Thank you America!!

Published on Thursday, July 3, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
Dear Clarence Thomas: It Happened on July 4, 1776
by Thom Hartmann

In 1789, Thomas Jefferson wrote a note to James Madison about the future possibility of a president who didn't understand the principles on which America was founded. "The tyranny of the legislatures is the most formidable dread at present," he wrote, "and will be for many years. That of the executive will come in its turn, but it will be at a remote period."

The new so-called conservatives claim the power to violate citizens' private lives because, they say, there is no "right to privacy" in the United States. In that, they overlook the history of America and the Declaration of Independence, signed on July 4, 1776. And they miss a basic understanding of the evolution of language in the United States.

Of course, they're not the first to have made these mistakes.

When I was a teenager, it was a felony in parts of the United States to advise a married couple about how to practice birth control. This ended in 1965, in the Griswold v. Connecticut case before the U.S. Supreme Court, when the Court reversed the criminal conviction of a Planned Parenthood program director who had discussed contraception with a married couple, and of a doctor who had prescribed a birth-control device to them.

The majority of the Court summarized their ruling by saying, "Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy...."

However, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart disagreed back in 1965, saying that he could find no "right of privacy" in the Constitution of the United States. Using his logic, under the laws of the day, the couple in question could themselves have been sent to prison for using birth control in their own bedroom.

As Justice Stewart wrote in his dissent in the case, "Since 1879 Connecticut has had on its books a law which forbids the use of contraceptives by anyone.... What provision of the Constitution, then, makes this state law invalid? The Court says it is the right of privacy 'created by several fundamental constitutional guarantees.' With all deference, I can find no such general right of privacy in the Bill of Rights, in any other part of the Constitution, or in any case ever before decided by this Court."

In that view of American law, Justice Clarence Thomas - George W. Bush's "role model" for future Supreme Court nominees - agrees.

In his dissent in the Texas sodomy case, Thomas wrote, "just like Justice Stewart, I 'can find [neither in the Bill of Rights nor any other part of the Constitution a] general right of privacy,' or as the Court terms it today, the 'liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent dimensions.'"

Echoing Thomas' so-called conservative perspective, Rush Limbaugh said on his radio program on June 27, 2003, "There is no right to privacy specifically enumerated in the Constitution." Jerry Falwell similarly agreed on Fox News.

Limbaugh and Thomas may soon also point out to us that the Constitution doesn't specifically grant a right to marry, and thus license that function exclusively to, say, Falwell. The Constitution doesn't grant a right to eat, or to read, or to have children. Yet do we doubt these are rights we hold?

The simple reality is that there are many "rights" that are not specified in the Constitution, but which we daily enjoy and cannot be taken away from us by the government. But if that's the case, Bush and Thomas would say, why doesn't the Constitution list those rights in the Bill of Rights?

The reason is simple: the Constitution wasn't written as a vehicle to grant us rights. We don't derive our rights from the constitution.

Rather, in the minds of the Founders, human rights are inalienable - inseparable - from humans themselves. We are born with rights by simple fact of existence, as defined by John Locke and written by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. "We hold these truths to be self-evident," the Founders wrote. Humans are "endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights...." These rights are clear and obvious, the Founders repeatedly said. They belong to us from birth, as opposed to something the Constitution must hand to us, and are more ancient than any government.

The job of the Constitution was to define a legal framework within which government and business could operate in a manner least intrusive to "We, The People," who are the holders of the rights. In its first draft it didn't even have a Bill of Rights, because the Framers felt it wasn't necessary to state out loud that human rights came from something greater, larger, and older than government. They all knew this; it was simply obvious.

Thomas Jefferson, however, foreseeing a time when the concepts fundamental to the founding of America were forgotten, strongly argued that the Constitution must contain at least a rudimentary statement of rights, laying out those main areas where government could, at the minimum, never intrude into our lives.

Jefferson was in France when Madison sent him the first draft of the new Constitution, and he wrote back on December 20, 1787, that, "I will now tell you what I do not like [about the new constitution]. First, the omission of a bill of rights, providing clearly, and without the aid of sophism, for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction of monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land..."

There had already been discussion among the delegates to the constitutional convention about whether they should go to the trouble of enumerating the human rights they had held up to the world with the Declaration of Independence, but the consensus had been that it was unnecessary.

