{"id":59629,"date":"2016-07-21T05:00:53","date_gmt":"2016-07-21T10:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=59629"},"modified":"2016-07-17T10:25:39","modified_gmt":"2016-07-17T15:25:39","slug":"fuzzy-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=59629","title":{"rendered":"Fuzzy Thought"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Suppose a guy walks down the interstate highway during rush hour, blocking traffic and stalling thousands of motorists for hours, and when arrested says: \u201cI did it as an act of non-verbal communication to protest police violence because Black Lives Matter.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We know the First Amendment protects citizens\u2019 right to speak freely, including the right to protest government policy.\u00a0 We know the courts have defined \u201cspeech\u201d to include non-verbal communication such as nude dancing and therefore, presumably, walking.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s1\">Should the walker\u2019s First Amendment defense require that he be found Not Guilty of Obstructing Traffic? \u00a0Liberals would say \u201cYes\u201d and many Moderates might agree.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s1\">Change the facts a bit: instead of walking down the freeway, he rapes a co-ed.\u00a0 Or burns a store.\u00a0 Or shoots a cop.\u00a0 If the same defense is raised, should the same result obtain?\u00a0 For many Liberals, probably so.\u00a0 But for Moderates, here\u2019s a crucial question:\u00a0 if the First Amendment should not excuse rape, arson or murder but it should excuse obstructing traffic, why?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"s1\">Joe Doakes<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"p2\">Because racism!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Suppose a guy walks down the interstate highway during rush hour, blocking traffic and stalling thousands of motorists for hours, and when arrested says: \u201cI did it as an act of non-verbal communication to protest police violence because Black Lives Matter.\u201d We know the First Amendment protects citizens\u2019 right [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[327],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-activism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59629"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59630,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59629\/revisions\/59630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}