Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Anti-Free Speech Zones Used to Silence Pro-Lifers Could Come Back to Haunt Liberals
The Daily Beast ^ | 01.16.14 | Kirsten Powers

Posted on 01/18/2014 1:23:20 AM PST by Slings and Arrows

click here to read article


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-22 next last
Now ain't that interesting?
1 posted on 01/18/2014 1:23:20 AM PST by Slings and Arrows
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Slings and Arrows; Lurking Libertarian; Perdogg; JDW11235; Clairity; TheOldLady; Spacetrucker; ...

FReepmail me to subscribe to or unsubscribe from the SCOTUS ping list.

2 posted on 01/18/2014 1:39:11 AM PST by BuckeyeTexan (There are those that break and bend. I'm the other kind. ~Steve Earle)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Slings and Arrows

I believe the law should be used against Unions who try to block the entrance to a factory during a strike.


3 posted on 01/18/2014 1:39:52 AM PST by Cowboy Bob (They are called "Liberals" because the word "parasite" was already taken.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Slings and Arrows
The farther to the left on the scale, the less free speech prospers after the left gets power. The more the left gets power, the more abortion prospers. (Another Maxim?)

Free speech is a tool which the left will use to get power but once obtained, that power is used to stifle speech and consolidate power.

The history of China is illuminating. Under communism that country murdered or sent to reeducation gulags people who sought to exercise speech and the country forced abortions upon its women. As the country now is somewhat liberalized, it is freeing up speech and some limited areas and it is repealing its one child policy.

History shows us that it is abortion rather than free speech which is the higher value for the left. Free speech is the enemy of collectivism and abortion is a tool of collectivism. Abortion is a tool which destroys the traditional role of women and therefore of the family and therefore of a building block of society independent of the collectivist whole. Any institution independent of the state is a threat to the state in the eyes of the leftist.


4 posted on 01/18/2014 1:45:26 AM PST by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat, attack!" Bull Halsey)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Slings and Arrows

Since when does the left apply standards to themselves to which they hold the right? Just like the occupy losers trespassing for days and getting away with it, while elderly veterans were forcibly turned away from their own memorials.


5 posted on 01/18/2014 1:45:31 AM PST by mrsmel (One Who Can See)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nathanbedford
Free speech is a tool which the left will use to get power but once obtained, that power is used to stifle speech and consolidate power.

"The issue is never the issue. The issue is the revolution."
Unknown, quoted by David Horowitz

6 posted on 01/18/2014 1:55:05 AM PST by Slings and Arrows (You can't have Ingsoc without an Emmanuel Goldstein.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: mrsmel

It is also the left that wants to ban offensive speech (offensive to them) labeling it hate speech.


7 posted on 01/18/2014 1:59:22 AM PST by JimSEA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Slings and Arrows

This seems to be a habit with Mass, that they pass a rule which subtly punishes conservatives somehow, and it comes back and bites them in the ass later. The most memorable instance was the special-election rule change they passed to protect Kerry’s seat when he ran for prez, which then virtually guaranteed that a Republican would get Kennedy’s seat after he croaked. The libs desperately tried to walk the change back, so the special circumstance would only ever help the Dems, but couldn’t make it stick.


8 posted on 01/18/2014 2:01:23 AM PST by Little Pig (Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Little Pig

I remember that one. IIRC, part of the reason that Scott Brown got elected was the Dem-dominated legislature got a little too cute for even Massachusetts voters.


9 posted on 01/18/2014 2:08:35 AM PST by Slings and Arrows (You can't have Ingsoc without an Emmanuel Goldstein.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: Slings and Arrows

I seriously think that I would not be surprised if Kirsten Powers defects to our side of the political spectrum not too long from now. Her eyes are being opened to what liberalism is all about.


10 posted on 01/18/2014 2:34:02 AM PST by winner3000
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: winner3000

Conservatism gets all the pretty women. ;^)


11 posted on 01/18/2014 2:38:06 AM PST by Slings and Arrows (You can't have Ingsoc without an Emmanuel Goldstein.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: Slings and Arrows

It wasn’t that it was too cute for Mass voters (who are largely libs who supported the rule anyway). It was that back in 2004, the Mass legislature stripped the governor of the power to appoint replacements for vacated seats, so Romney couldn’t put a Republican into Kerry’s vacated seat. Then in 2009 when Kennedy died, the new Liberal governor was barred from putting a lib in to replace the Swimmer, and Brown was able to defeat the execrable Coakley (who ran a bad smear campaign that turned off voters).

The way the legislation was worded, it didn’t discriminate between a seat vacated due to a campaign and a seat vacated due to death (which probably *would* have been too cute even for Mass libs), and therefore applied in the Swimmer’s death even though Kennedy actually had the gall to lobby to change the law 9 days before his death, despite his having been the primary impetus in getting the law passed in the first place.

