zzzBigOne Quote

Prosperum ac felix scelus Virtus vocatur (Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue). Seneca: Herc. Furens, ii. 250.//%end% ====================== - done %start%%cat=Liberty,Freedom//%quote%The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.//%Author%Patrick Henry//%end% %start%%cat=Liberty,Freedom,Independence,Responsibility//%quote%All our liberties are due to men who, when their conscience has compelled them, have broken the laws of the land.//%Author%William Kingdon Clifford//%end% %start%%cat=Liberty,Freedom,Independence,Responsibility//%quote%I believe that America is the greatest country in history and for good reasons, but America has been changing and not for the better. Our free society has been falling prey to a more repressive system with methods for the increased control of people. The return of groups and individuals to the controlling ideology of Imperialism and Marxism using the structures of Corporatism, Socialism and Democracy. The result is that this nation's foundational principles based on the ideology of Liberty are now in danger of extinction. //%Author%Darren Perkins//%end% %start%%cat=Liberty,Freedom,Independence,Responsibility//%quote%We fought the Revolutionary War for no taxation without representation, it seems to me that we are much worse off today, because we are heavily taxed, and only the king's corporations control this Country, together with mob rule, of the special interests.//%Author%James Montgomery//%end% %start%%cat=Liberty,Freedom,Independence,Responsibility//%quote%As the circle of knowledge expands, so does the Sphere of darkness that encompasses it. //%Author%Albert Einstein//%end% %start%%cat=Liberty,Freedom,Independence,Responsibility//%quote%Liberty's view of the government could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it works, work with it. If it doesn't, work against it. If it works you over, abolish it. //%Author%Angel Shamaya//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Men and governments must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life. //%Author% John Stuart Mill//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Goodness without wisdom always accomplished evil. //%Author% Robert A. Heinlein, "Stranger in a Strange Land"//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Love your country but fear its government.//%Author%Daniel Webster//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%An important art of politcians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public. //%Author% Talleyrand//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule. //%Author% Friedrich Nietzsche//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%You know, if government were a product, selling it would be illegal. Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have. //%Author% PJ O'Rourke, "The Liberty Manifesto"//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Whatever power you give to the good cops, goes to the bad ones, too. Never forget that. //%Author% Phillip J. Birmingham//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Never blame a legislative body for not doing something. When they do nothing, that don't hurt anybody. When they do something is when they become dangerous. //%Author% Will Rogers//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Dost thou not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed? //%Author% Count Oxenstierna//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.That government is best which governs least.//%Author% Thomas Jefferson//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may only resort to force only against those who start the use of force. //%Author% Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The preservation of freedom is the protective reason for limiting and decentralizing governmental power. But there is also a constructive reason. The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or in literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.//%Author% Milton Friedman, "Capitalism and Freedom"//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Government power must be dispersed. If government is to exercise power, better in the county than in the state, better in the state than in Washington. If I do not like what my local community does, be it in sewage disposal, or zoning, or schools, I can move to another local community, and though few may take this step, the mere possibility acts as a check. If I do not like what Washington imposes, I have few alternatives in this world of jealous nations.//%Author% Milton Friedman, "Capitalism and Freedom"//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Think of what big governments have gotten up to in this century : not one, but two world wars, the gulag, the holocaust, aerial bombing of civilian population centers, the Berlin Wall, nuclear explosions, the post office. A wicked individual might want these, but he wouldn't have the cash and connections to get them. A villainous corporation could afford them but has to market the products. The Vietnam draft would be a tough sell for even the most fiendish businessmen. "Get shot! Get killed! Get diseases from foreign women who despise you in their hearts!" //%Author% P. J. O'Rourke, "Age And Guile"//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Politics doesn't work. Look at the parts of America where government has had the most power, where government has spent the most money. Look at the housing projects we've got the poor people in. //%Author% P. J. O'Rourke, "Age And Guile"//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Can you imagine working at the following Company? It has a little over 500 employees with the following statistics: 29 have been accused of spousal abuse. 7 have been arrested for fraud. 19 have been accused of writing bad checks. 117 have bankrupted at least two businesses. 3 have been arrested for assault. 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit. 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges. 8 have been arrested for shoplifting. 21 are current defendants in law suits. 84 were stopped for drunk driving in 1998 alone. Can you guess which organization this is? Give up? It's the 535 members of your United States Congress. The same group that perpetually cranks out hundreds upon hundreds of new laws designed to keep the rest of us in line. //%Author% //Jack Sharp%Who%Capitol Hill Blue editor Jack Sharp, researcher Marilyn Crosslyn, and private Investigator James Hargill.  //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience. //%Author%Karl Marx//%Source%The Communist Manifesto, 1848.//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"I can scarcely contemplate a greater calamity that could befall this country, than be loaded with a debt exceeding their ability ever to discharge. If this be a just remark, it is unwise and improvident to vest in the general government a power to borrow at discretion, without any limitation or restriction." //%Author% Brutus//%Source%The Anti-Federalist,1787-88.//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"From the earliest ages of history to the present day there have never been thirteen millions of people associated in one political body who enjoyed so much freedom and happiness as the people of these United States. You have no longer any cause to fear dangers from abroad ... It is from within, among yourselves - from cupidity, from corruption, from disappointed ambition and inordinate thirst for power - that factions will be formed and liberty endangered ... " //%Author% Andrew Jackson//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"Right now, I'd rather be in Sweden than in the U.S. because we have seen the problems and are moving away from the welfare state. On your side of the Atlantic you are moving right into it, and you risk destroying your country." //%Author% Ian Wachmeister//%Source%by Paul Klebnikov, "The Swedish Disease," Forbes, May 24, 1993.//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends. //%Author%Jeremy Bentham//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Freedom of speech means that you shall not do something to people either for the views they have, or the views they express, or the words they speak or write. //%Author%Hugo L. Black U.S. Supreme Court Justice//%Source%1963 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%It will be asked whether one would care to have one's young daughter read these books. I suppose that by the time she is old enough to wish to read them she will have learned the biologic facts of life and the words that go with them. There is something seriously wrong at home if those facts have not been met and faced and sorted by then; it is not children so much as parents that should receive our concern about this. I should prefer that my own three daughters meet the facts of life and the literature of the world in my library than behind a neighbor's barn, for I can face the adversary there directly. If the young ladies are appalled by what they read, they can close the book at the bottom of page one; if they read further, they will learn what is in the world and in its people, and no parents who have been discerning with their children need fear the outcome. Nor can they hold it back, for life is a series of little battles and minor issues, and the burden of choice is on us all, every day, young and old. //%Author%Judge Curtis Bok//%Source%Commonwealth v. Gordon, 66 Pa. D. & C. 101, 110. //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The American press is extraordinarily free and vigorous, as it should be. It should be, not because it is free of inaccuracy, oversimplification and bias, but because the alternative to that freedom is worse than those failings. //%Author%Judge Robert Bork//%Source%1985 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%There is no such thing as a false idea. //%Author%Justice William Brennan//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable. //%Author%Justice William Brennan//%Source%1989 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold. //%Author%William Jennings Bryan //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The statute mandating recitation of the pledge [of allegiance] is secular because it aims to foster democracy, which is both necessary to the survival of the concept and entirely independent of religion. [...] It is clear in the 2001 [Virginia] state law that no student is forced to accept the beliefs the pledge espouses. //%Author% James C. Cacheris//%who%U.S. District Judge//%Source%21 Feb 2003 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Two hundred ten years ago, the people who drafted our Bill of Rights decided that banning books wasn't the way to handle disagreements. They thought the best thing was more speech. It is a pity that county commissioners in 2002 don't agree. //%Author%Matt Coles//%Who%director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Lesbian and Gay Rights Projects//%Source%on the occasion of a censorship challenge to It's Perfectly Normal //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The core issue here is not whether you agree or disagree with the commissioners about gay people. It is whether you think the answer to a disagreement is to yank the words of anyone who disagrees with them out of the library. //%Author%Matt Coles//%Who%director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Lesbian and Gay Rights Projects//%Source%on the occasion of a censorship challenge to It's Perfectly Normal//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The 1st Amendment embraces the individual's right to purchase