M.T.A. Amends Rules After Pro-Israel Ads Draw Controversy

[JDPriestly]

5. The ads are, no doubt, horrible.

But the new guidelines give the right to minorities to censor the speech of others. Put the shoe on the other foot. Let's say the ads were extremely pro-Muslim or pro-Palestinian and people who sided with Christians or Israel were to demand that they be removed because the ads incited to violence.

This cycle would never end. Who is to decide whether an ad incites to violence or not? It's just words.

This seems like such a good solution until you think about what it really means.

The real solution is to put up ads encouraging tolerance on all sides. You cannot fight one extreme, hateful opinion about religion or ethnicity with another opposing but equally extreme, hateful opinion. And the First Amendment prohibits censoring speech based on its political content.

The people tearing the signs down need to cool it. They need to put up their own signs.

I'm not expressing this well, but I hope you will understand. This kind of censorship is more dangerous than the obnoxious signs themselves.

Talk about Sharia law. When we can't insult the Muslim religion (or the Jewish religion) or the Christian religion because we incite to violence then we are imposing religious law on ourselves.

This is a bad move. It goes in the wrong direction.