Yep, and it's that kind of mental gymnastics that I lose faith in the world around me and find it harder and harder to talk with people pushing social issues.

I give up.

There's no way for this not to be confusing, due to the paradoxical nature of a right to civil disobedience.

Bob? The answer is Bob right? I mean if Jim couldn't afford to live within 3 minutes of the police station, would it be the land lords' faults? Wait, no, it was probably that math teacher in junior high who humiliated Bob when he failed his geometry exam before his life went to shit.

This reminds me of when they devise increasingly elaborate what-if scenarios in search of that one perfect scenario in which torture rocks to justify legalizing torture across the board.

I'm sure they'll blame Bob much more than they'll blame BLM, if their heads aren't way up their asses.

Maths teachers are the cause of all murders.

If only maths wasn't so hard

Freedom of Speech doesn't give you the right to protest where ever you want. I don't care if you want to be loud and heard, I don't care if you're just annoying people. But if you disrupt something like traffic, where you KNOW that medical services might need it you're putting other peoples lives at risk. Go yell at people in malls, go keep people from going in stores for all I care.

Do you have the right to just go lets say block off a hospital?

What is it about not actively doing something that you KNOW could directly endanger lives is so hard to understand? I have a thick skin and I can stand when people annoy me, if some protestor wants to get in my face or prevent me from walking in a store then whatever, I'd be annoyed, but fuck em I'd move on with my life, but blocking off something that medical services use?

"Officer! I wasn't blocking that ambulance from passing! I was using the power of "SPEECH" to stop it. I held it in place there with my "WORDS" "

Don't British police officers use scalding hot tea as weapons?

Well they are dumb in the same way any group with no organisation, leaders, or properly defined goal where any random fuckwit can say they are (insert group name here) and then go throw a brick at someone. That is always dumb.

Still with the semantics. I could have been saying 'first amendment' instead of 'free speech' this whole time and it wouldn't have made a difference, but you insist on focusing on the word 'speech.'

Blocking off a hospital with no other intent than to deny people from getting medical treatment isn't really free speech, it's just mustache twirling evil.

Bobo is right that I have been using the term free speech a bit loosely since the proper legal channel for constitutionally protected free speech and free assembly is getting a permit to protest in a particular location at a particular time. It is actually civil disobedience and generally a crime that gets people arrested and gets protests broken up.

But in principle we recognize it as a sort of 'free speech' which, even if illegal, is positive for democracy as demonstrated by the civil rights protests of MLK and others.

But OK, let's say it is anti-abortion activists blocking a hospital that provides such a service. Yeah that would also be civil disobedience and need to be broken up pretty quickly. But it is within the principle of civil disobedience. Even if it is a fairly abhorrent action for an abhorrent cause.