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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: Newt Gingrich's First Amendment Newt Gingrich is one of the most intelligent public figures in this land. Over the years, hearing this former history professor talk and write on the health-care system, education and other issues, I've learned a lot. Even when I've often disagreed with him, he's made me think. On first hearing he might run for president in 2008, I thought I might have a candidate who has a mind of his own that works. But then came his Nov. 27 Manchester, N.H., speech at the annual Loeb First Amendment dinner. Newt Gingrich proposed “a serious national dialogue about the First Amendment - what it protects, and what it should not protect.” He's right, and I also agree thoroughly with his attack in New Hampshire on the McCain-Feingold so-called “campaign reform” law, which does indeed seriously weaken part of the core of the First Amendment - political speech. I also agree with him about the terrorists who want to kill us, and who operate on “a level of ferocity and a level of savagery beyond anything we've tried to handle.” Where I part with Gingrich is at his proposed radical revisions of the First Amendment to deal with the terrorists. This long-term war - he said that night - “will inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country (and) learn how to close down every Web site that is dangerous ... Before we lose a city or, if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will ... use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use ... free speech ... and stop from recruiting young people ... to destroy their lives while destroying us.” In New Hampshire, Gingrich kept citing the “we” who must and will shut down “dangerous” free speech. But on NBC's “Meet the Press” (Dec. 16), he was more specific: three federal judges would decide when, and on whom, to close down the First Amendment. What would be the criteria of “dangerousness”? Would there be appeals against these rulings? He didn't say. During his Nov. 27 remarks, as reported in the New Hampshire Union Leader, I would have applauded when Gingrich - speaking of the need for students to be stronger in science and math - said they also need to know more about American history. Yes, indeed. How many know about the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798; Woodrow Wilson's large-scale suspension of free speech during World War I; the mass internment, based on collective suspicion, of Japanese-Americans during World War II? Students immersed in our history, and learning the recoveries of the First Amendment, might ask Gingrich to slow down his understandably impassioned fear of our enemies' unbounded ruthlessness - fueled by insatiable hate of who we are. They might want him to be more specific on how we are going to change our free-speech heritage. What safeguards will there be if the omnipresent monitors of what we say and write - those computers feeding the three federal judges - make mistakes about our loyalty to our nation? That a person of Gingrich's exceptional intelligence and knowledge can speak so imprecisely of cutting into the First Amendment, from which all of our admittedly endangered liberties flow, warrants concern - particularly since many Americans are not familiar with the tumultuous history of the First Amendment and, as he points out, many students are being left behind in understanding the roots of the freedoms our enemies would destroy. The fear of terrorism that Gingrich cites is real, but increasingly, so is the fear of some Americans that the government is targeting them as being among the terrorists. A Dec. 13 front-page story in USA Today is headlined: “Fear ‘as bad as after 9/11': In Michigan and elsewhere, Muslims worry about hostile neighbors and surveillance.” Gingrich, meet Ron Amen, described in the story as “a retired police officer, a Vietnam-war veteran, a U.S.-born son of U.S.-born parents.” He is an Arab-American, a Muslim, and he gets “a cold chill whenever I step into an airport” - a target, he feels, for security screeners. Then there is Najah Bazzy, “a registered nurse and mother of four whose family has been in America for a century.” She wears a hijab, or headscarf. “A $1.50 worth of material has become a symbol of aggression,” she says. “With only a headscarf, I'm scaring people.” And, writes USA Today reporter Rick Hampson, “if she gets into a conversation with a stranger, she denounces terrorism before even trying to explain her religion.” But not only American-Muslims are in fear of being seen as dangerous. There are documents through the Freedom of Information Act showing that the FBI, Homeland Security and the Pentagon diligently are watching nonviolent protestors against various government policies - including Quakers and student groups - and storing their “dangerous” names in ever-expanding databases. On Sept. 12, 2001, President Bush assured us: “We will not allow this enemy to win the war by changing our way of life or restricting our freedoms.” If we lose our First Amendment to the enemy, with the Fourth Amendment already vanishing, who will we then be, Gingrich? Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights and author of many books, including “The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance” (Seven Stories Press, 2003).
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#1. To: Brian S (#0)
(Edited)
This is just another in the stream of lies told to us by this dictator. His administration are every bit as brutal as Saddam Hussein's only his brand of torture and murder is more sophisticated. He has followed in the foot steps of his murdering father, a man whose deeds makes Hitler look like a school boy. [Who was financed by Prescott Bush, the grandfather of the current scumbag]. I don't wish for impeachment, I pray for his and his father's public execution by hanging. He gives meaningless speeches written for him by polished propagandists, accuses others of exactly what he's doing, while he commits atrocities in our name. He has terrorized Iraq more in 3 years than Hussein did in 30. Between him and his father they have killed nearly a million Iraqis, and have stirred the muslim world to a frenzied state of revenge. The Bush family even provided the means for Saddam Hussein to kill. In a world that increasingly desribes itself as civilized, we allow men like the Bush's and their bosses to make a mockery of the term civilized and us. All of this bloodshed and killing seems remote today because it has been done at a distance. The laws of kharma, what goes around comes around, will require an equal portion of justice be served up right here. Maybe a dose of reality will remind and awaken Americans to the injustices of war that we have been dealing out for a century. When this violence comes home to roost it will be served up two-fold by our enemies; one of which is the United States Government, and the other made up of numerous victims of our imperical escapades, maybe then it will dawn on us just how insensitive we've become to the suffering of others "far" more innocent than ourselves.
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