The Declaration, the writings of many of the Founders and Framers, and no shortage of other documents made amply clear the Founders' and the Framers' sentiments that human rights were solely the province of humans, and that governments don't grant rights but, rather, that in a constitutionally limited democratic republic We, The People - the holders of the rights - grant to our governments whatever privileges our government may need to function (while keeping the rights for ourselves).

This is the fundamental difference between kingdoms, theocracies, feudal states, and a democratic republic. In the former three, people must beg for their rights at the pleasure of the rulers. In the latter, the republic derives its legitimacy from the people, the sole holders of rights.

Although the purpose of the Constitution wasn't to grant rights to people, as kings and popes and feudal lords had done in the past, Jefferson felt it was necessary to be absolutely unambiguous about the solid reality that humans are holders of rights, and that in no way was the Constitution or the new government of the United States to ever be allowed to infringe on those rights. The Constitution's authors well understood this, Jefferson noted, having just fought a revolutionary war to gain their "self-evident" and "inalienable" rights from King George, but he also felt strongly that both the common person of the day and future generations must be reminded of this reality.

"To say, as Mr. Wilson does, that a bill of rights was not necessary," Jefferson wrote in his December 1787 letter to Madison, "...might do for the audience to which it was addressed..." But it wasn't enough. Human rights may be well known to those writing the constitution, they may all agree that governments may not infringe on human rights, but, nonetheless, we must not trust that simply inferring this truth is enough for future generations who have not so carefully read history or who may foolishly elect leaders inclined toward tyranny. "Let me add," Jefferson wrote, "that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference."

Madison took Jefferson's notes and shared them with Hamilton, Adams, Mason, and others, and then sent a letter to Jefferson outlining the objections to a Bill of Rights that had been raised by the members of the constitutional convention.

On March 15, 1789, Jefferson replied to Madison: "I am happy to find that, on the whole, you are a friend to this amendment. The declaration of rights is, like all other human blessings, alloyed with some inconveniences, and not accomplishing fully its object. But the good in this instance vastly overweighs the evil.

"I cannot refrain from making short answers to the objections which your letter states to have been raised [by others]:

"1. 'That the rights in question are reserved, by the manner in which the federal powers are granted.' Answer. A constitutive act [the Constitution] may, certainly, be so formed, as to need no declaration of rights. ... In the draught of a constitution which I had once a thought of proposing in Virginia, and I printed afterwards, I endeavored to reach all the great objects of public liberty, and did not mean to add a declaration of rights. ... But...this instrument [the U.S. Constitution] forms us into one State, as to certain objects, and gives us a legislative and executive body for these objects. It should, therefore, guard us against their abuses of power, within the field submitted to them."
 
In this, Jefferson is stating openly that the purpose of the Constitution - and even the Bill of Rights - is not to grant rights to the people, but to restrain government. It doesn't grant, it limits.

And, Jefferson said, his proposed Bill of Rights was only a beginning and imperfect; it would be nearly impossible to list in detail all the rights humans have. But a start, a try, is better than nothing - at least it will make clear that the purpose of the constitution is to limit government:

"2. 'A positive declaration of some essential rights could not be obtained in the requisite latitude.' Answer. Half a loaf is better than no bread. If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can."

His third point was that the states may try to limit peoples rights if the explicit nature of government and rights wasn't spelled out in the Constitution through a Bill of Rights, so the constitution protected citizens from tyrannical state governments who may overreach (as the Supreme Court ultimately ruled Connecticut had done in banning birth control).

And, finally, Jefferson noted that if they were to err, it would be better to err on the side of over-defining rights - even if past efforts had proven unnecessary or nonviable - than under-defining them.

"4. 'Experience proves the inefficacy of a bill of rights.' True. But though it is not absolutely efficacious under all circumstances, it is of great potency always, and rarely inefficacious. A brace the more will often keep up the building which would have fallen, with that brace the less. There is a remarkable difference between the characters of the inconveniences which attend a declaration of rights, and those which attend the want of it. The inconveniences of the declaration are, that it may cramp government in its useful exertions. But the evil of this is short-lived, moderate and reparable. The inconveniences of the want of a declaration are permanent, afflicting and irreparable."

A Bill of Rights wasn't necessary, but it was important. We all knew the constitution was designed to define and constrain government, but it's still better to say too much about liberty than too little. Even though this thrown-together-at-the-last-minute Bill of Rights doesn't cover all the rights we consider self-evident, and may inconvenience government, it's better to include it than overlook it and risk future generations forgetting our words and deeds.

