In Hayden, Idaho, one family has a unique way of spreading the holiday cheer . . . or fear. A family has displayed a Klansman snowman with a dangling noose in front of their home and neighbors are calling for action to remove the offensive display.
The owner, named only as “Mark” is reportedly a white supremacist who displays both Aryan Nation and SS flags. He allegedly passed out bullets last Halloween. He insisted that he only handed out bullet casings . . . “and only did so after he ran out of candy.”
To make matters worse, Mark lives only 100 yards from an elementary school.
The case raises a long-standing dispute over the criminalization of hateful symbols. Police told Mark that he is in violation of a law prohibiting such hanging of nooses. The noose is gone now and the pointed hat has been knocked off. Leaving just a snowman.
However, what remains is a free speech question. Civil libertarians have long argued that such symbols cannot be criminalized under the First Amendment — despite rulings of the Supreme Court such as Black v. Virginia upholding prosecutions for such things as cross burnings as inherently threatening. Presumably, he was allowed to have the KKK snowman, but the noose itself would be the basis for a prosecution. From a free speech perspective, individuals have a right to be hateful and unpopular. The concern is that such prohibitions not only curtail free speech but place citizens on a slippery slope where various symbols can be categorized as hate speech or conveying a hateful message.
Source: KXLY
What Supreme Court rulings have held that the First Amendment does not protect hateful symbols? None. Expressions of hatred, whether verbal or symbolic, are protected. Exceptions are “fighting words” and “true threats,” but neither is at issue here. (A noose is no doubt threatening to some, but, unless it constitutes a threat to take a specific illegal action, it is protected by the First Amendment.) In addition, a crime motivated by hatred may get you a tougher sentence, but an expression of hatred alone may not be punished.
“Bob If want to defend the Klan, go for it.”
Seriously??
So I wasn’t being sarcastic about your segue between the snowman and votes for Obama?
Okay.
Brian,
Justice is not predicated on biological processes. It is an ideal intimately attached to the idea of equity. There can be no equity if both sides of a dispute are not heard and/or do not have the laws equally applied to both plaintiff and defendant. There is only one alternative to Due Process: tyranny, as dispute resolution without Due Process – by default – become imperial fiat. Fiat not constrained by law or fact but left to the whims of the dictator.
The existential argument cannot apply to law or the administration of justice. People must be held accountable for their harms and crimes against others or the result is tyranny by caprice of the tyrant and eventual anarchy as those who feel wronged without redress will take vengeance into their own hands to seek the equity they were denied when they were denied justice. Justice which cannot happen without equity and equity than cannot be had without Due Process.
My best friend’s son has Asperger’s. From this, I know that people with Asperger’s can find it difficult, if not impossible, to lie. This is not the case with the majority of humans. Lies, and the crimes predicate upon lies – which is almost all crimes under the proper analysis, come easily to most. In a world without liars, there could be alternatives to Due Process in the administration of justice. Unfortunately, the world has more liars than speakers of truth. If every man were truthful, the courts would be largely empty.
Smom,
I didn’t read that as Bob defending the Klan but rather making fun of duplicitous politicians.
Now before I melt away
change to:
Before I get taken away
B.I.L.,
In an actual dichotomy, the law of the excluded middle prevails; in a continuum, the fallacy of the excluded middle prevails.
The adversarial system, as I am able to fathom it, is based on a dichotomous notion of truth and falsehood; whereas my grasp of the neurobiology of human brain decision-making informs me that decisions happen within a discrete continuum, such that the law of the excluded middle is, in terms of actual human brain decisions, a pure fallacy, though one not recognizable as such until sufficient validated research in neuropsychology was accomplished, and, to date, as I read psychology and other scientific journals, almost no one has understood what the research means for actual public safety.
My research, not that this is what I sought, appears to me to refute any valid biological basis for believing in the biological validity of the dichotomy of truth and falsehood, said dichotomy being, as I have read history, being the essential core of the adversarial system.
