Unfree Republic

Let the stench of Middle East flesh reach Paradise reassuring them that these filth have gone to hell permanently."

The quote above is representative of many posted on the FreeRepublic.com site in the wake of the WTC attack, and unfortunately its like is not uncommon elsewhere. Americans are angry, predictably and rightly so, but just as predictable are the side effects. As always, that righteous anger will be accepted as a beloved gift by the state and molded into tools of oppression.

It’s funny how that works. Every single state-sponsored war the US has become embroiled in has resulted in an inexorable increase in the power of the state.

It’s also funny that it’s always assumed that human behavior in the past has no relation to how we behave today. Why those people were old-fashioned, we’re modern, educated, etc.

The beginning of this repeating pattern has already become public with the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security. It has an ominous sound, that name, almost Germanic. (I can’t wait to see the uniforms.)

On April 13, 1917, days after our entry into World War One, President Wilson created the Committee on Public Information to promote the war domestically while publicizing American war aims abroad. Bush has replicated that step, with this new cabinet-level department.

Under the leadership of journalistic muckraker George Creel, the CPI was a propaganda apparatus unparalleled at that point in world history. The CPI functioned as a de facto public censor, vetting nearly all published material about the war and helping to draft legislation such as the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. In the months prior to our entry into the war and especially after our entry when they were nearly criminal, antiwar viewpoints were rarely heard.

The same pattern emerges now: Penn. Gov. Tom Ridge will be President Bush’s George Creel, and just as in those dim days of yesteryear, he’ll have plenty of willing civilian accomplices. And after all, there’s so much more to censor -- Ridge will need all the help he can get. In seeking warriors for the front line of Internet censorship, Ridge needs look no farther than FreeRepublic.com. The atmosphere there is now poisonous.

Again, look back to Wilson's CPI. It encouraged businesses to spy on their employees, parents to spy on their children, children to spy on their parents, neighbors to spy on neighbors, and above all to report "disloyal," pro-German sentiments. State authorities banned the teaching of German in schools and changed German street names. As the madness mounted, those regarded as pro-German were hounded from their jobs, pressured to change their German names, beaten, and in a few cases lynched. Almost all cases of violence, while incited by the state, were carried out by "civilians" in the grip of war hysteria.

Along with this anti-German hysteria, Congress passed several measures designed to rigidly suppress criticism of the war. In particular, the Espionage Act, passed in June 1917, specified a fine of $10,000 or twenty years in prison for "whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, and whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag."

The Espionage Act was very popular in its day. It was cheered on by mindless lemmings under the influence of state propaganda. Their great grandchildren now inhabit FreeRepublic.com, viciously attacking anyone who questions the wisdom of the state.

Our Congress is considering similar measures under the rubric of "anti-terrorism," and as it was at the beginning of the 20th Century, the FreeRepublic lemmings of the 21st are cheering the morally corrupt politicians along.

It’s not just message posters on the site. The management of FreeRepublic has instituted a "loose lips sink ships" campaign, with new moderators patrolling the forum to delete posts that in their opinion are detrimental to the "war effort."

The FreeRepublic mission statement claims "We're working to roll back decades of governmental largesse, to root out political fraud and corruption, and to champion causes which further conservatism in America."

Sanctimonious hogwash. Everything old is new again – the keyboard warriors of FreeRepublic would be right at home in 1917 shilling for Wilson.

Jeff Elkins is a freelance consultant and writer living in North Central Florida. His personal website is located at www.elkins.org.

It's just amazing to me that someone as intelligent as Gates could do something so stupid as to donate to the DNC.

Bill Gates donating to the Democratic National Committee would seem to contain the same sort of ring you might catch from knowing that a battered spouse was contributing to the struggle to get her abuser released from prison. He can do as he pleases, of course, but if the hounds of the State were to come after me for no good reason other than having built a mousetrap so popular that the cats ganged up on me, I would sooner be caught dead sharing a steak with Beelzebub than contributing to the party in power when the hounds were set loose upon me.

As for the controversy and chazerei about the topic in question, I lean as always upon a wiser man than I, Frank Chodorov in this instance, who wrote in 1949 the following which some of you may have seen me cite before but which is always appropriate under such circumstances:

Heterodoxy is a necessary condition of a free society. When two people are in disagreement, both may be wrong, but both cannot be right...Whenever I choose an idea and label it "right," I imply the prerogative of another to reject that idea and label it "wrong." To invalidate his right is to invalidate mine. That is, I must brook error if I would preserve my freedom of thought. When I presume to be in possession of "absolute truth," and maintain that those who disagree with me not only are in error, but are wickedly or sinfully so, I lay myself open to similar judgment; in the end, then, the "absolute truth" becomes a matter of power to constrict thought.

...To be sure, our history is not free of political efforts to put limits on what people may think...In every case, the authorities sought to get at ideas by inflicting punishment on those who held them; in every case, freedom of thought was the issue. It is to the credit of the American genius for freedom that ultimately the right to think as one wishes prevailed, even though too often some were made to suffer for it. Somehow the citadel of thought has held firm, and the right to be wrong has added something to human dignity.

...If men are punished for espousing communism, shall we stop there? (This is extracted from Mr. Chodorov's essay, "How To Curb The Commies". - BD) Once we deny the right to be wrong we put a vise on the human mind and put the temptation to turn the handle into the hands of ruthlessness...The danger, to those who hold freedom as the highest good, is not the ideas...espouse(d) but the power they aspire to. Let them rant their heads off - that is their right, which we cannot afford to infringe - but let us keep from them the political means of depriving everybody else of the same right.

Mr. Elkins, of course, is right on target. As a long-time poster on FreeRepublic, I'm shocked by the pro-totalitarian sentiments being expressed on this forum. Bush's new Department of Homeland Security should scare the hell out of all of us. If Clinton had proposed the same monstrosity, he'd be catching hell right now.

Good point. I doubt if all these conservatives would be rallying around Clinton with calls of "he's a traitorous son-of-a-bitch but he's OUR son-of-a-bitch" right now. They'd be looking to impeach him again for allowing it to happen. And they would somehow be able to recognize all these recycled and previously rejected measures for what they are: power grabs by the government which wouldn't make us one bit safer from terrorism.

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.