Beyond that, there's good reason to believe - as the majority of the Supreme Court did in the Griswold case, the Texas sodomy case, and at least a dozen others - that the Founders and Framers did write a right to privacy into the Constitution. However, living in the 18th Century, they never would have actually used the word "privacy" out loud or in writing. A search, for example, of all 16,000 of Thomas Jefferson's letters and writings produces not a single use of the word "privacy." Nor does Adams use the word in his writings, so far as I can find.

The reason is simple: "privacy" in 1776 was a code word for toilet functions. A person would say, "I need a moment of privacy" as a way of excusing themselves to go use the "privy" or outhouse. The chamberpots around the house, into which people relieved themselves during the evening and which were emptied in the morning, were referred to as "the privates," a phrase also used to describe genitals. Privacy, in short, was a word that wasn't generally used in political discourse or polite company during an era when women were expected to cover their arms and legs and discussion of bedroom behavior was unthinkable.

It wasn't until 1898 that Thomas Crapper began marketing the flush toilet and discussion of toilet functions became relatively acceptable. Prior to then, saying somebody had a "right to privacy" would have meant "a right to excrete." This was, of course, a right that was taken for granted and thus the Framers felt no need to specify it in the Constitution.

Instead, the word of the day was "security," and in many ways it meant what we today mean when we say "privacy." Consider, for example, the Fourth Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...."

Similarly, "liberty" was also understood, in one of its dimensions, to mean something close to what today we'd call "privacy." The Fifth Amendment talks about how "No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property..." and the Fourteenth Amendment adds that "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property...." And, of course, the Declaration of Independence itself proclaims that all "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

So now, on the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we have come to that remote period in time Jefferson was concerned about. Our leaders, ignorant of or ignoring the history of this nation's founding, make a parody of liberty and, with their so-called "Patriot Act," flaunt their challenges even to those rights explicitly defined in the Constitution.

Our best defense against today's pervasive ignorance about American history and human rights is education, a task that Jefferson undertook in starting the University of Virginia to provide a comprehensive and free public education to all capable students. A well-informed populace will always preserve liberty better than a powerful government, a philosophy which led the University of California and others to once offer free education to their states' citizens.

As Jefferson noted in that first letter to Madison: "And say, finally, whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government, or information to the people. This last is the most certain, and the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."

The majority of the Supreme Court wrote in their opinion in the 1965 Griswold case legalizing contraception that, "We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights [and] older than our political parties..." saying explicitly that the right of privacy is a fundamental personal right, emanating "from the totality of the constitutional scheme under which we live."

Hopefully Americans - including Clarence Thomas - will realize that the Constitution doesn't grant rights but instead constrains government. Our rights predate any government, a fact recognized when the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776. We must teach our children and inform the world about the essentials of human rights and how our constitutional republic works - deriving its sole powers from the consent of We, The People who hold the rights - if democracy is to survive.

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is the author of over a dozen books, including "Unequal Protection" and "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," and a nationally syndicated daily talk show host. www.thomhartmann.com This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.
 
Ex-Envoy: Nuclear Report Ignored
Iraqi Purchases Were Doubted by CIA

By Richard Leiby and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 6, 2003; Page A13


Joseph C. Wilson, the retired United States ambassador whose CIA-directed mission to Niger in early 2002 helped debunk claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium there for nuclear weapons, has said for the first time publicly that U.S. and British officials ignored his findings and exaggerated the public case for invading Iraq.

Wilson, whose 23-year career included senior positions in Africa and Iraq, where he was acting ambassador in 1991, said the false allegations that Iraq was trying to buy uranium oxide from Niger about three years ago were used by President Bush and senior administration officials as a central piece of evidence to support their assertions that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.

"It really comes down to the administration misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war," Wilson said yesterday. "It begs the question, what else are they lying about?"

The Niger story -- one piece of the administration's larger argument that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction posed an imminent threat -- was not debunked until shortly before the war began, when the United Nations' chief nuclear inspector told the Security Council the documents were forgeries. The White House has acknowledged that some documents were bogus, but a spokesman has said there was "a larger body of evidence suggesting Iraq attempted to purchase uranium in Africa," indicating it may have involved a country other than Niger.