and read whatever books she wishes to, without fear the government will take steps to discover which books she buys, reads, and intends to read. //%Author%Colorado Supreme Court//%Source%in a unanimous decision for Tattered Cover //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private school . . . At the next session you may ban books and newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. //%Author%Clarence Darrow//%Source%during the Scopes trial //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood. //%Author%Clarence Darrow//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%It is ironic that our government, which has been relentlessly critical of the messages that popular culture imparts to our youth, would seek to silence an artist who uses the medium of hip hop to preach a message of self respect and self reliance to young women and girls. //%Author%Lisa E. Davis//%Source%attorney for Sarah Jones vs. FCC //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%My faith is that the only soul a man must save is his own. //%Author%Justice William O. Douglas//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us? //%Author%William O. Douglas//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%But our society -- unlike most in the world -- presupposes that freedom and liberty are in a frame of reference that makes the individual, not government, the keeper of his tastes, beliefs, and ideas; that is the philosophy of the First Amendment; and it is this article of faith that sets us apart from most nations in the world. //%Author%William O. Douglas, dissenting, Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society -- once the right to travel is curtailed, all other rights suffer. //%Author%William O. Douglas//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%These unwritten amenities have been in part responsible for giving our people the feeling of independence and self-confidence, the feeling of creativity. These amenities have dignified the right of dissent and have honored the right to be nonconformists and the right to defy submissiveness. They have encouraged lives of high spirits rather than hushed, suffocating silence. //%Author%Justice William O. Douglas//%Source%Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville (1972)//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publication, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads. ... Fear of criticism goes with every person into the bookstall. The subtle, imponderable pressures of the orthodox lay hold. Some will fear to read what is unpopular, what the powers-that-be dislike. ... fear will take the place of freedom in the libraries, book stores, and homes in the land. //%Author%William O. Douglas//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%We must protect the freedoms of even those who hate us, and that we may find objectionable. If we fail in this task, we become victims of the precedents we create. //%Author%Judge Robert Doumar //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Putting free speech behind bars simply because it concerns prisoners sets a dangerous precedent. The court's decision makes clear that Arizona may not jail the Internet. //%Author%David Fathi//%Who%Arizona ACLU attorney//%Source%about an attempt to forbid convicts from accessing the internet //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%To vest a few fallible men -- prosecutors, judges, jurors -- with vast powers of literary or artistic censorship, to convert them into what J.S. Mill called the "moral police" is to make them despotic arbiters of literary products... If one day they ban mediocre books as obscene, another day they may do otherwise to a work of a genius. Originality, not too plentiful, should be cherished, not stifled. An author's imagination may be cramped if he must write with an eye on prosecutors or juries… //%Author%Judge Jerome Frank//%Source%Second Circuit of Appeals, 1956 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Words are chameleons, which reflect the colour of their environment. //%Author%Judge Learned Hand//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%One man's vulgarity is another man's lyric. //%Author%John Marshall Harlan //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%When we strip teachers of their professional judgment, we forfeit the educational vitality we prize. When we quell controversy for the sake of congeniality, we deprive democracy of its mentors. //%Author%Justice Gregory Hobbs Jr.//%Who%Colorado Supreme Court//%Source%2002 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from bondage of irrational fear. //%Author%Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.//%Source%dissenting Gitlow v. People of State of New York 1925 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body. //%Author%Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%There's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth. //%Author%Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used. //%Author%Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed. //%Author%Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%We have shared the incommunicable experience of war. We felt, we still feel, the passion of life to it's top. In our youths, our hearts were touched with fire. //%Author%Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company. //%Author%Charles Evans Hughes//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it...No grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy. //%Author%Justice Robert Jackson//%Source%U.S. Supreme Court, 08 Dec 1945, and reprinted in Precision-Guided Coverage, Molly Ivins, May 2003 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Patriotism and respect are earned through the substance and values of a nation, not by its physical symbols. By making