Israel has arrested and then given two days of house arrest for a rather bizarre form of expression: defecating on flags, including Israel’s flag. I cannot say that I am eager to attend a showing of the Natali Cohen Vaxberg’s scatological creations, but the sentencing clearly violates free speech protections that many of us believe are a core human right. Warning: foul language is contained in the story below.
In the United States, the destruction of the flag is a protected form of free speech. In Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989), the Supreme Court voted 5-4 that flag burning was protected speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is considered one of the core cases defining free speech in the United States. Brennan was joined by Marshall, Blackmun, Scalia, and Kennedy (Kennedy wrote a concurrence).
Cohen Vaxberg posted a video showing her defecating on an Israeli flag while she played Israel’s national anthem. In another video entitled “Shit Instead of Blood,” Cohen Vaxberg is pictured defecating on flags from around the world, including that of the Palestinian Authority. Cohen Vaxberg is described as a left-wing activist and artist.
It is a truly disgusting form of expression. However, the anger that it produced reinforces the view that this is not only a form of artistic expression but political expression. The Israeli court not only sentenced her to home confinement but banned her from using the Internet for 30 days. The Tel Aviv police insisted that her videos causes “damage to symbols of the state.”
It is always hard to criticize such punishments (even short sentences) in the face of such obnoxious and truly disgusting forms of expression. However, free speech is not needed to protect popular speech. We pay a price for the guarantee of free speech. That price is people like Cohen Vaxberg. By maintaing a bright line rule, we protect much more valuable forms of speech and avoid the dangers of allowing the government to draw lines between valuable and valueless speech. The slippery slope problem (a troubling image given this case I admit) has proven a real and consistent threat to free speech. We gain far more than we lose in protecting the very small number of flag burners or desecrators in this country.
“A system that cannot be corrupted is what humanity needs, but government is not the tool that provides it.”
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You seek what never was and what never will be. Government is the only tool unless you want to exist in a “state of nature.”
” Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war, and such a war as is of every man against every man.”
~Leviathan, Ch. XIII, Sec. 8
There never was a greater political scientist that Sir Thomas Hobbes.
Paul C. Schulte
Tyger – there are no ‘natural rights’ except death. After that is it all part of the social compact and how well it is enforced.
Well – I see Mespo has checked in with Tommy Hobbs. He was such a corker. lolol.
Our Inalienable rights are what made our country the creation it was and is and what it is to be. I for one, still believe in it. I am an optimist because anybody being lucky enough to have a group of people like we did that read people like John Locke and Adam Smith and understood Natural Rights – Republican Rights – were sure to be put on the path to Liberty.
🙂
I heard the IDF can shoot mind beams, and control your thoughts.
But it was at a busy cafe, so maybe not.
What did Sinead O’Conner get for ripping up a picture of the pope?
Mark Ewbanks – I think Sinead is going to hell in a hand basket, but she was doing that before ripping the picture of the Pope.
There you go.
Anyone here familiar w/ the Israeli Constitution? No, I didn’t think so.
Nick – there is NO Israeli Constitution.
Salient point. This occurred in Israel so the US Constitution is IRRELEVENT! Other countries have THEIR OWN Constitutions. This thread is classic US chauvinism and provincialism on full display.
Mespo, whether you call it a “right” to exist, or anything else, humans are free until they are convinced by other people that government is legitimately entitled to control their lives, their possessions, their freedom, and their very existence because some group of people who run the government says so. In essence: “If my group is bigger or more powerful than you or your group, we get to beat up on you. Whether you agree to this or not, we can use force to do whatever we say is appropriate.” I call this criminal behavior. It’s what people say government is supposed to protect individuals from, but it only enables it more. A system that cannot be corrupted is what humanity needs, but government is not the tool that provides it.
Perhaps her actions, as disgusting as they are, should rightly be seen as a ‘conversation’ then, between IDF and dissenters like Vaxberg!…for many years i’ve been aware that the IDF routinely defecates in peoples homes in oPt whilst keeping the families sequestered in one room or outside of their home. I’ve read about these soldiers crapping inside their kitchen utensils, bureau drawers etc and when I visited the ministry of health in Ramallah I got to see and hear reports about idf leaving their ‘signatures’ behind in file drawers, desks and furniture….after stealing computers and complete regional population health /innoculation records. This “calling card” should be punished but that remains unlikely since its been going on for many years without any chain of command intervention. Perhaps Vaxberg has read about this once too many times to remain passive — perhaps if the impunity of the idf were held to account we’d read nothing of such civilian reaction imo.
madams12 – you have no personal experience with the defecation by IDF. Just have seen reports. Hmmm. And you saw these reports in Ramallah. Hmmm again.
Hmmm, yourself Paul.
