Fletchette, another problem with an "unfettered rights" approach is that all too often, one person's right conflicts with that of another person. This is why I say that an "unfettered rights" approach, carried to the extreme, would lead to anarchy. One example: you decide that you're going to exercise your right of free speech by declaiming at the top of your lungs from your porch, at 3 a.m. I live next door, and am disturbed by the noise. Do I have any legal answer to your exercise of your right of free speech? If I insist on my right to peace and quiet at that time of the morning, on the grounds of "privacy" (not explicitly spelled out in the Constitution, despite what SCOTUS has to say about it), won't this infringe on your unfettered right of free speech?
censoring someone for being a kook is shirking your duty to counter them in debate.
Again, I must point out that the "kook" in question (Irving, and others of his ilk)
has been debated publicy
ad nauseam, and his position has been shown to be utterly false. This has not stopped him continuing to proclaim his views. If he'd do the honest thing and shut up after being proved wrong, that would be acceptable. He won't do that - so do you allow him to continue to lead others astray? Some would say "Yes, he has that right." The Austrian government has said "No - we passed a law to stop this sort of public nuisance." Given the history of the problem, I'm afraid I side with the Austrian government.
Another example: you said you have the right to vote but the responsibility not to throw your vote away. Your responsibility did not include taking away your right to vote if you did throw your vote away. Your right to vote is absolute.
I don't see what point you're trying to make here. If you don't vote responsibly, it wouldn't be
you who takes away your right to vote, but a restrictive government. I agree that this would be unacceptable. However, what about countries that legislate that since you
have the right to vote, you
must exercise that right, or face penalties (e.g. Brazil)? Is such an insistence that having been given a right, you must exercise it, a fair and reasonable regulation of the right in question?
Clinton said we should be responsible with our Second Amendment rights, but then erred when he said that being responsible meant that we should ban assault rifles.
Yes, he did say this - but the US courts agreed with him that prohibiting the sale and/or possession of a particular kind of weapon did not constitute an infringement of the right to keep and bear arms. The "right" does not spell out that any and all "arms" may be kept and/or borne - it merely says "arms". This can be legally defined in many ways. To take it to a ridiculous extreme, one could postulate that a government might ban the possession of all "arms" except a minimum-20-pound-weight .22LR rifle, to be not less than 40" in length, and might legislate that this weapon may only be "borne" (i.e. carried or transported) in a locked hard-sided gun case, between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Such a ban would still pass Constitutional muster, because one's right to keep and bear arms is still in existence, even if limited to only one "arm", carried in a certain way, at a specific time of day. This is what the gun-grabbers are using in their attempts to restrict classes and categories of weapons, and is why handgun bans, for example, have not been ruled unconstitutional - they don't prevent one from "keeping" and "bearing" long guns.
at what our notion of free speech means to those that are/have been long oppressed..i' am grateful for living in the USA. i would'nt trade it for nada!!
