[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Growltigga:
Ooh, I think you need to get off your anti-lawyer kick.. lawyers are not overpaid compared to other professionals (eg accountants, actuaries and venture capitalists particularily)...

But it's so FUN to kick lawyers.

You do know that that is all in jest, no? I would not be so simple minded as to think all lawyers everywhere are overpaid and not worthy of respect. Well, they aren't all overpaid anyway...

Puke, it sounds like you have enough problems of your own... the point I want to make here Geo is that I showed your post on our sports behaviour to 2 germans, 1 belgian and 3 english colleagues... it really was better than laughing gas.. to accuse us of jingoism and patriotric fervour in our sports is an absolute classic, do the words "pot", "kettle" and "black" mean anything to you.

Gt, please do try to keep your comments at least a little bit to the point of the discussion. You keep going off on these tangents where noone else has gone and it makes it terribly inconvient to try and keep things moving along. If you didn't have such a prejudice against all things American you would realize that my comments were in no way directed at British, Belgians or Germans. YOU commented that linedancers showed a lack of intelligence by the actions they partook in persuit of their hobby, and i was merely pointing out that soccer fans show many of the same lacks of mental prowess. Not British soccer fans, just soccer fans in general. I could have said the same thing about American Football fans, except for the part about beating the crap out of each other. For that matter, booing is one thing, but how many people got beat up in Salt Lake City for carrying the wrong flag? I didn't hear about it if it happened at all.

The fact that you don't seem to get is that I am not anti-British. I never even brought up any comments about American fredom of speech being better than European Freedom of Speech. You were the one that opened that particular box unfortunatly. In my mind you either have freedom of speech either or you don't have freedom of speech. It's a human condition, it's not about countries.

Freedom of Speech is constitutionalised in the US, rather than legislated as it is in most european countries.

So you think this means you can say what you like about what you like when you like.

Fine, try it. You try and take your soap box to the middle of your town today and preach on something like kiddy porn. You think you will be free to do so?

WRONG. You will be arrested. Try looking at the US public order offences and see what they really say.

You really don't get it do you? We can in fact do that exact thing and will not be arrested. You may have to get a permit or something. The Klu Klux Klan does that very thing several times a year all over the country. And As Baron pointed out,. the perverts at NAMBLA even have their own organisation and everything. It's all protected by law.

Many people think the permits are a tool used by the government to restrict the freedom of speech, and so say they are wrong. That I am sure has happened from time to time, but actually they are there to protect the person wanting to speak those things which are unpopular. It allows the local municipality to prepare for the speech and call in more police protection so the inevitable crowd doesn't turn into a mob and take away the person right to free speech, along with their head.

Where do you get your incorrect ideas about the US? I guess the European press must protray America as some sort of facist police state. I guess if a few shameful incidents get all the TV coverage that is what you would think. I can tell you I live in America, and that's not the way it is.

But even if you don't file a permit and go down town and start preaching on some unpopular topic, you may get arrested, but it WON'T be for the words that you speak Gt. It will be for causing a disturbance. In fact you may not get arrested at all. The cop may simply glare at you and tell you to move along. If you refuse he'll take you away and throw you in jail. The fact is if the cop wasn't there you might get killed, and then he'd have to fill out more paperwork, and cops hate paperwork.

You might spend a night or two and get a fine for public disturbance. But there are no prisons in the US for people that say the wrong things. Hell, there aren't even enough for the real criminals. You will be back on the street in no time.

As a lawyer you must know the difference between constitutionalising something and legalising it. But I'll explain it for the room.

If something is legalised, the government is saying, we have the right to take this away from you if we choose, but we are not going to do that. We will let you do it, for now at least.

Constitutionalising something says, I the government do not have the right to take this right away from you. As long as we are bound by this document I cannot do so. We could as a people ammend the constitution and give the govenrment the right to restrict our freedom of speech if we wanted to, but it would be really stupid to do so.

Geoschmo

[ July 16, 2002, 13:17: Message edited by: geoschmo ]