In the past, the Cape Charles Mirror has pretty much has given free reign to comments and some submitted articles and opinion pieces. In the past few weeks, we may have allowed this to go too far, in some way creating an environment resembling the wild, Wild West. In response to concerns from several members of the community, including this one, “the article slanders/libels more than half of the population in Northampton County, and the rights of slandered/libeled individuals are held by the law as more important than the freedom of speech and expression”, we are going to implement a set of guidelines for commentary and submissions based on the NY Times and Yahoo news best practices for online submissions and commentary.
While we will allow some dialog and argument to occur between parties, please attempt to refrain from “personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity”. The Cape Charles Mirror is really interested in articulate, well-informed comments that are “relevant to the article”. We encourage your works, including your criticism of events and local government, as well as any insights you might have about life in Cape Charles and on the Eastern Shore.
• Be considerate and respectful of your fellow posters—this is a public forum.
• Write concisely and use punctuation to help others understand you.
• Comments shouldn’t harass, abuse, or threaten anyone’s personal safety or property, make false statements, defame, or impersonate someone else.
The Cape Charles Mirror should be a place where folks in the community can exchange intelligent and informed commentary that enhances the quality of information available to people living on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. We want to hear from you, and most of all, we want to hear all sides of the issues.
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
In this day and age of social media, instant access and information overload, we fail to realize the culprit of deceit. It is our computer or our hand held phone with internet access. Moreover, it is the feeling of anonymity behind the screen. Much like a driver of a car, once buckled in and rolling down the highway, one has a detached disconnect with the surrounding drivers around them. That is why so many road rage instances occur. And like the vehicle, the computer empowers us in the same way. Behind the enclosure of our homes and the blinking cursor on our screen, we can be anyone we chose to be. We can rage and rant and go on and on about any number of issues that either anger us or enthrall us. We can say the things we wouldn’t dare say in public or say directly to someone’s face. We are immune to any actions we take. But are we?
Can you feel the fabric of civil society slowly slipping away? Do folks take the time to look up from their smart phones and say hello? Are the kids engaged at the dinner table in the conversation, or are they busy looking down at the glowing screen? Like road rage, do some articles give you a queasy, uneasy feeling while reading them and do you instinctively know what a lot of the comments are going to say before you read them? Does it seem easier just to hate so much, to be reticent about shutting someone else’s opinion down? Just to disagree is not enough anymore, you make your point by lobbing in a grenade first and go wading into the conversation, guns blazing. Doesn’t that feel great, being able to hide behind the discourse and your steady, blinking cursor? Sad.
I feel for our society today. The hate has always been there, it seems. It has just been waiting for the right conduit to bubble up and corrode our morals. The computer, when used as a cowards megaphone, is a broken moral compass. Because the truth we believe we spout, is corrupted by the cowardice of our anonymity.
Paul Plante is a brave soul and a wise man and I believe a decent person. I respect his opinions, even when I disagree with some of those opinions. Others on here, not so much. If we could just channel all that ire and discontentment into a positive and go after the ones who are truly dragging this great civilization through the mud and the blood and the cries of discontent, we would honestly change the world. But, first we must take off our masks. But as long as words can be formed behind the screen, closed doors and hearts, we will continue to rage and rant at each other without any real discourse or direction. That, sad to say, is our future.
For Paul, a parting quote:
The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it. – George Orwell
God Bless, friend. This is the last you will hear from me. I am tired of fighting windmills.
Charles Christian Chandler
C. Christian Chandler, it would be a shame for America to lose your voice in these matters.
The tradition of democratic government that I had instilled in me when young up to the north of you did not come to me from England or the British.
To the contrary, our system of democratic government in New York state came to us from the Iroquois nation, and it was based on each member not only having a voice, but more importantly exercising it.
