{"id":20293,"date":"2011-05-27T11:00:30","date_gmt":"2011-05-27T17:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=20293"},"modified":"2011-05-27T08:05:45","modified_gmt":"2011-05-27T14:05:45","slug":"why-do-liberals-hate-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=20293","title":{"rendered":"Why Do Liberals Hate Free Speech?"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Progressives” – or at least, way too many of them – hate <\/em>the free and open interchange of ideas.<\/p>\n

Over on this thread<\/a> at MinnPost<\/em> on the cancellation of “Sons of Liberty” on AM1280, a commenter sniffed “Freedom of speech has been stretched to the limit by “Patriot” radio”. \u00a0And I’d love to ask – what are the “limits” of free speech? \u00a0 (And, by the way – for all of you who got the vapors over Brad Dean’s radio show or prayer in the house – are you OK with lefty host Randi Rhodes repeatedly calling for then-President Bush’s murder? \u00a0Or with Ed Schultz calling his talk-radio better Laura Ingraham a “slut”? \u00a0Just curious).<\/p>\n

To many progressives, apparently, the limit is “whatever challenges what I believe<\/a>“; students at Georgetown turned out to sign a (staged) petition to censor conservative websites:<\/p>\n

“The undersigned hereby adamantly demand that the United States government shut down right wing hate sites. The hate speech propagated by sites like the Drudge Report, Hot Air, Instapundit, Big Government, and others must not be allowed to corrupt our political discourse any longer. These sites are dangerous not only to truth and freedom but also to our society as a whole. BAN THEM NOW!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is at Georgetown, mind you – incubator for our nation’s putative future elites. \u00a0And it’s not pretty; it might be time to look into getting some new “elites”.<\/p>\n

Ed Morrissey – whose site was specifically targeted in the petition – quotes some of the new power generation<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has to be some control,\u201d one young woman says. \u201cI mean, freedom of speech is good, but, there is a certain modicum of control \u2014 I mean, look at the Tea Party.\u201d Yeah, look at that freedom of assembly and freedom of political speech that garnered so much support that Republicans won more new seats in a midterm election than either party had in 72 years. We have to control that kind of thing! I particularly liked the one woman who signed the petition because sites like ours \u201ccause a lot of debate.\u201d Oh, heavens, no! Not debate! Why, then one might have to actually pay attention and think for one\u2019s self!<\/p>\n

Most common reaction to the question, \u201cWhat do you think of the First Amendment?\u201d was \u201cI think it\u2019s great, but \u2026.\u201d Maybe Georgetown should consider remedial Civics and American History classes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’d say Georgetown, and much of the public education bureaucracy, is thinking “Mission Accomplished” right about now.<\/p>\n

It’s nothing new, of course. \u00a0Back in 1986, on my old graveyard-shift show on KSTP, I interviewed some members of “Women Against Military Madness” after their leader, Polly Mann, called for censorship of media that didn’t promote the “peace at any price” line. \u00a0With a straight face.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Progressives” – or at least, way too many of them – hate the free and open interchange of ideas. Over on this thread at MinnPost on the cancellation of “Sons of Liberty” on AM1280, a commenter sniffed “Freedom of speech has been stretched to the limit by “Patriot” radio”. \u00a0And I’d love to ask – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,30,18,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lefty-alt-media","category-liberty","category-pc","category-liberal-tyranny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20293"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20295,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20293\/revisions\/20295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}