Freedom of Speech

Freedom of Speech is dying in the United States.  It is being strangled one speaker at a time, strangled by those who have no respect or affection for traditional American values and who serve the idea that Brave New Worlds should be constructed on the basis of the superiority of their ideas or minority allegiances.

There are a growing number of people in the country who are willing to express disdain, scorn and dismissiveness toward the views of others solely because they do not agree with them.

Political Correctness rules.  The kind of "Mommyism" that is typified by Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC is now running rampant across the land.  Foreign interests dominate large parts of the political process and the violations of law that accompany that phenomenon are simply ignored by law enforcement because the political masters of the cops have been bought, rented or intimidated.  The media are servants of all of this.  You don't think so?  Look at the people who are "talking heads" now on television.  They are all in one way or another servants of this system.  The army of highly qualified retired ambassadors who spent their lives in the service of the United States in the Middle East are ignored because they cannot be trusted to be altogether pro-Israel in what they say.

The United States is in decline.  Someone mentioned 378 AD as a destination for which we are bound.  I would add 1071 AD to that prophecy.

pl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech

 

Comments

[PirateLaddie]

The next round of 'leaks -- the banking saga -- should be the most telling. Doubt if elected officials care much about the first round of disclosures. After all, they were primarily embarrassing and may cost the lives of people far away, about which we know (and care) little.
The release of truly incriminating stuff on BofA, Citi or GS could unlease a serious shitstorm, especially with unemployment ratcheting back up and the USofA on the verge of attacking Iran at the behest of our financial overlords. Given the seriousness of how THEY play the game, I don't think Julian should be buying green bananas.

[Anna-Marina]

The spectacular haste of China, the US, and Russia’s uniting in suppressing the flow of information by Wikileaks illustrates the depths of a ditch the “civilized” society fell in.
The game is obvious: on one side is a ruthless fight for control of information, on another – the adherence to the basic human dignity. Hence the clean division: Palin and Frum and likes are hissing and demanding assassination of Assange, and are bloviating about “patriotism” (the paid kind, of course). The decent people recognize the underlying problem that has created Wikileaks
The oligarchy of China, the US and Russia wants to preserve the unaccountability

[Graywolf]

Anyone who says that Wikileaks is "exercising free speech" is either a nutjob or seriously anti-American (I vote the latter for most of these "people.")
Theft and misuse of state secrets is espionage and treasonous.
Assange should be found and put down.
His web site should be destroyed by the expensive cyper "warfare" geeks that we are supporting.
That creepy little leaker - the Army private in the Quantico brig - should be tried on charges of treason and shot.
None of this will happen:
Why?
Obama, and his juvenile anti-American minions are perfectly fine with Wikileaks.
It hurts America.
Only in America are the voters so stupid as to elect a President who doesn't like them or their country.

[Patrick Lang]

Graywolf

I agree with your view on Manning. I don't find that to be inconsistent with my views on free speech. pl

[Roy G]

Dear Graywolf, you are a great example of what Col. Lang referred to in his post:

There are a growing number of people in the country who are willing to express disdain, scorn and dismissiveness toward the views of others solely because they do not agree with them.

You consistently come in here and deliver fact-free rants at your boogeymen. I cannot ever remember you making a positive point, or even posting a substantive link to support your Beckish rants.

Typically, you rail at Wikileaks without knowing the situation, only that it goes against your authoritarian mindset. For instance, Wikileaks itself is not from the US, so it is not bound by our laws, ie. it is not a free speech argument they are making.

I doubt you care, because what we really see are your fascist underbelly, because you don't really care about the Constitution, or the Rule of Law. How American is that really?

I find it especially amusing because you were likely leading the parade to go to war in Iraq and Af Pak, didn't care how much money it cost, or that the US was torturing abroad, and spying and waging psy ops domestically. Yet, your cognitive dissonance is so large that you can ignore all these elephants in the room (not to mention the biggest welfare queen in the room, Israel), and pull outrage at how supporting Wikileaks is somehow worse than all that. Huh.

