{"id":18792,"date":"2010-04-24T12:43:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-24T17:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=18792"},"modified":"2010-04-24T14:11:59","modified_gmt":"2010-04-24T19:11:59","slug":"answering-cj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=18792","title":{"rendered":"Answering CJ"},"content":{"rendered":"

I hate fighting with fellow milbloggers, even debating them. But, this deserves a response<\/a> since I have devoted the better part of the past month working on a legal brief on the subject.<\/p>\n

CJ asserts that the Stolen Valor Act is unconstitutional. Now, I obviously disagree, but many folks think so. However, CJ’s reasoning behind this conclusion concerns me. To wit, CJ asserts that by replacing certain words with easier to understand language, the First Amendment stands for the proposition that:<\/p>\n

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or curtailing with regulation, interference or control any form of speaking, communication, sound or gesture, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No court has ever held that to be the case, as there are exceptions. In fact, were CJ to be accurate, it would invalidate NUMEROUS laws. For instance, that would immediately invalidate all libel, slander, defamation, copyright and similar laws. If there is no curtailing of what anyone can say, for any reason, then impersonation would be legal, perjury, and others.<\/p>\n

In fact, even the example that CJ later uses would be invalidated by that reading:<\/p>\n

Now, where I believe that laws should apply to these fakers is when they lie to obtain things that they wouldn\u2019t otherwise be entitled to. It\u2019s called \u201cfraud\u201d and there are stiff penalties for it. Fraud is \u201cdeceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage.\u201d Every state has laws against fraud and those are the laws that should apply in these \u201cstolen valor\u201d cases.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What is fraud if not speech? If there can be no infringement of speech, how could one have a law regarding fraud? It is not illegal to give someone money, nor has anyone ever contended it was. Fraud is giving someone money based on an untruth which they have voiced. So, if Fraud is to be illegal, it must by neccessity be on the virtue of the speech, to wit, the falsehoods.<\/p>\n

CJ proceeds:<\/p>\n

The name of the damn Act makes no sense anyway. From whom are they \u201cstealing\u201d valor anyway? They didn\u2019t steal MY valor and I would posit that they haven\u2019t \u201cstolen\u201d anyone else\u2019s, either. All they\u2019ve done is stolen their own honor and integrity. But, the moment they attempt to gain pleasure, profit, or personal safety from someone else then should they be charged with fraud and dealt with accordingly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I will dispense with the first part regarding the name and answer the second with questions of my own:<\/p>\n

1) Has anyone ever attended the Army Achievement Medal Society of America conventions?
\n2) Does one treat with the same respect an AAM recipient and an MOH recipient? If not, why is that?
\n3) If you work with 4 people and you have agreed to provide the labor for $1, and your 3 coworkers get $1,000 do you end up better after the days labor or not? What if those 4 individuals comprise everyone in the town?<\/p>\n

CJ next argues the bar pick up line argument. We have answered that one on a few occasions. The difference between a generic untruth, and asserting you have received an award for valor is two fold:<\/p>\n

1) Congress has it withing it’s purview (Art I Sec 8) to regulate the Armed Services, and one of the premiere interests there is in ensuring the nobel nature thereof. This would not be the case with a generic bar line.
\n2) Verifying military records is somewhat straightforward, and is not susceptibe to the vagaries of subjective interpretation. One has the award, or one does not.<\/p>\n

Lastly, CJ makes the argument of disenfectant, that one can always verify, and then vilify such individuals. However, to assume such is to assume that folks have the wherewithal and the ability to verify the stories. Alvarez (the case in the 9th cicruit) was in fact elected before his lies where figured out. If all the individuals in that district were either unable or unwilling to verify his claims, then would that not argue against such a belief? And in so thinking, does CJ assert that the media is the one we should trust in to verify such claims?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hate fighting with fellow milbloggers, even debating them. But, this deserves a response since I … Answering CJ<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18792\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}