“Be careful Freepers. But don’t back down.”
Here’s my answer to Dr. Allen, as follows:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2037813/posts?page=217#217
Mrs. Allen informs us:
“The idea of unsubstantiated charges whispered through gossip trails has been a tried-and-true political technique since well before Machiavelli’s time.”
How about the king is wearing an empty suit today — bellowed from the rooftops … does that count?
Along with the poison of Machiavelli she then peppers her speech with ‘unanimity on the internet’ and the word smear — forgetting that many great and influential writers such as Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and a host of other luminaries made use of pseudonyms.
Was it a smear when Mark Twain said: ‘ Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself ’?
She further says:
“The anonymous chain e-mail makes the false claim that Obama is concealing a radical Islamic background.”
There is a letter from some African Missionaries that seems rather strong but Beckwith didn’t write it.
Obama may be Muslim … and we all know he has radical friends… maybe even some radical Muslim friends… but where does the Obama file say that he — personally — is a ‘RADICAL’ Muslim?
She then says:
“I started thinking, How does one stop it?”
Well, Mrs. Allen could exercise her first amendment right of free speech, and lobby to limit free speech to only the speech she agrees with.
Perhaps she would be pleased to sit on a board of review with other ‘geniuses’ … a board that would act as a sort of social filter… one that would purge all views that don’t resonate with her rarefied cogitations.
Maybe she could reside over a book burning, or maybe we should say (figuratively) a cyber-burning, including certain websites and e-mails, that Dr. Allen disagrees with.
Dr. Allen doesn’t seem to grasp that the first amendment was designed to protect precisely that speech — sometimes even angry and pointed speech — that one may vehemently disagree with.
Perhaps Dr. Allen was truant on the day her Political Science professor discussed the first amendment.
Maybe she was off somewhere reading Machiavelli !
She says:
“This kind of misinformation campaign short-circuits judgment.”
Unless one is naïve enough to swallow whole any data one receives, whether through an anonymous internet e-mail, the mindless idiots on the mainstream TV. news, or other sundry sources; I am at a loss as to how anyone capable of reason — let alone a ’genius’ — would suffer impairment to their faculty of judgment.
One is not forced to read or accept anything.
One exercises the ability to discriminate … to sort out what one accepts and what one doesn’t, amongst the potpourri of ideas and views one encounters in life — a concept Mrs. Allen seems at odds with.
She then astoundingly says:
“It also aggressively disregards the fundamental principle of free societies that one be able to debate one’s accusers.”
Nay, Dr. Allen, the fundamental principle of free societies is that one be able to criticize those in authority and power — without fear of reprisal.
To the extent such criticism is chilled to that extent we live under tyranny.
… Machiavelli indeed!
STE=Q
Update: Beckwith clerifies what the Obama file DOES say, as follows:
“The charge that ‘Obama is a Muslim’ or ‘Obama was a Muslim’ does not exist in The Obama File.
The statement ‘By birth, blood and training, a Muslim, who has been a member of a Black-African church for 20 years’ is in The Obama File and is demonstrably true based on Obama’s own autobiography, press interviews, and statements of his teachers, classmates and family members — not to mention Islamic theology.”
unanimity = anonymity