{"id":78,"date":"2006-07-13T20:36:07","date_gmt":"2006-07-14T01:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/weeklyrob.dreamhosters.com\/?p=78"},"modified":"2006-07-13T20:36:07","modified_gmt":"2006-07-14T01:36:07","slug":"le-pen-isn%e2%80%99t-mightier-than-le-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/?p=78","title":{"rendered":"Le Pen isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Mightier than Le Law"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"line-height: 17px; padding-top: 0pt\" class=\"paragraph Body\"><span>Le Pen (you know, the right-wing nasty over in France) is a horror, of course. But every time someone in France or Germany <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/europe\/5175968.stm\" title=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/europe\/5175968.stm\">goes to trial<\/a><span> because he says something Nazi-ish, it makes me cringe a bit. More than a bit.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none\" class=\"paragraph Body\">I hear from the occasional smug European how Americans wave their flags so hard that dissenters can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get through the stars. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exactly true, though the word treason has played on a lot of lips lately.<\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none\" class=\"paragraph Body\">We have dissent. It so happens that the dissent here leans to the left (it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not hard to get left of the gentlemen running the Executive Branch). This dissent may get shouted down or out-stupided on the radio, but even really Nut-Case Left opinion exists without fear of jail-time. In France, dissent leans to the right, and in Le Pen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s case, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Nut-Case Right. And in France, Nut-Case Right is illegal.<\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none\" class=\"paragraph Body\">I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not breaking new ground here. Most Americans would argue the same way that I argue. Thought and speech should be free. Let the people hawk their wares in the market-place of ideas. The crazy ideas will attract the crazy people, and why not let them rot together? How can a truly liberal state maintain laws against freedom of speech?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Le Pen (you know, the right-wing nasty over in France) is a horror, of course. But every time someone in France or Germany goes to trial because he says something Nazi-ish, it makes me cringe a bit. More than a bit. I hear from the occasional smug European how Americans wave their flags so hard [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-famous-people","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}