TSO is currently writing an explanation of the 9th Circuit Court’s decision yesterday in the Elven Swisher case, so I won’t get into that, I’ll let the lawyers get down in the legal weeds. But, of course, Dallas “Witless” Wittgenfeld, the second greatest legal mind in the country has determined that, somehow, the Swisher decision of the 9th Circuit means the end of the Stolen Valor Community, because the 9th Circuit said that Stolen Valor is “free speech” and that’s it’s legal. The work that we do has nothing to do with the government or with the law – we are only about the Truth. Even if the Supreme Court says that the 9th Circuit was correct and that the government can’t regulate stolen valor, that doesn’t stop us from telling the truth.<\/p>\n
When the Supreme Court overturned US v. Alavarez a few years back, they acknowledged our participation in the Stolen Valor realm when Justice Kennedy wrote;<\/p>\n
The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the uninformed, the enlightened; to the straight-out lie, the simple truth.<\/p>\n
[\u2026]<\/p>\n
Society has the right and civic duty to engage in open, dynamic, rational discourse.<\/p>\n
[\u2026]<\/p>\n
The American people do not need the assistance of a government prosecution to express their high regard for the special place that military heroes hold in our tradition. Only a weak society needs government protection or intervention before it pursues its resolve to preserve the truth. Truth needs neither handcuffs nor a badge for its vindication.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In other words, people have a right and a duty to do that which the government can’t do. Although the court has said that the government can’t punish people for wearing awards and uniforms and making statements that are false, that doesn’t mean that we can’t expose them to the world for being liars.<\/p>\n
I find it difficult to believe that Dallas Wittgenfeld, a Vietnam veteran and a former drill sergeant, would celebrate the court’s decision, but that’s just how shallow his intellect is. Shallow enough to associate himself with a fake petty officer with a sketchy and sordid history, both as a veteran and as a civilian.<\/p>\n
The bottom line is that nothing the courts decide impacts that which we do here. Of course, phonies will all interpret the decision as Wittgenfeld did and we’ll see another explosion of phonies like we did when the Supreme Court overturned Alvarez, thinking that they now have the government’s blessing to be phonies. We are not the government. The court’s decision may have made stolen valor legal in the eyes of the government, they haven’t made what we do illegal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"