Man’s anti-Trump licence plates banned following backlash
A Texas teacher has been ordered to remove the “JAIL 45” license plate from his car amid threatening messages about his protest against US President Trump, according to reports.
History teacher Jerry Balkenbush, 43, initially got permission from the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) for the plate stating his blunt views on Mr Trump, the 45th president of the United States, he told local media in Fort Worth.
But a month later, he was told he had 30 days to remove it after it was revoked following complaints that it was derogatory, WFAA said.
“My license plate is peaceful. It does not harm anybody,” Mr Balkenbush told the station.
“If we can’t protest the government, then what direction are we headed towards?” ...
“There is a fine line between expressing one’s political opinions and offensive speech officially sanctioned by the State of Texas on license plates,” Brandon Rottinghaus, a political-science professor at the University of Houston, previously told the paper.
“The state doesn’t want to be liable for confrontations resulting from unhappy drivers who see messages offensive to them. Some motorists who see these plates would smile but others would be angry.
Many others defended his freedom of speech even if they did not approve of the message.
“Disagree with your politics. But you should be allowed to keep the tags,” Marv Gaby Mitchell wrote, while Jim Nowell said: “Don’t like your plate but you should have the right to display it.”
SOURCE
3 comments:
I do not believe that there is a right to be offensive in public displays such as license plates.
I have mixed feelings about this.
On first blush, it strikes me a profound violation of the 1st Amendmendment.
Without a doubt, it is. A very sad thing!
But it also advances the concept of treating all equally before the law. It has become clear that the hard Left considers the 1st Amendment as only being applicable to them, and the rules protecting people from being offended in any way as only being intended to protect the sensibilities of only the hard Left. For most on the hard Left, those of us anywhere Right of the hard Left are not really "people". They dehumanize their opponents every bit as much as their fellow socialists, the National Socialists (Nazis) or Saddam's Baath (Pan Arabic Socialist Party) did. (If you don't believe this view Project Veritas's video of Bernie organizer celebrating the idea of opening mandatory "re-education" camps for Trump supporters and burning American cities if Bernie doesn't get the nomination - https://www.projectveritasaction.com/2020/01/14/expose2020-part-1-bernie-2020-field-organizer-states-fing-cities-will-burn-if-trump-wins-re-election-calls-for-violence-mass-murder-of-opposition-and-reign-of-terr/)
Perhaps if the hard Left is deprived of free speech rights in the same way as they insist on depriving all others of their free speech rights some of their less evil adherents will wake up before they too drink the Socialist Koolaid just as destructively as Apostolic Socialist Jim Jone's mindless socialist followers drank their Koolaid.
Unfortunately, the nature of all socialism is that it must be built on a foundation of hate and that it can only progress by depriving all who oppose it of their human rights.
This is only just and right because, in the socialist mindset, only socialist are truly human, the rest of us simply being, in Hillary's words, subhuman "Deplorables" requiring "re-education" camps.
Jail 44 not 45
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