[TrispusAttucks]

Suppression of liberty and free speech is against the founding ethos of America. Should we abandon that ethos, we have abandoned the very idea of America.

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"Better to die on your feet than live on your knees."

~ Emiliano Zapata

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"Live Free or Die"

~ U.S. state of New Hampshire

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"Give me liberty or give me death!"

~ Patrick Henry

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“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

~ Benjamin Franklin

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"True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else."

~ Clarence Darrow

[pessimizer]

"The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic..."

~ Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. writing for a unanimous Supreme Court about why antiwar pamphleteers should be jailed.

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"We think ... that [black people] are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time [of America's founding] considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them."

~ Chief justice Roger Taney, for the Supreme Court majority in Dred Scott vs. Sandford

[droffel]

> "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic..."

The decision for the first quote you used was overturned afterward, over 50 years ago now. It's misrepresentative of the current state of the law and you shouldn't use it as an example.

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...

[tomrod]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion

[TrispusAttucks]

"The whiskey tax was repealed in the early 1800s during the Jefferson administration. Historian Carol Berkin argues that the episode, in the long run, strengthened US nationalism because the people appreciated how well Washington handled the rebels without resorting to tyranny."

Let's hope the government maintains it's historical position of not resorting to tyranny and the country grows stronger as a result.

[throwawayboise]

Urm... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army

The Bonus Army was a group of 43,000 demonstrators – made up of 17,000 veterans of the United States in World War I, together with their families and affiliated groups – who gathered in Washington, D.C. in mid-1932 to demand early cash redemption of their service bonus certificates.

On July 28, 1932, U.S. Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered the veterans removed from all government property. Washington police met with resistance, shot at the protestors, and 2 veterans were wounded and later died. President Herbert Hoover then ordered the U.S. Army to clear the marchers' campsite. Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur commanded a contingent of infantry and cavalry, supported by six tanks. The Bonus Army marchers with their wives and children were driven out, and their shelters and belongings burned.

[JohnWhigham]

Fighting for liberty and freedom is an idea so divorced from contemporary society that the age of the founding fathers might as well be mythology.

We already have a sizeable portion of the population that wants people that don't agree with them to be silenced. And as long as they can all still buy their cattle feed at Wal-Mart, nothing is going to change for the better.