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Newt Gingrich Says Free Speech May Be Forfeit
At a dinner honoring those who stand up for freedom of speech, former House speaker Newt Gingrich issued his opinion that the idea of free speech in the U.S. needs to be re-examined in the interest of fighting terrorism. Gingrich said a "different set of rules" may be needed to reduce terrorists' ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message. The article has few details of what Gingrich actually said beyond the summary above, and no analysis pointing out how utterly clueless the suggestion is given the Internet's nature and trans-national reach.
On one hand, it galls me that Mr. Gingrich would say free speech should be limited at a First Amendment Award banquet. The real irony, though, is that this is exactly what the speech, press, and association clauses of the first amendment are all about: protecting the expression of political ideas that might disagree with law, government policy, or popular opinion.
Gingrich re-evaluates you!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
People need to understand that the reason we have freedom of speech and the right to bear arms is so that the people of this country can, if necessary, reshape the government WITH FORCE.
-Bill
If politicians are so hot on reducing free speech to fight terrorism, they should be voted out of office and be denied unemployment benefits (i.e., lobbying and speaking).
The article pretty much speaks for itself.
Newt Gingrich is a big fat tool. Mod flamebait if you need to.
"No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture." - Learned Hand
Last I heard he was running for president. He gotta bang that terrorism fear drum for the next two years and the American people are proven suckers for reduced liberty for false security.
We can't curtail civil liberties in the name of the War on Terrorism anymore! Now we curtail civil liberties in the name of the War on Illegal Immigration!
Perhaps Mr. Gingrich will be the first to volunteer to have his right to freedom of speech revoked.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I thought the entire idea of terrorism was to garner the attention that you receive to allow others to see your ideas or distrupt the status quo enough where they would have to change. Typically this would come from a group that has no inroads to get their message across in the current system. So... Let us limit speech and further disenfranchise folks that will create more limited means of getting a groups message out and thus creating more terrorists.
I had a flame... but she had a fire.
Ok, as a lifelong conservative, I find the thought of limiting anyones freedom of speech morally offensive (note the sarcasm in my subject line). Unless it's yelling fire in a theater (or similar action), or conspiracy to commit a crime, freedom of speech should never be inhibited publically. I didn't RTFA, but Newt is off his rocker on this one (and a few others), though I'll defend his right to speak his mind.
Just another day in Paradise
Newt's not elected to anything, though he is talking about a 2008 presidential run.
The only possible reason to want to curtail freedom of speech is to maintain a tighter control on a domestic population, which falls right in line with the current Republican agenda, so it's no surprise that that's what he wants, but I'm surprised even he would come right out and say it.
Anyone who is incapable of understanding why Freedom of Speech is essential to a democracy has no business being anywhere near government. That people don't rise up and tear him apart explains, in a nutshell, why, historically, democracies don't last.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I can think of a twenty cent solution to your problem, but it is generally frowned upon. However, the government does it all the time, and he wants to be a part of the government, so I suppose he should be fair game.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's about muzzling people like you. People who say things the rulers don't like. People who might have a conscience.
Networking technology is just the latest excuse. And the "Red Scare" wore out so now the enemies of freedom hype "the War on Terror".
So you don't know what he actually said, but you're going to post an article on a tech oriented site lambasting it.... That's responsible of you.
The more you know, the less you understand.
Why do we let them be in charge?
Terrorism is bad. It really is. It does not follow that it is so bad that we need to re-examin our fundemental rights.
Far more people die at the hands of run-of-the-mill criminals, in automobile accidents, of heart disease, and of AIDS. The number of Americans who were killed by terrorists last year was laughably small (Even our president calls those guys in Iraq insurgents and not terrorists, just in case you wanted to lump them in).
So why give up free speech? Privacy? Protection against unreasonable search and seisure? To stop the "scourge" of terrorism that didn't bomb a single target you can actually name last year?
These guys want power over you. They want to arrest you for mere suspision, they want to detain you for disagreeing, they want to hold you as long as they want without a trial, and they want to beat the confesion out of you when time alone doesn't make you change your tune. Then they want ot take the false info you gave them and proclaim "Look! We stopped this terrorist!"
Don't give it to them. Don't give them your rights. Anyone who says you need to make that kind of sacrifice, he's the one you want to kick out of office.
TW
"Gingrich said America has "failed" in Iraq over the past three years and urged a new approach to winning the conflict. The U.S. needs to engage Syria and Iran and increase investment to train the Iraqi army and a national police force, he said. "How does a defeat for America make us safer?" Gingrich said. "I would look at an entirely new strategy." He added: "We have clearly failed in the last three years to achieve the kind of outcome we want."
You might not be a Republican, and you might not agree with everything he has to say, but he is an extrememly intelligent man (Ph.D Tulane) and it might behoove you to read the entire speech transcript before getting so worked up.
There's always some "threat" that requires that we give up some Freedoms ... just until the threat is over ... so the government can "protect" us.
Freedom is not safe.
Our forefathers felt that it was better to die Free than to live under tyranny.
I'll take their opinions over Newt's any day.
That said, the larger issue is important. Just last night NBC ran a story about nuclear plant and security information being available in public libraries. My first reaction was that I generally favor public access to information, and that private watchdogs and the free press are probably why the US has not had a Chernobyl. The idea of purging public libraries is distasteful. But then they talked about what information was available, and I had to agree some of it should not be public, such as specifically the most damaging place to hit a nuclear power plant with an airplane. It is old information, and that sort of information would probably never be released now. Is that a good or bad thing?
