I HAVE never been so frightened for our freedom of speech than I am right now.
No, I’m not talking about my own legal troubles, with a court being asked to ban my published columns on how some people claim a “racial” identity.
No, far more chilling – because it was so shamelessly explicit – was the promise made by Greens deputy leader Christine Milne on Monday to punish newspapers which publish articles sceptical of global warming and critical of the Gillard Government.
To hear what she said on the ABC’s Q&A program in supposedly free and democratic Australia, after all the lessons we thought we’d learnt from Stalinist Russia and fascist Germany, is staggering.
What is it with Gillard’s Hitler-esque pose? Is she waving hello to someone in some weird manner, or perhaps pointing to where the CO2 is?
I’ll say, it’s a good thing she’s a charismatic speaker or she, you know based on her actual policies, might be accused of being like some guy from the early 20th century. Whew! Close call, there, right?
I hope people have had enough with “charismatic speakers”. I really hope people start voting for those with good track records. Barack Obama’s track record was what? A “community organizer”. That’s all he is now. He stirs up one group of people against another. That’s all he knows. That’s all he is. 17 months left of ObamaWorld.
And I hope Ausies wise up and vote this woman out next time. The Ausies need to show us they are the cool people we think they are. I actually had ideas of living in Australia. Buy this woman has made me change my mind.
Charismatic speaker??
Nails down a chalk board combined with Fran Drescher, more like it…
It is staggering. We’ve learned nothing! And those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
This is only possible because people believe they can pass laws and tell others how they can live their lives. I don’t know when this became acceptable, but it never should have been.
Freedom isn’t some abstract idea that is brought out only when one feels his or her rights are infringed upon. Freedom is a palpable state of being which can only be obtained by procuring and maintaining it for others. And we don’t.
Gerry Spence stated it better than I ever could …..
“In this country we embrace the myth that we are still a democracy when we know that we are not a democracy, that we are not free, that the government does not serve us but subjugates us. Although we give lip service to the notion of freedom, we know the government is no longer the servant of the people but, at last has become the people’s master. We have stood by like timid sheep while the wolf killed, first the weak, then the strays, then those on the outer edges of the flock, until at last the entire flock belonged to the wolf. We did not care about the weak or about the strays. They were not a part of the flock. We did not care about those on the outer edges. They had chosen to be there. But as the wolf worked its way towards the center of the flock we discovered that we were now on the outer edges. Now we must look the wolf squarely in the eye. That we did not do so when the first of us was ripped and torn and eaten was the first wrong. It was our wrong.
That none of us felt responsible for having lost our freedom has been a part of an insidious progression. In the beginning the attention of the flock was directed not to the marauding wolf but to our own deviant members within the flock. We rejoiced as the wolf destroyed them for they were our enemies. We were told that the weak lay under the rocks while we faced the blizzards to rustle our food, and we did not care when the wolf took them. We argued that they deserved it. When one of our flock faced the wolf alone it was always eaten. Each of us was afraid of the wolf, but as a flock we were not afraid. Indeed the wolf cleansed the herd by destroying the weak and dismembering the aberrant element within. As time went by, strangely, the herd felt more secure under the rule of the wolf. It believed that by belonging to this wolf it would remain safe from all the other wolves. But we were eaten just the same.”
Read the rest here…..
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/weaver/spenceletter.html
“And those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
History has shown me that people don’t learn from history. History is not a thing to learn from so you can change what will be. It is a thing that shows you what will be.
“There is nothing new under the sun. What has been is what will be.”
AAM, yes, I believe you are correct to a point. But, while what has been will be, it doesn’t have to be now.
obama, the democrats….
…Fox News, talk radio, and the internet
Well I was going to use this on the other Julia thread, but I thought it was over the top.
Then I see those Sieg Heil! poses and now it looks perfectly appropriate!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxmrGE1o7cg
Qoutes belong in quotation marks, and should be properly attributed to the person who wrote them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGtKXMAgbVk
I wouldn’t overreact to this kind of stuff. It needs to be countered, but the situation is nothing like that of Germany in the early 30’s. (Check out Konrad Heiden’s book The Fuehrer – especially on the 1918-23 period, which was when the foundation was laid for what followed.)
The most interesting aspect of this is that these weenies apparently think they can push through policies like this with impunity. That’s true insularity.