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Author Topic:   Enemy of Free Speech, John Kerry
jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 2787
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted October 26, 2004 02:26 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Kerry Presidency + Lapdog Media = Threat to Freedom
Wes Vernon
Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2004


Let no one say we have not been warned. The enemies of free speech are on the march.

The Kerry campaign has been moving heaven and earth to keep you from seeing the Red, White and Blue Production, “Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal.”

I have seen that documentary which was produced by Marine veteran and journalist Carlton Sherwood, and my reaction is, no wonder Kerry is afraid of what will happen if the American people get to see it.
It is a powerful account of decorated and wounded veterans of the Vietnam War who were deeply hurt that John Kerry trashed their sacrifices.

Even to this day, they are angry that one of their fellow veterans would turn on them. These brave men spent years in the “Hanoi Hilton” communist prison, only to have their cruel captors throw in their faces tape recordings of Kerry accusing them of unspeakable atrocities.

Since this documentary was made known, eighteen Democratic senators ran to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to try to block Sinclair Broadcast Group from showing it on 62 TV stations, the Democratic Party ran to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) to protest the showing, and one theater in Pennsylvania canceled a scheduled showing of the film after lawyers friendly to the Kerry campaign threatened to sue.

Michael Moore can show his slanderous bile at theaters all over the country, but one, little theater in Jenkintown, Pa. can’t show these honorable veterans pouring their hearts out over what they see as rank betrayal of their service.

Sinclair executives spent two weeks negotiating with the Kerry campaign about having its candidate appear on television to respond with his side of the story. Those negotiations came to naught.

Apparently Kerry’s camp simply has no answer to the substance of the devastating charges. His campaign operatives or allies can answer with smears, name-calling, and appeals to government power, but they can’t rebut the film with facts.

This whole controversy over “Stolen Honor” raises two very fundamental issues: free speech and a biased, lapdog media.

The free speech issue goes right to the very heart of the First Amendment and the Constitution. If we take the intent of the Founding Fathers seriously, then Sinclair (SBG) has every right to say what it pleases, just as any newspaper does.

Senator Kerry will not appear on Sinclair’s stations and refute the allegations of the veterans. Instead his supporters have sought to keep the American people from learning about them. Raw government power (the FEC and the FCC) is their only answer.

The FCC has been correctly described by a panelist on the Fox News channel’s Saturday media review program as “a Soviet-style creation.”

Sinclair will now show parts of the film as one component of an hour-long presentation).

The very reason Americans are able to hear Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity or view Sinclair’s forthright commentary is that in 1987, during the Reagan administration, the FCC did away with the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” which had held that since “the people own the airwaves,” radio and TV stations had to offer “equal time” to those who dispute controversial views expressed in their programming.

The net effect of this rule was to chill editorializing by the stations, for fear they would be inundated with endless demands for “equal time” to respond to this or that.

Many station managers played it safe by steering clear of “controversy” and offering mush in lieu of hard-nosed, substantive commentary.

When the “Fairness Doctrine” (a name which itself has Orwellian connotations) finally went out the window, more broadcasters exercised their First Amendment rights and not only editorialized, but scheduled talk show hosts with strong opinions. Most of them were and are conservatives, but not because broadcast companies wanted to foist them onto the public.

Conservatives on the air are successful because (and this irks the totalitarians of the political left) that is what the public wanted.

Listeners and viewers could already get the liberal slant simply by tuning in to the major broadcast networks, to say nothing of the major metropolitan dailies.

Now the left is on a crusade to demonize media conservatives (who still do not control the mainstream media by any means) and drive them off the air.

Sinclair Broadcast Group (SBG), whose outlets reach about 25% of the population, is still no match for the blanket coverage offered by the Dan Rathers of the world who spew their liberal conventional wisdoms day in and day out.

But alas, the left-wingers are not satisfied with control of about 80 to 85% of the media. They want it all. They want to go back to being the gate-keeping last word on what is and is not news.

Which segues nicely into my second point - the lapdog mainstream media:

Dozens of reporters have been following Kerry as he campaigns all over the country.

Not one of them saw fit to ask this man who aspires to the highest office in the land to discuss the heart of his Senate testimony in 1971 wherein he slandered his fellow military men.

Not once has he been confronted with a question on the order of the following:

“Senator, do you still stand by your testimony or 33 years ago? Can you cite names, dates and places where our men in uniform ‘personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power?’

"Senator, can you cite specific instances where American soldiers, Marines or sailors had ‘cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages, in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle or dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside in South Vietnam?’

"And Senator, did you commit atrocities, as you flatly stated in April, 1971 on Meet The Press and in June, 1971 on the Dick Cavett Show? And if so, can you tell us exactly what you did?”


Not one single outlet of the mainstream media has sought to get a straight answer from Kerry on these very serious charges that he made.

Why should it be left up to the Swift Boat Veterans or the vets who appeared in “Stolen Honor” to put these important questions on the table?

Why would the same media that dug up President Bush’s National Guard records not do an equally thorough investigation of Kerry’s military record?

If George W. Bush or any other Republican presidential candidate had made such allegations in open Senate testimony, does anyone doubt that ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times, and/or the Washington Post would be hounding him night and day to nail down specifics?

That double standard is nothing short of a scandal.

Taken together, all of the above is a clear indication of what we could expect from a Kerry presidency. With a Harold Ickes or a Hillary Clinton as attorney general, we could expect concerted efforts to shut down any media company or program that does not play ball with the White House.