Indeed, in the FEDERALIST No. 77 From The Independent Journal. Wednesday, April 2, 1788 “To the People of the State of New York,” Alexander Hamilton stated thusly with respect to voices being heard as a check on abusive government:
“Those who can best estimate the value of a steady administration, will be most disposed to prize a provision which connects the official existence of public men with the approbation or disapprobation of that body which, from the greater permanency of its own composition, will in all probability be less subject to inconstancy than any other member of the government.”
Approbation and opprobrium!
Those were to be our chief weapons as citizens of this Republic against bad government.
Towards that end, §8 of Article I of the New York State Constitution, the Bill of Rights, provides as follows: “Every citizen may freely speak, write and publish his or her sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right; and no law shall be passed to restrain or abridge the liberty of speech or of the press.”
The key phrase in there, of course, is “being responsible for the abuse of that right.”
With respect to slander and libel, the New York State Constitution, in that same section of the Bill of Rights, provides: “In all criminal prosecutions or indictments for libels, the truth may be given in evidence to the jury; and if it shall appear to the jury that the matter charged as libelous is true, and was published with good motives and for justifiable ends, the party shall be acquitted; and the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the fact.”
Checks and balances, as it should be, as opposed to censorship.
With respect to ugliness in politics and political discourse, sadly, that is nothing new.
I think one of the most ugly political contests in American history was that between Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson and Massachusett’s John Adams in 1800.
As Kerwin Swint, a professor of political science at Kennesaw State University and the author of “Mudslingers: The 25 Dirtiest Political Campaigns of All Time” (Praeger, 2006) informs us, negative campaigning in the United States can be traced back to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
By 1800, party politics had so distanced the pair that, for the first and last time in U.S. history, a president found himself running against his VP, and things got ugly fast.
Jefferson’s camp accused President Adams of having a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”
In return, Adams’ men called Vice President Jefferson “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.”
As the slurs piled on, Adams was labeled a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant, while Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward.
Even Martha Washington succumbed to the propaganda, telling a clergyman that Jefferson was “one of the most detestable of mankind.”
As professor Swint tells us, and this used to be schoolboy history, back then, presidential candidates didn’t actively campaign.
But the key difference between the two politicians was that Jefferson hired a hatchet man named James Callendar to do his smearing for him while Adams, on the other hand, considered himself above such tactics.
To Jefferson’s credit, Callendar proved incredibly effective, convincing many Americans that Adams desperately wanted to attack France.
Although the claim was completely untrue, voters bought it, and Jefferson won the election.
With respect to assumed names and aliases, it must be noted that in the beginning days of this Republic, when the Constitution was being debated, many commentators used pseudonyms to express their opinions to the public.
The Federalist Papers, for example, a collection of 85 articles and essays attributed to Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, were written under the pseudonym Publius.
Alexander Hamilton used the pseudonyms Publius, Pacificus, Cattalus, Horatius, and Philo Camillus.
Newspaper publisher Benjamin Franklin used such pseudonyms as Silence Dogood, Alice Addertongue, Fanny Mournful, Obadiah Plainman, and the delightful Busy Body.
John Adams had 25 or so pen names which included Populus, An American, A Son of Liberty, and “Vindex the Avenger”.
Why?
Because they wanted people to think about what was written, not to be influenced by who it was written by.
As to newspapers, George Washington, our first president, complained vociferously about their shortcomings, sometimes describing them as “too sterile, vague & contradictory, on which to form any opinion, or to claim the smallest attention” and other times calling their critical editorials “outrages on common decency.”
To Thomas Jefferson, his Secretary of State, Washington confided, “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper.”
“Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.”
end quote
In all that time since, has anything really changed?
For the record, I myself like to read reasoned elaborations of someone’s point of view on issues of importance to all of us.
It does not make a difference to me what name is attached to the writing.
It is the writing itself which is of importance to me.
C. Christian Chandler, I have been tilting with windmills for many years now, and so far, anyway, I am still standing.
The art is to come at them hard when the wind is not blowing.
