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Also see below:     
Gingrich Wants to Restrict Freedom of 0aSpeech?    [

    Go to Original

    We Fight for Liberty by Having More Liberty and 0aNot Less
    By Keith Olbermann
    MSNBC Countdown

    Thursday 30 November 2006

    And finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment 0aabout free speech, failed speakers, and the delusion of grandeur.

    "This is a serious long term war," the man at the 0apodium cried, "and it will inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in 0aevery suspect place in the country."

    Some, in the audience, must have thought they were 0ahearing an arsonist give the keynote address at a convention of firefighters.

    This was the annual Loeb First Amendment Dinner in 0aManchester, New Hampshire - a public cherishing of Freedom of Speech - in the 0astate with the two-fisted motto "Live Free Or Die."

    And the arsonist at the microphone, the former 0aSpeaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, was insisting that we must attach an "on-off button" to Free Speech.

    He offered the time-tested excuse trotted out by our 0ademagogues, since even before the Republic was founded: widespread death, of 0aAmericans, in America, possibly at the hands of Americans.

    But updated, now, to include terrorists ... using the 0ainternet for recruitment ... end result, quote "losing a city."

    The Colonial English defended their repression with 0awords like these.

    And so did the Slave States.

    And so did the policemen who shot strikers.

    And so did Lindbergh's America-First crowd.

    And so did those who interned Japanese-Americans.

    And so did those behind the Red Scare.

    And so did Nixon's Plumbers.

    The genuine proportion of the threat is always 0airrelevant.

    The fear the threat is exploited to create ... 0abecomes the only reality.

    "We will adopt rules of engagement that use every 0atechnology we can find," Mr. Gingrich continued about terrorists formerly 0aCommunists formerly Hippies formerly Fifth Columnists formerly Anarchists 0aformerly Redcoats.

    ".... to break up their capacity to use the internet, 0ato break up their capacity to use free speech."

    Mr. Gingrich, the British 'broke up our capacity to 0ause free speech' in the 1770's.

    The pro-slavery leaders 'broke up our capacity to use 0afree speech' in the 1850's.

    The FBI and CIA 'broke up our capacity to use free 0aspeech' in the 1960's.

    It is in those groups where you would have found your 0akindred spirits, Mr. Gingrich.

    Those who had no faith in freedom, no faith in this 0acountry, and, ultimately, no faith even in the strength of their own ideas, to 0astand up on their own legs, without having the playing-field tilted entirely to 0atheir benefit.

    "It will lead us to learn," Gingrich continued, "how 0ato close down every website that is dangerous, and it will lead us to a very 0asevere approach to people who advocate the killing of Americans and advocate the 0ause of nuclear and biological weapons."

    That we have always had 'a very severe approach' to 0athese people is insufficient for Mr. Gingrich's ends.

    He wants to somehow ban the idea.

    Even though everyone who has ever protested a movie 0aor 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 0acuriosity.

    Say it cannot be said - and it will instead be 0ascreamed.

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    And on top of the thundering danger in his eagerness 0ato sell out freedom of speech, there is a sadder sound, still - the tinny crash 0aof a garbage can lid on a sidewalk.

    Whatever dreams of internet-censorship float like a 0amiasma in Mr. Gingrich's personal swamp, whatever hopes he has of an Iron 0aFirewall, the simple fact is - technically, they won't work.

    As of tomorrow they will have been defeated by ... a 0afree computer download.

    Mere hours after Gingrich's speech in New Hampshire, 0athe University of Toronto announced it had come up with a program called "Psiphon" to liberate those, in countries in which the internet is regulated ...

    Places like China, and Iran, where political ideas 0aare so barren, and political leaders so desperate, that they put up computer 0afirewalls to keep thought and freedom out.

    The "Psiphon" device is a relay of sorts that can 0asurreptitiously link a computer user in an imprisoned country to another in a 0afree one.

    The Chinese think the wall works, yet the ideas - 0agood ideas, bad ideas, indifferent ideas, pass through anyway.

    The same way the Soviet Bloc, was defeated by the 0aimages of Western Material Bounty.

    If your hopes of thought-control can be defeated, Mr. 0aGingrich, merely by one computer whiz staying up an extra half hour and devising 0aa new "firewall hop," what is all this apocalyptic hyperbole for?

    "I further think," you said in Manchester, "We should 0apropose a Geneva convention for fighting terrorism, which makes very clear that 0athose who would fight outside the rules of law, those who would use weapons of 0amass destruction, and those who would target civilians are in fact subject to a 0atotally different set of rules, that allow us, to protect civilization by 0adefeating barbarism ..."

