We've just survived a week of tensions over the issue of free speech. Freedom of expression, if you will. Burning the Koran. Building a mosque too close to Ground Zero. Everyone be calm - and tolerant we were told over and over. Everyone from the President to General Petreaus pleaded with a man never before heard of to please not burn the Korans - which was his right to do and would have gone mostly unnoticed if everyone hadn't over reacted. Muslims around the world were having a great time burning American flags.Is it becoming a way of life with us? Look at the TSA and their invasive searches. Heaven forbid you don't want the body scan. The pat down is even more invasive. It's over reaction.
Yep. A way of life. What else can you say when a 17 year old British teen who had a snoot full wrote Obama a letter in which he called him a p***k, is banned from the United States for life. The asterisks appeared in the news stories, they are not mine. I'm assuming the word is prick.
The FBI was enraged and told the local police to inform the young man the insult was unacceptable. There will be no criminal action taken by the local police. Why should there? If everyone in this country was banned for calling the President by some profanity or another there would be a whole lot fewer of us. Not that I condone the lack of respect, but it's a 17 year old college kid who readily admitted to it, not understanding the big deal.
Remember during the campaign when Jesse Jackson wanted to remove part of his anatomy? There was no outcry over that!
The article does say the letter was full of abusive and threatening language. What's missing here? Were the threats serious enough to ban him and if so why is the incident being made of a anatomical reference? Or did the FBI plain over react?
Banned for life. According to Homeland Security, wouldn't you know, there are about 60 reasons a person can be barred. I shudder to think what the other 59 might be.
4 comments:
He probably didn't intend to come to America anyhow. So that's no big deal.
see this is where I have the problem of understand... his was words... his was considered speech... and he is banned over words... yes, disgusting it was...but nonetheless words...
Yet, someone can burn something and that is ok... to me burning is an ACT...
I just don't understand.
I agree with word tosser. Speech is that which is uttered vocally or written as words. An act, should not be given protection under free speech laws. One of my pet peeves from the past was when hippies or other extremists would commit "civil disobedience." There is no such thing. If you didn't break the law, then there isn't any disobedience. If you did, then it's a criminal act not civil. This term was coined by the mainstream media to excuse public acts of large groups of people that would have been arrested, has they been individuals. Such is the prostitution of our language.
Oh, I don't know. Women used "civil disobedience" to finally get the vote after being misused for decades because they wanted it and deserved it. Gandhi used it to get freedom from the British in India and Martin Luther King used it to get equality and get the vote for blacks.
Sometimes that's all you can do to get justice.
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