With respect to guidelines for commentary and submissions based on the NY Times, that takes us back in time to June 17, 2007, and this article from the New York Times as follows:
Empire Zone Has Moved … to City Room
By The New York Times
After more than a year, 1,909 posts and 11,000 reader comments (plus 91,771 blocked spam comments), The Empire Zone blog went on hiatus.
end quote
More accurately stated, the Empire Zone blog, which I used to follow on a daily basis, had been shut down as a form of censorship on public speech.
In a NY Times article entitled “Are Blogs Outdated? The Times Eliminates Several, and Explains Why” By Margaret Sullivan on June 20, 2013, we were informed as follows:
I asked Mr. Baquet (managing editor) to explain what’s behind the recent changes and those that are to come.
While not confirming precisely which blogs will be eliminated, he confirmed the general trend.
“We are rethinking blogs – actually, we’re always rethinking them,” he said.
He suggested that the golden age of blogs at The Times may be over: “Blogs proliferated early on because they were seen as a way for desks and subjects to get into the Web game.”
“They taught us a different way of writing and thinking, created a way to move fast on coverage.”
“But I’d argue that as we’ve matured, the sections themselves now act like blogs.”
end quote
The original intent of the Empire Zone blog as I understood it, having followed it from the time of its inception, was to allow input from the citizen body to challenge the narrative put out by public officials in the form of press releases that are then printed as “news.”
What happened with the Empire Zone blog was that citizens started calling the cards of the politicians, challenging false and misleading statements in the press releases with facts and references, such as this post from a poster known as Livyjr on May 18, 2007:
If the purpose of government in the State of NY was to simply be another soap opera, which is about all that it is right now, then what took place in Albany with this Spitzer-itic charade the other day would be right in its proper place, like a scene from the “Secret Storm”, or “Days of Our Lives”, or something similar!
However, if government here in NYS is to really be “government”, as we, the people intended it to be, back in 1777, when we established our first constitution, then this charade in Albany the other day can be seen for exactly what it was, which is a farce staged by Eliot Spitzer!
A farce which did nothing for us upstate people but waste our time and money!
I don’t know how it is done in any other state of the union, but here in NYS, the governor does not control the legislature, as if he were its “boss”, nor does he control any individual legislator, as if he were their supervisor, and nowhere in our Constitution is Eliot Spitzer given any authority whatsoever to stage farces on our dime under the rubric of “Leader’s Meetings”, which is nothing but pure invention on the part of Eliot Spitzer!
And the last thing that we need in upstate NY is another governor who “invents” the “law” as he goes along!
Sadly, the school system in NYS appears to have stopped teaching NYS history and the NYS Constitution a long, long time ago, to the point that people in NYS today are or appear to be totally ignorant of the fact that we have a very long history here in NYS with “executives” who are prone to abuse the power of the office of “executive”, which is why, in our state Constitution, we have given the office of executive but little power, and what we have given the executive in our state Constitution is as follows from our own state archives:
New York’s constitution of 1777 created the office of governor “to take care that the laws are faithfully executed” and “to transact all necessary business with the officers of government.”
If Eliot Spitzer were to actually “take care that the laws are faithfully executed”, that farce the other day would never have happened!
But then Eliot Spitzer would have missed out on an opportunity to play at partisan politics before a crowd “in his room”, as he calls it, and he would have missed out on an opportunity to posture before the media, and his fans, and people in NYS would have been deprived of a circus to amuse them.
So we didn’t have “government” the other day, we had a farce, instead, starring Eliot Spitzer as the Impresario, and Joe Bruno as the odd man out, Eliot Spitzer’s tame “dancing bear” who does tricks for the crowd at Eliot Spitzer’s command, and Shellie Silver and his crowd, along with Jimmy Tedisco serving as the bit players and adulators of the “STEAMROLLER”, in the “STEAMROLLER MADE-FOR-TV SHOW.”
And I am neither a Republican, nor a Democrat.
