Participants: Lincoln Steed (Host), Clifford Goldstein
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000178A
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00:22 Welcome to "The Liberty Insider."
00:24 This is a program bringing you news, views, discussion, 00:27 and information on religious liberty issues 00:30 around the world. 00:31 My name is Lincoln Steed, editor of Liberty magazine 00:35 and my guest on this program is Clifford Goldstein. 00:37 Hi, Lincoln. He's gonna be 00:38 a handful I can tell. 00:39 Clifford was the previous editor of Liberty magazine 00:43 but for some years now what about 14 years, 13 years? 00:46 Yeah, 13 years. 00:47 You've been editing the Sabbath School Bible study 00:50 lessons for the world Seventh-day Adventist church. 00:53 A job that should give you medals for bravery because 00:57 as you can probably tell us you get people 00:59 sniping at you a lot. 01:00 But it's in my view an unparallel opportunity 01:06 to nurture a world, doctoral view point of Adventism. 01:11 Well, if there is someone that needs to be constantly 01:12 patted on the back and told that how great you're doing, 01:14 it's not the job for you. Trust me. 01:16 Well, I know you get a lot of that too. 01:19 But anyhow on religious liberty 01:23 you still remember some of it but I know 01:25 one thing you know very well because 01:26 your recently did an article for liberty magazine 01:29 that I think you told me was fun writing 01:32 because its one of the more bizarre story 01:33 I've seen in years. 01:35 Well I think I titled it, what I called, 01:37 "Zombie Muhammad and the parading atheists 01:40 of Mechanicsville, Pennsylvania." 01:43 And newspaper articles had much the same 01:45 sort of approach, didn't they? 01:47 Well, what it was, was they were having 01:49 a Halloween parade-- 01:51 And this was just only few months ago. 01:52 Yeah, last October, having a Halloween parade 01:55 and some group calling themselves 01:58 the parading atheists of Mechanicsville, Pennsylvania, 02:03 decided--one of them dressed up as a zombie pope 02:06 and the other one dressed up as zombieMuhammad. 02:10 You got to wonder what somebody is thinking 02:11 in this day and age to do that. 02:13 But anyway they go down, they're parading down 02:15 the street and I think they purposely, 02:21 some of these extreme atheist-- 02:23 They wanted to be insulting. 02:24 They wanted to be insulting. 02:25 You know a zombie pope, a zombie Muhammad, 02:28 how did they--they purposely, but this is America-- 02:32 First amendment, right? 02:33 This is America and if you want 02:35 there's nothing in the constitution that protects 02:38 people from being offended. 02:40 You know the whole free speech clause 02:42 doesn't mean anything if you can't offend people. 02:45 You know, I mean there's always, 02:46 there are limits to free speech. 02:47 Now was anyone offended? 02:48 Well, yeah, exactly there was, yeah. 02:51 I am sure there are lot of people offended, 02:52 sure some Catholics but there was apparently 02:54 some Muslim man, I can't even remember his name, 02:56 I can't pronounce it who supposedly got 03:01 in an altercation with zombie Muhammad. 03:02 You can see it on Youtube. 03:04 Yeah, but it's very grainy. 03:05 You can't tell what's going on. 03:06 Yes, you don't know if he laid hands on him. 03:07 Yes, so the point is this guy, this parading Atheists 03:10 of Mechanicsville, Pennsylvania dressed up as Muhammad zombie, 03:14 Muhammad zombie goes down. 03:16 He had a green face as I remember. 03:18 And he is going I am Muhammad, risen from, 03:21 zombie from the dead or some inane idiocy. 03:24 And he offends this Muslim. They get into tussle. 03:27 The Muslim is arrested, okay? Okay, that's fine. 03:30 That's understandable, you know, 03:32 even if somebody offends you, you're not allowed 03:34 to supposedly assault them or whatever. 03:36 So anyway but that might have not gone anyway 03:39 but it gets to the court. 03:41 It gets to the court. 03:42 Yeah, and this is where of course 03:43 the news media puts a spin on it 03:46 and the judge, I forgot what's his name, Mark Martin. 03:48 I think it was Judge Mark Martin, 03:51 he basically throws the case out and he just-- 03:55 He said there wasn't enough evidence. 03:56 Yeah, the bottom line was he says there wasn't enough 03:58 evidence of an assault. 04:00 They looked at the evidence. 04:01 They had testimony from other people, 04:04 whatever it was, I don't know all the intricacies of it 04:07 but he didn't have enough evidence he felt for, 04:12 you know, to go anywhere. 04:13 That would have been fine too. 04:15 But then apparently the judge decided to take it 04:18 upon himself to give a lecture to the plaintiff. 04:23 I forgot the guy's name, the one who dressed 04:25 as zombie Muhammad and really the judge would 04:29 have been better off to have kept his mouth shut. 04:31 Because he started saying, our founding fathers 04:33 didn't--You know, this was very offensive, 04:36 you were purposely offensive. 