For all intents and purposes, the power of the state would be used to stifle the first Amendment. This would not be the America we have known and loved.

And to add insult to injury, the same media that looked the other way during the Clinton scandals would be playing the lapdog role once again. That is why John Kerry Kerry is — as the vets have put it — “Unfit for Command.”
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/10/26/124215.shtml

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Rainbow~
unregistered
posted October 26, 2004 11:22 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Enemy of free speech. John Kerry

I beg to differ!

SILENCED BY THE PRESIDENT

By Trish Bowcock
10-20-04

A few weeks before my father died, he woke me in the wee hours of the morning. He needed to talk. He was worried about Attorney General John Ashcroft and the destruction of American civil liberties. I comforted my father, believing he was delusional from medications. I was wrong. I write this from my home in Jacksonville Oregon (population 2,226).

President George W. Bush came here this week. The purpose of his visit was political. Southern Oregon has been deemed a "battle ground" area in the presidential race. John Kerry has made incredible inroads in this traditionally Republican stronghold. President Bush's campaign stop was an attempt to staunch the slide.

Jacksonville is an old gold mining town. Our main street is only five blocks long, lined with restored storefronts. The sidewalks are narrow. We are a peaceful community. The prospect of an overnight presidential visit was exciting, even to me, a lifelong Democrat. My excitement turned to horror as I watched events unfold during President Bush's visit. In the mid 1800s, when Indians invaded Jacksonville, citizens clambered upon the roof of the old library. It was the one building that would not catch fire when flaming arrows were shot

This week it was a different scene. Police armed with high powered rifles perched upon our rooftops as the presidential motorcade approached. Helicopters flew low, overhead. A cadre of motorcycle police zoomed into town. Black SUVs followed, sandwiching several black limousines carrying the president, his wife and their entourage as they sped to the local inn where they would eat and sleep.

The main street was lined with people gathered to witness the event. Many supported the president. Many did not. Some came because they were simply curious. There were men, women, young and old. The mood was somewhat festive. Supporters of John Kerry sported signs, as did supporters of George Bush. Individuals, exercising their rights of free speech began chanting. On one side of the street, shouts of "four more years" echoed in the night air. On the other side of the street, chants of "three more weeks" responded.

The chants were loud and apparently could be heard by President Bush. An order was issued that the anti-Bush rhetoric be quieted. The local SWAT team leapt to action. It happened fast. Clad in full riot gear, at least 50 officers moved in. Shouting indecipherable commands from a bullhorn, they formed a chain and bore down upon the people, only working to clear the side of the street appearing to be occupied by Kerry supporters. People tried to get out of their way. It was very crowded. There was nowhere to move. People were being crushed. They started flowing into the streets. Pleas to the officers, asking, "where to go" fell upon deaf ears. Instead, riot police fired pellets of cayenne pepper spray into the crowd. An old man fell and couldn,t get up. When a young man stopped to help, he was shot in the back with hard pepper spray balls. Children were hit with pepper spray. Deemed "Protesters" people were shoved and herded down the street by the menacing line of armed riot police, until out of the President's ear-shot.

There the "Protesters" were held at bay. Anyone vocalizing anti-Bush or pro-Kerry sentiments were prohibited from venturing forward. Loud anti-Bush chants were responded to by the commanding officer stating: "FORWARD," to which the entire line of armed police would move, lock-step, toward the "Protesters," forcing backward movement. Police officers circulated filming the crowd of "Protesters." Some were people like me, quiet middle-aged women. Some sported anti-Bush signs, peace signs, or Kerry signs. A small group of youth, clad in black with kerchiefs wrapping their heads chanted slogans. A young woman in her underwear, sporting a peace sign sang a lyrical Kumbaya. Mixed among the "Protesters" were supporters of the President. One 19 year- old man shouted obscenities at anyone expressing dissatisfaction with the president, encouraging the police to "tazar" the "Stinking Protesters." Neither the "Protestors," nor the police harassed this vocal young man.

Across the street, individuals shouting support for the president were allowed to continue. Officers monitored this group but allowed them to shout words of support or hurl derisions toward Kerry supporters, undisturbed. Honking cars filled with Bush supporters were left alone. A honking car full of Kerry supporters was stopped by police on its way out of town.

The standoff with "Protesters" continued until the President finished his dinner and was secured in his hotel cottage for the night. Only then were the riot police ordered to "mount-up," leaping upon the sideboard of a huge SUV, pulling out of town, and allowing "free speech" to resume.

In small town American I witnessed true repression and intimidation by law enforcement. I saw small children suffering from the effects of being fired upon by pepper bullets. I felt legitimate fear of expressing my political opinions: a brand new feeling.[/b] Newspaper accounts state the chaos started when a violent "Protester" shoved a police officer. No one I talked to witnessed this account.

It is reputed that President Bush and his staff will not allow any opposition activity to occur within his ear or eye sight. I can confirm, that in tiny Jacksonville, Oregon, this was true. Physically violent means were taken to protect the president from verbal insults. Freedom of speech was stolen.

My father was not paranoid as he lay dying. He was expressing great insight into the dangers of our current presidential administration and its willingness to repress personal freedoms. If I could talk to my father today, I would say, "I am sorry Daddy for doubting you." And, no matter what, I will continue to exercise my individual right to freely express my opinions. Americans cannot take four more years.

Bold letters mine...

