Slashdot Mirror
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.
FP
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.
I can't find a way to mod Newt Gingrich down as "Troll", "Flamebait", or "Redundant". Can someone help me?
Ninjas use italics.
Gingrich re-evaluates you!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Thank God he isn't the speaker of the House anymore. It's scary when someone in power has an opinion about technology that they know nothing about.
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
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).
Gingrich should be legally prevented from saying such dumb things.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
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
Gingrich holds no elected office.
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.
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.
It's uncanny how recent law changes and the subsequent cries for more control and less freedom in the US mimic the changes that take place in "Animal Farm"...
It appears that Newt is just another pig, and the American constituency are the remainder of the barnyard animals. You need to find some mules with voices to nip this in the bud before it goes any further.
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.
I used to think he was smart.
Now I think he might just be like Jimmy Carter; smarter when he was younger, but now as daffy as a Warner Bros. cartoon duck.
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
Clearly his opinions are unchecked.
Oh, wait...
"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's right, we must win the fight to end our way of life! If they get there before we do, we're screwed!
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
As usual, there is more than meets the eye, especially when the original article is from the "Union Leader"..
From a fairly robust article in the Boston Globe I dug up with a quick Google News search for "Gingrich":
MANCHESTER, N.H. --Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Monday that First Amendment rights need to be expanded and cited the elimination of McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms as one solution.
Noting the thwarted London terrorist attacks this summer, Gingrich said there should be a Geneva Convention for such actions that makes those people subject to "a totally different set of rules."
From this Globe article (hardly a conservative-friendly paper) it appears Gingrich's "totally different set of rules" has not to do with freedom of speech, but with the Geneva Convention as applied to terrorists, which is a whole 'nother bag of worms in and of itself; however, the question remains as to how the OP managed to spin what seem to be two separate points into one decidedly negative message.
Does anyone have the actual transcript of his speech there so we can figure out who's full of BS and who's not? Think about it -- if the man is even THINKING of running for President in '08, he certainly isn't going to get elected if he runs on a platform of RESTRICTING basic freedom of speech.
John Adams
I nominate Newt as democracy's first victim.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
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 honestly hope we don't enact restrictions like Europe (and elsewhere) http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-02-26-euro pe-free-speech_x.htm.
"If the Constitution doesn't protect scum like me, it doesn't protect anybody."---Larry Flint.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
He's politically radioactive after shutting down the government in budget battles with Clinton.
Which I've never understood. Shutting down the government showed people some things-- the biggest was that much of the government is superfluous, and that having a good amount of the government not working didn't effect much. The press was all in a titter looking for the horrible effects of the government shutdown, and the most the were able to find was that a few people couldn't get passports and government workers weren't getting paid. That more than anything else is what got the politicians to hammer out a deal. It wasn't that the government had ground to a hault, it was that it had ground to a hault and it wasn't effecting much. They had to get it started up again before voters realized that much of the bureaucracy isn't needed. It must have scared the hell out of the politicians and the bureaucraticic drones.
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.
Newt said free speech is bad. How do we know? Cuz a leftist newspaper told us so. I mean just check out these quotes from Newt:
"different set of rules" and
"We need to get ahead of the curve before we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade."
YES FOLKS, those are the only two relevant quotes from Newt in the entire article. No context presented, we just have to take THEIR WORD for it that Newt was talking about turning America into Nazi Germany.
This article is nothing more than a leftist hit piece and you people are falling for it. Please read the (bogus) article first before going on a posting jihad.
Google News lists a dozen newspapers that are running this story, but they all site this one story as the source. I look forward to hearing more details. Although perhaps, if he really did say something this stupid, we may not hear from him much more.
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
They missed libraries, and museums, and all the tiny little things. If it was such a success, why did the Republicans back down so quickly, and how come Clinton was re-elected (the very thing it was designed to prevent?)
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
[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.
What I don't get, is that he blasts the Federalist movement for the Sedition Act:
And yet, somehow, Newt comes down on the other side now. Go figure.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
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?
No. It pissed everyone off because:
1. It was done out of spite and stubornness. Things don't get that bad without a complete failure of compromise and statemenship.
2. It should people just how much they depended on the government.
People get pissed when things don't work. Not when everything is going fine. And in the end, Gingrich's stunt backfired. His, and the rest of GOP's, popular support fell like a rock, and he ended up getting nothing more than what was originally offered. It was a spectacular failure, and led to him being him being voted in several polls "the most hated man in politics."