I'm still stunned that the conservative movement, which used to claim to champion smaller government and strict constitutional readings, has turned into a champion of authoritarian governmental control. The Bill of Rights is key to the freedoms we enjoy as Americans and these rights were ironed out by leaders who just emerged victorious from a civil war. They understood war and its dangers but more importantly they understood the danger of tyranny, and so the very first right in the Bill of Rights is the right to free speech. To try and claim that now we must suspend this fundamental right because of "war" is to go against the very underpinnings of this country's foundation and sets the stage for increasing authoritarianism by the US Government.
I read the article. Did you? Obviously not. Nowhere in it did Gringrich say exactly how or what he would suggest changing with regards to free speech. Yet that's enough to send the /. pundits through the roof. Perhaps in the future it might be helpful to know exactly what you are getting upset about before losing your mind.
By the way morons, he hasn't served in Congress since 1998, so it's not like he is running the show any more.
We have military tribunals that usurp Habeas Corpus.
We have warrantless wiretaps and searches that basically ignore the Fourth Amendmant.
Now some want to curb free speech.
At some point you have to ask yourself what are we fighting for?
There was a time when our steadfast will to uphold the US Constitution gave us somewhat of a moral compass that differentiate us from our foes.
Now we are basically eroding the very document that made the US a great nation.
The very purpose of terrorism is NOT to kill. That is a means to an desired end result.
Here is a common definition of terrorism:
the calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimindation or coercion or instilling fear
By us disregarding the Constitution we are giving the terrorists what they want.
The terrorists are winning because the governments of the western world are GIVING THEM WHAT THEY WANT.
And don't think for a second some of this is not for the benefit of the mega-multinational corporations either.
This is facism at it's purest. Welcome to the 21st century. I hope you enjoy your coup that George W Bush et al engineered.
Summary of Modern Politics:
"I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. 'I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.' 'I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.' 'Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!'"
---Bill Hicks
Living With a Nerd
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It makes some sense, as a culture, to ask ourselves what sort of speech we find reasonable. That's not to be confused with what's allowed - since that's nonsense, both practically and idealogically. Of course, that hasn't stopped the political correctness crowd from attempting to move beyond condemnation and into actual banning of certain phrases - but generally only in the tiny little fiefdoms where they reign, like at schools, or county councils.
But I've got no problem with having a loud enough discussion on this sort of subject, in a broad enough context, that we arrive at a slightly altered popular notion of whether it's culturally acceptable for people to rant along certain lines. For example, we quite delightfully shout down the idiot neo-Nazis and KKK-types when they decide to hold one of their special-ed style marches through some poor picked-upon town that has no choice but to issue them a parade permit. By all means, they should have the permit, and off they go. And a counter-demonstration shouldn't be allowed to occupy a street to protest them, or shut down traffic to hang things up (unless they've got their own permit to occupy said intersection). But that doesn't mean we can't just shame them into cultural oblivion, and in most towns where such things have happened, the klansgoons end up looking like the twits they are - with no speech bans necessary. Such movements arise by being given enough social comfort to exist, and they can be squashed by being starved of the same.
Obviously, the context here is seen in the whipping up of zealots and jihaddis, and the inflammatory wackiness that fuels that mindset and the resulting carnage. Not counting direct incitement to riot or outright criminal conspiracy (which aren't and never have been protected speech), the challenge is to expose the clowns who spew this stuff, and do so in a context that shows what loons they are. If, as is so often claimed, there is a vast, silent majority of non-crazy Muslims, then the job is (since the inciters have no shame) to shame the quiet ones into mopping up their own fringe loons. This isn't done by limiting speech, it's done by showcasing it and calling it what it is. In other words, we can leave the constitution alone and still, as a culture, act to cast a harsher and less forgiving light on the mysoginists and the religious crazies that would prefer the calendar read '11/28/1006'.
I guess it just seems odd that some soccer mom would feel rude telling a jihaddist recruiter that what he preaches to impressionable young men is toxic, malicious buffoonery, but that same mom would have no problem chastising their neighbor's kid for saying something disparaging about the (to them) comic-book-villain-looking Imam whose weekly sermon is actually entitled "Democracy Is Unislamic," with a breakout session on "Death To America."
Yes, yes, mod me down. But you know this doesn't have anything to do with Newt Gingrich or freedom. It's about what we proclaim - through our silence - to be acceptable within the context of western democracy. The Germans over-reacted and made certain utterances illegal - but making the utterers feel like fools is far more effective in the long term. Rebellion against a law gets passed down through families (see Ireland), but kids embarassed by their dad's medieval rantings tend to be the last branch of the family to repeat them. Or act on them.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The intellectual laziness of current conventional political thinkers really galls me. One thing that all of the Founding Fathers agreed on is that a free society presents some difficulties and challenges, but that it's well worth the extra effort freedom requires.
It may be that to maintain our liberty we will be more vulnerable to terrorist attack. Well, that's a price of freedom, but one that with a sensible and progressive foreign policy we can attenuate.
All of the Founding Fathers knew that a free society is inconvenient for our leaders. It makes it a little harder to govern a nation that is free to say and do what they want as long as it doesn't step on the toes of others. It's one of the reasons Jefferson, Washington and others maintained that we've got to keep religion out of the government, because religion proposes easy answers, shortcuts if you will, to get people to behave a certain way.
