Newt Gingrich Embraces Anti-American Ideals
It seems everyone these days likes to build up the idea in their own head that they are a "good american." Humans have long had the ability to rationalize and justify their own behavior, but these days, it seems particularly en vogue. the most common way to rationalize one's own greatness is to point out others badness.
For example, People who are card carrying NRA members point to their uncompromising position that they can own any firearm they want no matter what the government has to say on the matter as true blue patriotism. They paint anyone who wishes to modify or curb people's ability to own and use dangerous assault weapons and munitions that our founding fathers couldn't even conceive to be weak, unpatriotic and essentially begging for our country to be taken over by whomever is the enemy du jour.
These days, another example would include some americans using their position on immigration as a litmus test on what kind of american one is. to the people who are staunchly paranoid about the US / Mexico border and want it sealed up tight and all the hispanic illegals "dealt with" see anyone who looks at the issue in a broader fashion as being weak and a "bad american" who is "for illegal immigration."
But former house speaker, Newt Gingrich has taken things to a new level. Newt wants to get rid of the 1st ammendment to our constitution as we know it. Not only that, he made his declaration at a dinner celebrating our most cherished right to free speech. And furthermore, it took place in the state that has the 2 fisted motto "don't tread on me." As Keith Olbermann put it, it was like "...some in the audience must have thought they were hearing an arsonist give the keynote address at a convention of firefighters."
The concept of free speech is a cornerstone to our democracy and our culture. America was founded on this ideal. The concept of an individuals right to speak his or her mind and the press to operate free of any government interference is one of the things that has led to the greatness of this nation.
Mr Gingrich isn't the 1st to offer up the idea that we should shut up certain individuals. And he isn't the 1st to exploit people's fears and apprehensions aboutthe future and the unknown to somehow justify his attack on free speech and in effect, on America. He joins a long list of people who have sought to shut up certain individuals simply because they had no faith in America or any belief that we as Americans can make up our own minds on what information we choose to look at, listen to or whatever.
Today, it is the terrorists. Yesterday it was the hippies, the communists, the 5th columnists, the anarchists, the anti-slavery movement, the beatnicks, or the red coats amongst others. Gingrich has found common ground with others who had no faith in freedom, no faith in Americans and feels the only way he can preserve his narrow brand of freedom is to have the field titlted so far in his favor by shutting up everyone else. Of course, Newt has combined our fear of terrorism with our fear of the internet. He is proposing that we shut down every website that he deems as dangerous. What would Newt's reckless and cowardly trashing of our constitution mean for the rest of us? Keith put it this way...
"He wants to somehow ban the idea, even though every one 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 can not be said and it will instead be screamed.
And on top of the thundering danger and his eagerness to sell out freedom of speech, there is a sadder sound still, the tinny crash of a garbage can lid on a sidewalk. Whatever dreams of Internet censorship float like a miasma in Mr. Gingrich‘s personal swamp, whatever hopes he has ever an iron firewall, the simple fact is technically they won‘t work. As of tomorrow they will have been defeated by a free computer download. Mere hours after Gingrich‘s speech in New Hampshire, the University of Toronto announced it had come up with a program called Siphon to liberate those in countries in which the Internet is regulated, places like China and Iran, where political ideas are so barren and political leaders so desperate that they put up computer firewalls to keep thought and freedom out. The Siphon device is a relay of sorts that can surreptitiously link a computer user in an imprisoned country with another computer user in a free country. The Chinese think their wall still works, yet the ideas, good ideas, bad ideas, indifferent ideas, pass through that wall any way, the same way the Soviet block was defeated by the images of western material bounty.
If your hopes of thought control can be defeated, Mr. Gingrich, merely by one computer whiz staying up an extra half an hour and devising a new firewall hop, what is all this apocalyptic hyperbole for? "
He went on to say...
"Well, Mr. Gingrich, what is more massively destructive than trying to get us to give you our freedom and what is someone seeking to hamstring the first amendment doing if not fighting outside the rules of law? And what is the suppression of knowledge and freedom if not barbarism? The explanation, of course, is in one last quote from Mr. Gingrich from New Hampshire and another quote from him from last week, "I want to suggest to you, he said about these Internet restrictions, that we right now should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of it weren‘t for the scale of the threat." "
Kind of like the McCarthy Commission perhaps? Or some other version of the "thought police" that have blackened drief moments of our history by attempting to somehow defend freedoms by taking them away? Newt is like an arsonist who could defend his actions by rationalizing that he gives firefighters job security and they should support him. And just like the firefighters would never buy into that idea, neither should Americans buy into any idea that rationalizes taking our cherished and necessary free speech rights to fight any war against anything. Americans can make thier own decisions about what they read, listen to and watch. The government should never have any ability to infringe that right. Newt Gingrich is simply dead wrong in his view. Furthermore, he obviously has no faith in America or Americans and that is sad.
Finally, I couldn't have put it any better than Mr Olbermann when he summed up Newt's dangerous ideas. Of course, we don't want to censor Newt's words, as we feel Americans can make the right decisions on their own....
"Newt Gingrich sees in terrorism not something to be exterminated, but something to be exploited. It is his golden opportunity, isn‘t it, rallying a nation, you might say, to hysteria, to sweep us up into the White House with powers that will make martial law seem like anarchy. That, of course, is from the original version of the movie the Manchurian Candidate, the chilling words of Angela Lansbury‘s character as she first promises to sell her country out to the Chinese and Russians, then reveals she will double cross them and keep all the power to herself, waving the flag every time she subjugates another freedom.
Within the frame of our experience as a free and freely argumentative people, it is almost impossible to concede that there are those among us who might approach the kind of animal wildness of fiction, like the Manchurian Candidate, those who would willingly transform our beloved country into something false and terrible. Who among us can look into our own histories, or those of our ancestors, who struggled to get here, or who struggled to get freedom after they were forced here, and not tear up when we read Frederick Douglas‘ words from a century and a half ago, freedom must take the day.
Who among us can look to our collective history and not see it‘s turning points, like the Civil War, like Watergate, like the Revolution itself, in which the right idea defeated the wrong idea on the battlefield that is the marketplace of ideas. But apparently there are some of us who can not see that the only future for America is one that cherishes the freedoms we won in the past, an America in which we vanquish bad ideas with better ideas, in which we fight for liberty by having more liberty and not less.
“I am seeking to create a movement to win the future by offering a series of solutions so compelling that if the American people say I have to be president, it will happen?” What a dark place your world must be, Mr. Gingrich, where the way to save America is to destroy America. I will awaken every day of my life thankful I am not with you in that dark place and I will awaken every day of my life thankful that you are entitled to tell me about it and that you are entitled to show me what an evil idea lurks there and what a cynical mind, and that you are entitled to do all that thanks to the very freedoms you seek to suffocate.
Your ideas are not compelling Mr Gingrich. they are scary and somewhat stupid. Does that make you a bad american? Not in my book. But your ideas are bad. Fortunately, I believe that the rest of America, which probably disagrees on many other issues, will see your ideas as bad as well."