Speech vs Action

I am of the opinion that the Supreme Court screwed up when it invented "symbolic speech".  Words, whether spoken or written or otherwise published, are very different from action.  We have free speech, we have free press (to publish our words), and we have the right to peaceably assemble.

That's how it was the first 230+ years of our Republic.  That this needs to be said shows have far we've fallen in the past decade or so:

You have the right to be angry. You do not have the right to attack people, no matter how angry you are.

Trump made a vague statement about this madness. It’s not enough. He needs to call out both the alt-right morons and the Antifa dummies by name. And if he refuses to, he deserves the criticism he’s getting for it.

Political violence is wrong. It doesn’t matter how you justify it to yourself. It doesn’t matter how many memes you post of cartoon characters punching Hitler. If you take the law into your own hands to silence people, no matter how repulsive you find the things they’re saying, then you’re no better than they are.

Not quite sure what I'm talking about? We can start with the woman in this video I posted yesterday.  We can continue through Antifa (anti-first amendment) and BLM and anarchists and assorted other leftists.  We can continue with the 20-yr-old who drove a car into protesters a couple days ago (BTW, Virginia has the death penalty--do you lefties like it now?  I do.).

We need to get back to the values we held that allowed this country to become a beacon of freedom in the world.  If we lose those values, if we commit violence against each other just because we disagree, we'll be no better than many of the crapholes from which immigrants saw our beacon.  And our beacon will burn out.

Update:  what I wrote above is exactly why this is entirely the wrong way to go:

Professors attending a recent academic conference were advised to treat racial microaggressions in the classroom like actual assaults, according to attendees’ tweets...

“Treating racism in our classrooms as we would an assault removes the burden from the victim and begins to create safe space,” one scholar in attendance, Professor Shawna Mefferd Kelty of SUNY Plattsburgh, tweeted out.

Another attendee, Penn State Professor Jeanmarie Higgins, also tweeted: “Faculty: Treat racist microaggressions in classroom as you wd assault. Overtalking puts burden on students of color. -K Papailler.”