Just a common ordinary NYS citizen with a strong belief in and desire for a return to constitutional government here in NYS, instead of farces staged by Eliot Spitzer to entertain the masses at Joe Bruno’s expense, and ours, as well.
end quote
When the Empire Zone was suddenly shut down June 17, 2007, one month after that Livyjr post was published on May 18, 2007, that was the end of the citizen challenges to the narratives we are dished out by politicians who can do so without fear of citizen challenge.
Just before this 4th of July weekend, an on-line publication similar in nature to the Cape Charles Mirror known as the Talk 1300 Report in the Capitol District area of New York state, where the same conversation on race relations and violence that is appearing in this edition of the CCM was taking place, which is critical of Governor Andy Cuomo’s rhetoric and policies with regard to the police, abruptly disappeared from cyberspace without a trace being left.
Why?
Because powerful politicians were being embarrassed, and they did not like that.
So people, cherish what you have down here in the CCM.
It may be one of the only places left in America where a citizen can get his or her voice heard without censorship on issues of importance to the public.
Political Correctness is not required, by any law, to be bestowed upon another human being. It has almost ruined this nation/world. It must be abolished as soon as humanly possible. The State of our Union is the result of Political Correctness creeping into our lives like a cancer.
Now ‘Irish Diplomacy’…….works every time.
It is the art of telling some one to go to hell in such a way that they will look forward to the trip.
“Political correctness” is an insidious form of censorship, actually.
It has reduced political dialogue in this country, where such is even possible, to the equivalent of Velveeta cheese on white bread, very bland and without much substance.
We are told that the rights of slandered/libeled individuals are held by the law as more important than the freedom of speech and expression, and as a reasonable, rational, law-abiding, loyal American citizen, I would find myself in agreement with that sentiment.
But who makes that judgment that slander or libel has occurred?
And when?
As was stated above, §8 of Article I of the New York State Constitution, the Bill of Rights, which I bring in here since we are talking the rules of conduct of the New York Times, provides as follows on that subject:
“In all criminal prosecutions or indictments for libels, the truth may be given in evidence to the jury; and if it shall appear to the jury that the matter charged as libelous is true, and was published with good motives and for justifiable ends, the party shall be acquitted; and the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the fact.”
In other words, if someone feels they have been slandered or libeled, for instance, being upset at being called a hoodlum because they label themselves a liberal or progressive, both meaningless terms when you come right down to it, as is “conservative,” it is up to that person to sue for redress.
Should it be the duty or obligation of a newspaper editor to make that judgment beforehand and keep statements or articles that might offend liberals or progressives out of print?
With respect to that thorny issue, in the November 2012, Volume 98, Issue 7 of the Virginia Law Review, we find the article “Free Speech, Hate Speech, and the Hostile Speech Environment” by S. Cagle Juhan, Law Clerk, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama; J.D., University of Virginia School of Law; B.A. with distinction, University of Virginia, 98 Va. L. Rev. 1577 (2012), wherein is stated:
Invoking 42 U.S.C. § 1983 to protect free speech rights, this Note proposes a new cause of action: the hostile speech environment claim.
This claim is necessary to combat the continuing infringement of hate speakers’ First Amendment rights by public colleges and universities.
end quote
The author of this piece in the prestigious Virginia Law Review goes on the make this clai8m: “more protection of hate speech is needed if public universities are to abide by the First Amendment.”
The author states that two strands of First Amendment law provide the claim’s constitutional foundation: the freedom of thought that inheres in the freedom of speech and the captive audience doctrine.
In the INTRODUCTION, we are told:
The First Amendment protects a wide array of distasteful, disturbing, defamatory or factually false, profane, “anti-American,” and hateful speech.
Such protection has been justified, at least in part, by the sentiment that the First Amendment prevents the government from prescribing orthodoxy “in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.”
Officials must not regulate speech based on their disagreement with it or because
society finds it offensive or unsavory.
Unfortunately, the liberty interest inherent in the freedom of speech can collide with the equality interest that law and society hold dear.
This conflict is palpable in the context of higher education, where historically strong free speech interests clash with equality, diversity, and tolerance interests.
This tension reaches floodtide when students propound hateful and intolerant ideas.
