We seem eager, desperate, to throw away the freedoms we imperfectly hold in this country. So little that needs to be said ever actually GETS said, yet so many want everybody to just shut up:
MANCHESTER – Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich yesterday said the country will be forced to reexamine freedom of speech to meet the threat of terrorism.
Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, 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.
“We need to get ahead of the curve before we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade,” said Gingrich, a Republican who helped engineer the GOP’s takeover of Congress in 1994.
Never mind, you idiot, that 9/11 happened BECAUSE PEOPLE WHO NEEDED TO TALK TO EACH OTHER DIDN’T. Yes, yes, that’s not a case of public speech, but it’s still on point. A democratic republic can only function if there is MORE speech happening, not less. Does this idiot not understand that terror cells will find ways to communicate, that silencing EVERYBODY in the hope of making things harder for them is a fool’s game?
Gingrich isn’t talking about how to make us safe, not really. He’s talking about maintaining control. Control for his authoritarian party. Oh, and what “speech” SHOULD be protected?
Gingrich sharply criticized campaign finance laws he charged were reducing free speech and doing little to fight attack advertising. He also said court rulings over separation of church and state have hurt citizens’ ability to express themselves and their faith.
His fans are floating his name as a potential PRESIDENTIAL candidate, yet the only freedom that concerns him is keeping campaign donations rolling in and making sure that the religious (the right kind of religious people, of course, not those scary OTHER religious people) amongst us have more and more influence over public life in this country.
Does anybody have any doubt WHO would be silenced in Gingrich’s brave new world? It sure wouldn’t be voices from the rabid right. It would be people who question the status quo, of course, and I bet they start with people already on their lists. Gingrich is considered one of the leading THINKERS on the right, and that should frighten us all.
Behind all of their bromides and lectures about goodness, the right worships destruction, exploitation and the cultivation of hatred and bigotry. They rely upon ignorance, and there is no better way to foster ignorance than to deny speech, to ban books. Silencing speech will not make us safe. It won’t bring back the dead, or stop extremists from hatching their plans or rebuild destroyed buildings. What it will do is enable more criminal wars, more looting of the public treasury, more expansions of the already-too-big police state. Beneath Gingrich’s professorial demeanor is the rictus grin of the authoritarian. His idiotic suggestions need to be roundly condemned … while we still have a public square that ALLOWS us to condemn them.
