Larry Pratt v Piers Morgan (Round 2)
- Thread starter charlesmartel
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Shapiro is smart and fierce, but is not an advocate of freedom (as Moxie demonstrated). I agree with him on select issues in the same way I would agree with a rapist who opposes murder or a cop who opposes criminalizing drug use (note I did not say legalizing drugs, which, as you know, implies something entirely different).
For what it's worth, I thought Shapiro could have been much more effective. Rather than "punching twice as hard" and delivering a litany of facts and historical detail, he should have laid into Morgan with pointed questions that exposed his hypocrisy and inconsistency.
Like most intellectual fleas, Morgan is not trained to handle such an assault. He would try to duck and weave out of it, and perhaps even cut to a commercial to blunt the assailant's momentum, but a Tysonesque debater could have kept pounding away, demanding a response.
I don't get it. He's wrong now? Dumb now?
I'm sure Shapiro can back up formidably whatever it is that has you and Ice so sad.
It's s.o.p. to attack the messenger when attacking his message is near impossible.
Shapiro's track record is irrelevant. On this issue, he was right. He could be a piece of shit in every other aspect of his life but it doesn't make him any less right on this issue.
President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and allowed governmental officials to arrest Rep. Clement Vallandigham after Vallandigham called the Civil War "cruel" and "wicked," shut down hundreds of opposition newspapers, and had members of the Maryland legislature placed in prison to prevent Maryland's secession. The Union won the Civil War.
Under the Espionage Act of 1917, opponents of World War I were routinely prosecuted, and the Supreme Court routinely upheld their convictions. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes rightly wrote, "When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right." The Allies won World War I.
During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the internment of hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans, as well as allowing the prosecution and/or deportation of those who opposed the war. The Allies won World War II.
During the Vietnam War, the Supreme Court repeatedly upheld the free speech rights of war opponents, whether those opponents distributed leaflets depicting the rape of the Statue of Liberty or wore jackets emblazoned with the slogan "F--- the Draft." America lost the Vietnam War.
This is not to argue that every measure taken by the government to prosecute opponents of American wars is just or right or Constitutional. Some restrictions, however, are just and right and Constitutional -- and necessary. No war can be won when members of a disloyal opposition are given free reign to undermine it.
Lincoln was wrong.
Justice Holmes was wrong.
FDR was wrong.
Any time the government infringes on the rights of its citizens it is wrong. If you make exceptions in time of war, then we'll be in perpetual war if that's what it takes for them to perpetually infringe on our rights. See the War on Drugs or the War on Terror for examples.
People are always going to have different viewpoints, but as Ben hypocritically says in the video, "All I'm asking is for you to be philosophically consistent."
If you don't want others trying to decide if you can have guns, then you shouldn't be trying to decide who can have butt sex.