Update on HR 1955 - "Thought Crime" Bill

The bill I wrote about a few days ago that passed in the House of Representatives has now been introduced in the Senate as S. 1959. Please see Ronni Bennett's site Time Goes By for more information.

The Baltimore Sun had an Op-Ed piece opposing the bill on November 19:

"Not since the "Patriot Act" of 2001 has any bill so threatened our constitutionally guaranteed rights.

The historian Henry Steele Commager, denouncing President John Adams' suppression of free speech in the 1790s, argued that the Bill of Rights was not written to protect government from dissenters but to provide a legal means for citizens to oppose a government they didn't trust. Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence not only proclaimed the right to dissent but declared it a people's duty, under certain conditions, to alter or abolish their government." (emphasis added).

The article goes on to explain all of the dangers of this bill:

"Ms. Harman, a California Democrat (the H.R. bill's sponsor) thinks it likely that the United States will face a native brand of terrorism in the immediate future and offers a plan to deal with ideologically based violence.

But her plan is a greater danger to us than the threats she fears. Her bill tramples constitutional rights by creating a commission with sweeping investigative power and a mandate to propose laws prohibiting whatever the commission labels 'homegrown terrorism.'

The proposed commission is a menace through its power to hold hearings, take testimony and administer oaths, an authority granted to even individual members of the commission - little Joe McCarthys - who will tour the country to hold their own private hearings. An aura of authority will automatically accompany this congressionally authorized mandate to expose native terrorism.

Ms. Harman's proposal includes an absurd attack on the Internet, criticizing it for providing Americans with "access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda," and legalizes an insidious infiltration of targeted organizations. The misnamed "Center of Excellence," which would function after the commission is disbanded in 18 months, gives the semblance of intellectual research to what is otherwise the suppression of dissent."

Please do follow the link and read the whole article. In addition, the Daily Kos has also picked up the story. However, other than the piece in the Baltimore Sun, no other MSM has publicized it that I can find.

Today's Haiku:

Save the Bill of Rights
Let's fight for freedom of speech
Write your senators.

Be Afraid: "Thought Crime Bill" Passes

I was wandering around in Blogdom and came across an interesting blog called Time Goes By, and found a post about HR 1955, which recently passed the House of Representatives while no one was watching.

This bill, called the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007," would establish a commission to:

"(1) Examine and report upon the facts and causes of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in the United States, including United States connections to non-United States persons and networks, violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in prison, individual or `lone wolf' violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence, and other faces of the phenomena of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence that the Commission considers important.

`(2) Build upon and bring together the work of other entities and avoid unnecessary duplication, by reviewing the findings, conclusions, and recommendations of--

`(A) the Center of Excellence established or designated under section 899D, and other academic work, as appropriate;

`(B) Federal, State, local, or tribal studies of, reviews of, and experiences with violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence; and

`(C) foreign government studies of, reviews of, and experiences with violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence."

(quote is from GovTrack website, linked above).

Go check out "Time Goes By" for more information. There are two (at least) really scary things about this bill:

1) First of all, it passed while no one was watching, during the middle of the California wildfires, and I have not been able to find a single link to a mainstream media news source about this bill. Why is no one writing about this? Where is the New York Times? The Washington Post?

2) The second thing is that the vagueness of the wording would mean the commission could define "homegrown terror" any way they want. If this bill passes, it's going to give the administration (or any administration to follow) the right to decide what is terrorism, what is free speech and what isn't.

Ronni of "Time Goes By" explains it well:

"This is the first terrorism-related legislation that specifically targets U.S. citizens and the vagueness of the wording is a dangerous threat to the First Amendment and to each of us in ways that have not been attempted before in the United States. The definitions in the bill hold the frightening keys to the undermining of our most basic liberty - to speak freely: (blue color indicates quote from "Time Goes By.")

'VIOLENT RADICALIZATION - The term ‘violent radicalization' means process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.' (red color indicates quote from the HR 1955 bill).

The difficulties here are that “extremist belief system” means anything the government wants it to mean as does the word “facilitating.”

