What's Good For The Anti-Free-Speech Goose...

From the Daily Beast:

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday for McCullen v. Coakley, a case in which anti-abortion activists argue that their First Amendment rights have been violated by a 2007 Massachusetts law that bars any person from entering or staying in fixed 35-foot-buffer zones around entrances to abortion clinics...

Mark Rienzi, who argued the case against the buffer zones, told the Court that the zone is, “a place where the government claims it can essentially turn off the First Amendment” for some people but not others. Justice Scalia described it as a “dead speech zone.”

What is perhaps most disturbing is that the Massachusetts law was created by people who call themselves liberal.  It is also being defended by an assortment of liberals from the ACLU to Planned Parenthood. Which raises an obvious question:  Is it now liberal to oppose free speech...

The state has argued that this law is necessary to prevent obstruction and congestion going into the abortion clinics.  But obstructing an entrance is already a crime. Abortion rights supporters have also argued that women need to be protected from violent acts of anti-abortion rights protestors.  But violent acts are already illegal and anyway, it’s hard to imagine that a painted line around an entrance is actually going to stop a violent maniac.  What about someone screaming in the face of a woman entering the clinic, causing her to feel fear?  That’s already illegal under anti-harassment statutes...

Now, if you are an abortion-rights supporter you may still be thinking, “I don’t want anti-abortion advocates bothering women going into abortion clinics, so I’m okay with this.”  That’s an understandable sentiment. But even if this law was constitutional—and it isn’t—one has to consider the implications of accepting the government exercising such a broad power that infringes on constitutionally protected free speech...

If the Supreme Court were to uphold the Massachusetts law, it’s not hard to imagine businesses lobbying to create zones where union members are not allowed to speak, but workers for the business are. Businesses could use the same logic used in McCullen:  the picketers are disrupting business and upsetting customers. So, government, please silence them—even though they are standing on a public sidewalk...

What goes around, comes around. Which is why it’s always best to stick to first principles and avoid “ends justifies the means” reasoning.  The first principle here is that the government does not have the right to control the content of speech, no matter how uncomfortable that speech may make certain people. Abandon that principle and your free speech may be next.

Nobody likes having their arguments or actions turned against them, which is exactly why the goose/gander warning is so effective.