Re: ah, where to begin...
areenactor said:
to the party that becried the dixie chicks, and danny glovers treatment. they chose to shoot off their mouths (their right), and i as a consumer have exercised my right to not buy their product. or do you think that because they are "entertainers" they should be accorded special dispensation for being stupid, and saying foolish things?
steve
Hmmm. Something in this passage has been lurking around at the back of my head for a couple of weeks now. It all came down to this postulated "freedom of speech" thing.
I don't actually know who the Dixie Chicks are, never having heard of them. I'm assuming they're a girl band who spoke out against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. I know who Danny Glover is of course, having seen all the Lethal Weapon films, ( as a teenager they were career guidance for me!
) The Colour Purple and Predator 2. I've not heard him speak out personaly, but again I assume he was against the invasion. Okaaaaayyyyyy.............
Personally Steve, I find the above passage to be the second most horrifying thing I've ever heard from you. You mention the freedom of speech, as trumpeted under the First Amendment. According to your philosophy, the only freedom this gives is the freedom to speak out and not be arrested and shot by the secret police. Sorry mate, but that isn't any freedom at all. What makes this particular philosophy truly abhorrent, is that the need for the secret police isn't there any more, because the people are doing the job for the government! You don't need the KGB/Sheepdog waltzing up the street, ready to knock the citizens back into line, because the people/sheep are doing it to any of their number who look like they're about to break out of the pen.
Voltaire said something along the lines of...
"I may vehemently disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."
For freedom of speech to be truly that, it has to be afforded without predjudice, malice or conditions. If you think Danny Glover is a crap actor or the Dixie Chicks are awful singers (assuming I'm right about them being a girl-band), then feel free to boycott their product. But refusing to buy their product because you consider them to be "being stupid, and saying foolish things" (something that is hotly disputed, not just in liberal and commie Europe, but inside the USA too) when all they were doing was expressing their opinion, (God, what a crime!)is vindictive, nasty, prejudiced and downright frightening. It isn't freedom of speech, it's coercion dressed up in a frilly frock to hide it's damn ugliness. A movement to blight the careers of those who step outside the party line, (like that Brit basketball player, who plays over there) might just as well transport the "free" USA back in time to communist Russia, having the jackbooted guards roaming the streets and the KGB listening out for any stray word that might criticise the wrong person.
Could someone tell me please, why "special dispensation" should be needed at all? It makes it sound like it's good and justified for anyone with an unpopular opinion to have their career ended. The "stupid and foolish" bit, is nothing more than an opinion held by the most vocal, most popular, best backed and well publiscised. This sort of psychological communism/terrorism is exactly the sort of thing that makes America the laughing stock of the rest of the world, when it has the bare-faced cheek, to claim it is the most free nation on Earth.
When it comes to civil liberties the USA is streets behind most European countries. In America the military has the right to wade in in the instance of mass public demonstrations. Over in Europe the idea is completely unthinkable. (Although give it a few years of the marxist progression the EU is displaying so prominently, and it'll have probably caught the USA up.) The right to free speech is a joke because anyone who has the temerity to exercise it is immiediately the subject of a public hate campaign that blackens their names and ruins their career. One of the biggest freedoms Americans love, is the freedom to own the instruments that are causing a massive swing in crime and homicide. People who legitimately own firearms in reasonable quantities for the purpose of home defence or hobbies, are being eclipsed by people who think it means they should be able to own a basement full of weapons, that would make the underground arms bunker in Terminator 2 look like the local Cops 'N' Robbers toy counter. The rationalisation for this is that it's supposed to be in case citizens need to defend themselves against a government that gets to big for it's boots. And people really think a squad of the Delta Force is going to be remotely fazed by some NRA nutter toting a few rifles, shotguns and handguns?
I've heard people say that the government wouldn't dare use special forces to slaughter a group like that. I think those people are shockingly naive. Just what would have happened if Martin Luther King had told his followers to use the Second Amendment to protect themselves from a racist and discriminatory government that robbed them of even basic civil liberties? The army wouldn't have fired back? Gun-toting blacks wouldn't have been mown down like corn at harvest time? Registered voters wouldn't have regretfully concurred that the government had no choice but to use lethal force?
COBBLERS!!!
Freedom of speech is like universal love really. It's easy to obey Jeebus when he tells you to love thy neighbour, and it's a nice old bloke who always smiles and says hello. But if your neighbour is a nasty, criminal bastard, who keeps you awake at night with loud music, then it's a hell of a lot harder to obey the commands of Jeebus. Free speech is basically the same. It's trumpeted from the rooftops when it's acceptable to your ears, but come the time when it's something you've been conditioned to disagree with and it suddenly gets a lot more difficult to accord that basic right, doesn't it? Freedom of speech in America (and surviving to earn a living) has become synonymous with freedom to express the most popular opinion; nothing more. Sadly, the situation just looks like it is getting worse. Her in the UK it's a strange kind of limbo, because most sentiment and political leaning, is in the direction of our long-time allies and friends in the US. But we also have a fair share of the sensibilities of the European countries. (That is to say, we express ourselves in ways that get us labelled as weak-kneed, apologist liberals in the US.) On the negative side, it seems to us as if the US is getting ever closer to the extreme right-wing and the EU gravitates ever towards the left. (Both ending up by turning completely around on themselves and turning out to be oppo-sames of each other.)
When will we stop seeing the world's population as being divided by schisms and conceptions? When will people actually wake the hell up and realise just how damn stupid we've been being? When will we realise that there is no need for the sides of our politics to be ever rooted on two sides of a chasm wider than the Grand Canyon? When will we realise that things like love and freedom can't be offered on condition that you agree with the current administration? Sadly, I don't think we will. I think the mass of humanity is walking blindly in it's ever-increasing fanatiscism, straight into the biggest metaphorical abyss it's possible to imagine.
God save us.
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N.B. I'd like to add a note here. My post above may seem to be directed totally at Steve. That isn't the case. It just so happened that Steve's post was the one in this thread that I replied to. Many in the world today express similar opinions to those expressed in my quote from Steve and my post was directed at them all as a body. That's why I refered to the idea of Universal Love put forward by the Bible's Jesus, when I know full well that Steve is Jewish by heritage and spiritual by inclination. That particular reference was directed at people in America like the fanatic, nut-case of a judge who believes we should be carrying out mass-executions of homosexuals. (The one involved in the row over the Ten Commandments monument.)