Rainbow

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jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 2787
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted October 26, 2004 11:43 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Well Rainbow it is the Kerry crowd who is attempting to shut up everyone who doesn't agree with Kerry, who attempts to get his military record before the public or who attempts to get his treasonous collaboration with the enemy before the public.

What's Kerry got to hide, that he won't sign a simple form 180 to release his military records?

What's Kerry got to hide that he scared $hitless the Swiftboat vets and the POW's will reveal about him and sends goon squads to shut down a theater and lawyers to harass a broadcast network?

Really makes me wonder. Hell, it makes everyone wonder. But they won't be wondering any longer because I saw a new commercial by the Swiftboat and POW's tonight and it's
dy-na-mite.

By the way Rainbow, you ever try to protest Kerry...or Hillary? Course not but you can't get anywhere near them. How does that square with the story you just posted?

For me, I'm happy the police and secret service don't permit protesters to interfere with the President's scheduled speeches for those who come to hear what he has to say. Still, no one stopped the protests, they just didn't let the protesters get in the Presidents face. I know, I know, you think the President has to listen to a bunch of BS and lies from Kerry supporters.

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Rainbow~
unregistered
posted October 26, 2004 11:55 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I THINK THEY HAVE THE RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH, WHICH OBVIOUSLY HIS ROYAL AND ALMIGHTY HIGHNESS DOES NOT! (this is scary as hell! )

Isn't free speech what we were talking about?

Love,
Rainbow

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jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 2787
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted October 27, 2004 12:04 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
They can say whatever they want. They just can't yell it in the President's face or interrupt his scheduled speeches.

What the hell makes you think protesters have the right to have someone listen to them? What makes you think the President has to meet with them and listen to their BS insults?

You don't have a clue about what's actually in the Constitution Rainbow.

You have the right to free speech, but I and everyone else has the right to refuse to listen to a thing you have to say. You have no right to force anyone to listen to you or interfere with their rights.

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Rainbow~
unregistered
posted October 27, 2004 12:39 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
You don't have a clue about what's actually in the Constitution Rainbow.

....and you don't have a clue...period!

(been waitin' to use this smiley....hope it's not grounds for ex-communication)

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puppyblew
unregistered
posted October 27, 2004 01:10 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
when bush came to my town and surrounding towns there were protestors who were allowed to protest how they wished as long as it was not violent, which it never was. they covered both the protestors and supporters on the news. what was funny however was the person on the street selling bush pins. when he tried to sell to one guy the man said he was a kerry voter. the salesman responed with something to the effect of "wait just here a second - i have those too!" and proceeded to switch the wares to match the crowd. now there is a flip flopper!

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Mirandee
unregistered
posted October 27, 2004 01:22 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
No you don't have a clue to what is in the Constitution, jwhop.

You don't even know American history. You don't know that this country was born on dissent. Dissent is a part of democracy. It is however not a part of a fascist regime. What the hell makes Bush think he is above criticism? No human being is above criticism. Does he think he is God?

Probably if anyone interrupts his scheduled speeches he loses his place in the teleprompter or his notes and can't remember what he was lying - er I mean talking about. We know that when he wings it it is nothing short of a disaster.

He hand picks his crowds. When he was in Michigan he made sure only Republicans and his supporters were allowed in the crowd. He is the only dictator -er I mean President in the history of this country to do that. Not only that when in the Grand Rapids area he insulted a member of the NAACP by telling him he wanted him to come to his rally and sit on the stage with him. Just to make it look like he had black support. It was an insult for that reason but also because he has refused requests by the NAACP to speak to him at the White House. Every request for a meeting has either been denied or just plain ignored.

Reporters who are known to print the truth and ask the hard questions are made to stand in the rear and they are never called on. That's not freedom of speech or freedom of the press.

You know, every Bush supporter I have ever talked to or heard is always making excuses for this man. That definitely has to be blind alliegance.

Don't you think it was a bit overkill on the part of the police in shooting pepper spray at the protesters especially when there were children in the crowd? And why did they allow the Bush supporters to taunt and provoke? You did not address that.

You are always glad when you see another shot in the head to democracy, jwhop. Hmmmm wonder why that is. You are after all a "SUPER PATRIOT" I think your loyalty is more to George W Bush than the country and the Constitution.

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Mirandee
unregistered
posted October 27, 2004 01:28 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
That is funny, puppy. Shows he was non-partisan. And a shrewd business man.

I like your smiley, Rainbow it cracked me up.

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jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 2787
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted October 27, 2004 02:35 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Mirandee, I've listened to everything you've had to say about the constitution and read most of what you/ve said about everything else.

I must conclude most of what you think is fact isn't even true which is the hallmark of the left. And that's ascribing benign motives for what you post because otherwise I would have to conclude you are posting false information deliberately.

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Rainbow~
unregistered
posted October 27, 2004 12:38 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Does he think he is God?

I believe he does, Mirandee.....or at least the "choosen one," cuz him mom told him so....

quote:
...when in the Grand Rapids area he insulted a member of the NAACP by telling him he wanted him to come to his rally and sit on the stage with him. Just to make it look like he had black support.

I remember that incident, Mirandee....I know a gal who spoke with the black gentleman who was insulted by that moron...*sigh*

quote:
I would have to conclude you are posting false information deliberately.

Absolutely NOT TRUE, jwhop....how DARE you accuse someone of posting false information DELIBERATELY? This moron of a pseduo president, not only ask the black gentleman to sit with him, but was stupid enough to tell him why. (cheney or rove or another puppet master apparently lost control of the "voice" there for a minute)

Love,
Rainbow


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jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 2787
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted October 27, 2004 12:52 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Well Rainbow, I see you're still reading with incomprehension.

Did I or did I not say I was ascribing benign motives to what Mirandee posts?

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Rainbow~
unregistered
posted October 28, 2004 12:46 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
oops!

I guess we all do that from time to time, when we read too fast....kinda like when you did that, to something I posted not too long ago......*** for tat...

Love,
Rainbow

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Mirandee
unregistered
posted October 28, 2004 01:26 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
The ONLY one around here posting false information deliberately is you, jwhop. False information and propaganda that you get from the fascist far right sites you go to. I just try to counter it with evidence to the contrary. Keeping democracy democratic. Anything that does not agree with your thinking is false to you anyway no matter who says it.

The Big Chill
(Dissent in America)
by Alisa Solomon
The Nation magazine, June 2, 2003


At a lecture in Cleveland in March, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told the audience, "Most of the rights you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires."
The government can legitimately scale back individual rights during wartime, he explained, since "the Constitution just sets minimums." For an increasing number of Americans, it seems, even such minimums are excessive. Last August, the Freedom Forum's annual First Amendment survey showed that 49 percent of those polled said the Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees, a ten-point jump since the last survey, conducted just before 9/11. In the wake of the recent war and the triumphalism that has followed, it's a fair guess that in this summer's survey, the numbers will climb even higher.
While we've seen a flood of antiwar activity over the past eight months, we've also witnessed a powerful countercurrent of political repression. From shopping malls to cyberspace, Hollywood to the Ivy League, Americans have taken it upon themselves to stifle and shame those who question the legitimacy of the Administration or the war on Iraq. When we read a story here or there about the arrest of a man wearing a "Peace on Earth" T-shirt in an upstate New York mall, or about country music fans crushing Dixie Chicks CDs because the lead singer said she was ashamed of the President, each may seem like an anomalous episode. But taken as a whole, the far-flung incidents of bullying, silencing and even threats of violence reveal a political and cultural shift that recalls some of America's darkest days.
Like any avalanche, this one started at the top, and likely dates back to the moment after 9/11 when President Bush warned the world's nations, "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists." From Bush on down, in the months that followed, government officials drew limits around acceptable speech. White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer told Americans to "watch what they say." Such words gained force when the Patriot Act gave the government extensive new powers to spy, interrogate and detain. When civil libertarians began to protest the curbing of constitutional rights, Attorney General John Ashcroft offered a forbidding rejoinder: "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists." These kinds of remarks from our government's top leaders, says Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU have granted ordinary people license "to shut down alternative views." The Administration has fashioned a domestic arm of its new doctrine of pre-emption.
Rashes of American conformity and nativism have broken out before during periods of war, social strain and insecurity over national self-definition. During World War 1, the McCarthy period and the COINTELPRO program of three decades ago, dissenters lost their jobs, went to jail and endured mob violence or government smears. Today's crackdowns do not match the force and scale of those shameful times, or take the same forms. History rarely repeats precisely those excesses, which have since been declared dishonorable or unconstitutional. Though Phil Donahue was recently fired for his views, and charities have been canceling events with antiwar celebrities such as Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, the Hollywood blacklist itself, says historian Howard Zinn, could not happen again. Still, while the government expands its power even as it loosens constitutional limitations on it, the public acquiescence-and participation-in suppression threatens American democracy anew.
Henry Foner, a longtime labor organizer who lost his state teaching license to the Red Scare, remembers the "tremendous terror" he felt in the McCarthy period, as "FBI agents were all over the place, visiting people's neighbors." Now, that fear is being experienced by Muslim and Arab immigrants, who are regarded as dangerous regardless of their political beliefs. Immigrant neighborhoods like Midwood, Brooklyn, home to more than 100,000 Pakistanis, have been decimated by the loss of thousands of men who were deported or who have fled. Many still languish in detention for minor visa violations or for donations to the wrong charity. Businesses have failed as customers have been afraid to venture out even to buy their groceries.
But if Arab and Muslim immigrants are enduring fear levels reminiscent of the McCarthy period, dissenters are experiencing a chill, according to historian Blanche Wiesen Cook, "more along the lines of the total repression during World War I, though we're not all the way there yet." The government has not revived, precisely, the Espionage Act of 1917, which barred from the mails any material (including this magazine) "advocating or urging treason, insurrection, or forcible resistance to any law of the United States"; or the Sedition Act of 1918, which outlawed virtually all criticism of the war and the government. Under that law, a man was sentenced to twenty years for stating in a private conversation that he hoped the "government goes to hell so it will be of no value." Today's clampdown, though far less systematic, is reminiscent: In February a former public defender, Andrew O'Conner, was arrested in Santa Fe for "threatening the president" and subjected to five hours of interrogation by special agents because he'd said, in an Internet chat room, "Bush is out of control." Glenda Gilmore, a professor of US history at Yale, sees significant parallels with that period, especially in the "nationalist hysteria that was in the streets and in the air." Egged on by government leaders warning of the presence of German spies and "seditious" antiwar labor activists, Americans joined mob actions to contain and castigate dissenters. Though not as widespread or as violent, patriotic vigilantism has broken out again across the nation. As before, it is often spontaneous, threatening and out of proportion to the action it means to challenge.
The New Patriotism
During the First World War, a man was beaten by fellow baseball fans for failing to stand up for "The Star-Spangled Banner." Today's patriotic outbursts are less bloody, though just as emotionally intense. Last winter, hundreds of merchant marine cadets amassed at a Manhattanville College basketball game to chant "Leave our country!" at senior Toni Smith, who had quietly been turning her back during the national anthem all season. Practically every sports columnist and talk-radio host in the country made sure to get in his licks against the obscure Division III player.
At Wheaton College, a small liberal arts school in Norton, Massachusetts, seven housemates hung an upside-down "distress" flag on their campus house the day the war started. Their neighbors responded by throwing rocks through the students' windows, calling in death threats to their answering machine and strapping a dead fish to their front door, Godfather-style. Restaurants in town stopped serving kids from Wheaton, and bar patrons harassed them. Norton police recommended that for their own safety, the housemates move out for a few days. "I know it's nothing like Baghdad or Palestine," says Geoffrey Bickford, a recent political science graduate and resident of the house. "But being forced to flee from my home, having my voice silenced and living in fear because of my beliefs-that concept is so frightening."
At Yale, when sophomore Katherine Lo also hung an upside-down flag out her window, several men wielding a 2 by 4 tried to enter her room late at night while Lo was home. They left a convoluted note on her door that ended, "**** Iraqi Saddam following ***** . I hate you, GO AMERICA."
In the swanky Detroit suburb of Birmingham, Shelli Weissberg recalls sitting down to lunch at a cafe with her 8 year-old daughter and one of the child's friends, when a man she'd never met stomped up and yelled at her for wearing a "No War" button in front of children. The Rev. Joseph Matoush, who led peace vigils in the military town of Twenty-nine Palms, California, found a letter tacked to his church door with caricatures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden next to the lines, "These are your friends! Why don't you leave America now."
In Albuquerque, humanities teacher Bill Nevins was suspended because, he told the local press, poetry students he coaches wrote and recited anti-Bush verses at a local slam. (School officials say it's because he failed to supervise the kids correctly.)
ACLU affiliates around the country report cases of students being punished for expressing antiwar views. In Louisville, Kentucky, Sarah Doyle and her two older brothers, inspired by ballplayer Toni Smith, decided to protest the war by staying seated through the daily Pledge of Allegiance. Doyle's seventh-grade teacher made her come up to the front of the room and recite the pledge twice; one of her brothers received in-school suspension. Bretton Barber, 16, was sent home from Dearborn High School in Michigan when he refused to remove a T-shirt labeling George Bush an international terrorist. "I thought it was obvious the T-shirt was protected speech," says Barber, who filed suit against Dearborn High in March. He says he hopes to "send the message that all high school students have the right to express themselves."
But as the social costs increase, how many people will make use of such rights? Tim Robbins told the National Press Club on April 15 that on a recent trip to Florida for an extended family reunion, "the most frightening thing...was the amount of times we were thanked for speaking out against the war.... 'Keep talking, 'they said. 'I haven't been able to open my mouth."'
A hush has even come over the arts, where free expression is supposed to be paramount. San Francisco's Alliance Frangaise, a French language and cultural center, removed a sculpture that poked fun at the Bush Administration from its February exhibition. The Palestinian-American comedian Maysoon Zayid reports that clubs she plays regularly have taken to declaring certain material beyond the pale: No more jokes, for instance, about Ariel Sharon bragging to Saddam Hussein about the Security Council resolutions he's violated. In a joint act of self-censorship, New York's most established Off-Broadway theater companies declined to participate in an April day of action called by the downtown group Theaters Against War. According to Mark Russell, executive director of the experimental performance space P.S. 122, people inside the National Endowment for the Arts have let it be known that "we shouldn't even bother to apply this year unless we have a really safe project."
This self-censorship extends all the way up to the halls of Congress, where Democrats have assured the President, in the words of Tom Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, of "solid, unanimous support" in the war on terrorism. This silence on the part of the official opposition party serves as a restraining factor, too: Notes political historian Gerald Horne, "Americans say to themselves, 'If people with money and power and influence are trimming their sails, why should little old me step forward?"'
A Culture of Fear
The September 11 terrorist attacks go a long way toward explaining why so much of the public has shivered quietly under this chill. "The fear in this country since 9/11," says Henry Foner, "is probably more intense than the fear of Communism in the 1950s. "Already a nation primed to panic, thanks to sensational broadcast news and the Willie Horton tradition in political campaigns, a real attack on American soil profoundly shook most Americans. We've still not had a chance to recover.
Quite the contrary. Since the Department of Homeland Security began its color-coded alerts a little over a year ago, it has never designated the United States to be at less than yellow-at "significant" risk of terrorist attack. A shoe-bomber arrest, an orange alert for Christmas, checkpoints on highways and now a simulated bioterror attack in Seattle- a constant drumbeat reminds us of our vulnerability. Facing a shattered economy, the Bush Administration fans these anxieties, sending us to buy duct tape, warning us away from public monuments and scheduling the Republican Party's convention for New York City on the anniversary of 9/11. People who are afraid want to be protected and reassured, explains Barry Glassner, author of The Culture of Fear. When the White House tends to those fears by laying out a plan to protect Americans, however misdirected, people do not want to see those leaders undermined.
The events of 9/11 were destabilizing in another way: They forced on many Americans the astonishing recognition that their country is not universally beloved. While some Americans responded with teach-ins or protests, others have acted out aggressively-think of the 2 by 4, the broken windows, the angry outbursts-to quell the expression of these troubling doubts.
The anti-dissidents don't have to look far for validation-it's available every night from the broadcast media and most days from the halls of government. Fox's Bill O'Reilly criticizes progressive Los Angeles Times (and Nation) columnist Robert Scheer by hammering him as a "traitor"; defense adviser Richard Perle, objecting to a report on his conflicts of interest, calls Seymour Hersh "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist." When Tom Daschle lamented the President's failure to find a diplomatic solution in Iraq, it wasn't just Rush Limbaugh who laid into the Senate minority leader, but House Speaker Dennis Hastert too, saying Daschle came "mighty close" to giving "comfort" to the enemy. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers even lashed out angrily at former generals who had aired reservations about the war strategy, questioning their "agenda."
Woodrow Wilson officially sponsored vigilantism by forming the American Protective League, citizen security forces that spied on and intimidated war critics. But then he didn't have Fox TV Jingoistic broadcast media have provided Bush with his own "protective league" by setting the tone for repression. Who needs government censorship when stations owned by Clear Channel, the nation's largest radio chain (reaching, thanks to deregulation, 54 percent of all American adults under age 49), can drop the Dixie Chicks from their playlists, as they did in March? Clear Channel, facing a Congressional investigation into its business practices, promoted prowar rallies in cities throughout the country.
'Free-Speech Zones'
As an inflamed public, incited by government hawks and shock jocks, does its best to shut down critical speech, the state has used force to quash expression in the public square. Local police across the country have used barricades and handcuffs to assert that some speech is more free than others.
On October 24 Brett Bursey tucked a cardboard sign under his arm and headed out to the Columbia, South Carolina, airport, where President Bush was about to touch down and stump for local Republicans. But as soon as Bursey lifted his homemade NO WAR FOR OIL placard above the cheering throngs, police ordered him to leave the airport access road and take his message to a "free-speech zone" about a mile away.
When Bursey, director of the statewide Progressive Network, pointed out that people with pro-Bush banners were not being asked to move, an officer replied, "It's the content of your sign that is the problem." When Bursey refused to move, he was arrested and now faces federal charges carrying a potential penalty of six months in prison.
In St. Louis in January, where Bush was giving a presentation on his economic stimulus plan, residents lined his motorcade with flags and signs. Banners proclaiming INSTEAD OF WAR, INVEST IN PEOPLE were selected by the police for removal; WE LOVE You, MR. PRESIDENT was allowed to stay. Police in other cities have subjected protesters to mass arrests, questions about their political views and affiliations, and even, in Oakland, rubber bullets. Legislation proposed in Oregon would jail street-blocking demonstrators as "terrorists" for at least twenty-five years.
Just as the range of expression permitted in the public square is constricted, traditional "free-speech zones," such as campuses, find themselves under pressure to hold dissent in check as well. Middle East studies scholars have been targeted in the past year in an aggressive, highly organized campaign attacking their positions not only on the war in Iraq but on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Campus Watch, launched last September to "monitor Middle East studies" on campus, has conducted virtual witchhunts, posting "dossiers" on individual professors, distorting their criticisms of Israeli or US policy to malign them as "apologists for Palestinian and Islamist violence." In April, Bush nominated Campus Watch founder Daniel Pipes to join the board of the United States Institute of Peace, a body designed to promote the peaceful resolution of international conflicts.
Dozens of scholars have been mercilessly harassed and threatened. According to Amy Newhall, executive director of the Middle East Studies Association, some faculty members have had to abandon their e-mail addresses because they received so much anti-Arab hate e-mail-as many as 18,000 messages in a single day. Some have been "spoofed," meaning hackers sent out anti-Semitic diatribes from the professor's own e-mail accounts. Some have received menacing warnings-"Your neighbors have been alerted to your allegiance to Islamic terrorists"-and threats of violence.
No sooner had Yale's Glenda Gilmore published an antiwar op-ed in the campus paper than she received a rush of rape and death threats. It turned out that Andrew Sullivan had set up a link from a blog denouncing her, and Pipes had attacked her in a hyperventilating op-ed titled "Professors Who Hate America."
In an article for Academe, Newhall notes that the purpose of these attacks is to stifle debate, and she warns that these efforts "will provide a model for future assaults."
At Columbia University an assistant professor of anthropology received so many death threats after remarks he made at a late March teach-in that he had to move out of his home and teach under the protection of security guards. The professor, Nicholas de Genova, was quoted by Newsday as saying that he hoped Iraq would defeat the United States and that he wished for "a million Mogadishus." An ugly statement, certainly, but not as extreme as Bill O'Reilly's enthusiastic on-air reading of an e-mail from a US soldier who bragged, "You would not believe the carnage. Imagine your street where you live with body parts, knee deep, with hundreds of vehicles burning and the occupants inside." On O'Reilly's remarks? Silence. But dozens of news outlets, from the Jerusalem Post to CNN, seized on de Genova's, portraying them as a bloodcurdling cry for American deaths. In an interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education, de Genova said he had hoped to "contest...the notion that an effective strategy for the antiwar movement is to capitulate to the patriotic pro-war pressure that demands that one must affirm support for the troops."
The debate de Genova meant to provoke, needless to say, was never engaged. In an unprecedented move, 104 Republican members of Congress signed a letter to Columbia president Lee Bollinger demanding de Genova's ouster.
The Defense Mechanisms of Democracy
Confronting the right's organized censure, and the popular patriotic flare-ups it inspires, it's easy to become demoralized. In the face of such effective pressure, says Gerald Horne, young people like his students at the University of North J Carolina-who were born during Reagan's presidency- easily learn to distrust the very idea of dissent out of a feeling that the right always wins. "They have a pragmatic, if not very deep, sentiment that's the political version of 'Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM': If you want to lead a comfortable, hassle-free life and not be a loser, be with the right," he says. "Unlike in the Vietnam period, we've all become sadly familiar with TINA- there is no alternative." In such a univocal world, dissent can seem downright futile.
As the space for dissent constricts, it's global public opinion and our own domestic civic institutions of liberal democracy- the courts, opposition parties, nongovernmental organizations and the media-that have to keep the channels open for alternatives to emerge. An inquisitive and vigorous press is essential, but too much of the mainstream media quickly succumbed to Pentagon spin. NBC fired Peter Arnett for making the obvious points to Iraqi television that war planners had "misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces" and that there was "a growing challenge to President Bush about the conduct of the war." According to a leaked memo, MSNBC's sacking of Donahue in February was the result of fear that he might ask guests tough questions about foreign policy; he was replaced by right-wingers like former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough. San Francisco Chronicle technology staffwriter Henry Norr was fired in April after taking a sick day to participate in an antiwar protest, and two deejays at Colorado radio station KKCS were suspended in early May for playing a Dixie Chicks tune. Aaron McGruder's acerbic antiwar comic The Boondocks was dropped by the Boston Globe in late March when McGruder penned a special antiwar "protest strip."
As for the courts, Ellen Schrecker, who has written several books about the McCarthy period, fears that they won't reverse their trade-off of rights for security the way they did some decades ago. By 1957, the Supreme Court had begun to rein in the most restrictive Red Scare laws. "They're feeble now," she says. "Twenty years of Reagan-Bush have really reconfigured the judiciary." The opposition party has also failed to rise to the occasion, leaving us, says Horne, accidental anarchists, with "no electoral vehicle through which to express dissent." What we do have is a small but vibrant alternative press, growing numbers in organizations like the ACLU, more than a hundred city councils that have voted to condemn the Patriot Act or similar measures and an inchoate protest movement that thronged the streets all winter. Howard Zinn regards these outpourings as significant, "a broader shield of protection than we had during the McCarthy period."
One of the spirited chants at the February and March demonstrations went, "This is what democracy looks like." True enough, the multiracial, intergenerational demos, which brought together Plumbers for Peace and Queers Against War, corporate attorneys, public hospital nurses, students, retirees and Sunday school teachers, reflected the vast diversity and insistent expression of the American polis. But that can't be all that democracy looks like. It takes powerful civic institutions to provide checks and balances, meaningful enfranchisement and vigorous open debate to make democracy function. None other than Donald Rumsfeld made this point recently. He was talking about Iraq.
In at least one respect, the current situation has the potential to do graver damage than even the McCarthy and Wilson eras. Historically, civil liberties have sprung back to full force when hot or cold wars have ended, thanks in large part to the perseverance, or the resuscitation, of the press, the courts and the opposition party. But in an open-ended "war on terrorism," the day when danger passes may never come. Even if it does, the democratic muscle of the courts, the press and the opposition party-already failing so miserably to flex themselves-may be too atrophied to do the heavy lifting needed to restore our fundamental rights and freedoms.

