Steven L. Sheffield wrote:
>
> What's WAY more worrisome is that that speaking out against our own
> government can be considered an act of inciting to terrorism, punishable by
> life imprisonment ... Just for speaking.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Steven L. Sheffield
> stevens at veloworks dot com
> bellum pax est libertas servitus est ignoratio vis est
> ess ay ell tea ell ay kay ee sea eye tee why you ti ay aitch
> aitch tee tea pea colon [for word] slash [four ward] slash double-you
> double-yew double-ewe dot veloworks dot com [foreword] slash
I agree completely that the real threat is coming from the government.
Unfortunately the rest of the world really seems to be going way down
the road to severely limiting speech. Granted that it has always been
this way in a lot of places, but Europe's shifting attitude on this
really bothers me since we seem to be going the same direction.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/06/21/news/paris.php
http://makeashorterlink.com/?W48A2109B
Unfortuanately there's plenty more examples out there and both ends of
the political spectrum here are doing their best to limit our rights
IMO. One from the PC end, and the other side from the religous
nutjob/neocons who are using fear to try and ram their agenda down our
throats. Either way we are in for a long hard fight to hang onto our
rights. What pisses me off is that both sides deny they are limiting
the right to free speech while doing everything they can to block
speech they find disagreeable. I'm with you as an absolutist on this. I
see very few cases where the government should be shutting people up no
matter how offensive what they are saying is. IMO Ward Churchill is a
pinhead, but his right to speak out needs to be protected, but that
same administation took action against faculty and students for running
an affirrmative action bake sale because it was considered racially
divise speech. When publicly funded organizations choose to protect one
form of speech, but act to silence others they should have their
funding pulled. When they allow and protect one form of demonstration,
but allow another viewpoint to have their equipment destroyed and be
driven off campus without taking any action against the violence that
they allowed to silence the speaker then That's garbage.
Anyway we're way OT.
Bill C