So it’s not so much this specific case, as it is one more example of the libs being in so much of a hurry to punish Republicans that they don’t think of the ramifications of their actions, and end up looking petty and partisan (or more so, as is so often the case).


12 posted on 01/18/2014 2:57:58 AM PST by Little Pig (Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Slings and Arrows
What is perhaps most disturbing is that the Massachusetts law was created by people who call themselves liberal. It is also being defended by an assortment of liberals from the ACLU to Planned Parenthood. Which raises an obvious question: Is it now liberal to oppose free speech?
At the start of the Twentieth Century the term "liberal" meant the same in America as it still does in the rest of the world - essentially, what is called "conservatism" in American Newspeak. Of course we "American Conservatives" are not the ones who oppose development and liberty, so in that sense we are not conservative at all. We actually are liberals.

But in America, "liberalism" was given its American Newspeak - essentially inverted - meaning in the 1920s (source: Safire's New Political Dictionary). The fact that the American socialists have acquired a word to exploit is bad enough; the real disaster is that we do not now have a word which truly descriptive of our own political perspective. We only have the smear words which the socialists have assigned to us.

And make no mistake, in America "conservative" is a negative label in the PR sense - just as surely as we know that every American marketer loves to boldly proclaim that whatever product he is flogging is NEW!


13 posted on 01/18/2014 3:03:18 AM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion ("Liberalism” is a conspiracy against the public by wire-service journalism.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Little Pig

Thank you for the summary.


14 posted on 01/18/2014 3:17:22 AM PST by Slings and Arrows (You can't have Ingsoc without an Emmanuel Goldstein.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: nathanbedford
History shows us that it is abortion rather than free speech which is the higher value for the left. Free speech is the enemy of collectivism and abortion is a tool of collectivism.
All “shield laws” which exist or are proposed to give “journalists” protections not applicable to you and me are anti-constitutional. I put “journalists” in scare quotes to signify that “journalist” is a suspect category - you can systematically perform all the functions of journalism you want - but if you are not simpatico with the Borg of journalists who report within the AP (including all member newspapers and broadcasters), you are “not a journalist, not objective.” McCain-Feingold presumes to extinguish free speech rights during political campaigns if you aren’t working for wire service journalism (tho it doesn’t, AFAIK, use that term). And McCain was on nobody’s top ten list of things the public wanted - but journalists wanted it, so plainly Establishment "journalism” wanted it, and got it.

Even “journalism’s” claim of objectivity is an attack on free speech, in the sense that it is an effort - a very successful, ongoing effort - to suppress arguments not congenial to the journalism worldview. Especially if those arguments are well-supported by facts and logic.


15 posted on 01/18/2014 3:32:26 AM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion ("Liberalism” is a conspiracy against the public by wire-service journalism.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: Slings and Arrows

“The Supreme Court is hearing a case about a Massachusetts law barring protesters from entrances to abortion clinics. If it’s upheld, unions and environmentalists could be next”.
when Pigs fly. Liberals are a protected people. They can do and say what they please and when it pleases them.


16 posted on 01/18/2014 3:42:30 AM PST by Yorlik803 ( Church/Caboose in 2016)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Slings and Arrows

Good article and well written......Sort of surprised it was written by Kirsten Powers ....


17 posted on 01/18/2014 4:11:11 AM PST by Popman ("Resistance to Tyrants is Obedience to God" - Thomas Jefferson)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: mrsmel; Slings and Arrows
Anti-Free Speech Zones Used to Silence Pro-Lifers Could Come Back to Haunt Liberals

This title is simply incorrect. Liberals never have to suffer the consequences of their choices or their decisions. There is now one set of laws and interpretations for liberals, and another for the rest of us.

18 posted on 01/18/2014 4:17:09 AM PST by Hardastarboard (The question of our age is whether a majority of Americans can and will vote us all into slavery.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Slings and Arrows

Would be interesting except for the fact that it won’t be enforced against the libs.


19 posted on 01/18/2014 5:01:54 AM PST by trebb (Where in the the hell has my country gone?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Slings and Arrows

What should be disturbing to ersatz liberals? Liberality is characteristic of the much maligned, former Western Civilization dominated by DWMs, dead white males.

Its multicultural replacement in which all cultures no matter how un-free are homogeneically equal, is most intensely expressed by New Left trailblazer Herbert Marcuse’ s partisan tolerance. Anything goes as long as it is not politically disapproved old culture. This is the essence of postmodern “liberalism”, no shock at all, just standard operating procedure.


20 posted on 01/18/2014 5:51:20 AM PST by CharlesOConnell (CharlesOConnell)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-22 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson