BILL O'REILLY Shows Juan Williams How to Count his Blessings

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Juan Williams Is Learning the Consequences that Flow from Having Feelings the PolitBuro Has Not Approved

Just feelings . . . nothing more than feelings. You should note that Juan is careful to always spout only accepted opinions and ideas. But that is not good enough. Sometimes he has funny feelings that are not totally in line with his beliefs. But now he knows that he has to keep a closer watch on what he says. You might say NPR has engineered a very public move to have a chilling effect on Juan's freedom of expression. The PolitBuro is very much alive, on the taxpayer's dime.

Victor David Hanson

The clip above is an excerpt from the longer clip below. His subject is Barack Obama and some of his policies. I will be putting the exalted ruler's name in the titles of posts less since I am convinced that I will thereby have fewer technical problems with my site. I call it the meaningless error message chilling effect that cuts traffic and makes it difficult for me to recognize my country. Apparently this chill blows off the lake into Chicago and is beginning to waft through the nation.




ht/Stop the ACLU

Together We Fought the Censorship that Never Happened

Below Is a great post from Da Techguy that I've copied and pasted.

The Wall Street Journal’s review of the the Nation’s magazine The Nation’s guide to the Nation delivers some comedy that I suspect the book doesn’t intend. But there is one part of the review that hits a particular nail on the head:

The Nation guide recommends a bookstore in Madison, Wis., by saying: “George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld do not want you to shop at Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative.” Yeah, remember that clerk, Dylan, the guy who was named Rainbow employee of the month last June? He’s in Gitmo now.

Gird Yourself for Exciting Yet Imaginary Battles! As far as The Nation is concerned, just about every progressive bookstore, musician, theater troupe and mime is committed to fighting the stranglehold of censorship. Except, well, they don’t actually get censored, so it’s like they’re committed to fighting the stranglehold of Klingons.

That line encompasses everything about the left and oppression these days. Over and over they talk about speaking truth to power and how there were censored by the Bush administration except that they don’t challenge any power that might actually strike back. Those days a long gone. Maybe they are referring to the violence inherent in the system.

Google: "Yeah,We Decide What Is Relevant. If You Don't Like It Go Back To Dogpile."

Google has come right out and said that their staff decided which search results to return. They don't say how long this has been going on.
Atlas Shrugs, who has been omitted from Google results for awhile says: "Now that Hussein is in the White House, Google (a chief fundraiser and potential member of O's administration) wants to control the news on their man. I never saw this kind of news suppression under Bush. You could say anything, BushChimpHitler, and get away with it.
Entering the dark age ...."

Some other choices Yahoo AltaVista Dogpile

Obama and Censorship

This is a post from Verum Serum (http://www.verumserum.com/?p=2339) from today.


Obama: Republic or Empire? (Update)

John on August 28, 2008

There’s a broad definition of censorship which goes something like this:

Action taken to prevent others from having access to a book or information; a public objection to words, subjects and/or information in books, films, and other media with the idea of depriving others from reading or viewing them.

Personally, I prefer a slightly tighter definition, one that includes the fact that real censorship is usually the action of government authority, like the kind of thing that happens in repressive communist regimes around the world. China censoring certain information on the internet comes to mind.

It seems to me that both definitions probably apply to the recent actions of the Obama campaign. First they tried to stop the airing of a commercial by an independent 527 group. He did this by sending threatening letters to the TV stations warning of possible justice department investigations. He then took it even further by sending a second letter calling for the prosecution of the individual who funded the ad. Which brings us up to today.

Today the Obama campaign has gone even further, trying to shout down Stanley Kurtz appearance on a radio show. Note, we’re not talking about Daily Kos here, this is the campaign organizing this (albeit with help from surrogates):

Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign organized its supporters Wednesday night to confront Tribune-owned WGN-AM in Chicago for having a critic of the Illinois Democrat on its air.

“WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears,” Obama’s campaign wrote in an e-mail to supporters. “He’s currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers.”

“Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse,” the note said.

“It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our public airwaves,” the note continued. “At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz’s lies.”

Apparently, Obama’s supporters don’t like “divisive, destructive ranting” on the public airwaves. No doubt they’d prefer something along the lines of the congenial, unanimity found on Cuban state radio. Or perhaps the massaged message of Pravda.

Guess what, you nuts, this is the United States of America!

