> CB; How is it not supporting them ? It helps them forward their aims.
Whether or not it actually does, there is an important difference between "I support them" and "something I do has the latent effect of supporting them". Otherwise you would have a completely contradictory situation in which every group whose views I *don't* think should be censored, I thereby support. I would have to support the pro- and anti-choice movements at the same time, which is neither possible nor accurate.
> CB: But if you only support speech that you say will be unsuccessful, then
> you really aren't supporting freedom of speech.
Well, I didn't say that I do only support such speech.
> We have no interest in protecting fascist speech if it doesn't succeed
> causing action.
Why not? You keep making these grand statements, as if they were obviously true, when they aren't.
> The law of free speech has a number of exceptions in the U.S. -like shouting
> "fire" , FALSELY, in a crowed theatre. There is no freedom of speech to do
> that. It is an exception. Similarly, we can make an exception to freedom of
> speech to advocate Nazism.
Others have probably addressed this (I don't have the time at the moment to go through all the emails), but the Supremes have long held that the fire-in-a-crowded-theatre analogy applies only to speech which is so inextricably linked with action that the two are, practically speaking, impossible to separate. You aren't allowed to shout "fire" in a crowded theatre because a panic would just about *inevitably* result from it - there would not be time for people to consider the accuracy of such an exclamation. Advocating Nazism, as a general rule, does not have those kind of immediate and unpreventable effects.