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
Several points: I have read the transcipt. Newt never said that free speech should be curtailed. Indeed, he said it should be expanded. But what's accuracy between a few friends? It should be pointed that the few attempts at LEGISLATION that would curtail free speech was sponsored by Democrats. It is also worth noting that the PMRC was the brainchild of Tipper Gore and that the panel was packed with Democrats. The two Repulicans on the panel, not any of the Democrats, were the ones who called the opponents of free speech restrictions as witnesses. A lot of folks forget that it was Edwin Meese, the Attorney General at the time and a Republican, wrote a legal opinion opposing the proposed PMRC legislation. He said parents were the bets people to decide whether children should be listening to Frank Zappa or whomever. 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. In fact, President Lincoln utilized it during wartime. 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. Meanwhile, there is a legal standard for searches without warrants. Indeed, it's provided for in the U.S. Constitution, and the Bush administration followed the standard required by the court.
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?
I am not surprised. The sad part about all this is that many in America will accept this. Hopefully, it remains a minority. But as 9/11 showed, all it takes is for an attack to take place on our soil. And all that requires is for the right (or wrong) ppl to ignore some evidence again.
Many have shown that we value their lives more than they value their rights or others lives and their rights. We must get rid of the "They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong." or "I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace." and return to the days of "I regret that I have one life to give for my country" or "We have nothing to fear, but fear itself" or "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
However, we do know from past experiences that Newt Gingrich doesn't believe in Free Speech. He spearheaded and passed the Telecommunications Decency Act of 1994 if you recall, which made it a federal crime punishable by prison and a $200,000 fine to transmit anything offensive over an electronic medium.
When interviewed he openly stated that he knew it was unconstitutional, and that he didn't believe in free speech.
The law was stricken, not for being unconstitutional, but for being unenforcible.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
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.
...stupid lyrics sites get the lyrics wrong.
"Now there's a have to hook'in fee" - what the fuck does that even mean? And if you google it, a lot of lyric sites have it this way.:-P
The real lyrics are "No, there's a hefty fuckin' fee" which actually makes sense.:-P
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
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.
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.
I'm old enough to remember when the threat was all the "evil, godless Communists" who wanted us dead.
Actually, I do believe that the Founding Fathers intended future methods of communications to be covered by the First Amendment. And even though they could not have envisioned the Internet and Oprah "being beamed around the world", they lived in a time when there was also an explosion of global communications and commerce. The notion that they were some primitives and we need to revise their vision because of religious fanatics (East or West), is just another excuse to lock down the freedoms they fought for.
Remember, there are people (some of them comment here occasionally), who really don't like the notion of people actually being, you know, free. They'd be much more comfortable being told what to do and what to think. Many of them find solace in Religion because it's a short-cut to having to make your own moral decisions. After all, if all the rules are written down for you, then you don't have to do any of the hard work yourself. Some people like to live like that. None of them were Founding Fathers of this Nation.
The exceptionalists who want to tell us that terrorism is something so new that we have to start doing a little snip-snip on the Constitution are short on understanding of history or short on brains (I guess short on courage is another possibility). There was a time when the Barbary Pirates brought much of the commerce of United States to a standstill, using terrorist tactics. In fact, they killed more people than Al Qaeda did on 9/11, too. And know what? We made it through by treating them as the criminals they were and putting them out of business. The cool thing is that it took COOPERATION WITH THE REST OF THE WORLD to do it. Tell that to the hairless ape that sleeps in the White House. Not that it will sink in..
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.)
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
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?
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.
Except when it comes to insensitive language at our places of learning.
Except in the workplace, where even facts might cause a hostile working environment (have a frank chat about the Koran and see if that is hostile, for instance).
Except by the use of the race card to silence ideas and opinions in politics.
Even
Meanwhile, all the man said was that the world has changed and we may need to revisit freedom of speech. Since he hasn't said anything about how to restructure the freedom of speech, how can anyone fault what he said? He didn't say "eliminate it," you know. Given the article didn't delve much into his reasoning, nor any way in which he might want to restructure freedom of speech, it seems silly to be in opposition.
Ed Barbar, President and General Manager, Furnit USA
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
RTFA - the go and read the "Gingrinch".
/.-er who doest read the article) is politics.
He is not advocating that the first amendment and net be shut - he is PREDICTING that after a large destructive terror attack, the first casualty will be the First Amendment.
He is basically warning we have to get on the ball now fighting terrorist organization, or else our society will suffer in the backlash of an attack. And the other point which was made was that there is no appeasing the terroist - they are religious fanatics who will attack without provocation. Our mere refusal to submit the the Calihpate (as the Salafists and Wahabists demand) and Sharia law are provocation enough under their warped view of Islam.
The rest of it (and the typical knee-jerk mischaracterizations on both side here, but especially the typical lefty
Don't shoot the messenger, look at the message.
There is some scary truth there - and we shoudl act now to prevent far worse abuses (and deaths) later.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO