Posted by
CRB on Wednesday, July 09, 2008 2:21:43 PM
Bruce Wilson, the adroit (chuckle, chuckle) commentator on TalkToAction, now has in mind the remove of legal protections for people with even perceived extreme opinions. (Now, I’m no Hagee fan. His hyper-dispensational positions lack theological soundness and his quick attribution of judgment are, to be very generous, careless.) But despite Wilson’s rants, extreme positions still deserve the protection of law. Without out it we have no liberty, for who is to determine what is extreme or otherwise inappropriate or destructive? Bruce? You really want that role?
At issue is whether John Hagee’s presentations should have legal copyright protection. What Hagee is asking for is a part of mainstream law. It’s why people can be prohibited form taking pictures at guns show (keeps the anti-gun people away). It is also why a museum can prevent photographs of private displays. It was Michael Jordan’s ownership of his image.
Wilson promotes the idea that Hagee’s message is in line with the Protocol mythology. But he gives no links or does anything to substantiate his claim. Instead he leaves it out there, presenting Hagee as a necessary racist. Maybe Wilson will come out with some facts instead of just saying things that are so meaningless and destructive? I doubt it, but maybe.
But Bruce Wilson apparently did not give consideration to legal precedent. His opinion is clear:
Because the use of video and audio footage from Pastor John Hagee has been crucial, notes Max Blumenthal, in convincing mainstream media, which had long ignored alternative media journalistic coverage of Pastor Hagee's ideological extremity and agitation for apocalyptic war, to finally give Hagee's growing mainstream presence some belated coverage. As late as March 2007 when Hagee was invited to give a keynote address at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's annual Washington DC conference, routinely attended by a large proportion of the US Congress, critical coverage of the apocalyptic, often anti-Muslim and at times viciously anti-Jewish nature of Pastor John Hagee's sermons was something AIPAC and mainstream media seemed willing to ignore despite the fact that Hagee's sermons, which have included versions of anti-Jewish conspiracy theories remarkably similar to the Protocols of The Learned Elders of Zion even to the extent of mirroring the claim, put out by an early "Protocols" publicist, the Russian Orthodox priest Sergei Nilus, that the anti-Christ will be Jewish, routinely go out on broadcast networks that reach upwards of 100 million households around the globe. Regardless of its technical legal merits, the claim of John Hagee Ministries, to copyright protection for Hagee's internationally telecast church sermons that often feature content wholly unrelated to Biblical scripture, amounts to a claim, by JHM, that its broadcasts of Hagee's anti-Jewish rhetoric and even Hagee's proposal of a version of the anti-Jewish "Protocols" myth, should enjoy copyright protection as a legitimate 501(c)(3) educational enterprise. Such a claim would seem to raise the question then, what could JHM Ministries educational mission conceivably be ? What the 501(c)(3) mission statement ?
Apart from that last malformed sentence, should Hagee not have the protection that others have? That is clearly Wilson’s position. But that is not the law and that is not a free society. This is a fine example of what I mean when I talk about the irrationality of some on the Left and their use of the power of the state to silence critics and whatever else they do not like.