ThinkProgress wrote Rand Paul, Supposed Defender Of Civil Liberties, Calls For Jailing People Who Attend ‘Radical Political Speeches’. It pulls on this Rand Paul (R-KY) comment on Sean Hannity's radio show:
"PAUL: I’m not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they’ve been traveling and perhaps, you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they’ve been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders. It wouldn’t be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that’s really an offense that we should be going after — they should be deported or put in prison."
They only include that sentence so I imagine there's some cherry picking going on, but still, it's really missing the point of the first amendment. I agree with this comment by Paul Krugman:
"He’s not unusual. There are genuine libertarians out there. But political figures who talk a lot about liberty and freedom invariably turn out to mean the freedom to not pay taxes and discriminate based on race; freedom to hold different ideas and express them, not so much."
6 comments:
I had two thoughts when I read this post:
1) Paul Krugman is freaking amazing. I can barely find time to read all his posts and columns. Where does he find the time to write them?
2) There probably is a high correlation between reading/attending hate speeches and later violent acts. The problem is there is probably also a very high false positive rate. You would identify many many people who will never commit a violent act.
1) Krugman I get. He writes 5-10 short posts a day, usually commenting on stuff he finds in other places. Those combine into two columns a week. He's good at adding graphs and data to the discussion or commenting on other's reports.
Ezra Klein is who currently amazes me. He does tons of posts a day, usually of some length, often of original reporting. He has a lot of depth on a lot of different issues.
Others have done this before but usually degenerate to lots of posts commenting on others (I've been doing that too much lately). Andrew Sullivan and digby come to mind.
2) The correlation seems reasonable, but would need to be tested. It could also be that those who are incited to violence are recruited more quietly. The false positive rate is clearly the problem.
And of course speech isn't a crime, violence is. Until you commit violence (or at least conspired to commit it) you haven't committed a crime. McCarthyism was arresting people for attending political speech events 20 years prior.
I think that reading /attending/giving hate speeches warrants a degree of surveillance. It would simply be imprudent do nothing. I'm still reeling from A Clockwork Orange, the book. It's amazingly easy to read when you know Russian! I guess I have to watch the movie next...speaking of hate and violence, this is definitely it. What crushed me the most was the music connection, Beethoven's 9th Symphony especially. Alex totally loves my kind of music. Got on a tangent, stop.
There's all the levels of reasonable suspicion and probable cause that come into play. I'm not sure what all the distinctions are. Sure, investigate but that's different than "deport or put in prison".
As is so often the case, I haven't read the book but I've seen the movie. I saw it in college and I know that Burgess didn't like the adaptation, but I did get the message he intended, so it worked for me.
It's most memorable to me for making an indelible connection between a song and a scene. I always think of the scene when I hear the song and only a couple of films have done that (for better or worse). Another is Reservoir Dogs.
Another thing that continues to impress me about Kubrick's film. Even though it was made 40 years ago, it still looks like it's set in the near future. That seems remarkable.
Still have to see the movie but the book feels amazingly fresh and futuristic. It was supposed to be a "near" future, the 70s. My book edition contains a multitude of reviews of the book and the movie, an interview with Kubrick, and Burgess' own take on it. Burgess was a polyglot and knew Russian pretty well. He wanted to figure out a universal teen/hate language and ended up with a mix of American English, Elizabethan English and pidgin Russian.
He loved and knew music, obviously, and have written the book in a form of Sonata, in 3 parts, etc.
I can loan you the book, it's quite amazing, including all the extras on music, language, free will, Kubrick, etc.
The movie differs from the book, the ending is different as the last chapter is omitted. I don't particularly care for the last chapter but the Sonata form calls for coda and so this is it.
I apologize for writing too much about irrelevant things but they are relevant to me. The idea that the most divine music can trigger mayhem is truly revolting. I know, Nazis loved music also but they did not have this physical connection, they did not dream of killing Jews while listening to Schubert. And Alex commits his most heinous crimes while listening to Beethoven's Ode To Joy...or simply having music playing in his head.
Movies are hardly a diversion. Or rather, they are always a diversion I'm willing to take. :)
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