For the past year, Wilson has spoken out against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, but until he was interviewed by The Post and wrote an op-ed article published in today's New York Times, he had never disclosed his key role in the Niger controversy.

The CIA turned to Wilson in February 2002 because of his extensive experience with intelligence and his relationship with senior officials in Niger.

Wilson's account of his eight-day mission to Niger, including a statement he was told Vice President Cheney's staff was interested in the truth of the allegations, has not been contradicted by administration officials, but they have played down his importance and denied his accusations.

A senior administration official said yesterday that Wilson's mission originated within the CIA's clandestine service after Cheney aides raised questions during a briefing. "It was not orchestrated by the vice president," the official said. He added that it was reported in a routine way, did not mention Wilson's name and did not say anything about forgeries.

Wilson has been interviewed recently by the House and Senate intelligence committees, which are expected to focus on who in the National Security Council and the vice president's office had access to a CIA cable, sent March 9, 2002, that did not name Wilson but said Niger officials had denied the allegations.

Wilson said he went to Niger skeptical, knowing that the structure of the uranium industry -- controlled by a consortium of French, Spanish, German and Japanese firms -- made it highly unlikely that anyone would officially deal with Iraq because of U.N. sanctions. Wilson never saw the disputed documents but talked with officials whose signatures would have been required and concluded the allegations were almost certainly false. Back in Washington, he briefed CIA officers but did not draft his own report.

In September 2002, the story of Iraq purchasing uranium in Africa made its way into a published British dossier on Hussein's weapons of mass destruction that got wide coverage. Wilson was perplexed.

""t was unfathomable to me that this information would not have been shared" with the British, he said.

In late September, CIA Director George J. Tenet and top aides made two presentations in closed session on Capitol Hill. They said there was information that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium but that there was some doubt the information was credible. But on Dec. 19, 2002, a State Department fact sheet listed attempts to purchase uranium, specifically from Niger, as an item omitted from Iraq's supposedly full disclosure of its weapons of mass destruction program.

Bush, in his State of the Union speech on Jan. 23, declared that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

After Bush's speech, Wilson said he contacted the State Department, noted that the Niger story had been debunked and said, "You might want to make sure the facts are straight."

In early February, the CIA received a translation of the Niger documents and in early March, copies of the documents, which it turned over to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

After IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei announced they were bogus, Wilson read a March 8 front-page story in The Washington Post that quoted an unidentified U.S. official as saying, "We fell for it."

The quote provided "a wake-up call . . . that somebody was not being candid about this Niger business," he said. Interviewed that day on CNN, Wilson said: "I think it's safe to say that the U.S. government should have or did know that this report was a fake before Dr. ElBaradei mentioned it in his report at the U.N. yesterday."

In June, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that top administration officials were unaware of the faked documents at the time of the State of the Union. "Maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery."

But Wilson said he considers that "inconceivable." Based on his experience at the NSC, Wilson does not believe his report would have been buried. Having been told the vice president's office was interested, he said, "If you are senior enough to ask this question, you are well above the bowels of the bureaucracy. You are in that circle."

Last week, Wilson said of Hussein: "I'm glad the tyrant is gone." But he does not believe the war was ever about eliminating Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. It was, he said, a political push to "redraw the map of the Middle East."

While his family prepared for a Fourth of July dinner, he proudly showed a reporter photos of himself with Bush's parents. On a den wall was a framed cable to him in Baghdad, from the first President Bush, dated Nov. 20, 1990:

"What you are doing day in and day out under the most trying conditions is truly inspiring," the cable states. "Keep fighting the good fight. You and your stalwart colleagues are always in our thoughts and prayers."

Wilson observed: "I guess he didn't realize that one of these days I would carry that fight against his son's administration."
 
Quote from OPTIONAL777:




Hm... when was the last time you personally posted an article or essay defending the Bush administration on any subject?

I defended the war during the war, now that it is over, I am back to questioning the current authorities, which is Bush and company.

I do believe in questioning the establishment, to the point that they know people are watching and thinking critically.

I can count on you, Hapaboy, Aphie, etc. to post plenty of support for Bush.

I am of the opinion that whoever is in power should come under the most severe scrutiny at all times, Republican or Democrat alike. Should we get a Democrat in 04, you can check to see if I post articles that question that Democrat's direction and policy.
More...


