The Rudy GOP Shifts to the Center [er, plunges hard left

Hope I didn’t ruin any plans you may have had while you waited for me to respond to whether I favor child pornography. I try to be on FR 24 hours a day but I find it damn impossible.

I also find it impossible to believe that some people need to be spoon fed.

I’ll try again.

The First Amendment states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;”. Pretty straight forward. No and, if, or buts. It is as “absolute” as the Second Amendment. Actually, clearer. On its face certainly “freedom of speech, or of the press” isn’t as open to interpretation as the issue of RTBA and its relationship to militias.

So how can Congress abridge the freedom of the Press to publish any pornography?

Because we know that the Founders could not have imagined contemporary pornography, and certainly child pornography, in their wildest dreams- or nightmares. We know that it would be absurd to believe that the First Amendment allows anything. So have the courts ruled, and we have readily accepted those rulings, as common sense which overrides- or abridges- Freedom of the Press.

But strangely people who accept that the First Amendment can be made to conform to reality argue that the Second is sacred.

In the same way that the Founders could not have imagined contemporary pornography, they could not have imagined the United States in 2007. They could not have imagined NYC. They could not have imagined the multicultural, multi ethnic metropolis. They could not have imagined the NYC subway system.

And as it is impossible that they anticipated that unabridged Freedom of the Press should allow child pornography, so too it is impossible to believe that they would have thought that by the Second they are allowing that in a subway car where they may be pychpaths, sociopaths, criminals, white supremacists, black supremacist, toddlers, grandmas, Jihadists, schools girls, and other assorted human beings, that all can come into that car with weapons concealed under the rights of the Second Amendment.

All the Amendments are equal. The Second is not special. And as I wrote above, while the First, Fourth and others, remain vital to our freedoms and liberty, the purpose of the Second has been superceeded by the fact that the citizen can never again dream of having arms proportionate to those available to the Government.

Now call me a Liberal.

You are in a class by yourself if you believe that the First Amendment should protect child pornographers.

I don’t even think the ACLU supports your position.

And to return to commentary regarding Rudy Giuliani.

You started off this thread defending him. Yet, he is the one that closed down the porn shops in NYC. It was not an “America is a Christian Nation” politician who did it.

It was your man Rudy.

Now I just think you’re illiterate.

Your parsing is getting so tiresome.

You're just frustrated that the vast majority of members here aren't locking in marchstep behind Giuliani.

For a few bucks a month, you can easily create your own website and you and your misguided Rudy minions can cheerlead Rudy until the cows come home.

Most FReepers do not support Rudy. We will not support him in the primaries, and if he wins the nomination, we will stay home or vote for a 3rd party candidate. This is something you need to simply realize and stop trying to shove your candidate down our throats.

No, I’m not illiterate. Yours was simply the first post I have ever read on this forum that claimed that the First Amenment should protect child pornographers.

And I find it strange that you use that as a reason to support Rudy Giuliani.

Because we know that the Founders could not have imagined contemporary pornography, and certainly child pornography, in their wildest dreams- or nightmares. We know that it would be absurd to believe that the First Amendment allows anything. So have the courts ruled, and we have readily accepted those rulings, as common sense which overrides- or abridges- Freedom of the Press.

But a video is not speech although it may contain speech. A magazine or book with photos may or may not contain speech or photos.

Printed and spoken speech are protected. The others could be regulated if we chose.

In the same way that national security documents or private medical records are not 'free speech', to be published at any time the press wishes, we could also categorize pornographic images and video. Clearly, the Founders had no such explicit intent to protect pornography although if one wishes to take an absolutist view of the First, it would be consistent that all types of textual pornography would be legal. In fact, this is pretty much the case.

It is a matter of classification. It is only in the last century that we've thrown a blanket of 'speech' over all kinds of things. This is judicial activism, stretching the Constitution to fit the Court's own policy preferences. Just as in Roe where infanticide was injected via a flimsy 'privacy' that had never previously been imagined or construed in the Constitution, the idea of pornography as a form of free speech is a figment of the Warren Court's overactive imaginations.

I would think you would be more disturbed, however, over the convictions from imaginary computer-generated porn. Although repulsive, since these are not images of real persons, they do not depict the actual victimization of a person in a criminal way. So the viewing of actions which did not even occur are criminalized which creates a thought crime, a crime of viewing.

Now that is a law that should make everyone, for or against the law, think hard. The Court has become a little strangely and inconsistent.

However, it does apply to your argument. Obviously, there are certain types of pornography that aren't free speech even though they did not result from the filming of a crime. Therefore, all pornography can be, in fact, regulated similarly.

Another angle that has never been explored to that video in particular can be viewed as a public performance. So if something is illegal on a stage or on the street, it could also be regulated. The current notion of very broad free speech treats all of these as though they are private acts, viewers and performers only as private persons. However, that is not privacy as most people think of it or as the Founders thought of it. Again, we see a legal basis by which we could regulate this form of 'speech'.

BTW, I didn't think you were making an argument for child pornography. Neither am I. I'm actually making the argument for a return to greater regulation of speech.

Freeper polls show that when push comes to shove, Rudy will hold about half of the Freeper vote in the General. The bad Torie has this thing, that maybe Rudy should be nominated and elected, if only to demonstrate that no one wing of the GOP can dictate anything. It isn’t all about me, as it were. Punish the hubris, and then punish it some more, so the bad Torie muses.

I didn't think I was making any arguments concerning freedom of speech or press. The mention - of what I thought was a given- was merely an attempt to illustrate my argument concerning the Second Amendment (which is relevant to the on topic of Giuliani).

BTW, I didn't think you were making an argument for child pornography.

I'm thankful for that as that only leaves me as being a "child murderer" of which I was accused a few days ago.

FreeRepublic is so rational and fun these days. Still I long for the good ole days when the worst I was accused of was being an Israeli First traitor to the US.

I didn't think I was making any arguments concerning freedom of speech or press. The mention - of what I thought was a given- was merely an attempt to illustrate my argument concerning the Second Amendment (which is relevant to the on topic of Giuliani).

OH! If that was the case, I take it all back! LOL.

People get touchy when their favorite abridgements of liberty are threatened, don't they?

Me: BTW, I didn't think you were making an argument for child pornography.

I'm thankful for that as that only leaves me as being a "child murderer" of which I was accused a few days ago. FreeRepublic is so rational and fun these days. Still I long for the good ole days when the worst I was accused of was being an Israeli First traitor to the US.

I'm surprised you haven't been shot at dawn. I long for those posts that could dissect an EO right down to its heart in ten minutes after Xlinton signed it. I miss the posters who would rip any legislation to shreds and expose the true Dim agenda, people who could take a news article and find the slyest line of propaganda in the very first read of it. We've lost some good posters over the years. We were more radical then but more effective.

I'd begun to think you were busy with Easter. Or with an egghunt. Then I reconsidered and recalled there was some quaint custom of observing a holiday called Passover. Just a little ribbing. It's funny sometimes to be so majoritarian that you fail to realize that a holiday you celebrate has an older tradition from which it derives.

So happy Passover! Well, if that's the correct term and if it isn't over already (which I suspect it is).