Programming note: Please join me later today, Friday, for a brand new audio adventure in our series Tales for Our Time.
~If you haven't yet heard our 2020 Tale The Marching Morons, do give it a listen because the morons are stepping up the pace. Thus, Tim Walz, friend of school shooters and grade-school bicyclist of Tiananmen Square, has unilaterally repealed the First Amendment:
VANCE: Kamala Harris wants to use the power of government and big tech to silence people from speaking their minds. That is a threat to democracy that will long outlive this present political moment. I would like Democrats and Republicans to both reject censorship. Let's persuade one another. Let's argue about ideas, and then let's come together afterwards.
WALZ: You can't yell fire in a crowded theater. That's the test. That's the Supreme court test.
Actually, it's not. And, if ever there were a time for those two self-appointed CBS "fact-checkers" to check the facts, that was it. But, of course, they're on the Marching Moron's side. So you can't yell anything that diverges from the Dem-media approved narrative. For example, you can't yell "Where the hell is FEMA?" in an underwater state.
As I wrote over fifteen bloody years ago now:
Here's a good rule of thumb: Anybody who cites the fire-in-a-crowded-theatre line is brain-dead and has given no thought to the matter... Apart from anything else, I'd wager he never goes to the theatre. ("Fancy seeing Les Misérables?" "Good lord, man, are you insane? The place is a powderkeg.")
When I was testifying at the Ontario parliament on Monday, the chair turned to the Liberal member for his questions and, sure enough, the very first one out of the excitable fellow's mouth was:
Mr. David Zimmer: Mr. Steyn, there was a well-known, indeed famous, American jurist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, who made a statement in which he expressed his view of the limit on free speech in a case in the 1930s, and I'm wondering if you agree or disagree with this statement. He said that nobody is free to yell "Fire" in a crowded movie theatre.
Mr. Mark Steyn: It wasn't the 1930s; it was 1919 that Oliver Wendell Holmes made that statement. It's interesting, that case. He was an American-
Mr. David Zimmer: I know, but do you agree with that statement or not?
Mr. Mark Steyn: Let me say this for a start: He was upholding espionage charges against an anti-war protester. So by his measure, thousands of Canadian liberals would have been rounded up for protesting the war in Afghanistan.
Mr. David Zimmer: But don't duck the question.
Mr. Mark Steyn: I'm not ducking the question...
Mr. David Zimmer: No, no, but then answer the statement.
Mr. Mark Steyn: Because Oliver-
The Chair (Mrs. Julia Munro): Excuse me. Could I just have one speaker at a time?
Mr. Mark Steyn: Oliver Wendell Holmes said that the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely - falsely - shouting "Fire" in a theatre. The problem with the Human Rights Tribunal is that falsely shouting "Fire" is not at issue. It doesn't matter whether the theatre actually is on fire, because under the Human Rights Tribunal, truth is not a defence...
Mr. David Zimmer: But back to Holmes's statement, is that a fair limitation on freedom of speech: You can't yell " Fire" in a movie theatre, just as a general proposition?
Mr. Mark Steyn: As I've tried to answer you, I think if the theatre is on fire, you're certainly entitled to point that out. By the way, that, as a metaphor, is simply a ludicrous metaphor. He was talking about gaslight, 19th century theatres. By 1919, the Winter Garden on Broadway... was an electrified theatre, and it wasn't in danger of burning down. The metaphor is lazy and irrelevant.
Yeah, it's literal gas lighting! As I continued way back in 2009:
A careless observer might be forgiven for concluding, from the way so many British socialists and Canadian liberals are dependent on the already obsolescent metaphor of a weirdo eugenicist American cracking down on anti-war protestors in a subsequently reversed court decision, that there really are no good arguments for state censorship.
At the close of the Maclean's/Steyn "flagrant Islamophobia" trial in Vancouver, Julian Porter, QC [NOW KC], said:
Against the argument that you cannot cry fire in a crowded theatre: Oh yes, you can – you must, if in your considered view there is a fire. In that case there is a duty to cry fire.
Not according to Tampon Tim. But, if you want to cry that they're "going to have to go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump" in a crowded theatre, feel free.
The crackpot eugenicist's original line was about the use of state power to enforce the approved narrative. So too is its appalling recapitulation by Walz - but in an America a century later, where half the country appears to have lost the habits of liberty.
American self-government is a sham. There are supposedly 335,893,238 people in the United States. Which one of them is running the executive branch? We have no clue. All that can be said for certain is that it's one of the other 335,893,237 - and not this guy:
Reporter: "What do the states in the storm zone need — after what you saw today?"
Biden: "Oh, storm zone? I didn't know which storm you're talking about"
Holy crappic.twitter.com/qdXRBzcr68
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 4, 2024
In a blizzard of lies - which is what this so-called "republic" has withered away to - the right to question the official version is ever more vital. At least John Kerry acknowledges that the First Amendment is an obstacle to his plans for us and thus has to be done away with; Tim Walz, by contrast, has simply redefined it into meaninglessness. A disturbing advance in ruling-class brazenness.
I'm coming to the conclusion it may be time to burn down the theatre.
~In this eighth year of The Mark Steyn Club, we're very appreciative of all those who signed up in our first flush and are still eager to be here as we cruise on towards our first decade. We thank you all. For more information on the Club, see here.