Most amusing is your impotent rage at Wikileaks, because they have finally ripped the fig leaf off the scam you've been promoting all these years. How dare they!

Manning chose his path, so let him have a red meat show trial, and shoot him on prime time. Assange is outside of the US Justice system, but by all means, go ahead and try to take him down; what you don't understand is that Wikileaks cannot be shut down.

Wikileaks is beyond free speech. They are just using the same unilateral tactics that the State used against the We the People to get us in this mess in the first place.

Perhaps you should up your meds, Graywolf, because things are going to get bumpy. Good thing you can continue to be so Politically Incorrect and blame this on Obama.

[walrus]

Bill Wade:

"Walrus, I've heard they have already tested a roadside security checkpoint on I20 with more to follow. They didn't catch anybody on the first go-around.

An awful lot of public money is being spent to catch nobody.
"

We have roadside checkpoints here where a police car runs a licence plate recognition system connected to a laptop computer containing a database of criminal histories of car owners and known drivers.

When someone of "interest" drives by, the system beeps and the policeman radios the "Random" Breath Test unit further up the road. With the plate and details of the "treatment" required - in other words "random" stops are no longer random.

There are also mobile systems including GPS that allow police to recognise and plot the position of every car they see as well as doing the recognition thing.

2ndOp:

" I believe there will come a time when our citizens will have had enough and "refuse to take it anymore."

With the greatest respect, histories of Stalinism, Nazism, the Belgian resistance in World War One and the experience of the Franc Tireurs in 1870 as well as a number of personal accounts, suggest that 98% of the population will not resist and will "take it" if a series of sufficiently brutal examples are made of the objecting 2%.

The key to suppression is "sippenhaftung" - collective punishment; a uniquely German institution as far as I can tell that has since been warmly embraced by Israel in one of the most gigantic ironies of the century. You know the drill: if a family member offends you blow up the family house and/or imprison or slaughter the family. If a militia attack occurs, destroy the nearest village and its inhabitants, midway between Two villages, destroy both, etc., etc. Then of course there is the low grade punishment of curtailed access to jobs, careers and promotion, access to educational institutions, etc. etc.

This is the routine banality of evil. Stanley Milgram discovered that about 60% of the population are capable of inflicting pain on the other Fifty percent, especially if the victims have a suitable label attached like "terrorist", "Liberal", etc.

My fathers experience on the run from the Japanese in the Phillipines was that those with most to lose collaborated with the Japanese. It was the poor Muslims of the Southern Phillipines who risked their lives taking him in because it was their religious duty, and they took it as seriously then as the Taliban did when asked to give up Bin Laden.

I'm sorry if it is a gloomy conclusion, but short of a ballot box revolution, I can't see you dismantling the surveillance state.

[Cieran]

As you have stated before, most of what can be found in the Wikileaks material to date comes as no surprise to anyone paying close attention to world affairs.

What this means is that this material never should have been classified in the first place. This inane practice of classifying material simply because it's politically inconvenient is the real threat to national security.

Why? Because when everything is classified, then the boundary between what is legitimately secret and what is not becomes blurred, and folks start to think that they can exercise discretion as to what needs to be kept secret, and what can be released into the wild. Is that not what Private Manning is alleged to have done?

Identities of intelligence assets would be an obvious good candidate for secrecy. Yet Dick Cheney felt free to release such secrets for purely partisan and selfish purposes. An even better candidate for secrecy lies in SRD and TSRD principles used in weapons designs: these must be kept secret forever, because the laws of physics (unlike the laws of nations) are immutable over time. Those secrets must never be allowed to fall into the wrong hands.

We have legitimate secrets that need to be kept, sometimes for years, sometimes forever. But when our government uses classification to bury facts simply because they might be embarrassing to public figures, we conflate the importance of a politician's feelings with the importance of the legitimate secrets of our state.

And on that road lies disaster.