If I were to accept the adversarial system as biologically valid (and I cannot do this as an ethical bioengineer), I would accept the necessity of an adversarial approach to discernment of truth and falsehood.
From time to time, a new scientific paradigm emerges from the simple extensions of settled work which comprise the main effort(s) of scientific research. Thomas Kuhn has written rather well of this in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.”
The few people who have bothered to talk with me, face to face, intensively and extensively enough to understand my research methods and findings sufficiently well as to be capable of critiquing them decently, have yet to find my work other than of the form of portending a scientific revolution of what plausibly is of nearly unprecedented significance.
It is terribly clear to me that the notion of adversarialilty is essential to the adversarial system.
As a directly observable fact, I have no right to Due Process because I do not accept the notion of Due Process as valid.
There is an alternative to the Adversarial System and to Due Process, and I know this with all the certainty any living person can ever have because, for the whole of my life, I have actually lived said alternative.
It is one thing for me to live in a particular manner and quite another thing for me to be capable of explaining said particular manner of living to someone whose life excludes said particular manner. What language am I to use if the only language we appear to share, by the nature and structure of said shared language, absolutely excludes any accurate description of the way I actually live?
I actually live in a real world in which there is no real fault, no actual blame, and no hint of possible guilt. And I seek to respect everyone and everything with equanimity while refusing to internalize the mistrust of existence which is inseparable from time confusion (Erik H. Erikson) or the time-corrupted learning brain trauma of the work of neurologist Robert Scaer.
When the existential nature of existence as a self-creating, evolving process permits, someone may actually be able to make useful sense of whether the purportedly-alleged science I pretend to do has any meaningful value.
Frosty the Klansman was a miserable pitiful soul,
With a corncob up his ass and a big white sheet to hide his nose
And two soulless eyes made out of coal.
Frosty the Klansman is a Nazi, they say,
He was made of snow but the children
Know how he came to take their life one day.
There must have been some magic in that
Old silk noose they found.
For when they placed it around his neck
He began to dance around.
O, Frosty the Klansman
Was alive as he could be,
And the children say he could snarl
And burn a cross just like any Klegal.
Thumpetty thump thump,
Thumpety thump thump,
Look at Frosty go.
Thumpetty thump thump,
Thumpety thump thump,
Over the bodies of his victims.
Frosty the Klansman knew
The neighbors were hot that day,
So he said, “Let’s run and
We’ll have some fun
Now before I melt away.”
Down to the village,
With a noose in his hand,
Running here and there all
Around the square saying,
Catch me if you can.
He led them down the streets of town
Right to the traffic cop.
And he only paused a moment when
He heard him holler “Stop!”
For Frosty the Klansman
Had to hurry on his way,
But he waved goodbye saying,
“Don’t you cry,
I’ll be back again some day.”
Thumpetty thump thump,
Thumpety thump thump,
Look at Frosty go.
Thumpetty thump thump,
Thumpety thump thump,
Over the bodies of his victims.
Bob If want to defend the Klan, go for it.
Brian,
The adversarial process is requisite for the courts proper function as a trier of fact in dispute resolution. It is this very nature that allows Due Process to work. In a dispute, the parties are adverse by the nature of the problem. The only way to reach resolution absent extra-legal means like assassination is to use an adversarial process with counsel representing both sides to an impartial trier of fact who can apply the facts to the law based upon the evidence as presented.
It’s not the adversarial nature of the courts that is the problem.
It’s that those in power are ignoring and breaking the law and attempting to cover their crimes with violence, threats and intimidation thereby usurping not only the law but the proper role of the courts – and ergo the adversarial process – as defined by the Constitution. The adversarial process is key to your Constitutional right to Due Process. Otherwise you are left with dictatorial mandates instead of justice.
A white supremacist who builds a klan snowman, complete with dangling noose, and passes out bullet (casings) at Halloween. What could go wrong here?