We prize freedom of speech on “the public airwaves.” Please note that they’re the public’s airwaves, not yours and not the Democratic party’s. So I’ll give you the same advice Hollywood has been giving parents for years. If you don’t like it, turn the dial.

And, hey Barack, you have some nerve using your status, money and army of lawyers to try and shut down public debate. Frankly, it says a lot about you. A man who’d turn his campaign apparatus loose on a single journalist (not having even heard what the man has to say) must have a great deal to fear.

That set at Invesco field is starting to make a lot more sense. Barack Obama isn’t running for President, he’s looking to be crowned Caesar.

Update: Read this account of the interview itself written by Guy Benson who was there:

The experience was surreal, amusing, and chilling. In a matter of hours, a major national campaign had called on its legions to bully a radio show out of airing an interview with a legitimate scholar asking legitimate political questions.

It All Depends on Whose Steyn Is Being Gored

Mark Steyn recently wrote a column that identified a new civil right: the right to not be offended. A little thought about this leads me to wonder if, before I speak, I am expected to go to every person in the world and make sure every one of them is OK with what I’m about to say. Just joking. I know those who enforce this ‘civil right’ really don’t care about me suffering offense from other’s remarks. These enforcers are only interested in the thoughts and feelings of a few. What atheists and many nonChristians feel is especially important. The feelings of the members of certain racial groups are trotted out to limit the speech of others. But nuance is important here. Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice might think they are black and I might even think they are. But their feelings are not of any interest to the enforcers: except bonus points are offered to anyone who will offend Condi and Colin.
There is a basic test of someone’s alleged beliefs. If you are willing to extend the benefits to all mankind, not just your friends and allies, then I might be able to accept that it is a truly and firmly held belief. But if the right to not be offended is only extended to a slice of humanity then it begins to look like just another weak assed rhetorical device.

John Milton's Arguments Against Censorship

I had meant to summarize Milton’s Aeropagitica. But I no longer want to do that. I have set myself a more narrow goal. I intend to give summaries of Milton’s arguments defending freedom of expression. Often I have adjusted Milton’s arguments since his focus was on arguing against prior censorship.
ARGUMENT ONE Without freedom of expression our ability to think clearly is diminished by the lack of exercise imposed by the constraints of censorship. And our chance of acquiring new knowledge can only be limited by this lack of freedom. And sometimes the recovery of lost truth is nearly impossible.
ARGUMENT TWO If you are forbidden to hear your opponent’s beliefs and arguments this gives them advantage since they know both yours and theirs.
ARGUMENT THREE “Bad meats will scarce breed good
nourishment in the healthiest concoction; but herein the difference is
of bad books, that they to a discreet and judicious reader serve in
many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate . . .
how can we more safely, and with
less danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading
all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason? And this is
the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read.”
ARGUMENT FOUR How will it be decided who will be trusted to choose what speech will not be allowed? If some speech is disallowed because it is dangerous, how will the censors be safe?
(I would also ask if we would need overseers to make sure the censors act properly and if,  then we need overseer overseers creating an infinite regression.)
ARGUMENT FIVE “that this order of licensing conduces nothing to the end for which it was framed . . . See the ingenuity of Truth, who, when she gets a free andwilling hand, opens herself faster than the pace of method and discourse can overtake her.”
ARGUMENT SIX “And how can a man teach with authority, which is the life of teaching;
how can he be a doctor in his book as he ought to be, or else had better be silent, whenas all he teaches, all he delivers, is but under the tuition, under the correction of his patriarchal licenser to blot or alter “

ARGUMENT SEVEN Some feel that making a book forbidden is just a sign something inthe work is important, otherwise no trouble would have been expended over it.
ARGUMENT EIGHT When truth is first seen it is different enough from the truth we have known for a long time that this difference might lead us to think it a lie and censor it. “that if it come to prohibiting,
there is not aught more likely to be prohibited than truth itself; whose
first appearance to our eyes, bleared and dimmed with prejudice and
custom, is more unsightly and unplausible than many errors, even as the
person is of many a great man slight and contemptuous to see to. “
ARGUMENT NINE “For who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty? She needs
no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious;
those are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power.
Give her but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps . . . “
ARGUMENT TEN “ . . . we in the haste of a precipitant zeal shall make no
distinction, but resolve to stop their mouths, because we fear they come
with new and dangerous opinions, as we commonly forejudge them ere we
understand them; no less than woe to us, while, thinking thus to defend
the Gospel, we are found the persecutors”