Geller says she wants to hold a great many of these events. Good for her. I know guys that’ll sit in a tree stand all day and the one deer they encounter runs by their tree, one time, and they miss. Now, if that deer was stupid enough to run back and forth in front of that tree stand a couple dozen times, well…
The GZSyndrome for the masses
GeorgeZimmermanSyndrome…hoping a perp scares them into shooting them (the perps).
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Not an apt comparison but since you mention abortion this is much like O’Reilly did in vilifying Dr. Tiller. He went on and on about the man and someone actually went and killed him. The killer was wrong and deserved punishment. However, O’Reilly incited the action.
Like Geller did in this case.
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Of course she does. The more aggravated she makes the Muslim population, the greater the likely hood of either, having another shootout (bonus) or a peaceful demonstration.
A peaceful demonstration will then be categorized as an assault on free speech, rather than as a group of people saying “would you please stop being a dick to us, you know that we find that offensive?”
Asking someone to stop saying “the holocaust didn’t happen” isn’t about curbing free speech, it’s about good manners and being socially aware.
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Two qualities many think should be proudly, loudly and emphatically disavowed as necessary for U.S. citizens to possess. Because freedom.
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Oh Lord, the truth you speak… 
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Absolutely 100% completely and utterly different. So much so that I can’t believe you would even try to equate the two.
O’Reilly publicly vilified and demonized someone repeatedly until someone actually hunted him down and murdered him.
Geller & Co. held an event, no doubt insulting, that some unhinged nutjobs decided to crash with machine guns. Those nutjobs started shooting and the cops took them out.
How in the hell do you even begin to equate these two things? O’Reilly demonized a specific person and he was executed. Geller had a rally that insulted a religion and some religious wackjobs showed up to murder everyone involved and ended up dead themselves. This isn’t apples and oranges, it’s apples and lawn furniture.
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We were able to stop those men before they were able to penetrate
This made my inner 10-year-old giggle.
Lets see.
Two people saying/doing something (free speech) designed to provoke a (negative) response in nut jobs (regular people can see that they are just being wound up, but whatever). People die when said nut jobs take the bait.
The only real difference I see is that in one the nut jobs were successful, the other, not so much.
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Who gets to decide what speech is designed to “provoke a negative response in nutjobs”? Theoretically a nutjob could say that ANYTHING provokes a violent response. I mean, they are NUTJOBS. Some right-wing nutjobs claim that voting for a black man for president deserved a violent response. Should we listen to them?
Where is the line? What level of speech do we suppress all in the name of trying to appease violent nutjobs?
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O’Reilly repeatedly publicly vilified Dr. Tiller, over and over with hate speech against him. Someone got fired up enough to kill
Geller vilifies a group of people publicly, over and over with her hate speech against them - even going so far as to hold an event in an attempt to ridicule. Someone got fired up enough to try to kill. In this case, authorities were ready for something happening
Inciteful talk.
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Bingo. You beat me to it. Thanks.
You are wrong. Sorry.
“Incitement to violence” as covered by the First Amendment does NOT include speech that happens to upset other people so much that they can’t control themselves and therefore resort to violence. That isn’t how it works. Otherwise anyone could just go off half-cocked at anything that anyone says and ALL speech would then lose its first amendment protection.
“Incitement to violence” only applies to you specifically threatening violence against others. So unless Geller’s group was specifically threatening violence against someone last night their speech was 100% protected by the first amendment, no matter how much you don’t like it.
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You seem to think that I have a problem with the speech aspect and that they should be stopped. I don’t. I think that a responsible human being doesn’t go out of their way to provoke someone and then cry foul when they get their ass kicked.
Is saying anything you want to protected? Yes (mostly), go for it, if you want to.
Is the ass kicking OK? No, no it isn’t, not at all.
Was saying something with the intent of getting someone to kick your ass a dick move? Yes, yes it was. Not illegal, but a dick move.
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That’s pretty far fetched. I understand that you feel very deeply about this and see that you are becoming more entrenched with each of your responses.
However the two events have more congruence than you’re willing to accept. If only Dr. Tiller had the protection that Geller’s group did then his murder might have been avoided.
Both incidents involve freedom of speech used deplorably. The only difference is that in one a person was overtly demonized and died while O’Reilly lived… In the other a religious icon was overtly demonized and two self anointed avengers died while Geller and her brood lived.
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Huh? What are you talking about?
No one is questioning whether Geller had the right to hold an event or free speech or whether I agree with the event or anything. What I was talking about is I view her actions as inciteful. And they most certainly are. You can definitely incite people to act irresponsibly by holding public venues meant to get a reaction - and that she did. She succeeded in getting a couple men to leave their homes and attempt to shoot up the venue. They were wrong to do so - but that does not make her actions less inciteful.
You’re wrong. Sorry.
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JamieH has it entrenched in her/his mind that we think that Geller should not be allowed to have her contests. I’m not sure how that happened, but we’re not getting through.
@JamieH Do you think that we are saying that Geller should not be allowed to hold her contests?
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The point was that steviedee111 was trotting out a stupid attempt by comparing apples to ball bearings that jumping into someone else’s event and then screaming something that is offensive means you deserve to get your ass pummeled… to the events in question (two loons grabbing their guns to go try and kill a bunch of bigoted freaks who offended their sky pixie worship). And JamieH’s response to it was spot on.
Don’t be so sure that you are allowed to offend people with the intent of provoking violence. The Fighting Words doctrine has been limited to individuals and is disfavored but it does exist:
"The fighting words doctrine, in United States constitutional law, is a limitation to freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
In 1942, the U.S. Supreme Court established the doctrine by a 9–0 decision in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire. It held that “insulting or ‘fighting words,’ those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace” are among the “well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech the prevention and punishment of [which] … have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem.” "
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Yes, exactly because of freedom. Just like Jerry Falwell has no right to not be offended, just like Jewish people in skokie have no right to not be offended, guess what… the mulish loons have no right to “not be offended”.
This is basic shit.