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Free Speech: Wrong Place and Time?
4:48 p.m. & 2003-12-22

Free Speech: Wrong Place and Time?

Ooooh, this frosts my cookies.

The Progressive's Dec. 3 McCarthyism Watch report makes it plain: Only pro-war, pro-White House vets merit honor on Veteran's Day.

Last month, about 30 former soldiers who stood in opposition to the Bush Administration's invasion and occupation of Iraq were barred from participating in Tallahassee, FL's Veterans Day parade, even though they reportedly had a permit allowing them to march.

"Members of Veterans for Peace and Vietnam Veterans Against the War were yanked off a downtown Tallahassee street, directly in front of the Old Capitol, while marching in the holiday parade they had legitimately registered in," wrote J. Taylor Rushing of the Florida Times-Union.

Others were allowed to keep marching, including the usual high school marching bands and--get this--"even a group of young women from the local Hooters restaurant," Rushing reported.

The anti-war vets were passing out leaflets and holding banners that said, "Honor the Warrior, Not the War," and "Support the Troops, Bring Them Home."

"It's disrespectful, that's what it is, and I just can't stomach or tolerate or conceive of it," Charles LeCroy of the local American Legion Post told the paper.

Parade chairman Ken Conroy said, "They can have their free speech, just not in the parade. They belong on the sidewalk."

And that's exactly the position that the Florida Times-Union took.

Its November 14 editorial, "Free Speech: Wrong time and place," said, "The parade sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars was intended solely to honor those who had served their country. It was not a forum on political issues. Yet, a few marchers tried to use it to publicize their opposition to the liberation of Iraq. . . . Let protesters protest on their own time, with their own parade."

Is there ever a wrong time and place for freedom of expression? Sure, there are situations such as the obligatory "shouting 'fire' in a crowded movie theater" scenario, where public safety trumps exercising the First Amendment. But in most cases, free speech is supposed to be paramount. And one would think that in a parade celebrating American freedoms -- the defense of which, hawks continually insist, is the reason Death Brigade members fight wars -- the exercise of those freedoms, especially by those who "served their country" would be allowed and even honored. Not this time.

Ah, American hypocrisy and mandated conformity in action. Makes expatriation sound good, doesn't

http://fando.blogs.com/fando/war/

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