECH. It’s all speech. It should be free, unfettered and as wild and as wanton as it can be. Spoken, written, preached: Impolite and impolitic thoughts are nothing more than thought crimes which ought to be ferociously protected by a free people. By logical extension, any accusations of Naziism—if leveled at a belief system, rather than at palpable violent actions—is suspect. Thoughts and words spoken or written that are not politically polite—for example, racism; Naziism—ought to retain protected status as speech beyond the adjudication of law-makers, bureaucrats, mediacrats, educrats and technocrats. In fact, "In the current climate," I had suggested—and considering the inherently paranoid style of American politics—it’s worth contemplating special protections for politically impolite, racist speech." "In 1978, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) ’took a controversial stand for free speech by defending a neo-Nazi group that wanted to march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie, where many Holocaust survivors lived." As a free-speech absolutist, a term Elon Musk has revived, I long for the return of what I shall term here the Skokie Standard of free speech and thinking. In 2022, the once-grand ACLU, however, no longer vigorously defends marginalized speakers and thinkers. Instead, the ACLU defrauds the public about its mission, devoting its resources to the well-popularized causes of the Left’s privileged populations: LGBTQ demands, illegal immigrant claims-making, seekers of abortion-on-tap, looters of property and destroyers of peace and prosperity (in Orwellian speak, "peaceful protesters"). Posted by: Besoeker 2022-05-14 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=632942 |