'HOMEGROWN TERRORISM - The term 'homegrown terrorism' means the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.'

Again, this refers not just to violence, but to thought and speech for any undefined “political or social objectives”. In other words, it could mean universal healthcare, equal rights, abortion or anything at all about which you or I might want to make our views known that the government objects to. And, it establishes U.S. citizens as the targets of this legislation.

'IDEOLOGICALLY BASED VIOLENCE- The term ‘ideologically based violence' means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual's political, religious, or social beliefs.'

This repeats legislative intolerance of speech and thought.

If you find this as alarming as I do, write to your representatives and senators to protest this legislation. I was very disappointed to find out that here in New Jersey our representatives all voted for this bill. In fact, only 6 House representatives voted against it.

You can find more information at Ronni's site. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on this.

Speaking Up

In view of the discussion on the return of Imus to the radio and the many valid comparisons of his brand of hatefulness to the hatefulness of other radio personalities (Limbaugh, Hannity, et al), I thought I'd write today about why it is so important to continue to speak out against these people.

Free speech should never be curtailed. But we must speak out against those whose free speech is akin to shouting "fire" in a crowded theater. They are making intolerant, hateful speech part of our culture. As Tomcat said in his comment on the Imus post, "Bush, the GOP, the neocons and the theocons have made hate mainstream." And this is the real danger of this type of free speech. It makes hate acceptable in our culture.

While we were in the Adirondacks two weekends ago, Leonard Pitts, who writes a syndicated column for the Miami Herald, had a very interesting op-ed piece that was published in the local town newspaper near where we were staying.

His article concerned the remarks Ann Coulter had made about Jews on a recent program:

"Last week, Coulter said that in her perfect America, everyone would be a Christian. She said this to Donny Deutsch, who was hosting her on his CNBC program, The Big Idea. Deutsch, who is Jewish, expressed alarm. Whereupon Coulter told him that Jews simply needed to be ''perfected'' -- i.e., made to accept Jesus as savior. Which is, of course, one of the pillars (along with the slander of Christ's murder) supporting 2,000 years of pogroms, abuse and Holocaust."

Pitts said that many people would be telling him he shouldn't be wasting his time condemning Ann Coulter, and that it would be better to ignore her. But he refuted this idea, saying:

"I suspect the reason some people believe that kind of ignorance is best ignored is that they find it difficult to take it seriously, or to accept that Coulter -- or those who embrace her -- really believes what she says. After all, this is not 1933, not 1948, not 1966. It is two-thousand-by-God-oh-seven, post-Seinfeld, post-Gore-Lieberman, post-Schindler's List. We no longer live in the era when open anti-Semitism could find wide traction. This is a different time.

But time, Martin Luther King once observed, is neutral. Time alone changes nothing. It is people who make change in time. Or not. So you have to wonder if this determined sanguinity in the face of intolerance is not ultimately an act of monumental self-delusion."

Pitts went on to say that in fact, letting remarks like Coulter's pass without protesting them, without shouting out that they are wrong, will just give the impression that this type of hatefulness is acceptable in society.

"While some of us are cheerfully assuring one another that They Don't Really Mean It, the Southern Poverty Law Center reports that the number of hate groups in this country has risen by a whopping 40 percent in just the last seven years. If you had spent those years, as I have, jousting in print the agents of intolerance, you would not be surprised. It would be all but impossible to quantify, but I've noted a definite spike, not simply in the hatefulness of some people, but in the willingness to speak that hatefulness openly and without shame. What used to be anonymous now comes with a name and address.

Like Coulter, many of those people find intellectual cover under the cloak of conservatism. It is a development that thoughtful conservatives (the very need to use that qualifier makes the case) ought to view with alarm. For all that Colin Powell, J.C. Watts, ...and others have done to posit a friendly new ''big tent'' conservatism, Coulter and others have done even more to drag the movement back toward open intolerance.

That will be read as criticism of conservatism, but I intend a larger point. After all, liberalism has had its own unfortunate extremes -- the drug use of the '60s, the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army and the like. The difference is, say what you will about Michael Moore or Jesse Jackson, they are not pushing back toward that which has been discredited. Coulter is.