[confusedponderer]

Mr. Silverman's link doesn't work; here's the complete address

Fred,
if such folk continues their purging of the party of unorthodoxy, the party will become an exclusive special interest party, and a rather 'small tent'.

In think that's what Barry Goldwater meant when he said

"If they succeed in establishing religion as a basic Republican Party tenet ... they could do us in ... When you say 'radical right' today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye.

I think they could indeed to the US in. He's even more pointedly in this speech:

"Well, I've spent quite a number of years carrying the flag of the 'Old Conservatism.' And I can say with conviction that the religious issues of these groups have little or nothing to do with conservative or liberal politics. The uncompromising position of these groups is a divisive element that could tear apart the very spirit of our representative system, if they gain sufficient strength." Insisted Goldwater, "Being a conservative in America traditionally has meant that one holds a deep, abiding respect for the Constitution. We conservatives believe sincerely in the integrity of the Constitution. We treasure the freedoms that document protects. . . "By maintaining the separation of church and state," he explained, "the United States has avoided the intolerance which has so divided the rest of the world with religious wars . . . Can any of us refute the wisdom of Madison and the other framers? Can anyone look at the carnage in Iran, the bloodshed in Northem Ireland, or the bombs bursting in Lebanon and yet question the dangers of injecting religious issues into the affairs of state?"

Goldwater concluded with a warning to the American people. "The religious factions will go on imposing their will on others," { he said,} "unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy. They must learn to make their views known without trying to make their views the only alternatives. . . We have succeeded for 205 years in keeping the affairs of state separate from the uncompromising idealism of religious groups and we mustn't stop now" { he insisted}. "To retreat from that separation would violate the principles of conservatism and the values upon which the framers built this democratic republic."

Prescient.

I found it remarkable how often during the mid terms one could hear conservative candidates, tea party or not, reiterate talking points like that 'America is a Christian nation' or that separation of church and state is a 'myth'. My impression is that Miss O'Donnell for instance was no aberration, to the contrary, but in many of her core statements was quite representative.

[Norman Rogers]

Obama, and his juvenile anti-American minions are perfectly fine with Wikileaks.
It hurts America.

Come now. There are certainly Republicans out there who don't care if America is hurt so long as Israel is wholly defended. To me, they are sunshine patriots in the employ of fools. A real Republican consistently puts the safety and security of America above all else, even profit and commerce.

Save your spectacular outrage for a situation where a Republican member of Congress tells Israel that it's perfectly fine to thwart the President's policies. Then you can lecture us about treason and loyalty.

[Fred]

Graywolf said:
"Assange should be found and put down."

Should we dispense with a trial? How about Scooter Libby and Robert Novak, or is 'outing' CIA agents okay as long as it supports starting a war the politicians want to start?

[Retired (once-Serving)Patriot]

should be tried on charges of treason and shot.

Assuming he is guilty, right? After all, no one would ever have been tried in the media, using anonymous sources and "approved leaks," and later acquitted when the government's case is found lacking.

So yes, let us have a trial. And let us have a competent investigation of how classified information left government control (after all, there are some 3 million potential leakers with access to these cables).

Indeed, maybe after we try and convict this leaker, we can re-visit the case of a leak in which a covert agent of the CIA was identified. And who's identification led to profound damage to our Nation's ability to collect intelligence and disrupt proliferation of nuclear technology. Seems to me that this too was a clear case of espionage and treason. Even if done in the name of a political smear.

RP

[Retired (once-Serving)Patriot]

Color me surprised.

Assange Accuser Worked with US-Funded, CIA-Tied Anti-Castro Group

Make that - not surprised.

RP

[Norm]

I find more bolsheviks in the comments than I thought there might be. Good, I'm not alone.

As for where America is going, I note an evangelical preacher somewhere in the Midwest has announced the Rapture will occur on May 21, 2011, He has put the announcement on billboards in eight cities. May 22, 2011 will be a great day to pick up used cars.

