Jon Stewart: Guns Don’t Protect Free Speech, the Consent of the Governed Does

Guns don’t protect our free speech. Our free speech is protected by the consent of the governed laid out through the Constitution…it’s not based on the threat of violence. It’s based on elections, organizing referendums, a judicial system. Our social contract offers many, many avenues to remedy these issues and allows sides to be heard and adjudicated.

Guns, from what I can tell, seem to mostly protect the speech of the people while holding the gun. It’s a tool of intimidation. And, if I may finish…listen motherf@ckers, I’m not done!

It is a tool of intimidation and one that I think is actually being irresponsibly and recklessly invoked because some people in your crowd thought they might have been shadow banned by Facebook. I mean, for God’s sake, you guys are in Butler, Pennsylvania. The whole reason you’re there is because some f@cking assh@le with an AR-15 tried to permanently litigate his vision of this country’s free speech. That’s why you’re there.

The whole point of a society is guns don’t decide it. I would prefer at this moment not to trade in a government that offers me many remedies for my concerns, legitimate or illegitimate, for a situation where my rights are determined by how many militia members agree with me. The country ain’t perfect.

Jon Stewart

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8 thoughts on “Jon Stewart: Guns Don’t Protect Free Speech, the Consent of the Governed Does”

  1. Matthew A Carberry

    That’s a logically incoherent position.

    What happens when those other remedies are withdrawn with the “consent” of a majority of people who disagree with him, using the power of the state as its “militia”? Revocation of consent requires the capability to do so, and a means to enforce that revocation. Absent a personal, effective means of revocation in extremis, “consent” is a sham – it is merely a self-deluding mask put on upon submission to the will of others with the power to impose it.

    1. This is something I read a few years ago on a different site and comes courtesy of ‘strych 9’. “When it comes to Civil Rights… Neither public opinion nor a potential risk presented by that Right…Is a moral or ethical reason to curtail the Right itself.”

  2. “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” – Mao Zedong, Chairman Mao, at the beginning of the Chinese civil war.

    I think Jon Stewart can be quite funny at times, but what happens when the governed DON’T consent? Tyrants aren’t known for the peaceful transition of power.

    1. We are still dealing with the Covid quarantine camp legality in court here in NY and I have little doubt the only reason we didn’t see it in play was many in NY being armed with rifles not on any state registry let alone entire country being armed to some extent.

  3. What a shock, an incoherent, expletive laced screed from a leftist/statist/fascist supposed ‘comedian’ with zero factual content based almost entirely on his emotions. As surprising as we still have gravity and water is wet.

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