In 2017, Denmark took a historic step in favor of free speech by rescinding its blasphemy law after 334 years. For those of us in the free speech community, it was an important moment in Europe where free speech is being rapidly reduced. Now, however, the liberal government is moving to reinstate the blasphemy crime with a new law barring the burning of the Qur’an, the Bible, and other religous texts.
The country already has an abusive law criminalizing offenses against foreign nations by publicly insulting them, including flag burnings. That law will be extended to religious books.
Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard adopted the same thread-worn rationalizations to curtail free speech. He simply dismissed that burning such books is free speech, dismissing such protests as “meaningless insults which have no other purpose than to create discord and hatred.” Speech crimes are often pushed by those who disagree with the content of opposing speech as “meaningless.”
Despite the growing anti-free speech movement in the United States, the Constitution still protects such protests, including the burning of the American flag.
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). I agree with the decision as did conservatives like Scalia. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a powerful concurrence where he famously stated:
“For we are presented with a clear and simple statute to be judged against a pure command of the Constitution. The outcome can be laid at no door but ours. The hard fact is that sometimes we must make decisions we do not like. We make them because they are right, right in the sense that the law and the Constitution, as we see them, compel the result. And so great is our commitment to the process that, except in the rare case, we do not pause to express distaste for the result, perhaps for fear of undermining a valued principle that dictates the decision. This is one of those rare cases.
Though symbols often are what we ourselves make of them, the flag is constant in expressing beliefs Americans share, beliefs in law and peace and that freedom which sustains the human spirit. The case here today forces recognition of the costs to which those beliefs commit us. It is poignant but fundamental that the flag protects those who hold it in contempt.”
The same is true with the burning of religious or culture symbols. I find such acts reprehensible, but they are clearly conveying a political or religious viewpoint.
Nevertheless, the left in Denmark is now embracing a new age of censorship and speeech criminalization. The country will now create an amorphous crime for those who show “improper treatment of objects with religious significance.” The vagueness is by design. Citizens will not know what may be considered such improper treatment and thus a chilling effect will curtail future political speech.
The reversal in Denmark illustrates the dire situation for free speech in Europe and the growing danger here in the United States.
The same is true with the burning of religious or culture symbols. I find such acts reprehensible, but they are clearly conveying a political or religious viewpoint.
Why do you find them reprehensible? Do you feel the same way about burning a literal nazi flag, or a KKK emblem? If someone believe the Koran, or the Bible, is just as evil as Mein Kampf, or just as useless as pornography, why ought they not to burn it?
I find burning the US flag reprehensible, not because of the number of people it offends, but because it is an expression of a view I find reprehensible, i.e. that the USA is an evil country. Burning a country’s flag is an act of symbolic war against that country. The US constitution protects a person’s right to make symbolic war on the USA, by explicitly restricting treason to acts of actual war. I fully support that. But making symbolic war on the USA means that you hate the USA, that you are its enemy, and I find that morally reprehensible. If you make symbolic war on the USA, you are my enemy, and I will treat you as such. Not with violence, but with rejection and shunning.
None of that is true about countries that deserve enmity. I think it’s laudable to burn the Chinese flag, or the flag of the Third Reich, or that of the USSR. I think it’s laudable to burn Mein Kampf, or Das Kapital. And I think the Koran belongs in the same category. I find burning it to be imprudent, but morally laudable. Others will, of course, disagree, and they’re perfectly entitled to do so.
Denmark’s failure is in casting the public destruction of religious symbols as “speech.” Instead, cast it as “fighting words,” which the U.S. Supreme Court first defined in Chaplinsky v New Hampshire (1942) as words which “by their very utterance, inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.” (Cornell Law website)
Kudos for bringing up the “fighting words” doctrine, a notable exception to First Amendment protections as initially laid out in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942). You aptly cited the Supreme Court’s definition of fighting words as utterances that “inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace,” and are thus not essential to the exposition of ideas.
However, it’s important to note that the fighting words doctrine has been considerably narrowed in its application over the years. The U.S. Supreme Court has been reluctant to uphold convictions based on this doctrine in subsequent rulings. For example, in the 1969 case of Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Court established the “imminent lawless action” test, which requires that in order for speech to be restricted, it must be aimed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action and be likely to achieve that result.
As a result, the fighting words doctrine has fallen out of common legal usage, and many believe it has essentially been rendered obsolete. The latest significant Supreme Court ruling that invoked “fighting words” was likely in 1992’s R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, which struck down an ordinance banning hate speech. In the decision, the Court clarified that the government cannot regulate speech based on hostility towards its content, further restricting the doctrine’s scope.
Given this evolving legal landscape, applying the fighting words exception in the context of Denmark’s approach to public destruction of religious symbols could be seen as problematic. Nonetheless, the principle still sparks intriguing debates about the limits of free speech, as your comment exemplifies.
