America now needs to defend Jones' right to free speech [View All]

[Bragi]

Last year when Jones' fondness of Quran-burning first surfaced, Muslim leaders demanded that the President intervene to stop Jones, and top figures in the administration responded by properly condemning his actions, and called on him to back off, which resulted in Jones backing off.

Fine. What no-one in the administration said at the time, however, (and I mean no-one) was this: Because of the First Amendment, Americans have a right to burn any holy book they choose to burn, even if it offends other people, and the government cannot, and will not, try to stop people who choose to exercise their right to offend from doing so.

My concern at the time (and I wrote about it here) was that by not making it clear that Jones had a legal right to be an offensive asshole, many people outside the US would conclude that somehow the US government actually did have the power to intervene to stop Jones from burning the Quran, and that the administration actually did stop Jones from doing what he said he would do. It sure looked that way from the outside.

So now we come to the present. Jones stood by as a Quran was burned following his mock "trial" in March. And, as is right, no-one stopped him.

Now however, people like Hamid Karzai are demanding that Jones be "brought to justice." But we all know that can't and won't and shouldn't happen, because Jones was exercising his right to free speech, he did not break any US laws, and there is no punitive justice a government could invoke, even if they wanted to.

The Karzai's of the world will now claim otherwise, and will now point to the fact that last September Jones was "stopped" from burning the Quran as proof the government could have stopped him this time, and that he was actually "allowed" to offend Islam, which is then proven by the fact that no-one will even punish him for his blasphemy.

All of which makes me lament the fact that no-one defended the right to fee speech last September. I hope that US leaders are now prepared to explain to the world what the First Amendment means, why it matters, and why it means that nothing can be done to anyone who chooses to engage in legal, offensive free speech.

(edited for grammar)