04:37 I used to live in Muslim countries, I know-- 04:40 He says first amendment is enough 04:41 but you've gone beyond. 04:42 Yeah you've gone beyond and he read this guy 04:44 and then of course the rumor even came out too 04:46 that the judge himself was a Muslim, 04:48 which turned out to be a lie. 04:51 He had been--he was a Lutheran and you look at the guy 04:54 he didn't look like a Muslim. 04:55 He looked like a Lutheran or a Methodist 04:57 or something but-- He was on two military-- 05:00 He did two or three-- 05:01 I think Afghanistan and Iraq. 05:02 And he was going back, so that's where I think 05:04 he got his sensitivity to Islamic, but the point was 05:08 the judge made this mistake and he was going off and off 05:11 about--on and on about the founders didn't want, 05:15 didn't mean free speech to be offensive 05:17 to so on and that's what made the news. 05:19 And he tells this guy, he says this country 05:21 you'd be killed for doing that, which is true. 05:22 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 05:23 But you know, what's that got to do with America? 05:24 You're not killed for first amendment rights here. 05:27 Yeah, wonder what was the whole point? 05:28 We live in America. 05:29 We don't live in Afghanistan. 05:30 We don't live in Saudi Arabia. 05:32 You are allowed to be offensive, 05:34 so I think he totally missed the point. 05:38 You know if he would have just voted-- 05:39 I mean ruled that way it would have been fine 05:41 but the news media of course they hyped it up. 05:43 You see the headlines, "Sharia Law in Pennsylvania" 05:48 you know and this kind of silliness and so forth, 05:50 but it really was--I think this was a very interesting 05:54 mix of religious freedom thought it was really more-- 05:58 it was just really in many ways it was a free speech case. 06:00 It was a free speech case, because the judge totally, 06:03 I mean I remember even when I was working on the article, 06:07 I took the judge to task, you know, 06:09 say you're not allowed to be offensive. 06:12 Why do you think of all people, 06:13 the horrible A.C.L.U., many people you know the A.C.L.U. 06:18 It's a curse you know A.C.L.U. 06:20 Many people don't realize that a lot of the freedoms, 06:23 a lot of the religious freedoms that we have today 06:26 that we take for granted it was because the A.C.L.U. 06:30 went to court battling for those freedoms. 06:32 Sure they take positions on things how to offend people 06:34 but what they did was the A.C.L.U.-- 06:36 number of years ago in Skokie, Illinois 06:41 where there are a lot of Holocaust survivors-- 06:43 Yeah, I remember that case very well. 06:45 Some bunch of jerks, American Nazis, 06:50 they wanted to march in Skokie purposely 06:53 because they knew they are Holocaust survivors. 06:56 Just to offend them. 06:57 And they wanted to--you know, people wanted to stop it 06:59 and they had a judge put in a--temporary junction 07:02 on it and the A.C.L.U. 07:04 went to court to defend 07:06 the right of the Nazis to march. 07:08 And people were horrified but that's not the point. 07:11 They were looking at the principle. 07:13 They were looking at the principle. 07:15 If you--if speech that is just offensive is a rule 07:19 that nobody can say anything. 07:21 Well, the point to the first amendment is precisely 07:23 to protect offensive speech. 07:24 Yeah, of course. 07:25 If it's not offensive you don't need a first amendment. 07:27 Everyone will be happy with it, non-offensive speech. 07:29 I mean it was--especially if you go back 07:31 and you look at we mention in another program 07:34 the political, the vitriol, we got nothing. 07:38 The patch today, the super patch and L.B.J.' s daisy ad. 07:44 They saw that was the beginning 07:45 of negative campaigning, the daisy ad. 07:48 That was nothing compare to what was going on back then. 07:50 It does seem like a lot of political speech. 07:52 This is off the topic a bit 07:54 but heads to a defamation of character. 07:56 Well but, you know, it's yeah, that's the way. 07:58 And I guess it is a public person-- 08:00 As much as they say they don't want to go negative, 08:03 they want to win, they want to win 08:06 and they're gonna go-- who can forget Willie Horton? 08:08 And Willie Horton and what was it Lee Atwater 08:10 said I am gonna make Willie Horton 08:13 Michael Dukakis' running mate. 08:15 And as stupid and as evil and as bad as it was, 08:18 it worked and when-- 08:20 By the way before he died Lee Atwater apologized--. 08:24 Oh, yeah, well, yeah, of course that fine, 08:26 that's a separate issue but it still, it works, 08:29 I mean Romney went ballistic, you know, 08:32 when Newt won those other things that Romney 08:34 didn't expect, but they went ballistic on him. 08:38 And you know the negative campaigning accused him 08:40 of a lot of stupid things and some of the stuff 08:42 they got coming out against Obama. 08:44 See it doesn't matter if it's not true. 08:47 What matter in the day and age 08:49 of sound bytes, will it turn voters away 08:53 from one and get you to vote other. 