Surprisingly (at least in light of existing legal doctrine), public colleges and universities have erred on the side of regulating “hate speech” and vigorously, though less surprisingly, promoted norms that suggest the invalidity and undesirability of prejudiced views.
It is that phenomenon—public higher education’s effort to quash hate speech through regulation and adverse inculcation—with which this Note is concerned.
Rather than wading into the widely discussed and largely stale normative debate about whether hate speech should receive constitutional protection, this Note takes a different approach; setting aside the normative issue, it starts from the easily demonstrable and descriptive premise that hate speech is generally protected.
end quote
Searching through GOOGLE on the subject of free speech in Virginia, we find the article “Virginia Bans Unconstitutional Campus ‘Free Speech Zones’” from April 7, 2014, which provides:
On Friday, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe signed a bill into law effectively designating outdoor areas on the Commonwealth’s public college campuses as public forums, where student speech is subject only to reasonable, content- and viewpoint-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions.
Under this new law, college students at Virginia’s public universities will not be limited to expressing themselves in tiny “free speech zones” or subject to unreasonable registration requirements.
end quote
In the New York Times, itself noted for stifling responsible speech by citizens critical of important people in NYS government, in the article “Virginia: Spam Law Struck Down on Grounds of Free Speech” by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, SEPT. 12, 2008, we are informed:
The Virginia Supreme Court declared the state’s antispam law unconstitutional and reversed the conviction of a man once considered one of the world’s most prolific spammers.
The court unanimously agreed with the argument of the man, Jeremy Jaynes, that the law violates the free speech protections of the First Amendment because it does not just restrict commercial e-mail.
Most other states also have antispam laws, and there is a federal Can-Spam Act as well.
The Virginia law “is unconstitutionally overbroad on its face because it prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mails, including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” Justice G. Steven Agee wrote.
In 2004, Mr. Jaynes, above, became the first person in the country to be convicted of a felony for sending unsolicited bulk e-mail.
The authorities said he sent up to 10 million e-mail messages a day from his home in Raleigh, N.C.
He was sentenced to nine years in prison.
He was charged in Virginia because the e-mail messages went through an AOL server there.
The State Supreme Court last February affirmed Mr. Jaynes’s conviction on several grounds but later agreed, without explanation, to reconsider the First Amendment issue.
Mr. Jaynes was allowed to argue that the law unconstitutionally infringed on political and religious speech even though all his spam was commercial.
end quotes
So what do we have here?
Haters have free speech rights.
Spammers have free speech rights.
The only people who don’t seem to have free speech rights, especially in the pages of the New York Times, and throughout New York state for that matter, are people who wish to speak out in a manner that is critical of government corruption.
Is there something wrong with this picture, or is it just me?
Just how absurd this thing called “political correctness” has become with respect to regulating speech in America can be seen in this HUGE kerfuffle over Melania Trump’s speech during the republican convention, where she is accused, if you can believe it, of “plagiarizing” from some speech Michelle Obama gave in 2008.
Being curious about this supposed “plagiarizing,” I took it upon myself to research the matter further, and this is what I found:
Melania Trump at the RNC: “..and we need to pass those lessons on to the many generations to follow.”
“Because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”
Obama said in 2008: “…and pass them on to the next generation.”
“Because we want our children – and all children in this nation – to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”
Michelle Obama in 2008: “… that your word is your bond and you do what you say.”
Melania Trump in 2016: “… that your word is your bond and you do what you say.”
end quotes
Is somebody kidding us here with this “plagiarizing” crap?
Is someone pulling our legs?
Because they must be, since long before Michelle Obama was even born, my kindergarten teacher told me and my classmates at the end of WWII that the only limit to the height of our achievements was the reach of our dreams and our willingness to work for them.
And she also said that your word is your bond and you do what you say, words I have taken to heart ever since then, and never forgotten, nor forsaken.
That was perhaps fifteen (15) years before Michelle Obama was even born.
