There's a guy named Glenn Beck.
I've never watched his show, ever; until tonight, I had no idea who he was.
But this guy is the only person talking about free speech these days who actually knows what's going on.
Watch this clip, all the way through.
Listen to what he says.
Now, think about what he said.
Then watch it again. And think about it harder.
It's not "almost" as if these groups are positioning themselves to control the debate; it's what's happening. There have been bills proposed by some of our current liberal Senators to make conservative commentary illegal.
THEY ARE TRYING TO MAKE IT ILLEGAL TO DISAGREE WITH THEM.
Can you understand this? There can be no more blatant attempt to take over control of our society than this; making it illegal to SPEAK, despite your CONSTITUTIONALLY GUARANTEED RIGHT TO SAY WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT, is WRONG.
Read the First Amendment again, folks.
It says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Note the part where it says "or abridging the freedom of speech," and bear in mind that there are no qualifiers on that statement.
None.
There has been no Constitutional Amendment to change that. Every law about "hate speech," every law about "sedition," every law against, in fact, slander or libel, is UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
Just because they've never been struck down by a court doesn't mean they're not on their face illegal. The First Amendment guarantees you the right to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater. It does NOT guarantee that you won't get your ass kicked after you do; but it does guarantee that there can't be a law telling you not to.
You have the right - let's be clear about this - to say ANY GODDAMN THING YOU WANT TO.
Now, businesses have the right to say "ok, but not on our premises." And you as a person have the right to tell anyone "I'm not listening to this," and walk away, or change the channel, or just plain turn the goddamn thing off.
But you, and I, and everyone else are bound by a simple law, which says that no matter how offensive something is to us personally, we do not have the right to tell someone else not to say it.
Don Imus should never have gotten fired.
I find it interesting - incidentally - that the folks to whom his offensive comments referred were offended that he said they had curly hair - which, being black, some of them clearly did - but none of them were offended by the fact that he also called them prostitutes.
Seriously, you're more offended by an allegation that you have curly hair, than you are by the allegation that you have sex with strangers for money?
That's Bizarro World, folks.
But it's more than that. This issue is growing, and unless we do something about it now, it will not be long before you will see children - and I mean 5 year olds - serving jail sentences for calling each other names at school. At that point, we might as well give up speaking to one another at all, since anything you do or say can be held legally actionable; in fact I would recommend ignoring other people as a course of action wholeheartedly, except for the fact that you can then be found guilty of "creating a hostile work environment."
What the FUCK has happened to our sanity?
It's not our military that makes us the laughingstock of the planet, folks. It's that with all the gigantic advantages we have in this country - natural resources, plenty of room, wealth beyond the wildest dreams of most nations, a huge industrial base, a standard of living for even our poorest citizens again beyond the wildest dreams of most countries - THIS is what we find to argue about.
If we, as a nation, don't have anything better to do than try to find ways around our own Constitution, maybe we should fail as a nation, so that something else can be tried. Obviously representative democracy is a foolish idea.
Let's note that we've had democracy - the great ideal - up and running for less than 300 years, and we're falling apart, dramatically, in front of the whole world.
The empires of the past lasted for thousands of years, and in fact with the exception of Rome, only fell due to the effect of outside influences - and Rome only fell after they became a Republic.
I hate to have to compare the two, because despite the historical track record of empires on human rights - shitty - in every other way they are clearly a superior form of government.
Maybe what we need is a Constitutionally-governed empire.
