No Going Back!
Craig T. Nelson, Free Speech, and Stupid, Stupid, Stupid
I've been on food stamps and welfare. Did anybody help me out? No! Craig T. Nelson
Here indisputable proof that you can be a moderately successful actor, a celebrity worthy of a spot on a day-time Game Show, and you can still be stupid.
First, being on a show hosted by Glenn Beck lowers your IQ by 37 points. Apparently, Nelson doesn’t have enough brains to realize he contradicted himself in a three short sentences, one of which is a one word sentence. In 13 words Craig T Nelson reveals that he has no understanding of, well, hardly anything. Nelson is saying that he takes care of himself, he gets no help, no handouts, and everyone else should be as responsible as he has been. But welfare and food stamps is not manna falling from the sky. Welfare is help from the Government. Food Stamps is a Government handout. The depth of Mr. Nelson's shallowness is off putting.
The quote Mr. Nelson has excreted came during a discussion between himself and Glenn Beck, where the two were talking about the idea of some sort of tax strike. Nelson was boasting that he was so steamed about the abuse of tax dollars that he was seriously considering not paying taxes anymore.
Nelson needs to read a newspaper, or a blog, or watch a little television news, because what he is considering was done by Wesley Snipes and, well, it didn’t work out all that well for Mr. Snipes.
Is Nelson really going to announce on cable TV that he is not paying taxes, and dare the
The answer, of course, is NO. No, Craig T Nelson is NOT actually going to break the law and go to jail. What Mr. Nelson is actually doing is attempting to inspire dumber, more easily influenced, hot heads to do what he claims he is willing to do. Nelson is attempting to get a tax rebellion movement started without actually leading the pack himself. Craig T Nelson doesn't want to go to jail, but he would be thrilled if you were willing to a jail for refusing to pay your taxes.
I actually liked the sit-com Coach, and his one movie hit, Poltergeist, so I was surprised to discover that the Coach was a Glenn Beck styled conservative, meaning a whack-o, libertarian leaning conservative.
If this week has taught us anything, it is that freedom of speech allows anyone with a TV camera and a microphone, or a keyboard and a blog to say any damn thing they want. Ultra conservative, Christian fundamentalist pundits have used their freedom of speech to publish the pictures, names, and home addresses of doctors they brand as baby killers, mass murderers that deserve to be killed. When one of their listeners hears their incendiary free speech and jot down the information, and then go out and actually kill the doctor, in his church, in the sanctuary, the people who provided the blue prints for murder say, "Gees, it wasn't me, but don't forget the guy was a baby killer." There are no consequences to the people who stirred up the crazies, and provided them with the information to carry out their godly assassination.
In high school I remember a rigorous discussion in class about Freedom of Speech, and a reference to a 1919 Supreme Court case Schenck vs the
The actual quote from Justice Holmes goes like this:
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. ... The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.
Saying crazy stuff encourages crazy people crazy to do crazy stuff: like not paying taxes and killing doctors inside a church sanctuary.
Often we are tested by events. We believe in protection from unreasonable search and seizure, until a nine-eleven event and suddenly we are willing to deny those rights to people who look like Arabs, and we have no problem with the government listening in on phone calls between our soldiers in
I am afraid of the right to life whackos because if you don’t think they way they think they think it is perfectly reasonable to kill you. I am pro-choice, so I am uneasy about all these right to life killers that roam freely among us all. But do I (do we) really believe in the basic rights delineated in our Constitution? Are we willing to allow stupid speech, or reckless free speech, or incendiary manipulative free speech, in order to protect freedom of speech?
My conclusion, at this moment, is “yes.” Yes, we must put up with freedom of the gnat minded whackos even when it leads to acts of atrocity. We must allow all speech, but we must NOT sit back and do NOTHING about this irresponsible, offensive speech. We must not ignore lies or inflammatory, inciting, rabble rousing, provocative statements. We must do something, but that something is NOT to attempt to legally silence dangerous speech. What lovers of freedom must do is fight fire with fire, and free crazy speech with free logical speech. We must use responsible free speech to counter irresponsible free speech.
If you question someone’s logic, and disagree with their conclusions, you don’t hand cuff them and stick a sock in their mouth, you point out the gaps in their logic and the ludicrousness of their conclusions, and you do so as publicly as possible.
Nelson is poking tax haters with a stick and saying, “Stop paying taxes. I was on welfare and food stamps and no one helped me, so that should be proof enough that you should stop paying taxes.”
As that great intellect Forrest Gump has said:
Stupid is as stupid does.
Article submitted Sunday, June 07, 2009 & read 3244 times.
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