Texans Can’t Read The Bill Of Rights Either. Confederate License Plate Case Belongs In Austin Not DC

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Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript –“What is really at issue here is not so much free speech as it is who controls minting the license plates.  It’s a logical fallacy to say that someone deciding not to produce something is an infringement of your right to speak.  No such complaint has been made.  You can say: I’m a proud member of the SCV.  No one is telling you that you cannot.  You can put a bumper sticker on your car that says: I am a proud member of the Texas SCV.  The state is deciding not to publish something.  We have our logic all backwards again.  I may be a proponent of them publishing this particular license plate.  I may be in favor of it.  That does not then follow that the state has to comply, or that the state has to do what I want it to do.” Check out today’s transcript AND Clip of The Day for the rest….

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Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  “Battle flag at center of Supreme Court free speech case”:

[reading]

Texas commemorates the Confederacy in many ways, from an annual celebration of Confederate Heroes Day each January to monuments on the grounds of the state Capitol in Austin. Among the memorials is one that has stood for more than a century, bearing an image of the Confederate battle flag etched in marble.

But you’re out of luck if you want to put that flag on your license plate. Texas says that would be offensive.

Now the Supreme Court will decide whether the state can refuse to issue a license plate featuring the battle flag without violating the free-speech rights of Texans who want one. The justices hear arguments Monday in a challenge brought by the Texas division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

[end reading]

Mike:  I just want to tell you Confederate veterans before we get into this – SCV, Sons of Confederate Veterans is a national group, the Texas SCV – understand something before I discuss your case.  I’m not opposed to your case.  What I am opposed to and what I am revolted by is this has become a First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution issue.  It’s not.  It isn’t.  It’s covered under the Texas Constitution.  How many times must we go through this?

[private |FP-Monthly|FP-Yearly|FP-Yearly-WLK|FP-Yearly-So76|Founding Brother|Founding Father|FP-Lifetime] Do you not see the irony of this?  The Southern states secede, Texas being one of them.  Before the Incorporation Doctrine was invented out of whole cloth, thanks to the Fourteenth Amendment and a bunch of eggheads who probably didn’t take philosophia perennis, and anointed that the Bill of Rights, as it’s called, is applicable to the states.  It is not and it should not be.

The irony cannot be lost on you, though, that you’re applying to the Supreme Court for a case that is ultimately all about the State of Texas.  It is Texas not Congress – the First Amendment cannot be any more clear.  Congress shall make no law.  It doesn’t say Texas will not.  Yet here we are again.  Here we are again with another perversion of the ratified intent of the Bill of Rights.  I have news for you.  [mocking] “What if this one is decided on behalf of the Sons of Confederate Veterans?  Won’t you be happy for that?”  I will be pleased that they chose to fight.  I will not be pleased that a decision further perverted the Constitution and made our national tyranny that much more national.  Texas has a bill of rights.  I have it here in front of me.

[reading]

Freedom of Speech and Press; Libel. Every person shall be at liberty to speak, write or publish his opinions on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that privilege; and no law shall ever be passed curtailing the liberty of speech or of the press. In prosecutions for the publication of papers, investigating the conduct of officers, or men in public capacity, or when the matter published is proper for public information, the truth thereof may be given in evidence. And in all indictments for libels, the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts, under the direction of the court, as in other cases.

[end reading]

Mike:  Article I, Section 8, if you’re going to sue for speech rights in Texas, Article I, Section 8 is what protects your liberty to speak and print and object to the government.  “Every person shall be at liberty to speak, write or publish his opinions on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that privilege; and no law shall ever be passed curtailing the liberty of speech or of the press.”  That’s pretty clear.  However clear that is, that does not then require the state to issue a license plate in any denomination.  What is really at issue here is not so much free speech as it is who controls minting the license plates.  It’s a logical fallacy to say that someone deciding not to produce something is an infringement of your right to speak.  No such complaint has been made.  You can say: I’m a proud member of the SCV.  No one is telling you that you cannot.  You can put a bumper sticker on your car that says: I am a proud member of the Texas SCV.  The state is deciding not to publish something.  We have our logic all backwards again.  I may be a proponent of them publishing this particular license plate.  I may be in favor of it.  That does not then follow that the state has to comply, or that the state has to do what I want it to do.

Why the Supreme Court is hearing this is – folks, what are they going to decide?  So if a bunch of Nazis want to come in and say: We want a swastika license plate.  [mocking] “That’s free speech.”  No, it’s not free speech.  This all began in the 1960s, late 1950s with this ridiculous notion that everything that can be expressed is speech, and that the First Amendment has something to say about it.  The First Amendment doesn’t have anything to say about it.  The First Amendment says Congress shall make no law.  That’s the way it was.  You do realize that for over 150 years there were laws against swearing in public – I’m not making this up.  What was that?  Why didn’t anyone bother to question or challenge that in the Supreme Court or using the First Amendment?  Because incorporation hadn’t been invented yet, the perversion that is incorporating the first eight amendments and using them and applying them to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment.

[reading]

The group sued over the state’s decision not to authorize its proposed license plate with its logo bearing the battle flag, similar to plates issued by eight other states that were members of the Confederacy and Maryland.

The First Amendment dispute has brought together some unlikely allies, including the American Civil Liberties Union, anti-abortion groups, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, civil libertarian Nat Hentoff and conservative satirist P.J. O’Rourke. [Mike: They’re all incorrect. This is not a First Amendment issue.]

“In a free society, offensive speech should not just be tolerated, its regular presence should be celebrated as a symbol of democratic health . . .

[end reading]

Mike:  Ladies and gentlemen, error does not have any rights.  You do not have a right to speak publicly things that are erroneous.  If you told people to go walk to the peak of the Mississippi River bridge and jump because you thought it was something that free people ought to do, and ultimately when someone jumps and dies and they try to hold you accountable for it, you are to be held accountable for it.  You think about this in business.  How many times has the FTC, Federal Trade Commission, sued someone because they say they got the advertisement wrong?  [mocking] “Hey, you were advertising that this product did this and it doesn’t do that.  You can’t mislead people.”  The idea that all speech is good speech and we’ve got to have it all and we ought to celebrate it is – again, what is wrong with this society?

Let me ask you a question.  Does your neighbor have the right to drop 13 F-bombs in a row in front of your child, five years old?  Do they?  Your neighbor is in error.  Does your neighbor have the right to proselytize about your five-year-old becoming a Muslim, joining a jihad and going to heaven early, foregoing all the rest of school?  Error does not have a privilege.  That’s why it’s error.  The fact that people that have fancy names and are moderately famous are behind this, again, shows the imbecility of our age.  This isn’t even hard to figure out this one.  There it is in front of the Supreme Court.

I have a letter here from Michael Givens, the commander in chief emeritus, meaning he’s retired, of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.  I understand that he’s upset and he’s offended.  The issue here is not the confederacy.  Some of you may think that it is but it’s not.

[reading]

I’m offended.  In 2011, unelected Texas Department of Motor Vehicles board members succumbed to my pressure and shoot down a Confederate battle flag, especially [unintelligible] for my compatriots in Texas, and now three years later this denial is before the highest court in the land. I’m offended because on Monday lawyers for the State of Texas will argue to the Supreme Court that Americans deserve less liberty.

[end reading]

Mike:  No, that’s not what they’re going to argue, Michael, that’s not.  This is just amazing to me.  So you want a government stamp on something, I guess ostensibly to make it legitimate.  Your organization is legitimate not because the State of Texas has conferred legitimacy upon it.  It is legitimate because it is a worthy cause, preserving the earned heritage of Confederate veterans.  You don’t need Texas to stamp it.  You don’t need Louisiana to stamp it.  It has nothing to do with whether or not people can express their support for the Sons of Confederate Veterans.  I realize that I’m talking to a wall here, and thank Heavens the Three Stooges cutout is right across from me.  Somebody has to do this.  He concludes: [/private]

[reading]

I’m offended that the State of Texas is willing to endorse and sign off on the myriad inaccuracies and defamation thrown at the iconic Confederate battle flag.

[end reading]

Mike:  Again, that’s a separate debate as to whether or not they have to make a battle flag license plate.  What does the Texas Constitution say about that?  It says you can express.  It doesn’t say the state has to.  It doesn’t say that.  It’s just amazing to me the things we want government to do and the logical fallacy that is – for example, [mocking] “We want this to get out so we can get it out in the media.”  You hate the media.  Why do you want people that you dislike to embrace your subject matter?  [mocking] “Well, if we could just get the lib media to tell the truth about something.”  In most instances in my experience, most people don’t know what the truth is.  Why does the truth need media blessing.  It’s either true or it’s not.  This is what is called a prepositional statement.  A prepositional statement has as its component – there are two answers to any prepositional statement: true or false.  Has the State of Texas or the Department of Motor Vehicles stopped anyone from uttering the words Texas Sons of Confederate Veterans?  No.  Have they caused anyone to not be able to put, of their own volition, their own expression, a Confederate flag sticker on their automobile or pickup truck?  No.  Then they haven’t censored anyone’s speech.  You want to talk about tilting at windmills and quixotic quests, this is one of them.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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