Adventures in My Mind
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Sep 27, 2007
Not to Be Outdone ... House Makes 2nd Claim to Ignorance
As referenced in the Candy Ass post from 9/20, the Senate recently condemned the political advocacy group, MoveOn.org, for exercising its First Amendment rights. That's right they took time out of their busy schedule to play a rousing game of For Shame against the citizens of this country - 3 million citizens, who, including myself, are members of MoveOn.
And how exactly do you think that Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid let that little number into the schedule?
I imagine it something like this:
"Hmm, I wonder what we should put on the agenda today? Debate the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind or the PATRIOT Act? Nah! Debate and pass the 12 spending bills necessary to fund federal government operations for the next fiscal year? Nah! Pass some sort of legislation that gets us closer to ending our immoral occupation of Iraq? Nah! Oh, wait! I've got it! We'll pass a sense of the Senate resolution that says that MoveOn is mean, rotten, and icky for saying those things about General Patraeus. Yes. Now that'll show the public we know how to get things done down here in D.C.!"
Or something like that.
But wait! There's more ...
Not wanting to cede the soapbox, er ... uh, I mean the high moral ground to their big brothers and sisters in the Senate, the House passed its own scolding resolution against MoveOn yesterday - a full 16 days after the Patraeus ad ran in the NYT! Can you say "Me too, me too!"
It passed 341 - 79. That's right, 78% of the House voted in favor of condemning criticism of a man charged with prosecuting a war that 70% of Americans disagree with! Here's the vote tally. More than likely your House rep is in the Yea column.
Now there may be some of you gentle readers who agree with the criticism of the ad. You may think that it goes to far. That it unfairly questions the general's sense of duty to the military, to the nation, and to the administration under which he serves.
So what! Who cares? Big deal! And, oh yeah ... grow up!
This issue is not about whether a pinko, lefty liberal group is smearing the good name of a God-fearin' Amer'can. This issue is about government censorship of constitutionally guaranteed free speech.
While the resolutions are non-binding and carry no legal weight other than the opprobrium of Congress, these votes can be seen as nothing but censorship. They are literally our elected representatives saying "We don't like what you have to say." And even without the legal authority to do anything about that opinion, they cannot be ignored.
Think of it this way:
Did they vote to condemn Dick Cheney's lies about Iraqi WMDs? No. Did they vote to condemn the despicable comparison of former senator Max Cleeland - who, as a young serviceman, left both legs and an arm in a Vietnamese rice paddy - to Osama bin Laden? No. Did they vote to condemn the outright lies of the Swift Boat veterans against John Kerry? Hell no. But they found it in their hearts to express a special kind of outrage against the free speech of private citizens.
This is not a legitimate role for the United States Congress to be playing, especially now, especially with all of the true harm that they have stood by and watched, and sometimes enabled, this administration to create since 9/11.
They are not nannies and nursemaids to say "Tsk, tsk" when we speak out of turn. They are not arbiters of good taste to publicly chide us if we say too much. They are not a church tea clutch to revile us for our misdeeds. These are supposed to be men and women of substance and character whom we send to Washington to decide laws for us, not to reprimand us when a political ad comes close to the line of poor judgement or rings too uncomfortably true.
It's bad enough when the Decider-in-Chief uses his bully pulpit to call such ads "disgusting." It rises to another level of misuse of power, however, when the full weight and stature of Congress votes to quash our right to speak truth to power.
As Justice William Brandeis wrote 80 years ago the "freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth."
If our government votes to discourage such free expression then we are doomed to never know any kind of political truth, whether as Republicans or Democrats. Which, of course, may be just what they want.
2 Comments | Link to this post posted by Teddy 4:06 PM