the American flag untouchable, Congress would be sending the message that approval of our nation is an obligation not a choice. //%Author%Marvin Johnson//%Who%a Legislative Counsel for the ACLU//%Source%circa 2001 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%China, Cuba, countries where the only freedoms are those bestowed on a whim by the state -- these countries jail their kids for burning the flag. We do not. America was created around dissent. Our freedom is founded upon the right to make known our opinion without threat of government interdiction -- Old Glory is the ultimate, tangible expression of this national belief. //%Author%Marvin Johnson//%Who%a Legislative Counsel for the ACLU//%Source%circa 2001 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought. //%Author%Justice Anthony Kennedy//%Source%U.S. Supreme Court, 16 Apr 2002, Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%After years spent trying to deal with the effects of COINTELPRO, my rage at the FBI's almost unimaginable evil remains undiminished because I believe that it succeeded in many of its horrifying goals, given the deaths of Martin King, Malcolm X, and other sixties leaders. Since the FBI uses taxpayer dollars to fund its extreme and ridiculous investigations of anyone who expresses dissenting opinions, even resorting to crime -- including theft, encouragement to murder, subornation of perjury, and manipulation of the judicial process -- to achieve its ends, I have always advocated its disbanding. //%Author%William M. Kunstler//%Who%civil rights attorney //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%It is now well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas. [...] This right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth, [...] is fundamental to our free society. //%Author%Thurgood Marshall//%Source%Stanley v. Georgia, 1969 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art. //%Author%Sandra Day O'Connor//%Source%Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 1991 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The prima facie evidence provision in this case ignores all of the contextual factors that are necessary to decide whether a particular cross burning is intended to intimidate. The First Amendment does not permit such a shortcut. //%Author%Sandra Day O'Connor//%Source%writing for the majority in Virginia v. Black, 07 Apr 2003 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%MacKinnon's treatment of the central issue of pornography as she herself poses it -- the harm that pornography does to women -- is shockingly causal. Much of her evidence is anecdotal, and in a nation of 260 Million people, anecdotes are a weak form of evidence. //%Author%Judge Richard Posner//%Who%U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit//%Source%reprinted in Defending Pornography, pg 141 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%I do not know what has caused MacKinnon to become, and, more surprisingly, to remain, so obsessed with pornography, and so zealous for censorship. But let us not sacrifice our civil liberties on the altar of her obsession. //%Author%Judge Richard Posner//%Who%U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit//%Source%reprinted in Defending Pornography, pg 141 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Now that eighteen-year-olds have the right to vote, it is obvious that they must be allowed the freedom to form their political views on the basis of uncensored speech before they turn eighteen, so that their minds are not a blank when they first exercise the franchise. And since an eighteen-year-old’s right to vote is a right personal to him rather than a right to be exercised on his behalf by his parents, the right of parents to enlist the aid of the state to shield their children from ideas of which the parents disapprove cannot be plenary either. People are unlikely to become well-functioning, independent-minded adults and responsible citizens if they are raised in an intellectual bubble. //%Author%Richard Posner//%Who%Seventh District Judge //%Source%American Amusement Machine Association, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Teri Kendrick, et al., Defendants-Appellees (2001) //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%It is the censor's business to make a judgment about the propriety of the content or message of the proposed expressive activity. The regulation here does not authorize any judgment about the content of any speeches." [...] "A park is a limited space, and to allow unregulated access to all comers could easily reduce rather than enlarge the park's utility as a forum for speech. Just imagine two rallies held at the same time in the same park area using public-address systems that drowned out each other's speakers. //%Author%Richard Posner//%Who%Seventh District Judge //%Source%Thomas v. Chicago Park District, Sep. 2000 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Violent video games played in public places are a tiny fraction of the media violence to which modern American children are exposed. Tiny -- and judging from the record of this case not very violent compared to what is available to children on television and in movie theaters today. //%Author%Richard Posner //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%If what we read today can result in a subpoena or a search warrant tomorrow, fear replaces freedom. We presented three witnesses who said there would, in fact, be a chilling effect if the Tattered Cover was forced to turn over the information. //%Author%Dan Recht//%Who%lawyer for the Tattered Cover bookstore //%end% ========================================================= - done %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Indeed, perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection. //%Author%Judge