Even when the “fighting words” doctrine still existed, it applied only to words directed at an individual.
The definition of “fighting words” is parallel to that of “incitement”; just as incitement means words that are both subjectively intended and objectively likely to turn their audience into zombies who will immediately act on them and commit a crime without making a conscious choice to do so, “fighting words” means words that are directed at an individual and that, by their very nature, are likely to turn that individual into a zombie who will immediately react with violence, without consciously choosing to do so. In other words, words that if you said them to any ordinary person his normal expected reaction would be to punch you.
And as William points out, it is dubious whether the doctrine even exists any more. While the Supreme Court has not yet officially said so, it’s likely to do so the next time such a case comes before it.
The brandenburg standard limited this doctrine to instances where it is likely to incite imminent, lawless action.
There has never been free speech in a America. Instead it has been “feel free to talk with consequences”
In 2023 try (1) challenge the holocaust; (2) explain an international private bank/banker conspiracy; (3) talk about the unhealthy relationship between AIPAC and American politicians; (4) Identify the connection between NECONs, Wars and Israel, etc. without being de-platformed, loosing your job, loosing your friends.
Freedom of speech enjoys constitutional protection against governmental infringement, a cornerstone principle in democratic societies. Nonetheless, it’s a misconception to believe that this freedom insulates one from social consequences. For example, those who openly question well-documented historical events like the Holocaust are not merely uninformed; they may also be subject to justifiable critique and consequential professional and social repercussions.
Moreover, it is intellectually dishonest to focus criticism exclusively on one entity or ideology while ignoring other significant issues that demand equal scrutiny. Take, for instance, the Arab slave trade, the policies of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the pervasive gender inequality, and the criminalization of homosexuality in various countries, including the Palestinian Territories. It’s also noteworthy that blasphemy is a capital offense in more than a dozen countries that share a specific cultural heritage.
One could argue that an individual who disproportionately criticizes Israel while turning a blind eye to genocides and injustices occurring elsewhere exhibits signs of anti-Semitism, consciously or otherwise.
The freedom of speech is only against the government. You have no right to a platform, a job, or friends. If you reveal yourself to your friends to be someone who doesn’t deserve their friendship they will rightly drop you; if you show your employer that you are someone he would never want to employ, he will fire you; and if you show yourself to any event organizer to be someone they would never in their worst dreams think to invite on stage, they will stop inviting you. That doesn’t infringe on your freedom of speech; it just means you’re reaping the natural consequences of your being a repulsive person.
Contrary to the letter & spirit of the First Amendment. In real practice, American officials are only restrained from (overt) indictments and convictions for violating a citizen’s freedom of speech.
Covertly, the First Amendment is violated with impunity by most government officials. These covert actions are precisely meant to infringe on Freedom of Speech.
For example: Many, if not most, citizens posting legal peaceful Freedom of Speech on this site (or any social media site) are then subjected to covert and warrantless computer searches – in violation of both the First and Fourth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
These covert searches are done without Fourth Amendment probable cause evidence, without the officer or agent risking perjury or contempt by falsifying a warrant request and without permission from a judge.
Usually the motive for these covert activities is to intimidate citizens exercising their legal First Amendment rights – an infringement on your speech rights.
Many of the oath sworn constitutional-officers don’t seem to even understand First Amendment or Fourth Amendment law. Most of these officials use terms like “extremist” that can apply to almost anything, impossible to define and protected by the First Amendment (ie: peaceful protest by women’s rights activists were once considered to be “extremist” or a peaceful gun rights activist).
The problem with covert punishments for legal First Amendment activities, is there is no oversight by judges and no electronic paper trail when abuses do happen.
Freedom of Speech is not protected from the “covert” Justice system in the United States, only from overt indictment and conviction.
“dismissing such protests as “meaningless insults…”
Meaningless? It’s certainly a human right for a non-Muslim to protest burn an extremely insulting, hate filled book that declares war on him & all non-Muslims while claiming all non-Muslims are evil and hell-bound (Q 98:6) and must be k𝜄lled and/or subjugated (sura 9). Protesting bravely that one will not be submissive to the conquest & tyranny this book demands is hardly meaningless.
Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard is mindless & cowardly demanding respect for a book of such virulent hate. Shame on Denmark’s government for even considering banning such right of free expression.