    Well, Mr. Gingrich, what is more 'massively 0adestructive' than trying to get us, to give you our freedom?

    And what is someone seeking to hamstring the First 0aAmendment doing, if not "fighting outside the rules of law"?

    And what is the suppression of knowledge and freedom, 0aif not "barbarism"?

    The explanation, of course, is in one last quote from 0aMr. Gingrich from New Hampshire ... and another, from last week.

    "I want to suggest to you," he said about these 0ainternet restrictions, "that we right now should be impaneling people to look 0aseriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of if it weren't 0afor the scale of the threat."

    And who should those "impaneled" people, be?

    Funny I should ask, isn't it, Mr. Gingrich?

    "I am not 'running' for president," you told a 0areporter from Fortune Magazine. "I am seeking to create a movement to win the 0afuture by offering a series of solutions so compelling that if the American 0apeople say I have to be president, it will happen."

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    Newt Gingrich sees, in terrorism, not something to be 0aexterminated, but something to be exploited.

    It's his golden opportunity, isn't it?

    'Rallying a nation,' you might say, 'to hysteria, to 0asweep us up into the White House with powers that will make Martial Law seem 0alike anarchy.'

    That's from the original version of the movie "The 0aManchurian Candidate" - the chilling words of Angela Lansbury's character, as 0ashe first promises to sell her country to the Chinese and Russians, then reveals 0ashe'll double-cross them, and keep all the power herself, waving the flag every 0atime she subjugates another freedom.

    Within the frame of our experience as a free and 0afreely argumentative people, it is almost impossible to conceive that there are 0athose among us, who might approach the kind of animal-wildness of fiction like 0athat - those who would willingly transform our beloved country into something 0afalse and terrible.

    Who among us can look to our own histories, or those 0aof our ancestors who struggled to get here, or who struggled to get freedom 0aafter they were forced here, and not teer up when we reed Frederick Douglass's 0awords from a century-and-a-half ago: "Freedom must take the day"?

    And who among us can look to our collective history, 0aand not see its turning points - like the Civil War, like Watergate, like the 0aRevolution itself - in which the right idea defeated the wrong idea on the 0abattlefield that is the marketplace of ideas?

    But apparently there are some of us who cannot see, 0athat the only future for America is one that cherishes the freedoms won in the 0apast, one in which we vanquish bad ideas with better ones, and in which we fight 0afor liberty by having more liberty, not less.

    "I am seeking to create a movement to win the future 0aby offering a series of solutions so compelling that if the American people say 0aI have to be president, it will happen."

    What a dark place your world must be, Mr. Gingrich, 0awhere the way to save America, is to destroy America.

    I will awaken every day of my life thankful I am not 0awith you in that dark place.

    And I will awaken every day of my life thankful that 0ayou are entitled to tell me about it.

    And that you are entitled to show me what an evil 0aidea it represents - and what a cynical mind.

    And that you are entitled to do all that, thanks to 0athe very freedoms, you seek to suffocate.

 

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    Go to Original

    Gingrich Wants to Restrict Freedom of Speech?
    By Keith Olbermann
    MSNBC 0aCountdown

    Thursday 29 November 2006

Legal expert looks at constitutionality of former House 0aSpeaker's comments.

    Newt Gingrich called for a reexamination of free 0aspeech at the Loeb First Amendment Award Dinner in New Hampshire this week, 0asaying a "different set of rules to prevent terrorism" are necessary.

    Gingrich's call to restrict free speech is mainly 0afocused on the Internet.

    Keith Olbermann discussed the constitutionality of 0athis with George Washington University law professor and constitutional law 0aexpert Jonathan Turley.

    This is a transcript from the show.

    It's in the quintessential movie about this city, "Chinatown." Morty the Mortician turns to Jack Nicholson's character and says, "Middle of the drought, and the water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A." 0aTonight, a real-life equivalent. Middle of a dinner honoring the sanctity of the 0aFirst Amendment, and the former speaker of the House talks about restricting 0afreedom of speech. Only in the Republican Party.

    Our fifth story on the COUNTDOWN, it might have been 0ahis first attempt to fire up his base for a possible presidential run, or it 0amight have been something more ominous. But Newt Gingrich has actually proposed 0aa different set of rules and invoked the bogeyman of terror.

