No One Allowed To Speak Up!

John McCain is the latest entrant into the Republican’s war on free speech, and specifically the Blog’s. It is just the newest shot across the bow of our Constitution by the Right Wingers. Those people who tell us that we are at war with terrorism, because the Terrorists hate us for our freedoms.

Well, after this newest battle in the War on our Freedoms is passed, there are very few of them left for the terrorist to hate us for. Stop the war! Bring the troops home! We have become them. They have won!

Just in the last month the Republican’s are once again marshaling their forces of evil to take away another one of our Rights. First there was Newt Gingrich, former House Speaker, who called for a reexamination of one of our most important Rights, Free Speech. At the Loeb First Amendment Award Dinner in New Hampshire, Mr. Gingrich said: a “different set of rules, to prevent terrorism” are necessary. Gingrich’s call to restrict free speech is mainly focused on the Internet, for now. What gall, to present this nonsense at a dinner, where they celebrate our 1st Amendment, the Right to Free Speech. I would have booed him and walked out. Or better yet, someone should have escorted him out of the dinner. Maybe out of the city, state or country. There are places in this world where his kind of thinking would be celebrated. But I thought we were fighting against those who believed this way.

Said Mr. Gingrich: “My view is that either before we lose a city, or if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that we use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech…..”
Keith Olbermann, of Countdown/MSNBC reply to this truly stupid plan: “If you are going to destroy freedom of speech, bub, you’ve already lost all the cities.
Olbermann went on to say: “To paraphrase Pastor Martin Noemuller’s poem about Germany in the ’30’s and 40’s: First they came for the Fourth Amendment, then they came for habeas corpus, then they came for free speech, and there was no one allowed to speak up”. Source

What is up with all these Republicans wanting to put a stop to our Right of Free Speech? Could it be that they know unless they get total control over the ability of American’s to talk truth to power and to each other, that they are doomed? They have bought control of every news media in the United States and passed every law that was need for these few to have a monopoly on the press. We have paid dearly for this.

Knowledge will forever overcome ignorance and fear! Knowledge will forever overcome snake oil salesmen! Knowledge is the true power behind every advance the human race has made! That is what the Republicans are afraid of.

If we truly had a free press, Mr. Bush would not be occupying the White House. If he was not there, think of all the misery which we could have avoided. We would not have been lied into the Iraqi war. Our economy would not be the worst it has been since the Great Depression. Yes, you may think that our economy is doing fine. But, the bill has not been delivered to us yet. The amount of debt the Republicans have added is going to come due long after Mr. Bush has left the House. And then the American people will feel, deeply in their pockets, the true costs of this mistake. If we had known the true state of economy, the true costs of Mr. Bush and his Cabal’s wars and policies, we would not have given tax cuts to the already bloated rich and powerful.

This is just another one of the Republican’s “let’s all get on the same bandwagon” to take away American’s Rights, so that we can rule forever. With fear! And why not? It has worked so well in the past. McCarthy, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II.

“A popular government, without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps, both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.” ~Dwight D. Eisenhower~ 1954

First Newt and now McCain. They took away some of the other important, (4th Amendment, habeas corpus), Amendments to the Constitution and got away with it and now they are going after the one that our Founding Fathers knew was the most important one. The first Amendment. Free Speech. The ability to share information, to discuss, to have a meaningful dialog of different ideas. To come to a consensus of what was right, with the full knowledge available to all.

Now, Senator McCain has introduced a bill which will cause much of the discourse in this country to stop because of fear. Senator McCain’s Bill has been authored to “protect the children” from any postings which may have links to websites that has “associated with Sex Offender”. With no proof that children are even reading “blogs”, let alone the comment sections of those sites, he has threatened us with fines up to $300,000.00.

I already spend time everyday editing and approving those people who send comments to my site. I never stop anyone from commenting with their personal opinions. But, the amount of spam, with the only purpose for sending comments is for their commercial links to be posted, is heavy. I have a program which keeps these off my site until I approve. Any blogger can get these. So, why the hell is Mr. McCain trying to get this un-American, anti-Constitutional Bill passed?

Commercial websites and personal blogs “would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000.”
Internet service providers (ISPs) are already required to issue such reports, but under McCain’s legislation, bloggers with comment sections may face “even stiffer penalties” than ISPs.
McCain’s legislation could deal a serious blow to the blogosphere. Lacking resources to police their sites, many individual blogs may have to shut down open discussion. Source

Why not a Bill which fines local Library’s for the content of their books? Why not a police unit which raids our houses to make sure that we don’t have any offensive books on our shelves? Why not raid the Publishing Houses to make sure only approved books are printed?

Even with the Republican’s total control over the Press, they lost this time. One of the main reasons, is the “Internets”. Knowledge will forever overcome fear! You can only sell fear for so long and then the people, who don’t like being afraid, will start to ask questions. They will search for answers. The Republican’s can only maintain their agenda as long as American’s are afraid. And so the Republican’s must shut down every form of our finding the truth.

They go so far as to equate Free Speech with helping the terrorists. Same argument that every totalitarian government has used.

Sounds to me like Mr. McCain and his gang want to go back to the days when King George and his Government tried, fined and imprisoned people for the pamphlets those damn Colonists were using to rouse the rabble in America. You know, our Founding Fathers!

No! I will not shut up! And neither will I pay the fine, for invoking one of my Constitutional Rights. The Right to Speak Freely! Anywhere and anytime!

The claim to a Constitutional Right can not ever be made a crime!

I am an American! All Rights Reserved!