It appears that you defend idf deplorable behavior but these events did take place and were reported, without much coverage in American media.
The events that I mentioned took place in 2002 when the occupation army drove Merkava tanks into cities, suburbs & villages tearing up roadways and running over anything in their path including occupied cars & human beings
I was an international observer at the ministry & got to view numerous 8 x 10 black and white glossy photos, framed, no less, all around the agency.
There was much damage done, apart from fecal ‘gifts’.
Why was your impulse to imply my statement untrue without any hesitation?
I was with a small group of visiting American Jews. Does that make it more acceptable to you ? Why?
madams12 – I am always suspicious of ‘reports’ by witnesses. The Palestinians are notorious for misreporting incidents, faking photos, staging photos, reusing photos. They actually must have a whole wing devoted to it.
BTW,. tanks regardless of their size do make a big mess when driving down the street even in peacetime.
Tyger:
” the government doesn’t “bestow” anything. Governments only restrict freedoms and rights that already exist naturally.”
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Rights don’t exist naturally. A cursory view of anthropology or a short read through Thomas Hobbes should disabuse you of that notion. Rights flow from law and law flows from the will of the people. Governments enforce law which insures rights. The system works fine when it’s allowed to but some find that manipulating any of the components I’ve mentioned inures to their benefit so they do. When factions take over government as the monied interests have now we have an out-of-balance system. Societies always seek a balance and we’ll see that in our lifetime.
mespo – one has to first agree with Tommy Hobbes. We don’t all agree that Hobbes is correct.
@ Jill
Sorry if I am misunderstanding you. I thought you to be saying that our government shouldn’t be supporting countries that commit human rights violations???? I agree with this if that is your position.
I just think though that we need to understand that what WE may think are wrong actions, may be viewed in a completely different way by the other countries or other persons.
Pogo, they were literally cheering in the streets in Gaza on 9/11 in case you missed it
Pogo and DBQ, You are both reading me incorrectly. I don’t know how else to explain my thinking. You believe I am saying something which I am not, so I will have to leave it at that.
Paul….. I took a 2 semester 6 credit hour course in the history of the US Constitution. I probably know a great deal more about its history then you do.
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Perhaps, you should have taken English, so that you would know the difference between then and THAN. 😀
justagirl – thanks for picking that up. Usually I catch that.
@Paul:
“James Otis in 1764 declared that government “has an everlasting Foundation in the unchangeable will of God, the author of nature, whose laws never vary,” and that “there can be no prescription old enough to supersede the law of nature and of the grant of God Almighty, who has given him to all men a natural right to be free.”
For 12 years the theory of natural law expressed by James Otis in 1764 was that generally accepted by the Colonial pamphleteers and speakers.”
American interpretations of natural law, by BF Wright – The American Political Science Review, 1926
Tyger Gilbert
Free speech is NOT a “luxury!” Free speech is a natural right, a right that is often trampled on by people who want to control others with governments.
= = =
The luxury, it appears, is being elite enough to stomp out free speech of others.
I still get angry when someone burns our flag, or displays it upside down as a protest. This country is the best in the world. Respect that you can desecrate the flag, but don’t do it!
“…negative rights are those which
do not involve claims against others; instead, they involve the right to be left alone by others. Negative rights include the right to conduct one’s affairs without being killed, maimed, or forced or tricked into doing something against one’s will; the right to own property, as against the right of others to abscond with property or claim it as their own; the right to work for a wage and not as a slave to an “owner” who claims the product of one’s labor; and the right to move and transact business freely within government’s sphere of sovereignty (which can include overseas movements and transactions, given a government strong enough to protect them).
[Negative] rights are limited to those that can be exercised without requiring something of others (e.g., transfers of income and property). The one necessary exception is the cost of providing a government to ensure the exercise of [negative] rights.”
a list of negative rights offered by Randy Barnett:
“A libertarian … favors the rigorous protection of certain individual rights that define the space within which people are free to choose how to act. These fundamental rights consist of (1) the right of private property, which includes the property one has in one’s own person; (2) the right of freedom of contract by which rights are transferred by one person to another; (3) the right of first possession, by which property comes to be owned from an unowned state; (4) the right to defend oneself and others when fundamental rights are being threatened; and (5) the right to restitution or compensation from those who violate another’s fundamental rights. “
Pogo – that is all very nice, but it is like reinventing the wheel. Did the Framers of the Constitution recognize positive and negative rights?
Yes, Pogo, we are in agreement in our perspectives on this issue it seems.
Oh, and just because the government blatantly tries to infringe or ignore rights and no longer follows the restrictions in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights doesn’t mean those rights have ceased to exist. It means the government has illegally and criminally exceeded its charter in its quest to control everything.