08:55 And this is again, this is the limits 08:57 of the whole democratic process. 08:59 It's a very flawed and the money that's involved 09:01 but anyway the upshot of it was if we go back to the case, 09:04 there are limits on free speech. 09:06 You know the famous shrink case 09:07 where the you know the judge said 09:08 your free speech doesn't allow you to shout, 09:11 fire in a crowded movie theater 09:14 and you know if you work for the government 09:16 you sign things believe me, the place where I live, 09:18 I know these people they are not allowed to talk 09:20 about what they do for the government-- 09:22 I think the zombie Muhammad one was interesting 09:24 not so much that he was setting an illegal precedent, 09:27 It was the just ludicrousness of the whole thing. 09:29 We'll visit that in a minute. 09:30 The Supreme Court recently a very much affirm 09:32 free speech but I think it intersects 09:34 what we've seen recently with the Danish cartoon controversy, 09:39 the burning of the Quran or the disposing 09:41 of the Qurans in Afghanistan, 09:43 the religious violence that comes 09:46 from the defamation of religion or a slight taking. 09:50 Well, here it was intended to slide. 09:52 It was an insult to religious sensibilities-- 09:54 But the point is-- 09:55 That protected under free speech. 09:57 But this is America we're allowed to do that. 10:00 And for the judge, I don't know what he was thinking 10:02 to sit there and say, you know, in other countries 10:05 you would be killed, but judge 10:06 what that has to do we-- this is America. 10:09 I've seen him on Talking Heads on TV 10:11 and he is pretty much apologizing-- 10:12 The Judge? Oh, yeah. 10:13 He know that he was-- Yeah. 10:15 I mean I wrote in the article-- 10:16 He didn't expect the national media to pick up-- 10:18 In the article I went and even though I said 10:20 he was wrong on that, I said, 10:22 look the guy is not a Muslim, 10:23 cut him some slack you know, he served this country-- 10:26 And he's received death threats-- 10:27 Yeah. Yeah. He personally feels frightened about it. 10:29 That shows the extremism on you know I am sure 10:32 some good red blooded American Protestant 10:34 or Catholic boys were gonna-- 10:36 you know try to do this judge in 10:38 because all right he made a mistake, 10:39 all right, he's a judge, he's not infallible. 10:41 Well, they thought he was a Muslim said-- 10:43 Yeah, that was because he said 10:44 at the one point in transcript or something, 10:46 if I am a Muslim I would find this, 10:48 which again is totally irrelevant. 10:50 I don't know why he did it but the transcript went out. 10:52 He said he's a Muslim. 10:54 So you got, you know a guy holding a sign 10:57 is attacked by a Muslim and then the judge 11:00 who's supposedly was a Muslim 11:02 lets the guy off and then lectures the guy 11:04 with the sign, I mean again this is easy to see, 11:05 this is how the irresponsibility of the American press. 11:10 And I am a writer but I understand, 11:13 you see how totally irresponsible 11:17 a lot of the America media. 11:18 As Rush calls drive by media 11:21 and I think Rush is a 100% correct on that. 11:24 And as one of the drive by shooters himself, 11:26 Rush Limbaugh. 11:27 But on this case we need to leave it 11:29 on a clear legal level, the Supreme Court 11:31 recently in another free speech case 11:34 where this church out of Oklahoma, wasn't it? 11:36 Oh, Phelps, those wackos, oh-- 11:40 And a military funeral particularly-- 11:42 Fred Phelps. 11:43 They were screaming abusive of the family of dead soldiers-- 11:47 God hates fags and God is killing these, 11:49 these people were dying because--your son died 11:52 in Iraq, your son died in Afghanistan-- 11:55 Because God's vengeance on the country. 11:57 And they got--they're standing at military funerals 12:00 with holding up you know saying, God killed your son, 12:03 It was a shocking social Faux Pas-- 12:06 And it's horrible, of course-- 12:07 But the Supreme Court said they have the right to do it, 12:09 it's as offensive as it is. 12:11 Yeah, that's the amazing think about free speech, 12:13 a lot of us are offended by it but when the time comes 12:17 you know when we want to say something, 12:19 we have our rights to be defended. 12:21 It's brilliant. Yes. 12:22 So I was very happy the supreme court did that 12:23 because its not that many years ago 12:26 when President Bush was in office, 12:29 the free speak had become a mockery 12:31 because if you wanted to demonstrate against 12:33 the president, there was a roped off area, 12:34 up to two miles away from the motorcade 12:37 called the free speech zone, anything but. 12:39 Well yeah, I, you know, again free speech-- 12:42 Well, we can dismiss it now as an aberration 12:44 but I think the Supreme Court's decision 12:46 fairly recently is a good restatement 12:50 of a valid principle which undergoes 12:52 the rights of religious liberty. 12:53 We will be back after a short break 12:55 to continue this discussion guest Clifford Goldstein. |
Revised 2014-12-17