But the Great Men of the Enlightenment knew that the price of being unwilling to do the hard work of Liberty is darkness for all mankind.
There was a time that America's willingness to work at staying free was a beacon to the world. It provided encouragement to young men and women who lived in Totalitarian societies and kept a flame of hope alive for those who suffered under tyrants. The desire of lazy leaders to skip over the inconveniencies of things like warrants, habeas corpus and free speech, along with the notion that the natural resources of the world are ours to command, have turned us into the object of hatred instead of the hope of the world, which is the natural place of a free people.
You are welcome on my lawn.
> Newt's not elected to anything, though he is talking about a 2008 presidential run.
Which is what this attack piece is all about, a preemptive strike to make Newt radioactive again and prevent him tossing his hat into the ring. I'm sure within a day the full text will appear and make a lot more sense. I'm also certain it won't receive a tenth the exposure this hit job gets.
Newt isn't some Bob (Klansman) Byrd fossil who doesn't understand what the net is.
Democrat delenda est
Sorry to say folks, but the ideals that created America were pure and just, and they have run their course.
What I mean by this is not that we should give up on those ideals, rather, they simply won't work any more in the land mass and 300 Million strong group of people we now call the U.S.A. The ideals need to be there even more than ever before.
In fact, we need to restart, and re-assert with utmost clarity the freedoms that allow humanity to flourish. We need to have another continental congress (of sorts) and begin the process of building smaller groups that support human freedoms from the tyranny that Newt represents.
Statements like those by Newt are sad by not unexpected. Rome failed too, and so will the USA, for similar reasons. In Newt's world, he CAN NOT SEE how people can be truly free and actually realize the real freedoms encoded in the constitution while simultaneously maintaining the system of controls needed for the USA to function the way it does now.
The challenge is different now than it was in the mid 1770s. People have lots more guns, a lot less land to move into, a more technology for those in power to maintain control. Yet - it has to happen, and it will, even if only virtually. People need to reassert the freedoms that we agree upon, and structure the society we live in to maintain those freedoms.
The USA no longer does.
I don't see any Democrats stepping up to repeal the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act. I don't see them stepping up to reduce the abuses of the executive branch. They won't, because they can't. Pelosi will block impeachment. Dems benefit from more powerful government as most of them are career politicos just like the Republicans. The USA version of Left/Right in politics is a false dichotomy supported for power by the right and unable to be opened/changed by the dis-united left.
Sounds more like someone from the left is starting the standard "out of context" smear campaign. They know he might run for President next time and are trying to eliminate him before he starts. Both sides do it and there is very little truth in any of it. Like everything else in politics, accuracy and honesty are not required.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Thank God you have no real power. It's scary when someone in power has an opinion bout a speech that they know nothing about.
Actually, one could view the Bill of Rights as our own "Tough Guy Manifesto", thus:
1) You can't tell me what to believe, or make me go home and shut up.
2) I'll go armed and defend myself, thank you.
3) You can't make me let someone else live in my house.
4) This is MY house; if you can't demonstrate a compelling need to snoop, stay the fuck out.
5) This is MY shit; keep your greedy hands off it. And don't go accusing me of Evil without evidence.
6) If you've got evidence, lay it on the table. And no fair getting a confession by pitchforking me in the ass.
7) I ain't guilty just on YOUR say-so.
8) You can't keep me in jail just because you want to.
9) As to the rest of my life, you can't tell me what to do or not do.
10) And neither can your big fat uncle in Washington.
Yeah, the Founding Fathers framed it in far more polite language, but the intent is the same. They understood standing up for yourself and not letting the gov't push you around -- your own or anyone else's. That was, after all, what the War for Independence was all about.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
How on Dog's Blue/Green Earth did this get modded Insightful?
We need to get ahead of the curve before we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade
That is Grade A Fearmongering.
Lose a city? Really? How would that supposed threat be worse now as opposed to 10 years ago? Same boogeymen were around 10 years ago, same tools were available. Why is it urgent now?
The systematic abuse of this tactic over the last 6+ years to centralize power and isolate/marginalize any meaningful discussion or disagreement should be a felony crime.
It is the equivalent of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded room. A non-credible statement designed and distributed to keep the citizens in a state of fear and heightened paranoia.
Please, consider the fearmongering more objectively.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
You don't need public information to determine the most damaging place to hit a nuclear power plant (or a bridge, or a highrise) with an airplane. All you need is a structural engineer, which neither the U.S. nor the nuclear power (nor general construction industries) hold a monopoly on. You don't even need blueprints, given that design doesn't change that much from one nuclear power plant (bridge, highrise) to the next. Just make a good guess based on knowledge any 2nd year engineering student has, and have at it.
:(
And given the political situation in the U.S. today, a near-miss is as good as a direct hit -- because you'd get the same reaction: "Ahh! Ahhhh! the sky is falling!!"
Bah. Chicken Little was right.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
In innumerable battles, soldiers of the United States of America went forth with a high degree of certainty that they would die. But they went forward in the belief that they would protect our liberties.
Yet today, with the incredibly remote threat that we might be harmed, we gladly offer these same liberties up for sacrifice at the altar.
*sigh*
More to the point, we already lost a city this decade - New Orleans. It wasn't lost to some surprise terrorist attack noone foresaw, either. Talk about being behind the curve.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Since when is Newt and his fascist, crooked friends "America?"
