The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #85532 Message #1584921
Posted By: McGrath of Harlow
17-Oct-05 - 06:34 PM
Thread Name: BS: Freedom of speech- Unless we disagree
Subject: RE: BS: Freedom of speech- Unless we disagree
If an organisation with an agenda of racial or religious hatred plans to parade through a neighbourhood in such a way that people living there will very reasonably feel under threat, they have a perfect right to object to them coming, and to resist it if need be; and the responsible thing for the civil authorities to do may very well be to ban the parade.
Perhaps it may be that in the USA you have given up that right and that duty. Fair enough, and there is a case for taking an absolute position on freedom of speech and movemeent, as a protection against falling intio the opposite error, but it woudln't be reasonable to expect everyone else to fall in line with that.
However from what I have read and seen it appears that the authorities in the USA frequently find it easy enough to restrict freedom of speech and movement in circumstances where there is far less justification for doing so than in this case. For example relatively recently in New York, in the case of protests against the war.