An Interesting Test in Massachusetts
The Confederate flag should REALLY test the limits in Mass.:
“A Watertown man is criticizing the Town Council for adopting a program that seeks to curb hate crimes, saying he believes it violates his right to free speech.
Ralph Filicchia, 71, said he’s “not a hater” but believes the town’s participation in the Anti-Defamation League of New England’s No Place For Hate program infringes on his freedom to hold opinions that may go against the grain. “People should be free to express things without being charged with hatemongering or hate speech,” said Filicchia, who is retired but does some freelance writing on political issues. “Isn’t the whole idea of free speech to protect offensive speech?”
Filicchia hung a Confederate flag outside his Bellevue Road home last week in protest, saying he would leave it up until a “No Place for Hate” sign in front of Town Hall is removed.
Council President Clyde L. Younger said in an interview he was surprised at Filicchia’s stance, since the No Place For Hate program is well-known and not about censoring speech, but fighting bigotry.
So will they define flying the Stars n Bars as “bigotry”? I suspect that they have not asked themselves how you define bigotry nor have they asked themselves how you “fight” bigotry without fighting expressions of it.
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Posted by JonJayRay on July 8, 2007 10:10 am
» Filed Under ACLU
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5 Responses to “An Interesting Test in Massachusetts”
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Actually, the Confederacy was technically treasonous, since they
took up arms against the legitimate American government of the time.
Therefore, flying the “stars and bars” is, at the very least, showing
support for traitors. Why would any patriotic American want to do
that?
I live in Watertown. Nobody cares what Ralph flies off his porch. If he starts knocking over gravestones, we’ll get interested, but the guy’s old, it’d probably make his back flare up to do anything actually destructive.
Is he flying the horizontally formatted stars and bars (i.e. the national flag of the CSA) or the Confederate Battle Standard or, when flown from a ship, Battle Jack? I ask because the former would be likely less well known in Massachusetts and less likely to arouse intense emotions, whereas probably 98% of Americans would recognize the latter and a large number would have a strong response to it, negative or positive.
For the record, I would assume that the ACLU would come out strongly for this resident’s free expression by means of pen and banner.
So when is hanging the confederate flag outside ones home a so called hate crime? Only in the minds to JESSIE JACKASSON AND THE NAALCP and the other wackos