(Natural News) When our founders wrote the First Amendment’s free speech clause, they had unpopular speech in mind.
That is, they wanted to specifically protect speech that wasn’t common, wasn’t popular, and could even be considered revolutionary in a literal sense of the world.
They also had protecting criticism of the government uppermost in their minds. That’s because they had just spent more than a decade fighting a tyrannical British monarchy headed by a king that did not permit such speech and in fact, punished those who criticized him and the Crown in general.
But in recent decades, so-called “hate speech” laws have made a mockery of the First Amendment’s speech protections. Words and phrases that political apparatchiks and authoritarians in government have ‘deemed’ as ‘harmful’ or ‘hurtful’ have been criminalized under such laws, with real consequences for people found to have violated those speech codes.
Now, a state judge in Michigan has taken the insanity a step further: He has crossed into the realm of insanity with a ruling that can only be described as antithetical to our founders’ vision of free speech.
The Michigan Court of Appeals has ruled that hurting a liberal’s feelings can be considered a terrorist threat and punishable by up to 20 years in prison, which has prompted a response from activists and lawmakers concerned about the grave implications this ruling may have on the 1st Amendment. …
This appeals court ruling is pertaining to the case of 20-year-old Lucas Gerhard, a former Lake Superior State University student who was jailed for 83 days because a liberal classmate was triggered by a picture of a rifle he posted on social media. The court of appeals ruled that it did not matter that the hyper-emotional leftist who went to authorities was not intended to receive the photo. This may give the green light for liberals to report social media posts to authorities and compel terrorism charges in the state.
Sources include:
Read full story here: It’s finally happened: Michigan judge rules hurting liberal feelings is akin to “terrorism” – NaturalNews.com