You may be thinking of Dissenters from some Established Religious Sect in a given location/era, where the government of the time served as an enforcement arm of the sect, and in that case you are correct that freedom to dissent is a form of speech that is protected in the Bill of Rights.

In any case, it isn’t relevant to the Church attack which was not at all nonviolent.

The Supreme Court HAS held that sometimes the public welfare trumps religious behavior (not belief), notably in upholding the Congressional bans on polygamy (LDS, 19th c. and later*), but allowing others (peyote use for Native Americans, animal sacrifice for some religions); and has not yet spoken on certain Islamic practices (female genital mutilation; honor killings) and assorted mandates (kill the unbelievers) that contravene established law).

*In light of the current state of marital arrangements now considered legal (if not yet acceptable by everyone in the country), the former Mormon practice of plural marriage (in actuality, not as so often depicted) was positively sedate.

The battle between “I win-you lose” to win-win continues across our globe.

🙂

This thing is far from over.

much like the lore about vampires, you have to be invited in,

we could strike military bases on the periphery, but I don’t think that would stop the sepah and the basij, from retaliating against targets across the Gulf, recall the strike on Abquaiq in 2019,

but it does seem a little like Hungary in ’56, if not Souti hern Iraq in ’91,

I don’t trust the Qataris much, but they as well Erdogan are party to this deal, as are our feckless European allies,
qatar and turkey also have significant influence on those self same allies,

One last comment on the church invasion: even the Westboro Baptist psychos stayed outside on the sidewalk. And that case was wrongly decided IMO for the same reason.

Kate:

Exactly.

I’m quite sure Trump is thinking, not exclusively, of Greenland in terms of his Golden Dome proposal to provide a missile defense system for the US, particularly against Russia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_system)

Iran is not Venezuela. There may be one Ayatollah, but there are many mad mullahs on that hydra ready to assume the head position should the current one be lopped off. Maduro also still had underlings in place when he was removed, but regime change wasn’t the ulterior motive, anyways. We had a beef with Maduro over drugs, and Biden had a price on his head, and so we went in and grabbed him. And the denunciations began – international law blah blah. But at least Venezuela is in our hemisphere, our backyard. A real worry for us.

Iran is not in our backyard. There are quite a lot of countries around Iran, including Israel, who have a lot more at stake if there’s an all out war.They probably have many different – and conflicting – ideas about what should or should not be done in Iran. Some of them may refuse us airspace, or landing space, and so limit what we could do.

Whatever you have to say about Trump’s promises, he’s the only major leader in the world (I think) who is openly and publicly supporting the Iranian people. Europe is pretending there’s nothing going on – they don’t want to anger their new migrant hordes. Russia and China I think are with the mullahs. The same people who criticize the US for nation building – Saddam Houssain’s and the WMD, Kuwait, Afghanistan – would have the same criticisms should the big Trump Baboon bully his way in to Iran guns abalzin’. Hell there was pearl clutching over his bombing their nuclear reactors. The man cannot do anything right. Sheesh.

Our own revolution was looking bad heading to worse for a long time before we got some help from the French. But we were serious about being free, and took our losses, and kept going. We got sneaky about it, and fought “unfairly” according to the British. Then others finally bet on us, and the tide changed (at least that’s how I learned it as a kid). The Iranian revolution is likely to get worse before it gets better, sadly. The mullahs have the support of most of the world, and they have all the weapons.

What’s that saying about when you strike at a king, you had better kill him? And what are the myths about killing hydras? We go in kill the Ayatollah and then what. We have to get rid of the other mullahs too – and what happens when civilians get blown up in the attacks, because these guys will be hiding with civilians? Lord have mercy – it’s Gaza all over again.

Maybe the “help” Trump promised is weapons smuggled in on the downlow so Iran doesn’t get wind of it, or providing more Starlink terminals, or targeting jammers to Starlink, or maybe just bribery to get an old fashioned military coup to overthrow the mullahs. Whatever he does or does not do, I think publicly supporting the Iranian people is huge. The real change is going to have to come from them though.