Am I remembering this correctly?

[kirisutogomen]

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to camp out in your park, strew trash all over, and forcibly block the local farmers' market.

Comments

[firstfrost]

Congress shall apparently also make no law abridging the right of corporations to air unlimited numbers of false attack ads. Sometimes freedom of speech includes mess and garbage.

[kirisutogomen]

ACLU Defends Nazis Right to Burn Down ACLU Headquarters

[dcltdw]

Because, of course, blocking the local farmers' market is the most pressing issue of our times!!

[kirisutogomen]

Sorry, I forgot to inform you, but I changed my policy and now actually pay attention to issues other than genocide.

[arcanology]

Assemble, of course, means only to come together in groups of white property owning males for coffee and light speechifying, including the consumption of one (1) alcoholic drink of no more than 70 proof.

[kirisutogomen]

Also, "religion" refers to a flavor of sorbet, and "speech" means a postage stamp commemorating the discovery of Hotson's Brush-tailed Mouse.

At some point the sarcasm gets so thick that communication grinds to a complete stop and they might as well put us on CNN along with the rest of the shouting nitwits.

[arcanology]

I was just trying to fit with the theme of the post.

The nonsarcastic version is: messy free speech is a lot better than a populous that lies around whining quietly in their rooms like bloated seals on a beach.

Nonsarcastic but still filled with weird metaphor. I can't quit that.

[kirisutogomen]

Your point would be relevant if we were being offered the dichotomous choice between the two options you suggest. As it is, it's an instructive example of a false dilemma.

And I do sincerely appreciate weird metaphor and would never ask you to stop.

[psychohist]

Is there something that actually happened that you're objecting to here?

[kirisutogomen]

Yeah, I don't like that anyone took seriously the argument that a crime isn't really a crime if you're saying something vaguely political while you commit it. Sure, they lost in court, but it should never have got to court. The assertion that the First Amendment gives you the right to camp out on my lawn and sell Vicodin to passersby should have been taken as seriously as the assertion that Sun Yat-sen was actually a hippopotamus in a very clever disguise.

[psychohist]

Er, most criminals get to court.

Still, thanks for the post; nice to know someone else (bakedweasels) has some understanding of the real situation (I already knew you did).

Note that I actually agree with some of the underlying points of the Occupy Wall Street protesters - albeit not those firstfrost quotes about Occupy Boston, which I agree simply represent greed - but I'll save that for another discussion.

[kirisutogomen]

Most criminals get to court, but they get there by claiming that they didn't commit the armed robbery, not by claiming that armed robbery isn't a crime if you do it during the course of an act of political speech.

[firstfrost]

Also, assuming you're talking about Occupy Boston and not something like Occupy Framingham that I don't know details about, the Dewey Square farmer's market has lost customers but is not forcibly blocked, if this is true.

[kirisutogomen]

OK, I stand corrected. I got that detail wrong. Occupy Boston is in fact even more impotent than I had believed, and has only managed to partially screw up the farmer's market. Thank you.

[kirisutogomen]

OK, I think I may have gotten a bit carried away with verbal gymnastics there. Sorry

[firstfrost]

Ah, okay, I can parse your initial complaint that way when I look at it again. I read it much more as "OB sucks because they are intentionally doing these bad things" so the question of whether the bad things were in fact intentional, or as bad as described, seemed more relevant. Well, which you have already figured out.

I'm sorry for claiming it was trolling. :)