... and yet how much security did they provide?
Every time we talk about Corrupt leaders, THEY talk about "hate speach" and terrorist propaganda.
This from a group, that didn't conduct an investigation into actual suspects and money trails... and has yet to make a credible arrest. So where is the "protection?"
The Democrats had to force them to start taking port security seriously... and then the Republicans went ahead and sold the ports to Dubai when nobody was looking. Remember Dubai of the UAE? BCCI? How is allowing our port security to be run by the same government that launders terrorist money "sercurity".
It seems that when Newt is saying "terrorist recruiting" what he means is "NeoCon Opposition speech." All the "sky is falling" chicken littles fail to realize that the widespread NSA wiretaps started BEFORE 9/11
So while Grandma gets swiped and probed for bombs, we have little port security, where we have millions of tons of cargo that could contain something a lot bigger than a shoe bomb arrives every day.
Oh, and this same group, which is riddled with War Profiteers, Incompetent Chicken-Hawk war mongers, and people of questionable loyalty (just look at how many get money from foreign nationals or are compromised by NeoCons who know who they've slept with), also sold 7 military industrial plants to Dubai. So you now have the UAE making weapons on our soil, with some of our technology.
Does that make you feel safe? Or are we going to scan every web page for suspect comments -- just incase it has some info from Bin Laden. Look, if I were interested in doing something wrong, and sending a message to someone else, I could send them a picture with the data encoded, and only they would have the origina picture without the data. It's a simple technique but impossible to thwart. So -- the only possilbe use for controlling the internet to get "bad guys" is to control the internet. The only possible use for a database of all my purchases, is to have a database of all my purchases to sell to PR agencies, marketing companies, and election promoters -- because Al Qaeda is going to use cash.
No, Newt is just a corporate shill. And America attacked two countries for oil and genocide, who had nothing to do with 9/11. Please note, that none of the hijackers were from either country. There are no credible NeoCon leaders, and they have never shown any ability other than to get elected and steal our tax dollars for private gain.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Because they know how to manipulate "the people." The recipe is hundreds of years old. Nazi war criminal Hermann Göring summed it up very nicely.
From Snopes, http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.htm
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
-- Herman Göring at the Nuremberg trials
Let's recap: 1) We're under attack by Terrorists. 2) America hating Cut-and-Run Democrats will harm the nation. It's the same chapter from the same playbook the Nazi's used.
This is a boring sig
Stick with your instinct. I very highly doubt that the terrorists are even looking through our libraries for this type of knowledge, because it is so widely and vastly known at this point. The point you start purging libraries and telling people what they can and can't say due to what terrorists could possibly learn is the moment you begin sliding down the hill toward complete information control. Controlling speech does not make us safer, as we don't have a monopoly on information. The same type of information would be available at large from other sources.
People pretend as if the terrorists are using our own information against us, or as if they are very sophisticated and rely upon things they'd like to restrict. The truth is that the terrorists took out 3,000 people with a few pilot lessons and a couple boxcutters, and their bombs mostly consist of garbage bin fertilizer recipes. The key to stopping these people isn't in clamping down on information that they probably won't even use to stop their largely unsophisticated (at least in technological terms) attacks. One of the keys to winning the war on terror is to stop being so afraid.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
Or we may be less vulnerable. While it's true that free speech (and freedom of association, a separate but related right) may allow "the terrorists" to organize and recruit, it also allows their enemies (us, free Americans) to organize and recruit as well. One of the great national strengths that freedom of speech conveys is the power of many. Like open source software development, the power of many means that the more people who can observe and think about a problem, the more likely it is for the most effective solution to arise.
Freedom of speech means that there is greater opportunity for errors in methodology to be found, for problems to be reported, and for more diverse innovation in problem solving. What Newt is proposing does not lead to better solutions, it leads to better concentration of power in the hands of a small number of solution-creators. I prefer an America where journalists, bloggers, or anyone at all can stand up and say "Hey! We're going about this all wrong!" or "Hey, you forgot this important thing: __________" or "Hey! This guy (agency, etc) is not doing his job well!"
It's a competitive marketplace of ideas and I think Americans can compete just fine with our enemies--if we allow ourselves to.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
In fact, in the Federalist Papers (no. 84, if you're counting) Alexander Hamilton described the very road you're going down as one of the reasons why a country shouldn't have a Bill of Rights:Unfortunately, I think time has shown that the founders greatly overestimated both the leadership and citizenry that would come after him; "men disposed to usurp" have indeed usurped practically every right not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, just as Hamilton feared.
This is not how things are supposed to work. The founders of our country lived in a time that was rife with invention and development; they certainly did not mean for only certain bits and pieces of speech to be protected. To say that books are protected under the First Amendment today, but not the Internet, would be as ridiculous as saying in 1788 that only handwriting was protected, but words printed using movable type were not. Either way is quite obviously the same content and due the same protection.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
NO, I do not think that Democrats are all about free speech.
Every time you try to reduce this to an us and them philosophy (and I did it too, I apologize) they gleefully screw us while we're fighting each other.
And for the record, though I'm left leaning, Hillary makes me hurl. It's a given that 2008 is going to be a festival of bad choices.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
"Next, people like to whine about the suspension of habeas corpus and about warrantless searches, like George Bush invented these things or in responsible for them. Suspension of habeas corpus for prisoners of war has been the standard for nearly 65 years in the United States. "
1: Prisoners of War? Since when was George Bush talking about Prisoners of War?