‘Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard adopted the same thread-worn rationalizations to curtail free speech. He simply dismissed that burning such books is free speech, dismissing such protests as “meaningless insults which have no other purpose than to create discord and hatred.” Speech crimes are often pushed by those who disagree with the content of opposing speech as “meaningless.” ‘
To dismiss speech with which you happen to disagree is simply censorship of disfavored views – viewpoint discrimination.. That is at the core of the defense of freedom of speech. If you’re going to label disfavored speech as ‘meaningless’, then you might as well go whole hog and adopt post-modern nihilism that all speech qua semiotics is meaningless – including blasphemy laws, which is nothing short of the takeover of western culture by religious extremists. The barbarians are in the city, it’s now house to house combat to defend our enlightenment legacy..
In America the burning of the flag is sometimes prosecuted under laws banning the setting of fires or disorderly conduct.
Only if those laws are enforced equally against all, no matter what viewpoint they’re expressing. If the law is only enforced against those burning a US flag but not against those burning a Nazi flag, or a pornographic magazine, or just junk mail. If they are not enforced against those expressing a favored opinion or no opinion at all, then any attempted enforcement against someone expressing a disfavored opinion is unconstitutional as applied, and the courts must strike it down.
For all their smugness and disdain for us Americans, the Europeans simply never fully grasped the true concept of freedom, such as speech, the press, and all the rest of the Bill of Rights. They still think that the natural state of mankind is to live under the rule of their enlightened elites. They still do not understand the concept of the people, unrestrained, forging their own destiny without asking for the government’s approval.
They espouse the Rights of Man but their practical exercise of those rights are atrocious.
Our approach has been to see what we as a people can do, unfettered as much as possible by the government. We get into our biggest trouble when we forget that or if one of our political parties forgets that.
Joe Biden and Barack Obama and before them John Kerry never understood that. Joe tries to corrupt the freedoms, Barack Obama hates our freedoms because he thinks his great mind should have him being perpetually worshipped so he can guide us forever (ugh), and Kerry just thinks we are dirt beneath his feet and his rich wives. They all exhibit hubris in its most classical form.
What the left is trying to do here is to make us European and that is an apostasy to all Americans who came before us. We stumble, we get it wrong at times but we right ourselves and go on. I will take that any day and pull myself up, and tell them and their elitist ilk to go where the sun don’t shine, so to speak.
They still think that the natural state of mankind is to live under the rule of their enlightened elites.
In fact the natural state of mankind is to live under the merciless rule of a warlord. People don’t realize how much of an anomaly American-style freedom is, both in the long sweep of history, and in the world today. If they did, there wouldn’t be so much ignorant America bashing by left-wing college student dweebs and university-faculty dweebs.
That is not the “natural state” of mankind. It’s the most common and likely state, but there’s nothing in human nature that compels it to be so. Each would-be warlord is capable of choosing not to be one, and each is responsible for the choice to be one.
Just as the existence of Botswana is proof positive that black Africans are capable of running a decent country, and therefore the fact that every other such country is a sh*thole is not the natural consequence of giving them independence, but the result of individual evil choices made by people, that they didn’t have to make and they can reverse, or their replacements can choose not to make.
Well said!
I dissent. Burning religious or national symbols is not a necessary part of the core value underlyng the First Amendment, which is that there must be a free DISCUSSION in the public sphere of matters of public importance. Vulgar and offensive stunts diminish support for free speech by confusing stunts with reasoned dialogue.
I disagree with your dissent. It is a slipery slope once you start carving out exceptions to the first amendment.
It’s not just a slippery slope. It’s a cliff. Freedom is a binary state; if anyone has no right to express an unpopular opinion then nobody has such a right, and the fact that most people feel free to do so is merely an illusion of freedom, because the masters have arbitrarily not so far chosen to crack down on the opinions they happen to be expressing. That can change in a minute.
I leave it up to others to draw such a conclusion based on the blood of others who protected us and the flag. But we see our leftist blog friends acting stupidly as leftists and depots do throughout the world. Those with more intelligence understand what the flag stands for.
In the video we see Iran students refusing to walk over US and Israeli flags
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-51084619
Broadly defined, “speech” is a form of communication, and I think it’s reasonable to deduce that “freedom of speech” was probably intended by the Founders to mean “freedom of communication” — as in engaging in the exercise of interpersonal communication.
It’s noteworthy that “freedom of speech” is joined in the First Amendment with “the right of the people peaceably to assemble” — the implication being that people have a fundamental right to get together and communicate with one another — share ideas with each other. To restrict that sharing of ideas to the spoken or written word is probably a more-narrow construct than what was originally intended. There is a long history, stretching back into prehistory, of people communicating with each other by means other than words. See the cave paintings of lascaux, beginning at the 42.20 mark of this video, for one of the oldest remaining examples of “speech” without words:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH7SJf8BnBI
In science, there are signs and symbols used to communicate — just as there were in human prehistory — and perhaps most importantly, physical demonstrations — experiments performed for others to observe. It’s ALL communication. Implementation of too narrow a definition of “speech” in the expression “freedom of speech” could outlaw a simple, wordless scientific demonstration to communicate the principles of physical reality to others.