Just because a threat isn’t imminent doesn’t mean there’s no threat at all. There’s no reasonable doubt about this hateful symbolism – we’ve seen its result for decades.
Swarthmore mom,
So what’s your take on states with snowmen made with two faces or forked tongues?
What is hate speech to one person may not be hate speech to another .
I find the “Diagnostic criteria for 299.00 Autistic Disorder” as found in “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision” (published by the American Psychiatric Association) to be of the form of hate speech, because it labels what I find, as an autistic person, to be truthfulness as a “mental disorder.”
Regarding “299.00,” I find that I meet diagnostic criteria A(1)(a), (b), and (d), A(2)(b), and (c), A(3)(a), (c), and (d); B(1), and (2); and C. Therefore, I find that I qualify for the label, “Autistic.”
However, I find that it is the belief that people make mistakes they could and should have avoided, a belief I find to be the essential core of the adversarial system of law, which is what I observe to be the actual mental disorder, for that disorder is the psychotic notion that existence, as it directly-observably exists, does not exist.
This puts me in the curious position of observing that the emperor not only has no clothes, but that the emperor also does not actually exist.
After my family moved to Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, in 1947, I came upon a saying I never heard before then. The saying, “The Boogeyman will get you.”
It has taken me more than sixty years to get even a trace of a notion as to what “The Boogeyman” is supposed to be. To me, “The Boogeyman” is, and is only, “The Adversarial System.”
Those other children, starting in 1947, were, I surmise, sincere, yet, regarding me, they were mistaken. “The Adversarial System” did not get me, and I surmise, never will.
What could ever be more hateful than adversariality?
What could ever be more hateful of life than an adversarial approach to life itself?
As I reject hatred, so I reject internalizing hate speech.
I do not reject people who have been so profoundly damaged by internalized hate speech that they can no longer speak of their most important concerns with words and can only act out their experiences of encountering hatred(s).
Idaho has become home to many white supremists. There aren’t too many Obama voters here. I am sure they would love to see him impeached or worse.
Someone should drive by and paint it black with a big yellow smiley face on its chest.
There’s a fine line, it seems, between what is hateful and that which threatens…
While on the side of “free speech”, scenes like this one do make one pause and think.
Was Frosty going to hang Rudolf? A snowman with a noose and a pointy hat is actually funny in this day and time. People need to treat this stuff with derision.
We give way to much power to silly symbols. The Klan is a joke and full of small minded morons with teeny weenies.
Although nuts like that will kill your dog and burn your house down if you tick them off.
Actually, I think that the Virginia Supreme Court reversed a decision, and said that a KKK’er burning a cross- even on the target’s lawn – was protected speech, which was the position of the ACLU.
A lot of people didn’t think they had a snowman’s chance in hell of winning that one. So, while I think that the speech of the reprehensible white supremacist in this case is protected, no noose is good news.
What if for 12 hours every day I parked a van in front of the snowman builder’s house on which I had painted a scene of him with a noose around his neck, hanging from a telephone pole beside his snowman. Would that be protected free speech?
Hate speech is a form of terrorism. It’s designed to influence the behavior of an individual or group through actions or speech designed to intimidate that individual or group. And speech doesn’t have to involve words: That snow sculpture is a form of speech.
There’s a delicate balance that must be walked between the Constitutional guarantee of free speech and the protection of individuals and groups from violence and intimidation. But this example doesn’t fall near that line: It is clearly intended to intimidate.
Respectfully, I think your “presumably” is carrying too much weight there. The courts have upheld bans on hateful symbols (without, frankly, particularly exacting analysis) when they are used as a specific threat to a specific group — as in a cross burned on somebody’s lawn. But — though I have certainly been wrong before — I don’t think that American law supports the proposition that the man can be prosecuted based on a noose as part of a dipshit racist display on his own lawn.