Freedom of speech?

TownHall.com ^ | 6/24/02 | George Will

[kattracks]

WASHINGTON--When the history of today's liberalism is written, the writers may marvel at that political persuasion's remarkable reversal of convictions regarding persuasion. Nothing more tellingly illuminates the contemporary liberal mind than the retreat from the defense of First Amendment guarantees of free speech.

This year's enactment of yet more campaign finance regulations that expand government restrictions on the quantity of political speech is just the latest confirmation of what professor Martin Shapiro of the University of California School of Law at Berkeley noted in 1996. He wrote that ``almost the entire First Amendment literature produced by liberal academics in the past 20 years has been a literature of regulation, not freedom--a literature that balances away speech rights. ... Its basic strategy is to treat freedom of speech not as an end in itself, but an instrumental value.'' Perhaps emboldened by the liberal media's enthusiasm for campaign regulations, other would-be speech regulators have brought two lawsuits that suggest the future direction of liberal attempts to shrink First Amendment protections.

The Michigan Education Association, a teachers union, is suing the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free-market think tank, charging that the center ``misappropriated'' the ``likeness'' of the MEA's president when it quoted him in a fund-raising letter. MEA's president, announcing establishment of a think tank whose mission would be partly to counter the center's research and policy work, said: ``Quite frankly, I admire what they have done.''

Full Article

[goldstategop]

Who nees the First Amendment? Its for the right wing nuts.

[yendu bwam]

When the Boy Scouts took their case for not having to allow openly homosexual scoutmasters to the Supreme Court, I remember thinking: The ACLU will have to support the scouts. Why? It's the scouts' inherent free speech right to say (and believe) whatever they want about the morality of homosexual behavior. And it's the scouts' derived free speech right to have, as a private organization, free association rights. But of course, the ACLU, our great defenders of liberty and rights, agitated aggressively to DISallow the scouts these rights! When a Bible school study group wanted to meet in a public school after school hours in upstate New York, I assumed the ACLU would be there to defend the 1st amendment right to free religious expression. Again, the ACLU took the non-free speech side. Liberals all over the world now are afraid of and opposed to free speech. In Sweden, now, if you say you don't think homosexual conduct is a good idea, you can be arrested. Canada is not far behind. The US is the ONLY truly free speech nation in the world. But we have to fight to keep it that way.

[Taxman]

". . . When the history of today's liberalism is written, the writers may ... tread lightly. Otherwise they may be sued by liberals demanding subordination of the historians' rights of freedom of expression to some greater social good that supposedly would be impaired unless the historians' speech is regulated.

You say it can't happen here? Notice what already is happening."

Great find! Must read bump!

Wake up America!