FREE SPEECH IS NOT FREE REIGN.

• Position: NATIONAL AFFAIRS

James Alex Fields drove his automobile into a crowd of people protesting against white supremacists, white nationalists, and fascists, many, if not most, of whom came to the event from outside of Charlottesville, Va. There also were counter-protesters, the so-called Anti-Fascists (aka Antifa), with many, if not most, coming from outside of Charlottesville and with some who also engaged in acts of violence, albeit none resulting in the loss of life.

Fields' actions caused the death of Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old woman who was protesting against white power demonstrators. She was hit while crossing the street. Although charged with second degree murder, Fields ought to have been slapped with capital murder under the Virginia criminal code. His actions qualify for that higher charge. The conviction and execution of Fields would send a clear message to others of like ilk who entertain the notion of transforming venomous rhetoric into violent action.

Under the First Amendment, each of us is entitled to use his or her own property or public areas set apart for the delivery of speeches to convey our views. We may do so provided that we do not act in ways that violate the equal rights of others or block ingress or egress to buildings and streets. We may do so even, as is the case here, or most especially when, the views expressed are repulsive to the majority.

Most all of us condemn the views of those who claim that one's immutable characteristics--race, disability, age, gender, etc.--render them deserving of derision, punishment, or denial of equal justice under the law, but that condemnation by the majority does not justify suppression of the minority, and such suppression, if sustained or condoned by law, violates the First Amendment. Indeed, equal justice under law and blind justice are bedrock principles of Western jurisprudence and of our Constitution and laws.

Although imbued with an unalienable right to hold and communicate one's own views on one's own property or on public property set apart for that purpose, none of us has a right to graduate from vile invective to violent action. The political problem for the white supremacists who gathered in Charlottesville is that their vile views call for the degradation of people based on their nonwhite status. That is their essential political problem, but it is not a legal problem per se. The legal problem for the white supremacists in this instance is that they translated their vile rhetoric...