And my father told myself and my brothers us the same thing when we were young, long before Michelle Obama was ever born, especially the part about “your word is your bond and you do what you say.”
And when I got back from Viet Nam and had children of my own, I told my kids the same things when they were young, when Michelle Obama was maybe 10 years old, stressing to them from the time they were young that “your word is your bond and you do what you say.”
So who was Michelle Obama plagiarizing from when she said those same words so many years later in 2008?
And what is the load of horsecrap being peddled here in America that Melania Trump plagiarized those words from Michelle Obama, as if Michelle Obama was the first one who had come up with those words and owned them?
Where is that ridiculous charge coming from?
Those are sentiments that are as American as apple pie, and they are probably as old as America, if not older.
How many generations of Americans have told their children those same words over the last century or more?
So how then does Michelle Obama have an ownership claim on those same sentiments such that Melania Trump cannot use them in a speech of her own, without attributing them to Michelle Obama, as if Michelle Obama invented those sentiments, or discovered them in some scientific experiment?
How much more childish can these people at the top become as they fight over who those words belong to?
The answer is, they belong to all of us, not Michelle Obama, and we should not let ourselves be tricked or fooled into believing otherwise by these ridiculous “plagiarizing” charges being leveled by uninformed fools at Melania Trump, all in the name of political correctness.
Mr. Plante, your diatribe on this page is primarily plagiarism – you don’t give credit to the sources from where you have liberally lifted so many of your paragraphs. Most readers likely don’t process the material you so liberally pour on these pages because it has the same effect as listening to someone hitting continuously a single note on the piano. But most of the verbiage is not original; you are infringing on copyright laws.
That man fought on foreign shores so that you people could have the right to post comments here. You may do well to respect that. We The People have had quite enough of you Liberal/Democrats. You need to do no more than look at the state of our union and the state of the world. We The People will show you in November, just what I mean. Do not come back and mention Bush……Barry owns his poor legacy.
Freedom is not free,
but the U.S. Marine Corps
will pay most of your share
I must be missing the lack of citations: see where Paul says stuff like…..”Uhhhhhhbama, 2008″, see that’s a citation.
Unless you are a proponent of such wisdom as….”it depends on what your meaning of is is”.
I wonder, does it take a long time to become comfortable with, to LOVE and DESIRE being lied to one’s face?
Must be a liberal thing.
Indeed, it is true, Dana Lascu, that when I posted the words, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act,” I didn’t give it an attribution, because honestly, I don’t believe there is one, any more than there is for “your word is your bond and you do what you say” and “we want our children – and all children in this nation – to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”
Those are all universal SENTIMENTS, where the word “sentiment” means “a view of or attitude toward a situation or event; an opinion, “or a feeling or emotion.”
If someone has actually copyrighted the sentence “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act,” that is certainly news to be, because the sentence is hardly original.
And the thought that I would be infringing on copyright laws by telling someone “we want our children – and all children in this nation – to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them,” or “your word is your bond and you do what you say” without first saying “according to Michelle Obama,” strikes me as patently absurd, to be truthful.
Are you actually telling not me, but all of the CCM readership, that Michelle Obama has copyrighted the words in the phrase “your word is your bond and you do what you say?”
Am I and the other CCM readers hearing you right when you tell us that Michelle Obama actually now owns the rights to the use of those words, and that I now owe her some form of compensation for using those words in a public discussion forum, from which I derive no financial or other benefit, other than satisfaction that I have exercised what I feel to be citizenship duties by standing up to absurdity?
If so, I would like you or her to sue me for copyright infringement, because in truth, that is a case I would salivate for the opportunity to get in front of a jury of my peers to defend myself on the grounds that the charges themselves are patently absurd, and I will allow Wayne Creed to give you my contact information so you can be sure to have me properly served so as to preserve my due process rights.