The willingness to "question authority" is certainly, in my opinion, a positive value to uphold for citizens in a democracy, but by itself it allows for only a negative politics, and becomes a kind of anti-establishment elitism, reflecting an unwillingness to take a stand and face the complexities, risks, and difficulties of making policies and achieving necessary and worthwhile objectives. Placing yourself above the fray in this way - or subordinating all other frays to the particular anti-authoritarian fray you prefer - you place yourself above and outside those struggling within it. The approach amounts to substituting a particular intellectual bias and a set of facile, content-less reflexes for engagement with the issues.

There's a place for political watchdogs, for people who specialize chiefly in auditing and criticizing whoever is in power, and they may remain important, even critical, even and especially in times of crisis or in other periods when the nation is struggling to come to terms with great challenges, but their purposes aren't superior to those served by other participants in the larger political process. If they allow themselves to become obstacles to progress and mere tools of obstruction and obfuscation, then they take sides by default, and can do harm both to the nation's interests and to their own role in advancing them.

When you suggest censorship of free speech, because you deem it to be "dangerous" or lighting the fire of anti-Americanism, or perhaps polluting the mind of the youth of America or Europe etc., that is where I raise an issue and disagree with your argument.
More...

I don't see how you can construe my comments as suggesting "censorship of free speech." I condemned the dishonest polemic we were originally discussing, not the author's right to produce it. I find Coulter's use of self-consciously inflammatory, sensationalist language to be highly questionable. If she gave me a call and asked for my advice, I'd urge her to take a different approach. Criticizing a writer's work is not the same as interfering with his or her freedom. Arguing that the Earth is better described, for most puposes, as revolving around the Sun, rather than the opposite, is not to squelch the free speech rights of Ptolemaists and other non-Copernicans, even if the acceptance of one's argument might be lead to fewer publishing opportunities for them.

We live in a time when authors, from both the right and left, resort to scare tactics. The Bush administration generates fear in my opinion, and the left in response generate fear of the Bush administration bordering on fascism.
More...

This theme, that the Bush Administration pushes fear, seems to be a common one, but is it Bush who manufactured fear or was it the 19 hijackers who brought down the WTC and blew out a section of the Pentagon? Whenever Bush speaks of turning the tide in the war against terrorism, or uses common language to express a refusal to retreat or give into fear ("Bring 'em on"), he's accused of being a bloodthirsty cowboy maniac. Realism requires the acknowledgment of real and potentially extreme dangers in the world. Pretending that there are no threats severe enough to justify committed action to head them off would be the height of irresponsibility for someone in Bush's position.

Personally, in my daily interactions with my fellow citizens, and in my observation of the mass and also the narrow media, I don't sense much fear. Though I think, or at least want to believe, that there's still determination and resolve on the part of the larger public and our political leadership, it's my impression that a reversion to the complacency and willful ignorance of the '90s is currently more of a threat than impetuous action based on paranoia.

We live in a most uncertain world, during a most uncertain and changing time.

The masses long for security, not making difficult choices that are required these days.

So the pundits structure their message not to the intelligentsia, but pander to the fears of the general audience.

Sad, but true.
More...

I think that "the masses" are generally in the position of having already made their "difficult choice." After 9/11, we chose to respond affirmatively and actively to the threat represented by the attacks, to give the President broad latitude and sufficient time to press an aggressive, systematic strategy, and to undertake necessary sacrifices while seeing the strategy through.

The next difficult choice will likely involve a basic assessment of Bush's strategy, probably in the context of the next general election. It's now closer than 9/11/01 in time, so all participants in the political process are being forced to stake out their positions looking forward. Much can and likely will happen between now and 11/04, and the "general audience" is much more likely to be moved by what it believes the truth and its interests are than by any amount of punditry and partisan noise.
 
The willingness to "question authority" is certainly, in my opinion, a positive value to uphold for citizens in a democracy, but by itself it allows for only a negative politics, and becomes a kind of anti-establishment elitism, reflecting an unwillingness to take a stand and face the complexities, risks, and difficulties of making policies and achieving necessary and worthwhile objectives. Placing yourself above the fray in this way - or subordinating all other frays to the particular anti-authoritarian fray you prefer - you place yourself above and outside those struggling within it. The approach amounts to substituting a particular intellectual bias and a set of facile, content-less reflexes for engagement with the issues.