He are suspending habeas corpus for non POWs. people who Bush claims are in legal limbo with no rights and no status whatsoever. mere chattle of the US military. Conveniently labelled "detainee".
"Also, before moving forward on it, President Bush consulted congress, or as I like to call them elected representatives of the people, and had its full support, included the democrats."
I'm sure you like to call them "representatives of the people". It kind of makes them sound legitimate doesn't it. snicker.
But come secret congressional comittee consisting of Dick Cheney and a few congressmen sworn to secrecy which does not include all of congress is NOT the same thing as consulting congress. Moreover congress does not approve or disapprove of anything except via passing LAW. It is not the executive branch.
Was a law passed which authorized warantless searches? NO. Congress does not offer support of things in real time. (not without violating the seperation of powers). It passes laws. Those laws are then carried out by the Executive, and overseen by the judicial branch which is the sole final arbiter for the meaning of the words of the law. It is the written word which counts. not backroom deals, winks, nods and handshakes.
As to the presence of democrats in congress.. Who cares? The democrats and the republicans are the same political party. There is no significant difference of opinion on almost any issues. Citing democrats as justification for the republican's wrongdoings is as fallacious as when the democrats point the finger at republicans to justify theirs. The entire system is corrupt. And both parties merely take turns screwing the people for private gain.
"Meanwhile, there is a legal standard for searches without warrants. "
yes. exigent circumstances. And there weren't any exigent circumstances here. There were plenty of chances to get a warrant.
"...and the Bush administration followed the standard required by the court." bull shit. which court case made such a finding?
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
They have never really thought of the United States as a politically free people; the US is simply our team, and we will do whatever we need to in order to win. They are sadistic, and get off on the idea of torture, war, etc. They've never served, but they have adolescent fantasies of blowing shit up and killing bad guys.
blah blah blah Newt's a fascist blah blah doesn't understand our constitution blah rights blah blah stupid blah blah blah freedom blah blah
OK great. We've all totally GOT IT that freedom of speech is a critical and inalienable HUMAN (ie applies to all, not just US citizens) right.
Then again...
It's pretty frikken' easy to stand at the sidelines and lob criticism at policymakers. After all, you're just some wanker on an anonymous login, YOU'LL never be tasked with the responsibility of actually making policy, right?
So, if you can spare a moment between breathless rants about how sacrosanct our rights are, please, let us all in on YOUR secret plan to neutralize a fundamentalist religious creed (Wahabism) that
- believes women are chattel, homosexuals should be killed, etc.
- believes that the Koran is the only source of any worthwhile laws
- will cheerfully kill you because you disagree
How do YOU stop someone sitting next to you whose beliefs are not only inimical to yours, but he WANTS to kill you? Do you 'tolerate' him until he (hopefully) goes away? What about when he starts grabbing the local kids off the playground and starts explaining to them how wonderful his creed of hate is, blaming you for everything wrong that's ever happened to him, and telling them that if they kill you they will be rewarded, even if they die doing it?
And don't say "education" or "poverty" in your answer, as the 9/11 hijackers were all well educated and came from (at least) comfortably middle-class backgrounds.
I can't wait to see how many THOUSANDS of +5 insightful responses we get in here, since so MANY people are so instantly ready to criticize, they MUST have solutions themselves, right? Otherwise they are just typical internet windbag hypocrites.
-Styopa
Republicans who don't believe in the value of oversight, good government, and social supports have done a great job illustrating what NO GOVERNMENT looks like.
Look at the Katrina disaster; FEMA outsourced all their equipment to the former head of FEMA... which is no big deal, since they didn't seem to think FEMA was much more than a check machine for Florida hurricanes. So the fat government deal given to the former head of FEMA, get's outsourced to other companies... because he doesn't do the work, just gets the profits. Unfortuneatly, this great experiment in "outsourced" government, went awry when an actual disaster occured. No buses were available. We all know about the smoke-screen cover arguing about how New Orleans was too corrupt or lazy to save themselves -- but the actual fact was that buses were planned and ordered but never arrived.
What was FEMA thinking, when they stopped 400 fanboat rescue volunteers from Florida? Either it was CYA or there was an interest in getting rid of troublesome New Orleans squatters... but if you assume that it was merely incompetence, we come to the other failure in government; Jobs. Haliburton was contracted, in a no bid deal, to fix up a lot of homes. They've outsourced that job to "guest workers" from Mexico while still retaining huge sums to do the work. So, in order to save Americans from the burdens of Socialist projects that use citizens for public works, we spend more to get less, and keep more citizens too impoverished to better themselves.
I'm sick of the mentality that accepts 100% corporate control or it's Communism. Our drug companies make huge profits on drugs our government subsidized to research... but above on beyond the argument that "profits=progress" why is it every woman in this country must spend about $35 a month for birth control? Wouldn't it make sense, that the government research this basic need, and provide it for free or perhaps a $1 month? Where did the Public Good, change to "someone needs to profit?" There is no inherent right to profit or even existence for corporations -- yet that's how our government now acts.
They spent $13 Billion subsidizing big oil, which has made record profits. $13 Billion could provide a lot of school lunches and books, or healthcare for every kid in this country. $13 Billion is apparently, chicken feed, when we urgently need it for 6 weeks of the Iraq war... but too much when actually helping Americans who didn't "work" for it.