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Mirandee
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posted October 28, 2004 01:29 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Published in Javnost/The Public 11 (June 2004): 19-35.

Robert L. Ivie is Professor of Rhetoric and Public Culture in the Department of Communication and Culture, Indiana University, Bloomington (USA), e-mail: rivie@indiana.edu.

Abstract

This essay considers the problematic of dissent being rendered oxymoronic with democracy in the United States under conditions of a weak democratic culture and an aggressive prosecution of the war on terror. It examines obstacles to democratic dissent in the U.S. and potential resources for rehabilitating it, sketching a preliminary map of the theoretical and cultural ground to be covered in a resistance to the further militarization of global politics. Suggesting that democracy is dissent, and democratic dissent is rhetorical critique, the essay argues that extant political culture might be rearticulated to dissent by language critiques that produce persuasive re-descriptions and symbolic merging.

Introduction

Democratic dissent was rendered oxymoronic in America after 9/11 under the sign of a timeless war on global terror. Indeed, dissent as a form of political activism was placed strategically by the rulers of the security state on a continuum of lawlessness leading to terrorism, a continuum in which protest was perceived as disloyal, as the unpatriotic act of the enemy within, as a threat to the safety of the polity – in short, as anti-democratic. The police, authorized by secret courts, might spy on, harass, and incarcerate dissenters on behalf of a state that would curtail civil liberties while prosecuting a war in the hallowed, but hollowed, name of freedom and democracy. In the words of U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, speaking to the Senate Judiciary Committee just three months after 9/11, “those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty” while criticizing the administration’s methods of fighting terrorism at home and abroad provide “ammunition to America’s enemies” and “aid [to] terrorists” (quoted in Lewis 2001). By this Orwellian logic, dissent terrorizes democracy whereas political quiescence promotes peace and security.

