Westboro is obnoxious and vile, but they work within the law. Anonymous has declared war on free speech.
There are well established limits on free speech, such as yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater (Schenck v. US, 1919).
Pretend for a moment that we live in a world where the Schenck case never happened. A group (call them the "Eastboro Baptist Church") has started using the tactic of running into movie theaters and yelling "FIRE!". After all the commotion, they spread their anti-gay message.
This "fire" ruse is starting to get on some people's nerves, so an online group (call them "NAMED") says that they are going to protest the Eastboro Baptist Church.
That's not a "declaration of war on free speech", it's an argument that shouting fire in a crowded theater does not deserve protection under the First Amendment.
Also, for anyone who isn't aware, the Supreme Court has already heard oral arguments (Snyder v Phelps) about whether these funeral protests are protected speech, and will issue an opinion at end of term in a few months.
The problem is that no one shouts fire in a crowded theatre, and anyone who did would rightly be indicted on a number of charges not pertaining to speech. The Schenck case had nothing whatsoever to do with theatres or people wrongly alerting theatre goers to a fire.
The metaphor was used by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who was an embarrassment to the country, to stop people from criticizing US involvement in WWI, claiming that criticism of US imperialism was identical to shouting fire, and was a clear and present danger, which is obvious bunk to everyone as it is not the same thing at all.
And here we are again. Someone is saying unpopular things and the reaction is to claim censorship is justified because there is a theatre that is not on fire somewhere.
Let me be very clear. There is no theatre. There is no fire. There is no one shouting fire in a theatre. And if there was someone shouting fire in a fireless theatre the result would be that the other patrons would tell the person yelling to shut up and sit down.
It is time to stop defending the abomination that is the Schenck decision and the lunatic that was Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
"It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes." - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., in Buck vs Bell, ruling that the government has a right to sterilize women against their will for the same reason the government has a right to vaccinate people against their will. The decision upheld Laughlin's Model Law, which was then used as a model document for the Law for Protection Against Genetically Defective Offspring, passed in 1933 in the German Republic, allowing forced sterilizations of those thought defective there as well.
The question is, would I defend to the death your right to turn up at someone's funeral and deliberately cause distress to their grieving relatives? Probably not.
There's free speech and then there's harassing people. If Anonymous want to hack into these people's website in order to prevent them speaking then I can't approve. I still can't describe picketing funerals as free speech.
Link to anonnews press release's comments: http://anonnews.org/?p=comments&c=press&i=449
We, the collective super-consciousness known as ANONYMOUS - the Voice of Free Speech & the Advocate of the People... Being such aggressive proponents for the Freedom of Speech & Freedom of Information as we are...
Look, I'm all for free speech. It is an absolute necessity. It should be protected at all costs.
...Except for when you have a group that is so deranged and have abused this right to free speech that we hold so dearly that it is barely recognizable. As far as I'm concerned, we can make this one exception, and the world will be a better place. Throw them in the "yelling FIRE! in a crowded theater" category.
That's not free speech though.