Dems Attack Free Speech

We've talked in the past about the Dems' wishes to implement the so-called Fairness Doctrine in order to shut down the most effective voice of opposition to their agenda, conservative talk radio.  It appears that the real attacks are going to be a lot more subtle:

If you don't already know the name Julius Genachowski, you should. In June of this year, he was confirmed and sworn in as Obama's new FCC Commissioner. And what has the new commish been up to since his hiring? To the delight of opponents of free speech everywhere, he has been waging a zealous campaign for "net neutrality."

Net neutrality — despite its benign, almost positive-sounding ring — is defined at a site called Save the Internet as a way "to expand the rules to protect a free and open Internet . . . against increased efforts by providers to block services and applications over both wired and wireless connections." You don't need a scorecard to understand that a phrase like expand the rules is liberal-speak for more government regulation. As to "providers" blocking "services and applications," that too should strike a familiar chord to anyone following the health-care reform debate. Its alternative names include free enterprise and healthy competition, both anathema to big government in general and the current administration in particular.

Save the Internet, by the way, is sponsored by Free Press, a name that will be familiar to Glenn Beck viewers and listeners. The group's founder, Robert W. McChesney, is a self-avowed Marxist who favors a complete overhaul of communications as we know it — a "communications revolution," to use his phrase of choice — as one means to combatting social inequality. By a remarkable coincidence, Genachowski selected as his press secretary a woman named Jen Howard, whose previous credentials include a stint as a Free Press spokeswoman.

But the coincidences don't stop there. Free Press also has ties to Obama's Diversity Czar Mark Lloyd, himself no stranger to Marxism and radical ideas. Lloyd has expressed admiration for Hugo Chavez and Venezuela's "incredible democratic revolution" and has demanded that white people" step down from important positions so power can be handed off to "people of color" and "gays."

And what are Lloyd's views about free speech? For one thing, he believes the Fairness Doctrine never went far enough in fostering "coverage of important issues in a way that spoke to the diversity of interests in local communities across our country."

So, Obama has positioned people who are admittedly in favor of a philosophy that silences dissent.  Is there any doubt that they're going to attack free speech on the Internet and air waves?

But it gets even worse.  We've also talked about hate crimes legislation in the past which would set up a sort of thought police scenario (here, here, here).  That presents an incredibly dangerous attack on free speech, and it has already been passed by Congress.  Here's the latest on that:

Byron York blows the whistle on Democratic legislation, about to be enacted by Congress, which purports to partially repeal the First Amendment:

The [hate] crime bill -- which would broaden the protected classes for hate crimes to include sexual orientation and "gender identity," which the bill defines as a victim's "actual or perceived gender-related characteristics" -- passed the House earlier this year as a stand-alone measure. But it's never had the votes to succeed by itself in the Senate. So over the summer Democrats, with the power of their 60-vote majority, attached it to the defense [appropriations] bill.

Republicans argued that the two measures had nothing to do with each other. Beyond that, GOP lawmakers feared the new bill could infringe on First Amendment rights in the name of preventing broadly defined hate crimes. The bill's critics, including many civil libertarians, argued that the hate crimes provision could chill freedom of speech by empowering federal authorities to accuse people of inciting hate crimes, even if the speech in question was not specifically related to a crime.

Republican Sen. Sam Brownback offered an amendment saying the bill could not be "construed or applied in a manner that infringes on any rights under the First Amendment" and could not place any burden on the exercise of First Amendment rights "if such exercise of religion, speech, expression, or association was not intended to plan or prepare for an act of physical violence or incite an imminent act of physical violence against another."

The Senate passed Brownback's amendment. After that, several Republicans, their fears allayed, voted for the whole defense/hate crimes package, which passed the Senate last July. ...

Then it was time for the House and Senate bills to go to a conference committee, where the differences between them would be ironed out. That's where the real action began.

First, the committee -- controlled by majority Democrats, of course -- inserted the hate crimes measure into the House bill, where it had not been before. Then lawmakers made some crucial changes to Brownback's amendment. Where Brownback had insisted, and the full Senate had agreed, that the bill could not burden the exercise of First Amendment rights, the conference changed the wording to read that the bill could not burden the exercise of First Amendment rights "unless the government demonstrates ... a compelling governmental interest" to do otherwise.

That means your First Amendment rights are protected -- unless they're not.

Needless to say, the First Amendment does not contain a "compelling governmental interest" exception. Legally, of course, no statute can trump the Constitution. But that doesn't mean the Democrats can't try, and it doesn't mean that Barack Obama's intensely politicized Justice Department won't try to bring criminal prosecutions against the administration's political opponents. Indeed, that appears to be the destination the Democrats have in mind when they continually try to demonize opposition to left-wing policies as "hate speech."

When Barack Obama promised to 're-make' America, he wasn't kidding.  He's trying to remove the freedoms, the prosperity, the individualism, and the fundamental Judeo-Christian free market principles that have built the United States of America into the global leader it is today.  In just nine short months, he's destroyed a massive chunk of this nation's prosperity, has laid down the foundations of unprecedented redistribution of wealth through his spending programs, taken over several private industries and hundreds of private companies, and warped our foreign policy to favor our enemies rather than our allies.  He's also attempting to gain control over your physical well-being (health care) and your ability to move freely about the country (cap-n-tax), though the country seems to be fighting back on those, for whatever it's worth.

If he can successfully achieve the criminalization of dissenting thought and opinions...well, what's left?  Without the ability to even speak out against what the federal government is doing, there's no way anything will actually get stopped.  The 're-making' project will be essentially complete.

Wake up, America, before it's too late.

There's my two cents.