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Starving free speech
Augusta Chronicle ^ | August 31, 2009 | Editorial Staff

Posted on 08/31/2009 1:46:36 PM PDT by kingattax

There's an old joke in which three men each get a wish from a genie. Two men ask for possessions as nice as their neighbors'. But the third man cites a neighbor who has a prize pig -- and rather than asking for one like it, he directs the genie to kill his neighbor's pig.

Some people take a similarly spiteful approach with regard to your right to free speech. They don't just want an equal right; they want yours taken away.

That approach is at work in a liberal group's attempt to silence conservative commentator Glenn Beck.

The group -- Color of Change -- is trying in vain to starve Beck and Fox News of advertising revenue by instigating a boycott. Why? Ostensibly because Beck opined that he thinks Obama is racist.

Notwithstanding the fact that such an opinion is mild compared with what the left said about President Bush, Beck has an absolute right to that opinion -- as do liberals who find a "racist" behind every tree (the latest being New York Gov. David Paterson, who says he is being attacked for being black, not for being inept).

We don't think Barack Obama is racist. His mother was white and he talks lovingly of the white grandparents who helped raise him. Still, we recognize others may disagree. It's their right.

One interesting fact about the assault on Beck: The organization leading it was co-founded by Obama adviser Van Jones, an admitted communist who now happens to be Obama's "Green Jobs Czar."

The real issue here should be Jones -- and the fact that Obama has used yet another unelected, unconfirmed "czar" appointment to elevate someone, in this case someone who has openly admitted being a radical leftist.

It's quite possible that both Beck and Fox News are popular enough -- they regularly attract more viewers than other cable news outlets combined -- that the boycott may only backfire. We hope so, and we encourage those who believe in free speech to resist attempts to silence it.

But it's frightening indeed that in 2009 America, one cannot legitimately criticize the president without being the subject of threats and coercion. And not everyone has the resources or throngs that Fox News has to beat back such attempts at censorship.

President Bush endured a squatter outside his ranch for weeks, a shoe being thrown at him in Iraq and countless comparisons of himself to Hitler.

We would encourage President Obama and his closest allies to take a correspondingly tolerant stance toward even the most biting criticism.

Until at least the end of last year, anyway, it's been the American way.


TOPICS: Editorial; News/Current Events
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1 posted on 08/31/2009 1:46:37 PM PDT by kingattax
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To: kingattax

Some people take a similarly spiteful approach with regard to your right to free speech.

Actually, there are numberless characters out there who take this approach with respect to anything at all you manage to gain for yourself and/or your family; they tend disproportionately to seek out and find employment in government or as criminals. But I repeat myself.


2 posted on 08/31/2009 1:56:23 PM PDT by Jack Hammer
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To: kingattax

“We don’t think Barack Obama is racist. His mother was white and he talks lovingly of the white grandparents who helped raise him.”

Let’s see. His white mother, by all accounts, did her level best to find, seduce (or be seduced by), and occasionally even marry a series of non-white men. She also did not object when her son took up with radical racists as a young man, and worked herself in anthropology, which is not exactly known as a pro-white field of study. But even aside from all this, the newspaper’s “logic” that because BO’s mother was white means he can’t be racist is idiotic. And that’s not even to speak of the “white grandparents,” one of whom he “lovingly” called a “typical white person.”


3 posted on 08/31/2009 1:58:25 PM PDT by sthguard (Pres__ent Obama: He's All Ego.)
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To: kingattax

One cannot set a good example when it comes to the left. They use our moderation for their own totalitarian gain. They must be defeated. Soundly.


4 posted on 08/31/2009 1:59:19 PM PDT by Republic of Texas (Socialism Always Fails)
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To: kingattax

Wal-mart, Geico, et. al. gets should be boycotted by conservatives. Let’s see how dedicated they are to the god of PC.


5 posted on 08/31/2009 2:02:30 PM PDT by Mogollon (Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God. -- Thomas Jefferson)
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To: Mogollon
gets=gets
6 posted on 08/31/2009 2:03:25 PM PDT by Mogollon (Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God. -- Thomas Jefferson)
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