Well that's crap -- what people earn or "work for" is an arbitrary value. One Oil CEO getting a Billion $ a year, or a minimum wage worker making $12,000 a year is an arbitrary value. It's just a lot of corporate-BS in people's heads that has them convinced that somehow these values reflect any true value of the person working. IF so, then CEO's would get paid less, or perhaps outsourced to INDIA. I'm sure I could lose GE money for a lot less than their current CEO -- I could perhaps even make them a profit.
If we allow everything to be driven by what corporations want, then no bar will go too low. As soon as Burger King hires "guest workers", McDonalds will have to fire their workers and do the same.
So Newt shutting down the government, would have had greater effects the longer it lasted. And we've seen how important Congressional oversight can be -- with the lack of it these last 6 years and a total failure in government.
We have an EPA that protect polluters. While the level of Mercury in pregnant women has doubled.
We have an FDA that protects bad drugs on behalf of drug companies.
Our government has been stood on its head... and the repercussions of that are just beginning to be felt. We will have a generation of poorly educated test-takers, who have developed asthma, diabetes and Autism in epidemic numbers. Eating all manner of modified foods, breathing adulterated air in some grand experiment. The solution will not be for everyone to be an expert in health, and to test their own foods, and teach their own kids -- this is
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
``Gingrich said a "different set of rules" may be needed to reduce terrorists' ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.''
I have to wonder why Gingrich is so afraid of free speech. If the "terrorists" are using it to get out their message and recruit people, perhaps this says something about their cause and the state of the world? Apparently, the message is, somehow, convincing. What is the message? Why are people so angry that they become terrorists? Perhaps _that's_ what we should be looking at. I have the feeling that doing so might improve things for us and for the people who are now being recruited by the terrorists, making the recruiters less successful, and us safer.
Five years ago, saying this provoked angry reactions and accusations of siding with the terrorists. Let's see what happens in 2006, after years of war, erosion of rights, lies, and public outrage.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
While you sound like a troll, your UID would seem to indicate otherwise.
Between the Salem Witch Trials, Blue laws, and various other puritanical ideologies that made there way into lawbooks, it is obvious that Judeo-Christian values were a normal part of society. The fact that still a very high percent of US citizens claim a version of Christianity would imply that a government by the people and for the people would continue to reflect those values.
In the '50s, the placement of In God we trust as our motto was not starting something new, but was solidifying what had been the norm, and was coming under attack. Again, since Judeo-Christian values were being removed from their position of influence, the people reacted by attempting to solidify that this was, indeed, at its core, a nation of based around christian principles. There was no need for that "motto" since it was understood before recent history.
What most Christians are opposed to is one sided removal of Christianity from anything public for the fear of breaking the establishment clause.
There are certainly your fundies who take issue with walmart having season's greeting, but those are a small (thought admittedly vocal) minority.
Religion and politics, without the flame. godgab.org
Freedom of speech is one of the core principles upon which this country is founded, and in this post 9-11/Internet/Pentagon Papers/McCarthyism/American Century era, a re-examination of those principles is perhaps exactly what this country needs. Let us examine such highfalutin ideals like freedom of speech, expression, religion, and the press that our founding fathers saw fit to make the foundation of jurisprudence in this country in light of enemies who really DO hate freedom. How much do we want to become like our enemies in order to be safe from them? Do we need to become like them at all? Is it possible to survive as a nation clinging to principles that are two centuries old? Is it possible for us to survive if we forsake them?
It's definitely time to have this conversation, because we have already given up so much in the name of making ourselves more secure. And while we're at it, let's have this conversation with the Republican party, which is purportedly in favor of tax cuts, smaller government involvement in daily lives, greater personal freedom, and greater personal responsibility. While we're asking the American people if we want to go so horribly wrong, let us ask the Republicans how they have gone so far astray from the core values of the Party of Lincoln.
saider said:
"Most people ignore the fact that the Founding Fathers established a system that was borderline anarchy. Just enough to keep a lid on things and let the people solve the problems themselves."
Brother, you are singing my tune. Before the election, I went back and read a little Tom Paine and other Enlightenment thinkers (Rights of Man, Age of Reason, etc).
Anybody who thinks they were a bunch of button-down, churchgoers who would have blanched at the wide-open societies that followed them are really missing the boat. They would have loved the Internet, porn and all, and probably would have put a would-be tin-pot like Dick Cheney in the stocks for public ridicule.
One thing that amazed me was how similar some of the pamphlet-writing of that era was to modern-day blogs and The Daily Show. These were LIBERAL men, with a capital-L, including James Madison, the patron saint of Republicans. Madison would have cuffed Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich for badly missing the point. Ben Franklin, needless to say, would have stuck his big-buckle shoe up the backside of someone like Rick Santorum faster than you could say "man on dog".
You are welcome on my lawn.
Look, folks, let's think about this for a second. The talk was given to a group handing out an award for protecting freedom of speech. You would have to be heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Idiots to go in front of such a group and claim to want to restrict freedom of speech. Regardless of what you think of Newt's politics, he isn't an idiot, and above all he is a politician. Politicians just don't go around slapping their constituency in the face; it just wouldn't make sense.
The bottom line is that the article got it wrong, either through error or (as I personally would suspect) intent. Newt publishes transcripts of a number of his speeches on his web site, http://www.newt.org/ Maybe if it shows up there we'll know what was said.
(As an aside, I'm registered non-partisan, and lean towards libertarian, so I'm not here toting the Republican party line. I have heard Newt talk on C-SPAN, though, and I do respect a lot of what he says.)
How on Dog's Blue/Green Earth did you go blind and not even notice? 10 years ago the terrorist were not in possession of nuclear weapons...thanks to our Liberal ways in the US, we have alowed these same terrorists to arm and train themselves for a long fight with us "infadels." we have also allowed them to come into our country and prepare for their next attack! Weather they are here on student Visa's (taking out loans they will never pay back), or here teaching their religion (of peace...yea right).
Gingrich is the same kind of politician that asserted that waging war on Iraq would make us safer, when, in fact, it has done the opposite. And now, he is making similarly wild assertions about how restricting free speech would make us safer.
The problem here is not any difficulty of dealing with terrorism, the problem is that Gingrich and politicians like him are completely and utterly incompetent.
Tragic as it is, an instance of 3000 deaths does not warrant throwing away our democracy or spending billions of dollars on ill-conceived wars; we have tens of thousands of preventable deaths from the flu and from traffic accidents each every year.
And maybe Gingrich didn't notice, but we did lose a city recently. That loss would have been completely preventable if people like Gingrich had done their job. And it would have been preventable at a fraction of the cost of the current anti-terrorism measures and without destroying our democracy.
I dunno about you, but if some religious zelot (or anyone for that matter) starts attacking my country and its people, there will be hell to pay. If they wanna play games, fine...let's play by our rules and our terms!
Life is not for the lazy.
ya, cant suppprt the very document he was sworn to protect and uphold.
Good thing hes pretty much worthless at this point and no one important listens to him.
idiot.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If a snow-turd like Newt is the really best our Democracy can do, maybe we need to reexamine Democracy.
... (gasp) ... a Poor Person.
I propose we select public officials by Lottery. Completely at random.
Don't laugh too quick. What's the worst that could happen? An alcoholic in the White House? An bumbling idiot? A chronic liar? A child-molester? An egomaniac? A greedy weasel? A corporate puppet? We've had all these and worse. J. Random Citizen would do less damage, and probably more good.
And this way, we might live to see a Woman in the White House
or a Black man
or an Atheist
or a Homosexual
or
And how many LEGISLATIONS were sponsored, passed, and overturned as unconstitutional that tried for further broaden child pornography (to cartoons) and to make it infeasible to host pornography online (stricken down as unconstitutional and eventually reworked as only required by commercial sources, as the burden on non-commercial sources was too great). But I guess you don't consider those "speech". Or are you simply being overly selective to ignore that there are few (if any) political parties that don't have an element that have or want to pass legislation to curtail speech?
People "whine" when you murder a person in cold blood. It has little to do with the person "inventing" murder. It does have a lot to do with being *responsible* for murder.
Such is irrelevant. Slavery existed for over 70 years in the United States, yet it clearly was against the Constitution. The fact that there has been a long period of ignoring the Constitution doesn't magically make an act constitutional.
Lincoln didn't just utilize it during wartime. He utilized it in a time of rebellion/invasion. "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." Golly, it looks like Lincoln had a just basis for suspending it. Now, who has invaded the US? Who is rebellion in it? Before you claim that 9/11 is the act, I will make note that the Supreme Court overturned Lincoln's military tribunals conducted in areas were the courts were open. Now, tell me of a place in the US where the courts *aren't* open. If you can't think of one, it rather reasonably follows that there couldn't be a rebellion or invasion, so there's no justification for suspending the writ of habeas corpus.
It doesn't matter if every single Congressman unanimously voted that Bush was God. So long as the 4th Amendment stands, unreasonable search and seizure is barred. Any reasonable search needs a Warrant. Now, the least you could claim is that Congress gave Bush Warrants. But there are none. Simply put, the request to wiretap hundreds or thousands of phones because they were "associates" of terrorists for indeterminate time doesn't fulfill the obligation of the Warrant to conduct a search.
An illegal standard, sure. If you spend 65 years believing the illegal is legal, it's little wonder you'd think the 4th Amendment being bypassable has any legal foundation.
Oh, really? Feel free to quote me the part of the US Constitution that usurps the 4th Amendment. I'm really all ears on that one.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
You're vastly oversimplifying:
...
> Commands you to kill:
> Qur'an - check
Infidels, yes--i.e. anyone other than a Christian or Jew (who pay a tax) and Muslims. We've all heard the infamous "slay them wherever you find them." And various other bits in enforcing certain laws, protecting Muslim lands, killing any Muslim who converts to anything else, etc. Honestly, though, I'm not overly familiar with it. I do understand, however, that there are some people who see it as their duty to kill civilians in certain areas for some combination of political and religious reasons as well as others who decry their actions.
> Bible - check
There's some stuff about ancient tribes, yes, but they're gone. Or can you point out any particular person that either a Christian or a Jew is supposedly obligated to kill?
Oh, right, now you're going to mention the law enforcement part in the same breath... Yes, they did have the death penalty back then, it's true, and even for crimes people no longer recognize as such. But that's pretty much irrelevant to modern Christians, at least--read up on that woman caught in adultery.
You seem to have left out lots of details in your hasty equivocation. I mean, why couldn't we add one more document to your list?
