Friday, December 01, 2006

Olbermann takes on Newt regarding free speech

Yesterday's Coundown with Keith Olbermann was a trip into the Twilight Zone. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich made a speech at the Loeb First Amendment Award Dinner in New Hampshire. And in that address, Newt called for the re-examination of the First Amendment freedoms, and the need to control the freedom of speech for the greater good of fighting terrorism. Olbermann then makes a Special Comment on Newt's address. I'm going to start with Olbermann's story regarding Newt's speech. This is from YouTube:



I'm just amazed at the scare tactics that Gingrich is playing up here for shredding the Constitution and eliminating our First Amendment freedoms. Newt actually wants to create a panel of individuals to supervise what can be placed on the web, and what can be censored. Consider this quote from Olbermann:

OLBERMANN: We asked Mr. Gingrich’s office for the full speech. To their credit, they provided most of it to us, late relative to our deadline. But let me read you a little bit more of this that we’ve just gotten, Jonathan [TURLEY].

“I want to suggest to you that we right now should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of, if it were not for the scale of this threat.” That’s one quote.

“This is a serious, long-term war,” Gingrich added, “and it will inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country. It will lead us to learn how to close down every Web site that is dangerous.”

Jonathan, are there not legal methods already in place to deal with such sites that do not require what Mr. Gingrich has here called “supervision that we would never dream of?”

TURLEY: Well, there are plenty of powers and authorities that could be used to monitor truly dangerous people. But what you see here, I think, is the insatiable appetite that has developed among certain leaders for controlling American society.

We saw that with John Ashcroft not long after 9/11, when he said the critics were aiding and abetting the terrorists. There is this insatiable appetite that develops when you feed absolute power to people like Gingrich.

And people should not assume that these are just going to be fringe candidates, and this could never happen. Fear does amazing things to people, and it could a sort of self-mutilation in a democracy, where we give up the very things, the very rights that define us, and theoretically, the very things that we are defending.

OLBERMANN: Also, when you talk about closing down Internet sites, who is the one who’s going to decide which those are? I mean, it could be the Daily Kos, it could be Citizens for Legitimate Government, it could be the sports Web site Dead Spin, for all we know, if he doesn’t like any one of them in particular.

TURLEY: Well, what these guys don’t understand is that the best defense against bad ideas, like extremism and terrorism, is free speech. That’s what we’ve proven. That’s why they don’t like us, is that we’re remarkably successful as a democracy, because we’ve shown that really bad ideas don’t survive in the marketplace, unless you try to suppress them, unless you try to keep people from speaking. Then it becomes a form of martyrdom. Then you give credence to what they’re saying.

That is the real problem that Newt Gingrich and the neoconservatives have with America. They don't like the fact that complete freedom of speech can quash not just terrorist-type speech in our country, but also extremist-type speech that Gingrich and the neocons are trying to shove down America's throats. Their own neoconservative bad ideas can't survive in a free marketplace without some form of government censorship. That is why Newt is calling for censorship of free speech as a means to fight against terrorism. The real trouble with censorship begins when you start equating criticism of the neocon's bad ideas with that of the terrorists, and start shutting down critical websites such as Daily Kos or Citizens for Legitimate Government, or even Keith Olbermann? Where do you draw the line between criticism and terrorism? And more importantly, who decides where to draw that line?

Olbermann pretty much blasted Gingrich's calls for censorship in his Special Comment. Here's the transcript of Olbermann's Special Comment from MSNBC. And here is the YouTube video:



Olbermann:“We will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find,” Mr. Gingrich continued about terrorists, formerly communists, formerly hippies, formerly Fifth Columnists, formerly anarchists, formerly Redcoats, “to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech.”

Mr. Gingrich, the British “broke up our capacity to use free speech” in the 1770s.

The pro-slavery leaders “broke up our capacity to use free speech” in the 1850s.

The FBI and CIA “broke up our capacity to use free speech” in the 1960s.

It is in those groups where you would have found your kindred spirits, Mr. Gingrich.

Those who had no faith in freedom, no faith in this country, and, ultimately, no faith even in the strength of their own ideas, to stand up on their own legs without having the playing field tilted entirely to their benefit.

“It will lead us to learn,” Gingrich continued, “how to close down every Web site that is dangerous, and it will lead us to a very severe approach to people who advocate the killing of Americans and advocate the use of nuclear and biological weapons.”

That we have always had “a very severe approach” to these people is insufficient for Mr. Gingrich’s ends.

He wants to somehow ban the idea.

Even though everyone who has ever protested a movie or a piece of music or a book has learned the same lesson:

Try to suppress it, and you only validate it.

Make it illegal, and you make it the subject of curiosity.

Say it cannot be said, and it will instead be screamed.

Incredible.

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