Dissident Racism Part 1: In a Crowded Theater
by Pastor Mark Downey
June 27, 2015
Scripture Reading: I Cor. 2:12-13
Fire! fire!! fire!!! I thought I would start out on a sarcastic note. Do you know where your right to free speech or free expression comes from? Can you imagine living in a society where your every thought and spoken word must be checked and filtered before it comes out of your mouth and somebody hears what's on your mind? Somebody might respond by saying, “In America you can say anything you want, except you can't shout fire in a crowded theater.” Or perhaps even in a church that isn't crowded. This was never the intent of our founding fathers and was affected by Oliver Wendell Holmes in a 1919 decision to uphold the sentencing of a prominent socialist for the crime of distributing anti-draft pamphlets against WWI; the defendant was a yiddish speaking jew (Charles T. Shenck). However, Holmes actually said “falsely shouting fire,” which emphasized that speech which is false and dangerous is not protected, in contradistinction to speech which was truthful and dangerous. The word “falsely” was dropped and the meme, in essence, the "shouting fire in a crowded theater" ruling, severely mitigated the scope of the 1st amendment right to free speech. The "shouting" was having a dissenting opinion, and the "crowded theater" was America. Holmes began to doubt his earlier decision and had a change of heart in the Abrams v. United States case, the defendant, Jacob Abrams, was a jewish anarchist, who was deported for opposing any American intervention in the Bolshevik Revolution. If this wasn't Marxist dialectics, then these two jews must have been comedians and the joke is on free speech or the progressive limitations on future White Christian rhetoric, in terms of Orwellian newspeak, which would be punishable by law. What sayeth Scripture?