"No rights are absolute." All rights are subject to government intrusion and have limits. That's the left-wing battle cry when it comes to gun control. "We need common sense restrictions on the 2nd Amendment."
Conservatives always ask, "So, does that apply to the 1st Amendment as well?"
At that point libs usually start calling you paranoid, and ramble on about fires, crowded theatres, and hate speech. Of course, they always ignore the salient point. A left-wing government that views no right as intrinsic to personhood, by definition, views every right as a "privilege" subject to federal whim.
They'll deny it with their dying breath, but that is the core belief of the modern Democrat party. Your rights are not a condition of your birth, they’re a gift from Washington - and that gift can always be taken away.
Better yet, it could be made profitable, or controlled economically.
On Monday, according to the Politico, Vice President Joe Biden met with around 20 representatives of the faith community to discuss the President's gun agenda. The matter may have stalled momentarily, but progs like Obama want gun control possibly more than anything save single payer health care. We all know it will be back, and Biden told the assembly that the issue would probably return this summer.
It was all pretty basic stuff. But then something interesting happened. Franklin Graham, son of the evangelist Billy Graham, posed the idea that violent media could be controlled by subjecting unsavory works to additional taxation.
According to the Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, the executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, "[Graham] floated the idea that media and entertainment that portray violence should be subject to a special tax, with the proceeds going to help victims and their families."
Now it's bad enough that anyone would want to slap a tax upon the first amendment rights of writers, artists, filmmakers, and software developers, but Biden's response took things to the next level.
Sister Marjorie Clark, a lobbyist for the Catholic Social Justice Network quotes Biden as saying "They really need a good scientific study, which they’ve done on things like smoking,” but says the Veep made it clear to Graham that there's "no restriction on the ability to do that, there’s no legal reason why they couldn’t.”
Elected officials are quick to deny ascribed quotes if they're certain no one can prove they were actually uttered. So far, Biden is sheepishly refusing to comment on the remarks, which in politics is a pretty good indicator that they're legit. If this is the case, it lends serious credence to the "first they come for the second, then they come for the first" theory.
If we honestly have a Vice President that thinks we can tax movies, music, literature, and yes, even video games based on their content, we are treading on the slipperiest of slopes.
...and it should scare the bejeezus out of anyone who values their free speech.
