Freedom FROM Speech
By Dwight Baker (04/18/03)
I think it's high time for our education system to require students to take Civics classes again. Too many people today seem ignorant of how our government works, what our forefathers did, and what is actually in our historical documents.
Take anti-Bush activist/actor Tim Robbins (please!). He's upset the 15th anniversary showing of Bull Durham at the Baseball Hall of Fame was cancelled on account of his anti-war and anti-Bush blather. Robbins told an audience of the National Press Club that "a message is being sent through the White House and its allies in talk radio...[that] if you oppose this administration, there can and will be ramifications," Robbins claimed. "Every day, the airwaves are filled with warnings, veiled and unveiled threats, spewed invective and hatred directed at any voice of dissent."
He went on. "In this time when a citizenry applauds the liberation of a country as it lives in fear of its own freedom...when people all over the country fear reprisal if they use their right to free speech, it is time to get angry. It is time to get fierce," he continued. "Any instance of intimidation to free speech should be battled against. Any acquiescence to intimidation at this point will only lead to more intimidation."
Exactly who is saying he can't exercise his right to free speech? What is it he just did? Apparently he thinks Freedom of Speech means freedom from criticism as well, at least for him and his Hollywood cronies.
I don't remember anyone pointing a gun at his head stopping him from speaking, and I don't remember reading about his immediate arrest following this speech.
Here's your Civics lesson, Tim. The first amendment in the Bill of Rights says this: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
What law did you break, Tim? None. In what way were you prohibited from speaking? You weren't.
And, by the way, it's not complete freedom. You can't lie in certain situations and get away with it. Look up the words perjury and slander in the dictionary.
What he, Susan Sarandon, Ed Harris, Sean Penn, and the other goofballs fail to grasp is that freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from responsibility. We're all free to say what we want, but if someone disagrees, they can respond by exercising that same freedom as well. But the Hollywood libs would have us believe that they're above all that, they're better than us, and the rest of us are just mindless sheep.
An example of their conceit can be found in Mr. Robbins‚ buddy Susan Sarandon. She told television host Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," "Well, I mean, if, you know, journalists started covering issues and they would take some of these experts on shows without movie stars, I'd be glad to stay home. ... Sometimes the American public is not getting all the information."
The obvious implication here is that the Hollywood elite somehow is privy to information us sheep don't have, and therefore, we NEED them to speak out. What we need is for them to stop using their power over the media to force their opinions on us while looking down their noses at us at the same time. What we need is for them to look at the facts surrounding this war and get it right and stop behaving as children just because their man isn't in the White House.
I don't go so far as to call them "un-American" or "traitors" as some extremists in the conservative movement have unfortunately done. Some of them have simply said they're against the war because they're against ANY war. Period. I don't have a problem with that. I don't know anyone who HOPES for war. But when some people openly make statements intended to hurt the country and our troops, such as Nicholas De Genova, the obnoxious professor of anthropology and "Latino/a studies" at Columbia University, who reportedly told students at an anti-war "teach-in" that he wishes America would suffer "a million Mogadishus", then I DO call them un-American. He also said "the only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military."
Right now I need some freedom FROM speech THEIRS. They may have the right to say whatever, but I have the right to turn the channel, avoid the movie theatre, and leave their videos sitting on the shelf at Blockbuster.
In a way, actors are a lot like politicians. When the public doesn‚t like what they say or do, we can vote them out. With these actors, we vote them out by boycotting their products. If they're not in demand, they go away eventually.
I'm exercising my vote, Tim.
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