John / Billybob
Letter from The Republic of Texahoma to President 0bama:
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another,...”
Under the Fairness Doctrine, which the Obama Administration may seek to reestablish, the government would tell talk radio how far they can go – what they can, and cannot, broadcast. It will be the electronic version of the Stamp Act by which King George sought to control the most free-wheeling part of American communications of his day.
That effort by the Obama Administration should fail. Today we have a First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom... of the press...” And today, for the time being, we have at least five Justices of the Supreme Court who take that Amendment seriously.
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Yes, let him show his colors — the colors of tyranny. It remains a blatant tragedy that we are even discussing this matter — the part of the electorate that sees the destruction of American freedom as “good” for America has made a huge, tragic error.
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2008/04/recurring-ties-between-obama-and.html
Executive Summary: Barack Obama’s relationship with former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers appears to go beyond their Woods Fund board membership. Even today, Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, sound utterly unrepentant over their attempts to overthrow the U.S. government in order to install a pro-communist regime.
Perhaps coincidentally, Obama’s name was recently discovered on a captured FARC computer. In the documents, FARC — Colombia’s brand of pro-communist terrorists — implied that it had met with Obama’s representatives to secure his support after the election. Interestingly, Dohrn has traveled to Colombia in the recent past in order to organize against Colombia’s pro-U.S. government. Is it possible that Dohrn served as a cutout between Obama and FARC? That much is not yet clear, but the question deserves to be asked.
Yes, very interesting.
Will we have the mettle of our forefathers?
Those who don’t study history are condemned to repeat it.
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Stamped docs. Imagine that. And for the past 10 years they’ve been telling us that information just wants to be free. Yet...the ones saying that are heavily vested in intellectual property and valued at multibillions by disenfranchising the bloggers who actually believe free speech—talk—is cheap. Words mean things. Ideas matter.
God save the USA.
Related:
http://www.informationjustwantstobepaid.com/
The FCC has the power to institute a "Fairness Doctrine" (as wrong as it may be) because it has the power to regulate the airwaves on behalf of the public. It is this power that also allows it to fine people for saying the f-bomb on the public airwaves or showing Janet Jackson's nipple. Radio and TV stations do not have a right to broadcast, they have a license to broadcast. That license requires them to adhere to applicable laws.
The autocratic power of the FCC has been a problem for years, and it will continue to be a problem as long as we only complain about it when it works against us. Hopefully, the opposition to a reinstatement of the "Fairness Doctrine" will prevail, but next time the FCC goes ballistic over a curse word or sexually-suggestive morning radio show, conservatives will rally around their anti-free-speech powers, and the problem will continue.
Couple of questions John:
I have read in other sources that the literacy rate of colonials was unusually high. I believe De Toqueville estimated illiteracy rate of one half of one percent. He was astonished at the literacy of the common man in America in 1810. Mothers taught their children to read from the bible. It was one their most sacred obligations as mothers. What is your source for one third literacy?
Another comment, not a question. The tax on paper always seemed to me to be less a tax on communication than a tax on ammunition. One loads a musket (particulary when used as a shotgun, its most common use) thusly:
1. Powder
2. Paper wad
3. Shot or ball
4. If shot, another wad of paper. Cloth was rarely used, particularly with shot as it was too expensive. Nests of paper wasps were highly regarded for loading in rifles or muskets because of their compressive nature.
Since many of our ancestors supplemented their gardens with wild game, usually rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks and the rare deer, the paper tax could also be typified as a tax on protein. This would also explain the revulsion for that tax.
Comments?
Interesting history lesson.
Thanks for the post!
An additional comment.
Another source estimates the English intake of protein to be much less than the colonial daily intake. Whereas we always had enough protein, the estimate of English intake was such that only 20% of the English population had enough daily protein to do what we would consider a good days work. Everyone else made do with a lot less daily protein.
Well done!
In providing for the patenting of inventions, and more generally in providing that the people are to be free to do things differently than in prior generations, the Constitution plainly contemplates technological advancement. Furthermore, the position of the framers of the Constitution before it was amended was that the rights which could be delineated in the Bill of Rights insisted upon by the Antifederalists were already implied in the original, and that a listing of rights could not easily be constructed which could never be construed as reducing the rights recognized by the Constitution.It would, therefore, be fatuous to take the words "the press" in the First Amendment in a reactionary, technologically static, sense. The printing press as it was known in the Founding Era was hopelessly crude and inflexible by modern standards - but there can of course be no implication that only the use of printing presses of archaic design is protected by the Constitution.
"Freedom of the press" cannot refer to specifically to the use of the technology of printing circa 1792. It certainly includes the use of high speed printing presses developed since the 1830s - and of telegraphy as well. And also the use of photography, telephony, movies, radio, Xerography, and television developed much later. And it not only includes the use of the computer printer and the Internet today, in principle it includes the use of whatever communication technology may extend those capabilities in as yet novel ways in the future. "Freedom of the press" is a right of the people, and each of us individually - the right to spend our own money to use technology to promote our own opinions about what we ourselves consider to be important. Most especially, in light of the establishment and free exercise clauses and of the assembly and petition clauses of the First Amendment, freedom of the press is the right of any person to spend money to use technology to promote his/her opinions on religion or politics in particular.
The principle is that if anyone has the right to spend money to employ a particular communication technology, everyone (who can afford it, as in combination with other like-minded people most would have some ability to afford some use of most such technologies) has the right to spend money to employ that technology. Under the Constitution the government does not get to elevate some people to privileged status officially recognized as "objective" or any other title of nobility. Anyone has the right to thus exert themselves to make it easy for his fellows to see, hear, and/or read his opinions - but whoever does so must interest and persuade his target audience, who have no obligation to give his exertions the slightest notice.
Anyone can, like the Sophists of old, claim superior wisdom - or objectivity, or any other virtue. But whoever does so - no matter what the weight of their purses, what printing presses, telegraph lines, or other communications equipment they may own or control, or even how many others similarly situated who may be in concert with them in making such claim - cannot thereby attain any authority over the opinions of their fellows. They not only do not attain the authority of the verdict of a jury, they do not (precisely because of their freedom) even attain the credibility of witnesses under oath and subject to the laws of perjury. They are still only people, and they do not on that account constitute any part of the government.
We the people are free to use the press in all its forms, and free from efforts by the government to prevent the success of our efforts to do so.