Lawyers Should be Indicted (Re: [lbo-talk] Doug Henwood profile

[andie nachgeborenen]

So, Nathan, a Communist lawyer could not defend
Communists who were accused of conspiring to advocate
the overthrow of the US govt by force and violence?
That was the charge in US v. Debs, for the legallly
uninitiated; the S.Ct affirmed the convictions, and
the case has never been overruled. Under the Patriot
Act, prosecutions like that are not merely possible
but actual, as with that professor from the Univ of S.
Fla. And of course you don't need USAPA, as the
Stewart case goes. 

Nathan, remember what liberalism is supposed to be
about: among the first and foremost things it stands
for is, defending the right to speech that you hate. 

You are sounding genuinely Sidney Hook like here:
recall that he defended firing Communist professors on
the grounds that expressing support for their
revolutionary goals merged into conspiring with the
Communists to further those goals. He wrote a book:
Heresy Yes! Conspiracy No! in which he defended this
proposition. Is that where you are at? He always
called himself a socialist, but ended up supporting
Nixon and Reagan. I think liberals who abandon free
speech (and in some cases, I don't say yours, due
process) are risking being as liberal as the later
Hook was a socialist.

jks


> nathan wrote
> But when a lawyer expresses support for the exact
> criminal activity 
> they are defending, folks rightly question whether
> the lawyer doesn't 
> merge into being a co-conspirator.  On the fringe
> right, David Hale 
> among the neo-Nazis was denied a law license on that
> basis.
> 

	

		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/