...By itself, Justin Carter's Facebook comment is, in fact, one hundred percent protected free speech. As late as 1972, US Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote, "the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content."
More than four decades later, American democracy is collapsing under the weight of extreme social inequality and more than a decade of bloody militarism. From behind the smokescreen of the so-called "war on terror," the basic structure of an American police state is emerging. No substantial commitment to democratic rights or democracy remains in the political establishment, which plans to meet future social opposition with mass arrests, the denial of basic rights, torture, and assassination....