There's a place for political watchdogs, for people who specialize chiefly in auditing and criticizing whoever is in power, and they may remain important, even critical, even and especially in times of crisis or in other periods when the nation is struggling to come to terms with great challenges, but their purposes aren't superior to those served by other participants in the larger political process. If they allow themselves to become obstacles to progress and mere tools of obstruction and obfuscation, then they take sides by default, and can do harm both to the nation's interests and to their own role in advancing them.

I don't consider myself anti-establishment, but rather seeking to maintain the establishment of the wishes of those great men who wrote the Constitution and formed our government.

I am not questioning the nature of our Constitution, nor of the branches of government, do you see that I am?

What I am questioning is whether or not the current administration is acting within the proper limits of our government, and if they are actually serving the good of the people.

If the current administration did in fact fabricate a threat, to justify a political agenda, I have a problem with that, wouldn't you?

Even if in fact, they know what is best for the people but don't include the people in the process of governing, that is not our system of government. The government is intended to be "We the People" not leadership who thinks they know more than the people, or chooses not to tell the whole story to the people for fear the people might not understand.

I am reminded of Bush's (who I think is a dry drunk) response the weekend before the election in 2000 when the news came out that he had a DUI. When asked if he told his daughters (who have some alcohol issues themselves) about the incident, he said "no, I wanted to protect them."

This clearly shows his nature of secrecy. Anyone who understands the disease of alcoholism knows it is a family disease, and that keeping secrets to protect family members is a core symptom of alcoholism. It is the secret keeping that prevents real recovery in the world of the alcoholic, practicing with alcohol or not is not the issue, it is the behavior patterns that matter, hence the term "dry drunk."

It is this secret-ism of Bush, as evidenced in his personal life, and as displayed in his political life that concerns me deeply.

Flat out, I don't trust those who keep secrets for my own good. I prefer leadership who treats those who elected him as equals, and tells them the whole story, and gives them an opportunity to be included in the decisions on how to solve the problems.

I don't see how you can construe my comments as suggesting "censorship of free speech." I condemned the dishonest polemic we were originally discussing, not the author's right to produce it. I find Coulter's use of self-consciously inflammatory, sensationalist language to be highly questionable. If she gave me a call and asked for my advice, I'd urge her to take a different approach. Criticizing a writer's work is not the same as interfering with his or her freedom. Arguing that the Earth is better described, for most purposes, as revolving around the Sun, rather than the opposite, is not to squelch the free speech rights of Ptolemaists and other non-Copernicans, even if the acceptance of one's argument might be lead to fewer publishing opportunities for them.

You made an argument that the writer's thoughts could generate anti-American sentiment in the minds of youth....which could possible lead to action that was a threat to our national security, did I read you wrong?

Sure, free speech has its dangers, so what? It is dangerous to allow people freedom of speech and freedom of thought, as they might decide on that basis to become anti-American.

That you brought up the point to begin with as a bone of contention, suggests that you would somehow curtail such freedoms if you could, i.e. censorship.

It is one thing to disagree with the ideas expressed in the piece, it is another to suggest that the piece is irresponsible and/or dangerous.

This theme, that the Bush Administration pushes fear, seems to be a common one, but is it Bush who manufactured fear or was it the 19 hijackers who brought down the WTC and blew out a section of the Pentagon? Whenever Bush speaks of turning the tide in the war against terrorism, or uses common language to express a refusal to retreat or give into fear ("Bring 'em on"), he's accused of being a bloodthirsty cowboy maniac. Realism requires the acknowledgment of real and potentially extreme dangers in the world. Pretending that there are no threats severe enough to justify committed action to head them off would be the height of irresponsibility for someone in Bush's position.

Personally, in my daily interactions with my fellow citizens, and in my observation of the mass and also the narrow media, I don't sense much fear. Though I think, or at least want to believe, that there's still determination and resolve on the part of the larger public and our political leadership, it's my impression that a reversion to the complacency and willful ignorance of the '90s is currently more of a threat than impetuous action based on paranoia.

Yes, I would say fear in America is less than immediately following 9/11, but so too are Bush's approval ratings.

We can only hope that reason continues to prevail and guide policy.

Fear is a great motivator, one of the greatest, and is skillfully used and abused by politicians all the time to advance their own political agendas.

Hitler was a master of using fear as a manipulative motivator, Churchill was a master of converting fear to determination.

Time will reveal if GW is Churchillesque, or the former.
 
