Well, somebody somewhere must have informed Lindsey Graham that his base was getting pissed.
How quickly that tune changed:
NRO: Some of my National Review colleagues are being pretty rough on you today. What is your response to some of the outrage on the right about your comments regarding free speech?
GRAHAM: General Petraeus sent a statement out to all news organizations yesterday, urging our government to ban Koran burning. Free speech probably allows that, but I don’t like that. I don’t like burning the flag under the idea of free speech. That bothers me; I have been one of the chief sponsors of legislation against burning the flag. I don’t like the idea that these people picket funerals of slain servicemen. If I had my way, that wouldn’t be free speech. So there are a lot of things under the guise of free speech that I think are harmful and hateful…
NRO: But don’t you fear that if we let Islamic extremists determine the speech debate in the United States, then we’ve lost something?
GRAHAM: No. Here’s what I fear: I fear that politicians don’t have any problem pushing against laws in the Middle East that are outrageous. It’s perfectly acceptable for me to push back against prosecutions by Islamic countries against people of my faith. And it is perfectly appropriate for me to condemn Koran burning when the general who is in charge of our troops believes that such action would help. I’m not letting Islamists determine what free speech in America is, but I am, as a political leader, trying to respond to the needs of our commander. You’ve got to remember, General Petraeus decided that this was important enough to get on the record as being inappropriate. And I want to be on the record with General Petraeus.
NRO: Instead of being an advocate for Petraeus, should you not first and foremost be an advocate for the First Amendment?
GRAHAM: You know what? Let me tell you, the First Amendment means nothing without people like General Petraeus…
NRO: What I don’t understand is, if would you support an amendment to ban flag burning, why do you not support one to ban Koran burning?
GRAHAM: In my view, the flag represents who we are as a nation. It is a symbol of who we are. If you start talking about individual acts of religious intolerance, the amendment doesn’t make any sense. It does make sense, to me, to focus on the symbol of the country, the flag. I’m not proposing that we propose a ban on religious disagreement. I am saying that you can disagree with America; you can disagree with me, but don’t burn the one symbol that holds us together. That’s not an act of speech. They say that is symbolic speech, but I think that is a destructive act. It’s the one thing that unites us.
Yet when it comes to regulating what individual churches may do, or what individual citizens may do under the guise under religion, you are not going to be able to write a constitutional amendment to ban those practices. There is no way to do that. I wish we could hold people accountable for their actions, but under free speech, you can’t.
Man, talk about putting that ’58 Buick in reverse in a big ol’ hurry! 😯
I realize that what Terry Jones is doing is just horrible; not to mention the fact that it is putting service members at risk. However, when you open Pandora’s box, but proposing to limit freedom of speech — you run the risk of ending up with results that one might not like too very well in the end. The simple fact that the results can be a double-edged sword. America, contrary to what is taught by the liberals in their cesspools of schools — was not, at any time, founded as a Democracy; it was founded as a Constitutional Republic. In our Nation’s Constitution and in it’s first amendment. the right to freedom of speech is guaranteed; this includes undesirable speech as well. This is why Neo-Nazi’s are allow to speak and publish that which they believe; as well as Communists.
Bottom Line: Any attempt to stifle freedom of speech in this Country is harbinger of disaster, one that America should try to avoid, at all costs.