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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: Round up 'hate speech' promoters? CBS News and U.S. News have posted a stunning, disturbing opinion piece by Bonnie Erbe. Here's who she is, for those of you who may not be familiar with her work: Bonnie Erbe is a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report and hosts PBS's weekly news analysis program, To the Contrary with Bonnie Erbe. She also writes a weekly syndicated newspaper column for Scripps Howard News Service. Top credentials. Her voice is loud and reaches far. Here's what it's saying: Round Up Hate-Promoters Now, Before Any More Holocaust Museum Attacks Erbe takes her lead from a statement made by Playwright Janet Langhart Cohen on CNN following the Holocaust Museum shooting: She said something must be done about ridding the Internet and the public dialogue of hate speech. I agree. And what is that "something"? Isn't it time we started rounding up promoters of hate before they kill? I don't know, Bonnie, is it? Who is going to determine who the haters are? And without a Department of PreCrime, who can determine when one of them will kill? Who is going to be doing the round up? Are we going to maybe house them at Gitmo now that we're clearing that place out? Any trials planned in your little fantasy? And what do you suggest "we" do if some decide to resist the "round ups"? Why is it your "Final Solution"...I mean, "Last Roundup" to oppose neo-Nazism sounds just like something the Nazis would do, Bonnie? I saw this coming when I wrote "Holocaust Museum shooting must not be exploited to erode liberty" the other day, citing a blogger on a popular left-wing site and expressing concern that it represented the tip of an iceberg. As we can see, it hasn't taken long for mainstream "authorized journalists" to take up the cause. I note the chilling Ms. Erbe is affiliated with the Thomas Jefferson Street blog. I can't help but wonder what she'd have to say about an extreme insurrectionist promulgating violent views like this: the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it's natural manure. If Ms. Erbe and those like her get their wish, we will find out how deep that tree's roots go, how wide its branches spread. So who am I siding with, the haters? From where I sit, that designation belongs to Ms. Erbe. And as far a neo-Nazis go, I can't help but notice many of her political sympathies appear both national and socialist in scope. My friend and colleague Mike Vanderboegh has sized things up well in his open letter to Erbe: You wish to sweep away those that you find "hateful." Have you ever considered that there are many who find your ideas "hateful?" Most of the Founders understood that you should never pass a law that you wouldn't be willing to see enforced upon you by your own worst enemy. (John Adams didn't, but then he and his party were swept from power by the reaction to the Alien and Sedition Acts.) If you really believe what you wrote, and worse, get what you ask for, the resulting armed resistance to such a tyrannical proposal would sweep away the safe, mythical cocoon within which you seem to live. And if you think that tyranny and civil war cannot come to this country, as divided ideologically and morally as we presently are, you are whistling past the graveyard of history. A government that would do what Bonnie Erbe demands is the very reason Thomas Jefferson wrote: That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it... But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. "Throw off." And how would they do that? Tomorrow, barring any current events that might push it to a back burner, I'll explore the limits of the First Amendment, what you'd have to do to abuse it to the point where others have a right to intervene. Contrary to common wisdom, you can yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater.
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#1. To: christine, all (#0)
It is my general experience that those who scream most loudly about "hate" are among the most intolerant elements in our society. It is they who are filled with "hate" and wish to exact their totalitarian mindset upon any and all. What they hate most is someone to be able to speak freely and express an opinion, or state a fact, which makes them uncomfortable. The actions of one individual are not, and should not be, license to deprive ALL of their God given right to speak their piece. It is also my observation that those who most ardently push "hate speech" restrictions are those who have something they do not want examined or dissected. Yes, there are those who are truly filled with hatred toward others, but to maintain a free society even they must be allowed to speak their mind. Just as it is the right of others to stand up to such hatred and to name it for what it is. A restriction upon anyone's speech is a restriction upon everyone's speech. Those who wish to imprison or inflict suffering upon others for speech and thought are simply and purely autocrats and are an enemy of liberty. Ms. Erbe should take her intolerant ass somewhere that she finds more amenable - perhaps China or Israel.
You are most right about what they don't want examined or dissected. What it is is the whole complex of paranoid politics that is founded in their own monstrous hate. A hate which they project onto all others.
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