:confused:


You seem to be missing the point of why the thread was started....this is not about right or wrong or liberal v conservative.....this is about the men and women who came before us so we can have these debates....Geesh...Going over the things that have been said and printed, I just want you al to know that in most counties around the world these posts would be pulled, Baron would be in prison and the secret police would be knocking on your door....

MSFE contributes nothing to this thread but Anti-American propaganda...why he is on this thread beats me, considering he is not in our country and iM pretty sure if he spoke out against his country his family would disappear.....

We see things so differently here in American depending on your political party.....I was kind of hoping that we could all agree on one thing an that's the sacrifices of the past that made this possible....For instance, There is an incredible book out about John Adams that I recently read ...It's mind boggling that a rich land owner would walk off the farm and leave home for YEARS to help America gain it's freedom...Can you imagine that today??? Bill gates risking his riches for the greater cause?...

Ted Williams LEFT baseball for 4 years in the PRIME of his career to go fight for this country ( as did countless others). who helped fight the NAZI's from taking over Europe....Can anyone tell me ONE baseball player of today that fought in Afghanistan or Iraq?


We are the product of incredible men and sacrifices.....be prod of it and don't listen to guys like MSFE, and Alfonso ....they are not even Americans...they are only here to cast dispersions because they are jealous of what we can do here and what they cannot.


HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!!!
 
Quote from OPTIONAL777:

If the current administration did in fact fabricate a threat, to justify a political agenda, I have a problem with that, wouldn't you?
More...

Naturally.

Even if in fact, they know what is best for the people but don't include the people in the process of governing, that is not our system of government. The government is intended to be "We the People" not leadership who thinks they know more than the people, or chooses not to tell the whole story to the people for fear the people might not understand.
More...

Actually, our government is based on representation, not direct democracy. In accepting the Constitution and the government it established, "We the People" recognized that we couldn't all individually be consulted on every aspect of policy. So, in that sense, you get things precisely wrong: The idea that leadership "may know more than the people" is presumed and embedded directly in our form of government.

You made an argument that the writer's thoughts could generate anti-American sentiment in the minds of youth....which could possible lead to action that was a threat to our national security, did I read you wrong?
More...

I suggested that the article belonged in that general category. I consider it highly irresponsible and worthy of condemnation. I even believe that, under some circumstances, the government could be within its rights and responsibilities to inhibit such writing, under the "clear and present danger" doctrine, but I don't believe those circumstances obtain.

If our enemies of the United States succeed in using WMDs or other tools of mass terror against us again, then many might believe that such circumstances were in effect. It is partly to head off such a situation - a state of emergency that puts our way of life and basic freedoms truly at risk - that an aggressive response to certain threats is, in my opinion, justified.

Sure, free speech has its dangers, so what? It is dangerous to allow people freedom of speech and freedom of thought, as they might decide on that basis to become anti-American.

That you brought up the point to begin with as a bone of contention, suggests that you would somehow curtail such freedoms if you could, i.e. censorship.

It is one thing to disagree with the ideas expressed in the piece, it is another to suggest that the piece is irresponsible and/or dangerous.
More...

Virtually all political disagreements rest on such implications. Any essay or argument about political alternatives implicitly carries the freight of the moral and physical harm that would occur if the wrong decisions were to be made. The writer of that article rather explicitly argues, for instance, that supporting Bush policy equates with supporting aggressive war aimed at democratic values. Your arguments imply that my point of view would lead to repression of dissent and other dangers.

Hitler was a master of using fear as a manipulative motivator, Churchill was a master of converting fear to determination.

Time will reveal if GW is Churchillesque, or the former.
More...

Or maybe it will reveal that he's just GW Bush, the guy who happened to be in office when the shit hit the fan.
 
Quote from TM_Direct:

MSFE contributes nothing to this thread but Anti-American propaganda...why he is on this thread beats me, considering he is not in our country and iM pretty sure if he spoke out against his country his family would disappear.....

contrary to the USA nobody disappears in Switzerland for speaking out against anything.


We are the product of incredible men and sacrifices.....be prod of it and don't listen to guys like MSFE, and Alfonso ....they are not even Americans...they are only here to cast dispersions because they are jealous of what we can do here and what they cannot.

what would that be - unelected presidents, fascist patriot acts, Cuban concentration camps, wars of aggression against defenseless sovereign nations ?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!!!
More...
 
"contrary to the USA nobody disappears in Switzerland for speaking out against anything."

One wonders what he thinks he's referring to.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top