And if some of us are laughing that off, not everybody is.

So this is not about bashing conservatives. It is, rather, about challenging them, and all of us. Within living memory, we have seen Jews in boxcars and blacks in trees and silence from those who should have been shouting. They pretended it wasn't happening until it already had.

So, what about Ann Coulter? What about the push-back against diversity, pluralism and tolerance, that she represents? I keep hearing that we should just ignore it.

My point is, that's been tried before. It didn't work."

(emphasis added)

So we must keep protesting when we hear hateful commentary on the air waves. We have to keep pointing out that this type of speech is wrong and is not to be tolerated. We must urge people not to listen to these voices. Our country has free speech. But we are also free to protest what is said.

I'm going to skip the haiku today and instead quote this, by Pastor Martin Niemoller:

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Thoughts on Propaganda

Today's "Frazz" comic strip was very appropriate in the Age of Dubya, as it used humor to demonstrate how propaganda works.

"A falsehood repeated often enough becomes the truth."

A falsehood such as...

- Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11
- Saddam has Weapons of Mass Destruction
- The Surge is working

and more...

DH and I started talking about it. About the fact that those who tell falsehoods repeatedly, eventually believe them themselves. And how if the falsehoods are continually repeated in the absence of contradictory information, that they are believed even more quickly and thoroughly.

It got me thinking about how important it is to have that contradictory information available, how crucial it is that voices of dissent are not silenced. In order for a person to know the real truth, both sides of the story must be available for critical analysis.

This is why freedom of the press was included in the Bill of Rights. If the press is under the control of the government then a citizen cannot know the truth about anything.

The continuous blurring of news, commentary and entertainment in the mainstream media is doing the pubic a disservice by obscuring the truth. People hear commentary and think it's truth. They watch stories about celebrities on the "news" and don't get to hear the truth - the real news. And Fox News reports only the news they want you to know, the way they see it.

So we must be ever vigilant - if we hear a news report, we should Google it and check it on multiple sources before passing it on; and make sure those sources are legitimate.

I have a friend who is a right-wing Christian and we get together and talk about political/religious issues from time to time, such as abortion, the environment, evolution and gay marriage. I like to do this so I can understand how the other side thinks. And I am struck by the propaganda to which she is exposed. She sometimes brings "proof" of her opinions - often from World Net Daily or some obscure newspaper in the South, or pamphlets her church gives out to help their members talk to non-believers about evolution and other touchy subjects.

My friend refers to the New York Times as "the New York Slime," and won't give any credence to anything I quote from that source; yet she believes in the sources she reads.

But in all fairness, she does have a point. I know the Times has a liberal bias. So I also read the Wall Street Journal, and am struck by the difference in the viewpoints expressed in their editorial pages. At least I am getting both sides this way, from respected sources. Then I can make up my own mind...which still usually agrees with the New York Times!

The thing that is clear is how important it is for those who disagree with the government's policies to continue to speak out against them. If these voices are silenced, there will be no one contradicting the falsehoods that are repeated over and over...until everyone believes them.

(By the way, the quote may have been "A lie repeated often enough..." not "falsehood." And some sources seem to credit Lenin with the quote, and others Joseph Goebbels. Of course, he could have been quoting Lenin.

Sometimes the truth is hard to come by, even on Google. But at least no one said it was Stalin!)

Update: In view of a couple of comments made to this post, I just want to clarify, that there are definitely more sides to every story than only two. The important thing is to expose oneself to as many information sources as possible in order to try to learn the truth, since so many sources have their own biases. And I also want to emphasize that, first of all, my friend is very sincere in her Christian belief, her church's propaganda notwithstanding; and that not all Christians are victims of propaganda from their churches. I do believe there are certain churches that have a strong right-wing political bias and they pass this on to their congregations. And there are churches that have a liberal bias as well, I realize.

The upshot of it is, we can't live in a bubble of just listening to others who share our opinions. We have to expose ourselves to all kinds of opinions and information in order to ferret out the elusive nugget of the truth.

