Nineveh said:
Why should Mr Enyart need to "be very careful", he doesn't advocate the unlawful killing of homos to even be "charged with complicity to commit murder". :doh: It's pretty clear what impurex is implying, which is a lie against his neighbor.
As has been explained several times, now, responsibility doesn't rest on Enyart's (or anyone else's) statements, alone. It rests on how his statements are interpreted by the person who actually commits the crime. If the person who commits the crime believes that he has done so at the behest of his "moral leader" Bob Enyart, then the court will look into Enyart's statements to see if there is any reasonable culpability, there. It's possible that Enyart could be held liable even though he did not specifically intend that one of his followers commit a crime. It's just as I can be held liable for killing someone by driving irresponsibly even though I did not directly intend to kill anyone when I was driving irresponsibly.
I don't know what Bob Enyart advocates, exactly, because I'm not foolish enough to listen to him. And I was not making any statements about what Enyart advocates or does not advocate because I DON'T KNOW, and I don't care. I was only using Enyart as an example of how it is possible that a person in the United States
could be held liable for what they say even though we do have "freedom of speech" guaranteed to us by the Constitution (this was, after all, the subject being discussed on the thread that spawned this one).
But as always, people see what they want to see, and hear what they want to hear, and understand what they want to understand regardless of what's right in front of them. If you don't believe me, simply go back and actually READ the posts. Whatever
implications you're seeing there are being put there by your own mind. They are not there by my words. I am obviously not a Bob Enyart fan. But Fan or not, I'm not accusing him of advocating murder. In fact, I'm not accusing him of anything at all, except of exercising his right to free speech.
I could have made the same point using a racist cult leader here in Illinois that was convicted of exactly that sort of thing, but I figured no one here on TOL would know about him and I couldn't remember his name, anyway. But most people here do know of Bob Enyart, so I used him as my example instead. But I didn't call him a cult leader and I didn't claim that he was in fact advocating killing homosexuals. As I understand it he DOES TALK ABOUT killing homosexuals on his show, however, and I was pointing out that this is the sort of "free speech" that
if he is not careful could conceivably cause him to be held liable should some nut case ever act on it.
The point of my post was that a person can be held liable for the consequences of what they say, even though we are guaranteed the right to say it.
I hope this clears up this nonsense once and for all.