If you want to protest something vulgar & offensive read the Medinan suras of the Koran (eg., 2, 4, 5, 8, esp 9, K60:4, K98:6). They’re directed against you & all non-Muslims. Protesting them even by burning them should be respected, especially when under the book’s freedom ending ideology the protester should be killed.
The first amendment is NOT a utilitarian statement that we are better off discussing “matters of public importance” in the public sphere. It is an expression of Natural Law as the framers understood it, and it reflects their opinion that each person has the natural right, not granted by any government but by the Creator, to express any opinion he likes, regardless of how useful or useless it is to the public welfare. The core value of the first amendment is that “no official, high or petty, can prescribe what is orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.” That means it’s just as important to let someone express the view that Hitler was right as it is to let them express the view that he was wrong.
Sorry, I think free speech means speech, the spoken or written word. No need to protect burning of flags, holy texts, or other sabotage. (Exception for depicting such acts in a play or movie.)
SCOTUS has re written the 1st amendment. It is not free speech, it is free expression. That’s how strip joints stayed in business. Dance is free expression. Putting a crucifix in a jar of urine is free expression
So you think expressing an opinion by a physical gesture, such as nodding or shaking ones head, shaking a fist, applauding or saluting, or refusing to do so, etc., are not equally protected?! That’s a very odd kind of view! I wonder how it could be justified.
Things in Denmark haven’t really changed all that much since Hamlet’s day.
Hamlet who?
My thoughts on Denmark restoring blasphemy prosecutions are . . . whatabout Trump. Haha! That’s a good one.
Cancel culture, revisited. All’s fair in lust and abortion.
In case nobody has ever said it before, let me be the first: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
I’m thinking I mighta read that somewhere . . . no, maybe not, I’m coming up blank.
LOL. Thanks.
No thanks necessary. Just be sure to give me credit if you every quote that line, ’cause I think it has a certain ring to it, if I do say so myself.
Certainly, Mr. de Minimis – if I use it, and I may, I will introduce it as “as Mr. Ralph de Minimus puts it,” and only then repeat the line. Credit where due, and all.
Thanks. It’s all I ask since I’m not looking for fame. If I were, I wouldn’t be posting my gems at this crumby blog that makes me use a fake screen name, whereafter I’m forced to suffer the slings and arrows of moronic trolls.
Slings and arrows . . . that’s catchy, too. Good name for a television series, I’m thinking.
A “television series”? Sounds like a tale told by an idiot to me. Wait — I gotta write that one down, too.
I looked it up – there actually was a series with that title. It was apparently about something called a “Shakespeare Festival,” though I’ve no idea what that could be.
But yeah, “a tale told by an idiot” is very good, too – almost up there with William Faulkner’s coining of “the sound and the fury.”
I thought that was Hunter Thompson. Maybe I’m thinking of Fear and Loathing, not sound and fury. It alll starts to run together after a while.
Disregard my previous, I should have scrolled farther down.
Already been done. 3-season Canadian TV show last aired in the US in 2007.
The saddest part of this story is that Texas vs Johnson was a 5-4 decision. Also a reminder of how our rights ride on a razor thin edge at all times.
While alarming, what the Denmark politicians are doing to the farmers is more concerning.
He simply dismissed that burning such books is free speech, dismissing such protests as “meaningless insults which have no other purpose than to create discord and hatred.”
The “have no other purpose than to create discord” excuse is used by the current regime to justify censoring political speech which it labels as “disinformation” – think of the “Joe Biden” administration’s proposed Ministry of Truth and its little Mary Poppins dictator.
If flag-burning is free speech, so if protesting an election.
Of course it is. Nobody denies that. The excuse for prosecuting peaceful protesters is the claim (true in some cases, false in most) that they committed an actual crime while protesting, and that is the only reason they’re being prosecuted, and that anyone committing that same crime in a different cause would also be prosecuted. This is a blatant lie, but the fact that they find it necessary to lie like that illustrates the principle that they can’t just prosecute someone for the content of his expression.
Your spellcheck was prompt to change “embark” to “embrace”, yet was derelict in inhibiting your “speeech”.
The govt cannot legislate morality. Denmark politicains exhibit their shallow thought process.
Of coarse that brings up the admonition, that our constitutional republic can ONLY succeed governing a moral people.
I’ve been trying to pound that first sentence into people’s brain for decades. Those who knw that, know it. Those who don’t, don’t want to.
Seems to me, if the third sentence is true, then it is imperative that the first sentence is false or abandoned.
How is what Denmark doing different than what Saudi Arabia is doing?
Presumably they won’t behead you in Denmark.