Originally published via Armageddon Prose Substack:
Free speech is the paramount civil liberty enshrined in the Constitution; that’s why it’s the First Amendment, and not the second or ninth or 27th.
Government officials who violate the Constitution have committed treason.
The remedy for treason is the refreshment of the Tree of Liberty with the blood of tyrants.
This is not complicated; the Founders worked it all out pretty well hundreds of years ago.
Trump apparently is not a fan of simplicity.
He, or one of his handlers, has come up with the brilliant idea of an executive order to outlaw government speech suppression:
“I will sign an executive order banning any federal employee from colluding to limit speech and we will fire every federal bureaucrat who is engaged in domestic censorship under the Harris regime.”
First of all, we don’t need firings; we need summary executions streamed on every platform and broadcast on every network, preferably via guillotine.
And neither do we need a goddamn executive order to enact said justice. That constraint on state power is already enshrined in the supreme law of the land.
I also don’t entirely trust Trump’s alleged devotion to the First Amendment. He talks a decent game because he knows his base is incensed about what the leftist media-industrial complex has been doing to them for several years, but does he really get it?
Here he is recently pledging to toss Americans who burn flags in prison for a year: “They say, ‘Sir, that’s unconstitutional.’ We’ll make it constitutional.”
Via U.S. Courts (emphasis added):
“Gregory Lee Johnson burned an American flag outside of the convention center where the 1984 Republican National Convention was being held in Dallas, Texas. Johnson burned the flag to protest the policies of President Ronald Reagan. He was arrested and charged with violating a Texas statute that prevented the desecration of a venerated object, including the American flag, if such action were likely to incite anger in others. A Texas court tried and convicted Johnson. He appealed, arguing that his actions were “symbolic speech” protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court agreed to hear his case…
The majority of the Court, according to Justice William Brennan, agreed with Johnson and held that flag burning constitutes a form of “symbolic speech” that is protected by the First Amendment. The majority noted that freedom of speech protects actions that society may find very offensive, but society’s outrage alone is not justification for suppressing free speech.
In particular, the majority noted that the Texas law discriminated upon viewpoint, i.e., although the law punished actions, such as flag burning, that might arouse anger in others, it specifically exempted from prosecution actions that were respectful of venerated objects, e.g., burning and burying a worn-out flag. The majority said that the government could not discriminate in this manner based solely upon viewpoint.”
It is a bitter irony, perhaps, that the very freedoms that the flag represents — the reasons it is sacrosanct — include the right to burn it.
I don’t want a president who speaks in bombastic bumper sticker slogans; I want one who’s going to #DraintheSwamp and restore Constitutional supremacy.
Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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