Posted on 02/03/2006 8:30:23 PM PST by infoguy
In an especially contentious exchange on this evening's Hannity and Colmes (Friday February 3, 2006), cantankerous cartoonist Ted Rall, a guest on the program, unbelievably declared, "We do not owe our liberties to the military." The topic was the recent Washington Post cartoon by Tom Toles that has outraged many. The cartoon prompted a letter to the editor (linked at Michelle Malkin) from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who tagged the the work as "beyond tasteless." Needless to say, Rall (who himself has created bigoted trash in the past) defended Toles' cruel piece. Here's the relevant exchange (audiotape on file, emphasis mine):
SEAN HANNITY: Here's what you're missing. The reason that you have the right to be mean, and you were mean to this guy [killed in Afghanistan, former NFL star Pat] Tillman, who gave up a football contract to save his country. The reason you have the right to be mean in your cartoons, and Toles has a right to mean and insensitive in his cartoons, is because of people like this (Sean holds up the WaPo cartoon) that literally put their lives on the line so you have the right for free expression. And you insult them and use them as props so you can make your left-wing political points.
RALL: Sean, you could not possibly be more wrong about the nature of this country. We do not owe our liberties to the military. We owe them to the Constitution. We have civilian rule in the United States --
HANNITY: The military preserves the Constitution. They put their lives on the line so that you have free speech. You do owe them.
RALL: The military doesn't give us free speech.
HANNITY: Yes, they do.
RALL: Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers gave us free speech.
HANNITY: No. Because if they don't defend that Constitution, you don't have the right to be so wrong in your cartoons!
"We do not owe our liberties to our military"?? I'm sure George Washington would have had a few things to say about that, not to mention the generations of heroic young men who fought and died to protect and defend our precious liberties.
It was simply another pathetic display by Ted Rall. How ungrateful this man is. What a disgrace.
By the way, if Rall's comments weren't sad enough, co-host Alan Colmes claimed that the Joint Chiefs' letter to the Washington Post was "intimidating" and that there was a "chill of intimidation that goes right down the spine of the First Amendment." Puh-leeze, Alan.
"It is the soldier, not the reporter, Who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, Who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, Who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier, Who salutes the flag, Who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, Who allows the protestor to burn the flag.
--- by Father Denis Edward O'Brien, USMC
A six year old child is in possession of a mind FAR clearer than that IDIOT. It takes YEARS of self-absorption and "education" to create a mind like that twit has.
I wouldn't send Ted Rall to any of the above, I'd send him to North Korea. Let him starve and be oppressed at the same time.
All I need to know is that George Washington and the Patriots did their part for us BEFORE the Constitution was written. The British didn't let their Atlantic seaboard colonies go because they got a sudden urge to act nice.
This reminds me the the time in 2004 when Jimmy Carter said the American Revolution wasn't necessary, and that if we had talked more with King George III he would have granted independence peacefully, the way Britain later did with Canada and India. It made me wonder why he bothered to run for president in the first place.
I was thinking Antarctica, but I wouldn't want to offend the penguins, they haven't hurt anyone. LOL.
Hannity handed him his **ss.
RALL: Sean, you could not possibly be more wrong about the nature of this country. We do not owe our liberties to the military. We owe them to the Constitution.
Rall's is a moron. I suppose he'd take a copy of the Constitution, hand it to dictators, and say "please."
Here's the part Teddy Rall is too stupid to understand. If I walk up to you and put a pistol to your head, Tom and the Founding Fathers' "free speech" is cancelled out and no longer exists.
Makes me wonder if the man hasn't lost his sanity, or if he ever had it.
BTW no one has caught my proctologist/pediatrist comment yet.
pediatrist=podiatrist, OOPS. Really I don't want to stick my kid up his a**.
We don't, in Jefferson's words they are "endowed by the Creator".
We owe them to the Constitution.
Wrong Oh, the Constitution, mainly the Bill of Rights, merely protect those liberties/rights.
We have civilian rule in the United States
Indeed we do, but that doesn't change the fact that it's the military that has preserved our rights, at least from would be foreign infringers of them. For that we do owe them.
We the People have had to manage against domestic infringements, and we haven't done nearly as good a job as the military has.
Post 9 isn't even there.
Lib's sense of entitlement knows no bounds. It's been raised to an art form.
Gato, thank you for saying what I would have liked to have been able say, if my blood pressure had been about 50 pts lower.
Technically Rall is right. The Military didn't pen the Constitution, the Founding Fathers did.
He does not get, however, that it is the citizen (growing the beans and making the bullets) and the soldier (putting his life on the line), who keep enforcing that document around the world.
Rall is still a dirtbag, and a seditious one at that.
Spot on.
I saw the interview this evening, and I was outraged!!!
I am a member of the US military, and was personally insulted by what he said.
Apparently Colmes believes the First Amendment is a one-way street. The Washington Post can publish whatever crap against whomever it chooses, but it's "intimidating" for their target to criticize it back.
YES!!!!.....and, then I'd like to have seen Rall call for "help"....i.e. the MILITARY......what a BOZO!
You have the "liberty" to be in a hijacked airplane that crashes into the towers, too, Mr. Rall.
The Constitution only has teeth in it because of the military.
I don't expect you to understand such a concept, however.
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