Lowell A. Reed, Jr, American Civil Liberties Union, et al. v. Janet Reno //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Technology now permits millions of important and confidential conversations to occur through a vast system of electronic networks. These advances, however, raise significant privacy concerns. We are placed in the uncomfortable position of not knowing who might have access to our personal and business e-mails, our medical and financial records, or our cordless and cellular telephone conversations. //%Author%Justice William H. Rehnquist, US Supreme Court Chief Justice, 2001 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The First Amendment should not be used as a shield for pornographers at the expense of our children. It is clear that public libraries have a compelling interest to protect the physical and psychological well-being of children. The law does not require every computer in the library to be equipped with the filtering software. The law strikes a delicate balance between protecting children and permitting adults to use a filter-free Internet without trampling on the First Amendment. The law is a reasonable and constitutional way to protect children from online pornography in public libraries. //%Author%Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice [Except that Sekulow and his ilk don't want to protect children so much as they want to control what all people are thinking, saying, seeing, and doing. —MN] //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Now, far be it from me to criticize partial nudity and cartoonish violence. Hell, if there were a Partial Nudity and Cartoonish Violence network (PNCV?), I'd be all over it. MTV has every right to show squished testicles and blurred ta-tas -- and I reject any lawmaker's attempt to the censor the network. //%Author%Evan Serpick, Entertainment Weekly, 07 Nov 2002, printed at CNN.com //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Under the First Amendment, clearly, there can be no "approved view of women" and of "how the sexes may relate to each other." (The free speech issue would be obvious to academics if the question were an approved view of men, women or Americanism.) There can be no imposition of regimes aimed at changing the attitudes of free citizens by censorship and coercion, rather than by appeal to reason and decency. Freedom of speech, like its close ally freedom of conscience, in America are essential legal and moral values, and their protection begins with the recognition that we are a nation of free individuals who may define for ourselves the deepest part of our being. Disguising censorship as a "civil rights" mechanism will not succeed in gutting the First Amendment. //%Author%Harvey A. Silverglate, 26 Jan 1999, Speech Codes and College/University Campuses //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The point is, or should be, simple. Pure speech, even if obnoxious to many, if it does not fall into any of the categories of unprotected speech, is fully protected by the First Amendment. Harassment, in its true sense, may be legislated against, but on the basis of total content-neutrality and only with respect to time, place and manner. (The same may be said of threats to physical safety, which are not constitutionally protected.) //%Author%Harvey A. Silverglate, 26 Jan 1999, Speech Codes and College/University Campuses //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%If a professor or student says something extremely unpleasant to any other person - whether a member of a minority group or not - that speaker is within his or her constitutional rights. If, on the other hand, the speaker delivers a message, whether one of love or of hate, to another at a time, in a place, or in a manner that constitutes harassment within the ancient common law and widely understood definition of that term, such utterance may be punished, and it does not take a special campus speech code to do it, for the civil and criminal laws governing the entire society apply. All of the arguments concerning the relationship between Title VII and Title IX sexual harassment law are entirely beside the point and are rendered irrelevant by the Constitution. To repeat the central point: It is fine for colleges and universities to have anti-harassment codes, as long as pure speech is not counted within the definition of harassment //%Author%Harvey A. Silverglate, 26 Jan 1999, Speech Codes and College/University Campuses //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The fact that codes banning speech are unconstitutional does not mean that a university is powerless in seeking to promote tolerance, understanding, civility, and mutual respect among members of its community. However, the means chosen must be educational, not coercive. Teaching critical thinking, as well as the lessons of history, presumably will bring perceptive students closer to the view expressed by Justice Robert Jackson, writing for a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark case declaring that a Jehovah's Witness child may not be forced to recite the pledge of allegiance to the flag in violation of his religious conscience. //%Author%Harvey A. Silverglate, 26 Jan 1999, Speech Codes and College/University Campuses //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%It is offensive - not only to the values protected by the First Amendment, but to the very notion of a free society - that in the context of everyday public discourse a citizen must first inform the government of her desire to speak to her neighbors and then obtain a permit to do so. //%Author%Justice John Paul Stevens; in the majority opinion against the Stratton, Ohio, soliciting permit ordinance //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%

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