Thoughts on Imus

My first thought was "good riddance." I had never listened to Imus in the Morning, but had caught (accidentally) a few riffs of Howard Stern, and rejected them both outright for their mean spirited repartee.

I am no fan of any of these "shock jocks" who love to put down everyone who isn't like them and think it's funny. They remind me of bullies in the schoolyard, a phenomenon I am familiar with from my long-ago youth, and have no desire to perpetuate in the grown-up world.

Unfortunately, many people find these commentators funny, or they feel vindicated in their own not-very-hidden prejudices when they hear comments by the radio personalities that mirror their own feelings and thoughts.

I'm sure Imus is not sorry for what he said about the Rutgers basketball team members. I think he's sorry he got in trouble and lost his job. And I don't think CBS or MSNBC are sorry either. They are just sorry they lost the support of their advertisers. If Imus had "gotten away with" his comments, and had just increased his audience by the notoriety, CBS and MSNBC would have been happy to keep him on board and continue to rake in the big bucks. After all, how many other equally offensive things has he said over the last 30 years and not gotten fired?

We all know that not all derogatory speech is created equal. People on the other side of the racial divide often say things that are biased against whites or other groups and they get a pass. And it's always still open season on gays and fat people, as Harvey Fierstein pointed out in yesterday's Times op-ed piece. Imus is just the scapegoat because he picked the wrong people to pick on, and they called him on it.

Maybe the bigger question is, why do we as a country lionize these people who make their living putting down other people and speaking with offensive language? When did our society become so crass, so crude, that we no longer have any standard of decency?

I'm not saying that we should go back to the days when a married couple on TV had to have twin beds, a la Rob and Laurie Petrie, and when "All in the Family" shocked people by having a toilet flush - imagine - in the background! But I am fondly recollecting the time when George Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words" routine truthfully reported there were indeed seven words you absolutely could not say on television. Admittedly, in talking about them, Carlin did say them. But not on television. After watching some recent episodes of South Park and my first ever episode of the Sopranos (we just got HBO) I know that the limits he was talking about are long gone, at least on cable.

And that is just one breakdown in civility in this country. Speech against other groups has never been stronger on the "shock jocks" radio that many everyday people seem to flock to. On one hand, some deride efforts at civility as "political correctness" and yet there is more non-PC talk then ever.

People like Imus cross the line on the radio all the time. It isn't until someone says "No, this is wrong, and we aren't going to take it," that this kind of talk is stopped.

The hostility and mean-spirited commentary spills over from the shock jocks onto other talk radio. Ann Coulter says horrible things about the liberals and anyone else she doesn't agree with; and so do many other commentators such as Rush Limbaugh, and his callers. The hatred that oozes from these people just because they don't agree with others on political issues is unbelievable. And of course, the vituperation can happen on the other side too.

I am totally against censorship; I'm not a card-carrying member of the ACLU, but would be if I got up the energy to join. The government shouldn't be regulating what is said on radio. But the marketplace and the audience have the right to regulate it. And in this case, they did just that.

Maybe it's time people turned off the radio when they hear hateful comments about others. Maybe it's time we stopped writing about them in People magazine. Maybe it's time we just say no to this type of "entertainment."

There is plenty of talk radio that stays within the bounds of civility and still manages to be entertaining: The Curtis and Kuby show on WABC radio, for instance. Two opposing viewpoints, good discussions, intelligent (for the most part) call-ins. But they don't cross the line. Kuby of course is the liberal, and is plenty PC, but even Curtis is respectful of diversity even though his opinions lean in the opposite direction from Kuby.

You don't have to be a bully to have a good radio show. And maybe it's time we went back to an era where people were more careful not to use language that hurts. Perhaps these shock jocks have forgotten that the people they are speaking about are actually people like themselves, people with feelings and hopes and dreams. The Rutgers women's basketball team reminded Imus of this. And the airwaves are cleaner for the reminder.

Now if only the other talk-radio show hosts would think about this as well. Maybe we could finally have a civil conversation about issues in this country instead of a shouting match of bullies throwing words like stones at each other.