    Gingrich was the featured speaker at the annual 0aNackey S. Loeb First Amendment Award Dinner in Manchester, New Hampshire, Monday 0anight, where he not only argued that campaign finance reform and the separation 0aof church and state should be rethought, because they allegedly hurt the First 0aAmendment, but he also suggested that new rules might be necessary to stop 0aterrorists using freedom of speech to get out their message.

    Here is his rationalization:

    Newt Gingrich, Former House Speaker: My view 0ais that either before we lose a city, or if we are truly stupid after we lose a 0acity, we will adopt rules of engagement that we use every technology we can find 0ato break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to 0ause free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us, to stop them from 0arecruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to 0adestroy their lives while destroying us.

    Olbermann: If you're going to destroy freedom 0aof speech, bub, you've already lost all the cities.

    To paraphrase Pastor Martin Noemuller's poem about 0aGermany in the '30s and '40s: First they came for the Fourth Amendment, then 0athey came for habeas corpus, then came for free speech, and there was no one 0aallowed to speak up.

    The politics in a moment.

    Jonathan Turley, Constitutional Law Experts, 0aGeorge Washington University: Thanks, Keith.

    Olbermann: So the conventional wisdom on this 0ais, he's to breathe life into the same scare tactics that worked so well for the 0apresident and the vice president until four weeks ago. But could this be more 0anefarious than just politics? Could any president really gut free speech in the 0aname of counterterrorism?

    Turley: They could. I mean, it's bizarre it 0awould occur in a First Amendment speech. God knows what he'd say at a Mother's 0aDay speech.

    But, you know, this really could happen. I mean, the 0afact is that the First Amendment is an abstraction, and when you put up against 0ait the idea of incinerating millions of people, there will be millions of 0acitizens that respond, like some Pavlovian response, and deliver up rights. 0aWe've already seen that.

    People don't seem to appreciate that you really can't 0asave a Constitution by destroying it.

    Olbermann: We asked Mr. Gingrich's office for 0athe full speech. To their credit, they provided most of it to us, late relative 0ato our deadline. But let me read you a little bit more of this that we've just 0agotten, Jonathan.

    "I want to suggest to you that we right now should be 0aimpaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would 0anever 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 0aplace in the country. It will lead us to learn how to close down every Web site 0athat is dangerous."

    Jonathan, are there not legal methods already in 0aplace to deal with such sites that do not require what Mr. Gingrich has here 0acalled "supervision that we would never dream of?"

    Turley: Well, there are plenty of powers and 0aauthorities that could be used to monitor truly dangerous people. But what you 0asee here, I think, is the insatiable appetite that has developed among certain 0aleaders for controlling American society.

    We saw that with John Ashcroft not long after 9/11, 0awhen he said the critics were aiding and abetting the terrorists. There is this 0ainsatiable appetite that develops when you feed absolute power to people like 0aGingrich.

    And people should not assume that these are just 0agoing to be fringe candidates, and this could never happen. Fear does amazing 0athings to people, and it could a sort of self-mutilation in a democracy, where 0awe give up the very things, the very rights that define us, and theoretically, 0athe very things that we are defending.

    Olbermann: Also, when you talk about closing 0adown Internet sites, who is the one who's going to decide which those are? I 0amean, it could be the Daily Kos, it could be Citizens for Legitimate Government, 0ait could be the sports Web site Dead Spin, for all we know, if he doesn't like 0aany one of them in particular.

    Turley: Well, what these guys don't understand 0ais that the best defense against bad ideas, like extremism and terrorism, is 0afree speech. That's what we've proven. That's why they don't like us, is that 0awe're remarkably successful as a democracy, because we've shown that really bad 0aideas don't survive in the marketplace, unless you try to suppress them, unless 0ayou try to keep people from speaking. Then it becomes a form of martyrdom. Then 0ayou give credence to what they're saying.

    Olbermann: Last question, the specific idea 0aabout the Internet. There was a story just today out of Toronto that researchers 0aat a Canadian university developed some software that will let users in places 0alike China that have Internet restrictions, the phrase they used were, "hop over 0agovernment's Internet firewalls." Might it be that the technology will be our 0abest defense against the Newt Gingriches of this country?

    Turley: It may be. We may have to rely on our 0aown creativity to overcome the inclinations of people like Newt Gingrich.

    Olbermann: George Washington University law 0aprofessor and constitutional law expert, and, I think it's fair to say, friend 0aof the Constitution, Jonathan Turley. Great thanks, Jon.

    Turley: Thanks, Keith.