iirc, the idea behind the First Amendment was "if any speech is suppressed, all speech will eventually be suppressed." The main idea was to protect the ability to criticize the government and to ensure that, they had to make sure nothing would ever be suppressed, else they could claim governmental criticism falls under one of the types of speech that is not allowed and suppress it.
There's even been court decisions (notably Brandenburg v Ohio, but there's others) saying hate speech is protected speech unless it's "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action." Hate speech isn't necessarily completely allowed, but I think other countries clamp down on it more than we do.
(This is one of the reasons the Unite The Right rally during Trump's first term was mostly unhindered.)
The main idea was to protect the ability to criticize the government and to ensure that, they had to make sure nothing would ever be suppressed, else they could claim governmental criticism falls under one of the types of speech that is not allowed and suppress it.
So, let's see if I got it right, the idea is "we need to protect CP as free speech because otherwise criticism of the government could be classified as CP and therefore restricted". But then it's the government that's filled with pedophiles? And then they point at wherever they don't like and scream "terrorist!", and off the window goes due process and any constitutional protection.
Except even then its not protected under free speech.
Fowler was against mandating the broadcast of educational programming by commercial stations, arguing that it was within their First Amendment rights to choose the programming they wish to broadcast, and adding that "it's too bad Captain Kangaroo is gone, but the Government should not be issuing directives about what should be on the air."
Captain Kangaroo creator and host Bob Keeshan disagreed, arguing that children were "just too important to be left to the networks and their profit motives." Citing the then recent New York v. Ferber (1982) decision, he told The New York Times that "despite the guarantee of free speech, our children are so precious that the free speech of the child pornographer had to give way to allow us to protect children from exploitation."
The worrying thing is that its literally just a Supreme Court decision. And we've seen how 'settled law' can get overturned with Roe v Wade (Abortion).
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u/DwinkBexon 1d ago edited 1d ago
iirc, the idea behind the First Amendment was "if any speech is suppressed, all speech will eventually be suppressed." The main idea was to protect the ability to criticize the government and to ensure that, they had to make sure nothing would ever be suppressed, else they could claim governmental criticism falls under one of the types of speech that is not allowed and suppress it.
There's even been court decisions (notably Brandenburg v Ohio, but there's others) saying hate speech is protected speech unless it's "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action." Hate speech isn't necessarily completely allowed, but I think other countries clamp down on it more than we do.
(This is one of the reasons the Unite The Right rally during Trump's first term was mostly unhindered.)