There’s always something to howl about.

To “concerned citizen,” who may or may not be a sock-puppet for Loudoun County Tax Assessor Todd Kaufman: The Bill of Rights exists to protect citizens from government, not the other way around

This is an extended response to “concerned citizen,” who commented at length on my Loudoun County Tax Assessor Todd Kaufman has a friend post. The nom de poltroon “concerned citizen” may or may not be a sock puppet for Todd Kaufman himself, but it sure reads that way to me.

Does not Mr. Kaufman have the First Amendment right to complain to the Realtor board? And does not the Realtor board have the duty to investigate whether there are false facts published?

Don’t be absurd. You’re attempting to reframe the debate to portray Kaufman as the victim. What we have is a case of abuse of office, a government functionary attempting to abrogate the free speech rights of an innocent citizen. The Bill of Rights exists to protect citizens from government.

The price for Mr. Kaufman exercising his rights, even if misguided, should not be ridicule

To the contrary, this is the exact and perfect price, firmly established in the history of satire in America.

and exposure of personal information.

Straw Man Fallacy. Did not happen, at least not in anything posted on the RE.net.

It comes across not so much as openness as exposure for further personal attack by others by way of letters to his home, phone calls and the like.

Straw Man Fallacy again. We have done nothing of the sort. This may in fact be the Well-Poisoning Fallacy.

It also distracts from the issue, which is, I think, whether any false information was published to consumers.

The issue is Mr. Kaufman’s ham-handed attempt at censorship. Period. He made a bone-headed mistake, and he is paying the exact and perfect price for doing so. If you are his friend, you could help him find his way back to the light.

Arguments pro and con in this matter should be couched in terms of truth or falsity of the blogger’s work,

False. The right to free speech includes the right to be wrong. Your instant quibble will be to resort to libel or slander, but those are civil torts, to be adjudicated in a court of law. Absent proof of damage or malice, people in the United States are free to say or publish whatever they want, even if it is factually incorrect, physically impossible, fantastic, surreal, satirical or absurd. Land of the free. Get used to it.

the argument that Mr. Kaufman is an ass for protesting is not an argument at all and concerns itself with the suppression of disagreeable speech or speech from individuals deemed unworthy of a voice by virtue of their profession.

False. Lampooning overreaching public functionaries is a proud American tradition.

I do not know whether this blogger published false information but for argument’s sake IF it was false, is this protected by the First Amendment?

Just as much as is all this specious nonsense you stayed up all night writing to try to muddy the waters in Mr. Kaufman’s defense.

A Realtor blog is used for marketing and if a member of a Realtor organization publishes false information, doesn’t the Realtor organization have the duty to act against the member under their code of ethics?

No, Todd — it’s you, isn’t it? — the NAR Code of Ethics does not exist to abrogate the free speech rights of Realtors. That would be the job of rogue government functionaries — which is to say the miscreants we are protected from by the Bill of Rights.

The Realtor organization acting under its code of ethics cannot be said to be the government acting to suppress speech.

Straw Man Fallacy. What we are discussing is an attempt by Loudoun County Assessor Todd Kaufman to use the threat to bring a Code of Ethics complaint against a Realtor — that is, to threaten that Realtor’s livelihood — in an attempt to force that Realtor to remove perfectly lawful published content.

To clarify, what we are objecting to is abuse of office by a public functionary — a bald attempt at censorship which should be abhorrent to any American and especially repellent to people from Virginia, home to George Mason, father of the Bill of Rights.

I apologize for this rather long comment but I think matters of free speech require a bit more consideration.

I view anonymous pecksniffs with a cold contempt, a presumptive imputation of cowardice. Anonymous publishing is a common characteristic of police states, and the beauty and glory of free speech in America is that we do not have to hide from the state behind phony names like “concerned citizen.” We have not just the lawful right but the affirmative duty and obligation to be concerned citizens in the United States, and the appropriate way to do this is proudly — pledging our lives, our property and our sacred honor, if it comes to that — but to do it in the full light of day, in our true names. This is a proud lesson we learned from another Virginian, Thomas Jefferson.

That’s as may be. I believe you are Todd Kaufman himself, covering for your shame and ignominy by trying to put someone else in the wrong. Even if you are not he, this is a mistake. What Todd Kaufman did was wrong. Not an outrageous and irredeemable evil, but an extreme transgression of American principles. No doubt he feels he is getting worse than he gave, but, where his perceived injury was local and particular, the offense he chose to make in retaliation — the threat to censor — is a threat to us all, not just real estate webloggers but every free citizen of the United States. The response he has seen so far is nothing like what he deserves for threatening to brow-beat a publisher into silence, and it were well for Kaufman to consider what fate might await him should the more-popular media discover what he has done.

But that’s all one, too. In fact, what Mr. Kaufman should do is back down and apologize at once. Not because he has been lampooned, and not because his lampooning could become much more comprehensive. He should back down and apologize because he is indisputably in the wrong. Government functionaries do not have the right to limit the free speech of citizens, and threatening the livelihood of a publisher is abhorrent, repellent, insufferable. It is exactly the kind of conduct that the American Patriots and hundreds of thousands of patriots since then fought and died to prevent from taking root on these shores. Mr. Kaufman has set himself in opposition to the most important philosophical principles upon which the American experiment was founded, and the American citizenry has not just the legal right but the absolute moral obligation to eliminate this criminality with every weapon at its disposal. If we are not willing to fight for our rights when fighting for them is relatively easy — as in this dumb show against a very dumb political hack — what will we do when the going gets tough?

To say the truth, I love this kind of theater, but it’s because I know that the First Amendment was written to protect people like me and Russell Shaw. We are exactly the kind of jackasses the less-cowardly-Kaufmans of the world would jail or kill if they could get away with it. Who does the Bill of Rights protect? I never have to ponder that question. I owe my continued life and liberty to men like George Mason. In any conflict, I will always take their side.

Stand down, Mr. Kaufman. You cannot win this battle, but you can succeed in making yourself look even more-publicly more ridiculous.

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