America, what a country! Glad to be here edition

The US Supreme Court provided yet another evidence for me as to why I continue to place my long-term bets on America, and not on any other country, and gives me an opportunity then to follow-up on my earlier post on freedom. 

The Court ruled that the Constitution protects hateful, bigoted, speech, in the case of those awful people who go to funerals of American soldiers and chant anti-gay and anti-other-religion slogans:

“Speech is powerful,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and — as it did here — inflict great pain.”
But under the First Amendment, he went on, “we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker.” Instead, the national commitment to free speech, he said, requires protection of “even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

What a wonderful contrast in how we in America handle expression, against a background of millions of people in the Middle East and Africa standing up, perhaps for the first times in their lives, to gain at least a little bit of this kind of freedom, and are even ready to give up their lives for it.

The chief justice wrote

the protesters’ speech “cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt.”

I cannot begin to understand how any person will be that much full of bigotry in order to be able to go picket at funerals of soldiers.  I am sure they fully understand that they are able to do what they do only because they are in this good ol' US of A.

The times when this immigrant gets all emotional about his adopted home country! 
Let us rope in another immigrant, from another country, to explain "freedom" in America ... yes, even in this kind of a situation, I have to fall back on humor--maybe to hide the love for USA? :)



Well, it is of course true that I don't have any free expression on campus here.  A few years ago, the faculty union's president wrote in an email to me:

join the union and go through the Bargaining Team.  If not, then please shut up 

I suppose we ought to appreciate the politeness in "please shut up" and not merely "shut up" :)

The in-coming union president at that time wrote in an email to me:

I think you should apologize for your self-serving attempt to mislead the faculty

Guess what?  I am still here!!!