America, for lack of a better phrase, constantly has sand in its vagina. An outsider wouldn’t expect this, except for maybe a Canadian, since Canada is really just a boring, less alpha male version of the USA. To everyone else America is a bully, and an unfeeling bully at that. Teddy Roosevelt perhaps; we’re a meaty motherfucker from prosperous stock and we’re so bad ass that we don’t even consider giving speeches unless we have a bullet lodged in our chest. We not only don’t feel the bullet stuck between our ribs, but we shrug off everything else too.
It was only one bullet, but he could have easily handled three or four.
Except that we don’t. Americans tend to act like cliché hormonal pregnant women, which is to say we get super emotional about everything imaginable, especially when we’re offended. Odd, considering America’s supposed love of free speech. Free speech, as we’ve mentioned before, isn’t as spiffy and spotless as it sounds; although the Alien and Sedition Act is long dead and nobody will get pissed if you stand on a street corner barking insults about King Edward, Americans like to suspend free speech when said speech makes them uncomfortable. Yet time and again, one organization steps up to not only defend the First Amendment rights of decent people, but also the rights of complete scumbags. And that’s the ACLU.
A liberal might say, “Dude, all wine-sipping communist liberals like me love the ACLU!” But the American Civil Liberties Union doesn’t fall into anyone else’s neat, tidy political box. True, liberals often champion the ACLU…but not when the organization is defending, say, a Neo-Nazi’s right to protest. Near a synagogue. During Yom Kippur.
And for some vaguely related reason, here's a pic of two hot Israeli army broads.
Free speech can be tricky, right? Some people think so, ranging from bleeding-hearts to the religious right.
Well it shouldn’t be tricky. If the lowliest and scumbaggiest of our citizenry are denied their right to free speech, we’re all at risk. Sure, some might wonder what a Neo-Nazi march has to do with their right to burn an effigy of Dick Cheney, but the link is obvious; the sensitivities of the public, and the government, are all relative. Banning certain manners of expression because of another person’s hurt feelings can easily snowball into political censorship. Look at Stalin. That dude’s feelings were hurt all the time. That’s why he loved gulags so much.
Possibly emo.
Conservatives really seem to hate the ACLU. Republicans, Tea Baggers, and most Americans who get sexually aroused by photos of Ronald Reagan think ACLU lawyers want to burn the American flag, put photos of Malcolm X in each white person’s home, nominate Mumia in 2012, and force every wholesome middle American child to come to school dressed as a transgender communist at least once a semester. Yet the ACLU defended Oliver North in one case and, in 2006, joined forces with gun ownership advocates in Washington State when Washington libraries blocked pro-gun websites on their computers.
"Dear God, not the pro-gun websites!"
Again, freedom of speech isn’t tricky. It’s brutally simple and sometimes that simplicity – the idea that every single one of us has a right to that freedom – can rub people the wrong way. Sort of like when the ACLU defended NAMBLA (yes…NAMBLA) in a civil suit after a pedophile murdered a child. NAMBLA was sued because the murderer visited NAMBLA’s website prior to the killing. Although the ACLU doesn’t endorse NAMBLA’s message, it defended the organization because NAMBLA had nothing to do with the murder. (Yes we despise NAMBLA too, but imagine if Eminem was convicted because some sick asshole started calling himself Slim Shady then killed his wife.)
If the ACLU were a person, it would have a monstrously badass set of titanium balls for it’s work in standing up for the First Amendment. When this organization defends the rights of those who, in their racism, sexual perversity, or love of national socialism, make us want to vomit our intestines all over the Constitution and even tempt us to say, “Okay, maybe not all people should have a right to free speech,” it’s actually doing our country a great deed. Free speech is what makes America America. Even if it sometimes makes you shudder.
Free Speech: Our Constitutionally-protected right to post photos of chicks hooking up. Eat that, China.
Joe Stalin was one of the kindest, gentlest men I have ever known. Joe and I shared an affection for cats.
I resent your use of him in such a saracastic way.
Oh yeah most priests are really good guys, it’s just a handful of bad apples that give the barrel a bad name.
Most our our brave young fighting men and women and private contractors are really good kids who just want to kill people for good reasons, patritotism, justice, security and so on.
It’s not like there is anything wrong with the culture of priests or soldiers….or anything like that.
That second comment was supposed to be in the previous article.
I make mistakes. I’m not afraid to admit to it. Sometimes I make big mistakes and people die.
I’m human