Food for thought

[lesliepear]

Someone in LJ land got called on by the secret service for something they wrote in their journal - apparently not from live journal or someone googling the net but someone who "knew" them:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/anniesj/331112.html

Makes me wonder. I tend to post pretty much publicly because I write about day to day stuff. I rarely friends lock stuff, I've done it because of work gripes or when I've written a few comments about terriorism/security.

Thoughts?

Comments

[dstroy.livejournal.com]

Threatening remarks towards the president... Haven't they always been a bad thing to say in a public forum? And a public diary is a public forum, right? And I read the stuff she wrote [it's cached here (about halfway down)] - to me it seems praying for lots of people to die (even if they don't seem to be the nicest people) doesn't seem quite kosher. If you post it public, it's the same as writing on the bathroom wall isn't it? I mean - who is this stuff being soapboxed to? So someone ran across it and was alarmed or offended, or heck, maybe they just held a grudge for other reasons and reported her...
It's not secret service googled or spyboted or randomly found the comments by Big Brother. The Secret Service has the responsibility to look into stuff like this when it's brought to their attention, no matter how ridiculous, and this has been the case since long before the current administration.

I guess to some extent, I see it more like this:
I get mad that the Islamic community isn't somehow doing more to reign in the extremists on their end. Not saying all Islamics are terrorists, but just pointing out that most terrorists are Islamic. I dont think a society can function if you overrule civility with "free speech rights" in the name of overwrought PCness.
Why should the standard be different for extremist language from a side that supposedly represents MY views? I get pretty damn mad when I hear the liberal left extremists in my town spouting hatred and violence and so on... like having Bush compared to Hitler by the tin-foil hat crowd and then spoutings about police states and so on... Especially when the excuse is used "Oh, well I was just KIDDING!" If you throw it out into a public forum, you're spouting to the general public. Not everyone can be expected to know you're kidding and eventually some pissed off wacko may get some ideas and actually follow through.
I call BS! and I'm supposedly on the side that generally agrees that the president we have isnt that nifty!
If anything, I've seen more threats to "free speech" coming from the venom spewing leftists than I have from the government that they love to bash, because anytime anyone seems to imply they are exaggerating they get all up in arms about Gestapos bashing in your doorways with giant boots.
We all say that public figures giving hate speeches which set off riots or acts of violence against minorities is bad...and yet when we find within our own group folks that spout the same sort of language against our government the reaction is "I'm sure they were kidding - I'm sure they'd never do anything like that" or some other lame excuse. Yet the folks that made those speeches that set of riots are convicted in our minds because we already disagreed with them, even though in many cases they never actually did anything besides "talk" either.
I find that really weird and hypocritical.


That said, I dont think you have anything to worry about, as I've seen only worries and concerns and disagreements, not outright inflamatory language, coming from you! But I've definitely run across more than a few rabble-rousers in LJ that border on the kook-ball limits in terms of the language they use to inexpertly articulate their frustrations.