In the meantime, before we see each other in a court of law to have this copyright infringement suit of yours properly resolved, I hope I can stop laughing before suppertime tonight so I can eat my evening meal, and I tell you, that is going to be a challenge, because I don’t think I have ever laughed so hard at something so ridiculous in my entire life as you saying Michelle Obama now owns the rights to the words in the phrase “your word is your bond and you do what you say,” so people owe her compensation for using them in a speech of their own, especially to their children, to set them out on the right path in life.
As to where I got those words, my goodness, they are all over the internet now, as well as the Main Stream Media, and you can watch both Melania Trump and Michelle Obama saying them on YouTube, so I think it is very fair statement to say that most readers in fact do possess the same material I do, since it is now PUBLIC DOMAIN.
It is interesting that as we have this discussion in here on speech, and its concomitant, expression, there is an organized group of people out there doing their very best to disrupt speech and expression by heckling, shouting down speakers, blocking highways so people can’t get to places to hear a speech, and so on, all of which is “protected” by the Constitution I and many, many others fought to protect and defend while in this nation’s military.
In essence, we fought and bled to provide people in this country the right to deny us free speech.
It reminds me of when I was young and just starting school and my education as an American citizen way back when.
For us young Americans just entering kindergarten, education meant among other things studying that war from a psychological perspective, especially the phenomenon of the Hitler Youth.
For those unfamiliar with the term, the Hitler Youth was the youth organisation of the Nazi Party in Germany whose origins dated back to 1922.
From 1933 until 1945, the Hitler Youth was the sole official youth organisation in Germany and was partially a paramilitary organization.
We were taught that the members of the Hitler Youth, children like us, albeit a few years older than we were then, were viewed as future “Aryan supermen” and were indoctrinated into racism.
One aim of the Hitler Youth, we were taught, was to instill the motivation that would enable its members as soldiers, to fight faithfully for Nazi Germany, which had just happened with WWII.
The Hitler Youth were used to break up Church youth movements, and in anti-Church indoctrination, used to spy on religious classes and Bible studies, and interfere with church attendance.
After the boy scout movement was banned through German-controlled countries, the Hitler Youth appropriated many of its activities, though changed in content and intention, with many activities closely resembling military training, with weapons training, assault course circuits and basic tactics.
We were taught right at the beginning of our education that we were not ever to become “Hitler Youth” in this country, which is to say, mindlessly indoctrinated into a belief system without ever questioning it.
More to the point of this discussion on speech, we were taught that we did not have the right to do as the Hitler Youth were doing, which was to use force and forceful tactics to deny others the right to speak and express themselves, as this organized group that exists in America today is doing.
“THINK WHAT WE WANT YOU TO THINK OR WE WILL BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN!”
That, people, is coercion and intimidation, plain and simple.
And that makes me think then of Chairman Mao’s Red Guards in China, who this modern day group here in America reminds me of.
According to WIKIPEDIA (yes, that is an attribution or citation for those who keep score on such things), Red Guards were a fanaticised student mass paramilitary social movement mobilized by Mao Zedong in 1966 and 1967, during the Cultural Revolution.
In that sense, it seems to me that this BLACK LIVES MATTER crowd is a fanaticised student mass paramilitary social movement mobilized by Hillary Clinton and the Democrat party in 2016 during their Cultural Revolution, which is on-going while we speak in here.
According to a Red Guard leader, the movement’s aims were as follows:
Chairman Mao has defined our future as an armed revolutionary youth organization…
So if Chairman Mao is our Red-Commander-in-Chief and we are his Red soldiers, who can stop us?
First we will make China red from inside out and then we will help the working people of other countries make the world red…
And then the whole universe.
end quote
I have Chinese friends who were living in China at the time of the Red Guards, and I have heard from them what life in China was like at that time, with the Red Guards literally policing and controlling not only speech and expression, but thought itself.
In many ways, the Red Guards in China to me were very similar to the Hitler Youth in Germany, and for the same reasons – to stifle dissent.
Now, we are seeing the same thing in this country with this BLACK LIVES MATTER crowd, which makes me think that time really is a loop.
It doesn’t go forward, it goes round and round.