Do you consider the video that spawned all this hubbub the equivalent as "yelling fire in a theater"? I don't. Not even close, in fact there is nothing similar between the two.
I believe Obama very eloquently explained Free Speech and I don't think in anyway he said he would come out in favor of censoring Free Speech at all. I do not know where some of you are drawing that conclusion. That video was idiotic and also happened to be offensive to some, oh well.
of course it is equivalent.
So, I assume you are living in the world the rest of us are living in, right? You have access to the same news streams, the same reality....you don't exist in a separate dimension, right (like spidey, Craig, pilotguy, etc)?
Anyone knows what will happen when someone yells "fire" in a theater. If it is intended to get people out, because there truly is danger, it will..."work" (but not very well, of course.) If someone yells it with the intent of creating the same type of chaos, but only with ill intent, the same will happen. Some people will likely die in a stampede, and as such, this speech is not entirely protected.
[--WARNING TO THE SLOW: Before you proceed with the next paragraph, it is important to realize that I make no judgement on the rightness/or wrongness of the known situation it describes. That judgement comes later in my post. One must RESIST the desire for strawman, and taking a comment out of context, and proceed---]
So...most of us are aware of what kind of world we live in. We
know that when somebody draws a cartoon of Muhammed, or creates an art piece, or writes accurate interpretation of the personal history of prophet (whether or not it is inaccurately seen as blasphemous), or creates some ridiculous video, we have now 3 decades of history that tells us what will happen. Idiots will react violently. You are creating a fire in the theater situation.
NOW--does that make it right that people react in such ways when they perceive such things as blasphemous, giving them the right to kill in response? Most of us would say no1 of course not! Does it mean that we should actively censor people that want to create such inflammatory content? No! of course not! But to ignore the very clear reality that such actions will indeed incite these reactions is extremely naive, or willfully obtuse. That is, simply, the world that we live in. (It's like banning guns in the US--sorry, what's going to happen to the 500 million guns that are out there? They aren't going to disappear...)
Either side of what we think of is "right," can never ignore the reality of the world we live in. This is exactly what Obama is saying--this is exactly why we have protected speech, for all speech. He
never calls for this video, or future similar videos to be banned.
Never.
He states, quite clearly, that this is the world we live in. You have a very small minority of extremist fuckwads that simply act as the fuse to the tinderbox of other like-minded idiots that are prancing around waiting to fan the flames.
The only way to eliminate either of these groups is accept tolerance, because right now, they aren't going anywhere, and there is no "ban," of any type, that will ever satisfy any of them. Therefore, there is only one other option: more speech, more information, more freedom...more tolerance of tolerance, zero tolerance of intolerance.
that's it. It's a simple, effective argument for a preposterously complicated world. The cynic in me believe it will never work in this world, and maybe not...but we can hope, can't we?
It's still better than the "turn them all into glass" argument you hear from one camp.