US Constitution - check (death penalty for treason)
And perhaps that should be considered an atheist document? I suspect that I need not relate to you all the arguments against the US being or ever having been a Christian nation, such as the 1796-97 Treaty with Tripoli which spells that out explicitly
if the moderators would indulge me, i'd like to post a youtube link to a one and a half minute segment of John F. Kennedy's speech about free speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkryNyxlubY it isn't my post, just happened across it and remembered this slashdot topic...
If Big Media is the Harvester of Eyes, does that make Apple an arms dealer?
Mode 10101001 10101001 up -- you said it how I wanted to.
Further I would add, that sitting here trying to defend the pure frontal assault on Liberty in the past six years -- by comparing it to "dog and pony" morality shows by Tipper Gore (took me a while to forgive Gore for that nonsense) pales in comparison to Patriot Act I, II, and every other thing Bush has done.
Warrantless and massive spying... who wants to continue to pretend that ANY of this has anything to do with "bad guys." Where are they and where are the trials? Why do I feel that they've done more to cover up 9/11 than to investigate it? A few weeks into office, and the first attack happened while Clinton was in charge. His response was swift and immediate that day. The FBI was put in charge. A couple years later the blind Mullah was in prison with his cohorts. No changes in law, case closed. It was all open and seemed pretty straight-forward, even with a negative press.
So all this nonsense about "defending America" was to get dirt on political opposition. They aren't defending kids from molesters, their finding Mark Foley, and then blackmailing him to do their bidding. In fact, if they catch you at something really bad, I'm sure that the NeoCon machine wants you in charge of a committee, or in a position of power -- so that they can control you. This administration has shunned honest people of ethics and is run like the Mob.
So the discussion is Bogus, and Newt as the absentee father of this deformed NeoCon movement, needs to do some pennance and start outing those who would abuse Liberty if he ever wants credibility again. Otherwise, he's pretending to be some sort of honest bystander, musing about "how could such a crime happen?" Newt didn't do the mugging, but he sprayed paint on the cameras, sold the "stolen" and unmarked gun, and sent the police to the wrong building.
He's just begging to be relevant again, as we swop one set of crooks for another. Go get another $4 Million book deal from Rupert Murdoch again while you sit on a committee reviewing his consolidation of media ownership Newt, and then muse some more about how this corruption got started. Some people have no memory of the past -- and that is your base.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Seriously though. I don't think it's about how much money the government takes. It's about how it's treated. It's about how open the spending and budgeting is. The people should treat the government like a service organization. How much value are you getting for your dollar? If it's low, replace the employees with new ones that will provide better value. If certain services are deemed to be unnecessary (due to, say, better services being offered privately), those services get cut. Etc. The problem is that people can get this idea that the government is just a pit into which money is thrown -- and at that point, they stop expecting to get anything back. The government becomes a villainous black-box. And when people expect the government to be corrupt and waste money ... the government will end up doing exactly those things and will get away with it because that's exactly what everyone assumes they're going to do anyway.
Terrorism is not a threat to the life of a nation. It is a nuisance. A deadly and horrifying nuisance. But a nuisance nevertheless. It should be dealt with forcefully, but in dealing with it, America should not give up its fundamental principles of freedom and become a defacto fascist state.
A standing army across your border waiting to invade IS a threat to the life of a nation. The German army waiting to invade Poland and France was a threat to the life of those nations. North Korea poses a true threat to South Korea, as North Korea can kill MILLIONS of people within a few minutes using artillery barrages. Compare this to the threat of a few bombs going off. Individually, these events are terrible and horrifying, but in reality, these bombs will affect a relatively small number of people. Their real effect lies in the fear they generate and the reactions caused by that fear. I would ask you to imagine living in London during the blitz of World War II, when huge areas of the city were destroyed. Imagine what those people had to live through. And then compare that to the above list of bombs and suicide attacks.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Let me get this straight... In order to fight terrorism the usa pushes democracy and freedom abroad. In a new twist, some seek to limit free speech in order to fight terrorism. I have one question. Since our democracy and freedom rests squarely on our first amendment rights to free speech(that is why it's our first and most important amendment), how can we say that democracy and freedom is important to fighting terrorism, perhaps the terrorist are right and we are wrong?
If you're gonna try to eliminate free speech that you don't like, then do it for a really, really good cause and avoid the backslash. Doesn't hurt to be a Democrat, either.
I also call bullshit, because clearly, the amount of sex you have is totally related to the amount of profit you have made. And since sex is central to happiness, raising children and pretty much everything else that matters, clearly profit is the central idiom of modern life.
Do you really believe this stuff? You are drinking Israeli coolaid, my friend... Why Israeli coolaid? What was WW I and WW II really about? Do you know anything outside of what you have been taught mostly via Israeli propaganda? Do you know about the founding of Israel and how that is related to those two wars? Do some research.
Israeli civilians get blown up because their military accidentally kills a few innocent people? Are you serious?
Israel has effected a genocidal program of ruthless extermination against a mostly poor unarmed population for the last 90 years. For that period of time, the Israelis have been ruthlessly killing women, children, the elderly and pretty much anyone else they can get their claws on - attempting to terrify the palestinian population to move from regions of interest. And once the population moves, the Israelis exclaim "We are taking this land because nobody lives here.". They bulldoze everything and then set their sites on the next region of interest. In the interest of propaganda, the Israelis occasionally hand some land back and then tell the world, "look how generous we are to the terrorist Palestinians". Then, after their little press release, they go back