Such logic not only confounds democratic politics but also rationalizes state terror in response to a state of terror. State terror is legitimized as counter-terror and anti-terrorism rather than condemned as terrorism redux and reduplicated. Jude McCulloch, in an act of immanent critique, has observed the fallacy of this prevailing discourse from his Australian vantage point as a lecturer in police studies at Deakin University. “The history of state terror,” he notes, “illustrates that counter-terrorism is used to punish, intimidate and disappear politically inconvenient citizens. In the ‘war on terrorism’ politically inconvenient citizens will include peace and anti-war activists . . . . [A]nti-terrorism is the new McCarthyism” (MuCulloch 2002, 59). This is the degraded condition of political discourse practiced by the United States and its “democratic” allies to exploit popular fear and mute criticism of a crusade against evil rather than address the root causes of terror, including a misdirected U.S. foreign policy.

Configuring democracy and dissent into a political incongruity, a contradiction of terms, is rhetorically strategic to dividing the world inextricably between good and evil, us versus them, in a deadly dual for global domination. Not since the Cold War has an American administration articulated an apocalyptic vision backed by such a massive commitment of military might, huge expenditure of economic resources, and wanton sacrifice of human life. By presidential decree, everyone must decide whether they are allies or enemies of the United States in a global war to eradicate terrorism. No shades of grey, no differences of perspective, no room for dissent can be abided if freedom is to endure and democracy is to prevail. The boundary must be drawn fast and firm between righteous truth and wicked persuasion. Thus, the domestic dissenter symbolizes democracy’s foreign threat, its enemy Other, a traitor to the people and their cause. Or so an empowered elite would have the public believe rather than suffer even a modicum of democratic self-rule.

Accordingly, one might conclude that unmaking the oxymoron of democratic dissent would be tantamount to striking at the rhetorical Achilles heal of a discourse that suppresses the actual practice of politics in the very realm of the political. The political is the realm of antagonism endemic to human relations, as Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau emphasize, a realm marked by a basic condition of struggle, contested opinion, and “undecidability” (Laclau and Mouffe 2001, xi). Politics is the process of articulating and taking contingent decisions in a context of irreducible difference, conflict, and division through “persuasive redescriptions of the world” (Torfing 1999, 302). That is, by “the elaboration of a language providing us with metaphoric redescriptions of our social relations” we might achieve a revised, expanded, and provisional hegemony of interpretation and political motivation short of insisting on consensus “in a context crisscrossed by antagonistic forces” and contrary to enforcing an ideologically constructed reality of “fully constituted essences.” (Mouffe 1993, 57; Torfing 1999, 116). Indeed, social division “without any possibility of a final reconciliation” is inherent to “the very possibility of a [pluralist] democratic politics,” which in turn requires a lively dynamic between consensus and dissent (Laclau and Mouffe 2001, xvii, xiv; Mouffe 1996, 8). Politics, in short, is an “ensemble of practices, discourses and institutions which seek to establish a certain order and organize human coexistence in conditions that are always potentially conflictual” (Mouffe 2000, 101). The central question of democratic politics is how to tame and diffuse antagonism in human relations, not eliminate it, how to articulate strategically a practical but partial unity in a pluralistic context of conflict and diversity, by transforming sheer enemies into legitimate adversaries, i.e., by achieving what might be called a fluid condition of consubstantial rivalry. Thus, by this account, the “aim of democratic politics is to transform antagonism into agonism” so as to establish an “us/them” relation “compatible with pluralistic democracy” (Mouffe 2000, 103, 101).

This vision of agonistic pluralism makes dissent not only compatible with democracy but also represents it as a rhetorical practice endemic to democratic culture, a resource for addressing antagonism productively on the shifting terrain of conflicted political relations. Yet it is a vision in remission, if not entirely dormant, a radical notion of democratic practice difficult to grasp and trust in America, perhaps no more than a fantasy. What, we might ask, are the contours of resistance to democratic dissent in the United States and the cultural resources for rehabilitating its good name? In what framework might we place dissent in order to see better the obstacles to accessing its democratic properties and potential? What are the challenges to overcome and the opportunities for affirming dissent within a sensus communis that currently is appropriated against dissent to the detriment of democracy? This is the question I wish to begin considering here as a prologue to additional investigation, sketching for now a preliminary map of the theoretical and cultural ground that must be covered much more thoroughly if we are to resist a further militarization of global politics. What might we expect to encounter in such a journey through this tangled terrain?

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Mirandee
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posted October 28, 2004 01:43 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I can post at least 100 more articles and essays regarding dissent in American and the necessity of it for a free and democratic society and the role it always played in democracy if you want. Article by statesmen, professors, and other learned scholars. All of them disproving what you say about the Constitution and freedom of speech and dissent. All of them proving that Bush is working towards the destruction of democracy with his Culture of Secrets way of running his administration and the way he squelches freedom of speech in this country. Then his brainwashed followers do as he does and attempt to squelch it too and redefine the Constitution to fit their purposes which is what you do. Also what Bush does. Bush and none of his followers have the slightest concept or understanding of what purpose dissent serves in a democracy.

At least I have a lot of intelligent people backing me up. We can't ALL be wrong, jwhop.

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jwhop
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From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted October 28, 2004 02:13 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
I don't care how many articles you post from far left radicals Mirandee.

For all the whining about lost rights, you still have failed to list one single right you've lost under the Bush Administration.

You've failed to show one instance where protesters were denied a permit to protest/dissent.

You make wild accusations you cannot back up with any facts. What you're posting is not facts but the opinions of hot air artists who disagree with the President politically.

All this nonsense only makes me think you're full of hot air.

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