[William R. Cumming]

Any good recent books on the history of the @nd Rome and its military strategy?

Will the Islamic wave again crest at Vienna?

[Graywolf]

Sir:
Believe it or not, I'm pretty much libertarian on most issues.
I draw the line on people violating their oath's of office to push a personal agenda.
For all those people yelling about the First Amendment in this case:
"The Constitution is not a suicide pact."

[William P. Fitzgerald III]

Pat Lang,

Adrianople and Manzikert? I'm guessing/ deducing and will now read the comments and/or refer to Gibbon.

WPFIII

[BillWade]

"Anyone who says that Wikileaks is "exercising free speech" is either a nutjob or seriously anti-American (I vote the latter for most of these "people.")"

Well, you got your vote in GW, so - come get me cause I'm one of them "people".

Just a note of appreciation:

N.S. Salaman and Walrus, I can't thank both of you enough for bringing the truth to this most important blog courtesy of Col Lang. If we don't turn around our energy policies and fast growing police state mindset by 2012 I'm going to have to reevalute my retirement plans accordingly from Margaritaville to farming in some out of the way place.

[walrus]

Graywolf:

"I draw the line on people violating their oath's of office to push a personal agenda.
For all those people yelling about the First Amendment in this case:
"The Constitution is not a suicide pact."

1. There are numerous examples of personal agendas taking priority over oaths of office in the last Ten years, Starting with the entire Iraq war.

2. If any element of the Constitution can be set aside for reasons of personal safety, then it is no longer worth the paper its printed on and anyone in the last Three hundred years who died defending it was a fool.

[walrus]

To put it another way Graywolf, it is precisely the most repellent, nasty, hateful and seditious speech that must be protected - or the First Amendment is worthless!

[Retired (once-Serving)Patriot]

For all those people yelling about the First Amendment in this case:
"The Constitution is not a suicide pact."

And neither is blind obedience to those who claim to have the mandate or know the future.

RP

[J]

Colonel,

The 'Israeli Lobby' owns/controls our White House, our Congress, and Hollywood. You'll never seen any 'bad press' regarding Israel emanating from Hollywood. The Hollywood types even conduct fund raisers for Israel IDF, bigger ones that what they do for U.S. troops. Hollywood's king-makers put Israel ahead of the U.S. in all their areas (in private) and most of them in public.

With individuals like Pipes, they continue to strike incessantly at U.S. academia. IMO Pipes need to be booted to a slow boat to Israel, as his actions have shown he values a foreign nation called Israel ahead of the U.S. one which gave him birth.

[Laura Wilson]

Amen, Sir! Free speech is not free and treason is not treason anymore. There will be a reckoning to pay.

[Carl O.]

We ARE in decline and the reason is simply this, as a witness testified to Congress, last week: We have government by the mortgage companies, of the mortgage companies and for the mortgage companies. When private interests are able to rule with impunity, we have already returned to the Dark Ages.

[walrus]

..And by an amazing coincidence, here is todays little attack on your liberty, courtesy of DHS:

"“Homeland security starts with hometown security, and each of us plays a critical role in keeping our country and communities safe,” said Secretary Napolitano. “I applaud Walmart for joining the ‘If You See Something, Say Something’ campaign. This partnership will help millions of shoppers across the nation identify and report indicators of terrorism, crime and other threats to law enforcement authorities.” "

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/12/06/washington.dhs.walmart/

We are now encouraging folk to spy on each other. The operative words are "indicators", "and other threats". Better not buy paint and protest sign materials while wearing your "Che" Teeshirt.

The next step is to appoint "Voluntary Neighbourhood coordinators" which the Germans called blockfuehrers.

We then start tracking "indicators" of "violent political beliefs", which is already defined as anything not approved of by the mainstream media - they will tell you what it is safe to believe.

[Fred]

confusedponderer

Thanks, I am definitely not up on Goldwater beyond a limited 'conventional' wisdom, i.e. don't know a thing. Do you have a handy link to these speeches?