|
Current Readers |
|
There are 71 guests online |
|
Circulation |
|
Visitors: 2133572
|
|
Archives |
-
May, 2006
-
April, 2006
-
March, 2006
-
February, 2006
-
November, 2005
-
October, 2005
-
September, 2005
-
August, 2005
-
July, 2005
-
January, 2005
-
December, 2004
-
October, 2004
-
September, 2004
-
March, 2004
|
|
Another Boot To The Teeth |
|
|
|
Written by Scott Meadow
|
|
Friday, 19 August 2005 (read 2285 times) |
Hard as it is to imagine in these days of men in black masks swooping
into "suspected terrorist's rooms" in the dead of night and
"disappearing" them on private CIA jets to other countries for torture,
Americans' civil liberties, including freedom of speech have been under increasingly harsh attack
in recent years. If you don't believe me, ask Howard Stern. Or Ryan
Dwyer, a 9th grader who was suspended for a week for creating a website
criticizing his school. Or you could ask Ward
Churchill.
This all hit close to home for us Wisconsinites back in March this year when Churchill came to visit U.W. Whitewater.
It created quite a local stir as very few people were receptive to
hearing how the victims of the "911" terrorists were comparable to Nazi
middlemen. People were so non-receptive, that some decided it
shouldn't be allowed. But they were faced
with a pretty thorny problem with that: how to frame an argument so
that most reasonable people wouldn't immediately reject it? I
mean, just advocating banning this guy because they didn't like his
message wouldn't be very First Amendment of them, would it? So
they came up with a cool idea: they won't object to the
content of his speech per se, but protest only the
fact that it's being given at a taxpayer supported university.
This way, they can still say they support
Churchill's right to say what he wants, just not on the public's
dime. It would only amaze single-cell
organisms that this argument was advanced by
local conservatives. (Well, at least
they tried to wrap up their judgmental
authoritarianism in the cloak of fiscal
conservation.)
So, in other words: they support his right to free speech, so long as
they don't have to really support it in any way. Ahh, the ever
vigilant guardians of democracy have spoken! Somehow I missed
that letter in Jefferson's collection where he said: "the best defense
against the erosion of liberty is to do nothing." And later, when
Madison must've said: "support freedoms only when the person exercising
them does something of which you personally approve and agree
with." (You know, those wacky founding fathers had the only
reasonable things to say about how to govern an advanced 21st century
republic.) Hmm, better hit the library and look harder.
Apparently, mob rule ...oops, sorry "majority rule"... is the only
healthy way to view personal liberty these days: if it's popular and
the majority likes it, well, that's the law, folks. Shut up and
choke it down, lefty. Better not be a minority in
anything.
If that's the case, then, according to a 2003 ABC Poll, 57% of people
believe abortion should be legal in most cases. Mr. Gallup poll
says that 53% believe Roe v. Wade was a "good thing" for the
country. And Mr. Pew Research says 84% believe you can be a good
American without religious faith. Okay, just shut up, minority, we'll take it from here. Buh bye.
Hmm.. but what was that other quote...hmm...
The minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
-Thomas Jefferson
Maybe we should respect minority rights after all, huh -- and the right of individuals to make controversial points -- because that's what equal protection is all about. Imagine that.
And while we're at it, someone needs to tell this to a teenager, because a recent study of high school students
revealed that "many do not think newspapers should publish freely,"
without government censorship, and that "even in the best of times, 30
percent of Americans feel that the First Amendment, the centuries-old
cornerstone of our Bill of Rights, 'goes too far.'" See, freedoms
like this are never very popular.
Probably why we have a constitution in the first place, don't you
think? If everyone agreed about these things all the time, we
wouldn't have to write them down so we won't forget.
|
|
|
|
Monkey Pile 
