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Subject: Re: And So It Begins...
Date: 08 Apr 2003 02:55:28 GMT
From: jmsatb5@aol.com (Jms at B5)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated

>Fine.  Where did a Bush adminstration offical, likely a soldier, FBI agent,
>or other offical, intimidate ANYONE from speaking out?

First, your sentence and logic is fault from the git-go.  You say when they
intimidated anyone FROM speaking up...well, if they didn't speak, we wouldn't
know, now would we?  On that score, you can say none, I can say hundreds, but
there's no way to know if no one said anything, yes?

So your question falls apart on the basis of logic.

The matter at hand is intimidation *after* people speak up, which results in a
chilling effect that causes other people to hesitate.

As in the case of the teacher in Missoula, Montana (reported by Reuters among
others) who was suspended from teaching for making critical comments about the
Bush administration, the canning of Peter Arnett (who admittedly did a dumb
thing in WHO he talked to, but WHAT he said has been said by others elsewhere)
because you can be pretty sure somebody from the administration called on THAT
little fracas, an atmosphere that leads a sheriff not to prosecute four guys
who beat a Brit outside a bar after he criticized Bush, the disc jockey at KOOJ
who recommended violence in response to anti-war protestors....

No, it's not Bush his own self, he's not out there saying "shut up" (well, not
in so many words), it's the atmosphere he and this administration have gone out
of their way to create that leads to this stuff.  So your sentence is also
faulty because of the wall put around Bush, the fact that soldiers are not used
on American soil to that end (at least not yet, though they've said they want
to repeal the Posse Comitatas act that precludes such things...).

You seem to feel this is a zero-sum game, that it's either complete
totalitarianism or total freedom...but the loss of one's freedoms rarely comes
all at once, it's nibbled away slowly, by inches and degrees, with the
assistance of those who refuse to deal with what's coming and thus make it that
much easier for the darkness to fall.

There was a  joke about the former Soviet Union that's becoming more relevant
now...it said, "Both America and the Soviet Union have freedom of speech. 
Difference is, America has freedom AFTER speech."  

It's the freedom *after* speech that is also at issue.

 jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
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