Now, the scenario this idiot posits – that a “librul” will just walk up to him out of the blue and yell, “you racist,” might be slightly different….but that’s as logical as the rest of his statement.

He’s either full of shit or the crappiest lawyer ever, because no fucking way does calling a man a “racist” give him a free hand to commit assault.

First of all, the concept of “fighting words” has nothing to do with one’s perceptions of need for self-defense.

In Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a conviction of a Jehovah’s Witness for calling a city marshal a “damned Faschist” and a “goddamned racketeer” under a statute providing that “[no] person shall address any offensive, derisive, or annoying word to any otherr person who is lawfully in any street or other public place . . . .” The Supreme Court of New Hampshire construed the words to reach only words which have a direct tendncy to cause acts of violence by the persons to whom, individually, the remark is addressed.” This definition was approved in the Chaplinsky decision. (315 US at 568 (1942).)

The contemporary doctrinal approach is probably best illustrated by the decision in Cohen v. California, where the US Supreme Court refused to classify a vulgarity appearing on the back of a jacket–”Fuck the Draft”–as “fighting words.” Justice Harlan’s opinion pointed out that offensive utterances are necessary side effects of free expression, and a power to maintain “a suitable level of discourse within the body politic ” is inherently illimitable. In other word’s one man’s obscenity is another man’s poetry. Except in situations where the audience is captive or where the broadcasting of an offensive message would intrude into the privacy of the home, government may not purge public dialog of unwelcome words or symbols, just as it may not prohibit unwelcom ideas. (403 US 15,25-26 (1971).)

In Terminiello v. Chicago, the US Supreme Court refused to consider whether race-baiting speech that attracted “an angry and turbulent crowd” was itself constitutionally protected. The high court reversed the speaker’s breach of the peace conviction because the statute punished speech that “stirs the public to anger [or] invites dispute” as overbroad, and void on it’s face. (See boldface for the legally problematic statutory language.) Justice Douglas, who wrote the opinion, further stated: “A function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It amy indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger.”(337 US 1, 4 (1949).)

Note that there is nothing in the above about feeling free to rearrange a speaker’s face if you disagree with what s/he says. As a matter of fact, the opposite is true: Law enforcement officials are obligated to let people speak, regardless of how odious the message may be, as a Jewish community with numerous holocaust survivors discovered when they attempted to pass an ordinance prohibiting members of a Neo-Nazi group to march through their community wearing swastikas. (Collin v. Smith, 447 F.Supp. 676 (N.D. Ill. 1978).

h/t American Constitutional Law, Laurence Tribe (2d ed).

Self-defense is a defense to certain tortious or criminal acts. For the sake of brevity, I will address the civil aspects.

Self-defense is a privilege that applies if it is necessary for a person who is attacked to take reasonable steps to prevent harm to himself, when there is no time to resort to the law. There are rules:
1. Apparent Necessity: The person asserting the privilege must reasibably believe that he is in imminent danger bodily harm. He is held to the reasonable person standard in this belief. In other words, the law doesn’t expect him to be a hero, but an ordinary reasonable person must perceive his situation as being dangerous enough to warrant taking the action.

2. Reasonable Force: The privilege is limited only to the force necessary for protection agaisnt the threat. Excessive force is NOT privileged. For example if you think you can whip out a gun and shoot an attacker who raises his hand to hit you in a bar fight, make sure you’ve memorized the phone number of the criminal defense lawyer who advertises on late night TV. Similarly, there is not privilege to continue to use force after an attacker has been disarmed.

3. You are never privileged to used deadly force to protect property.

It’s like the truck nuts of policial movements.

My vote: “UVULATION” will make you go blind!

Methinks it would be (literally) the other way around, no?