When The Union Leader, a New Hampshire newspaper, reported in 2006 on psychology Professor William Woodward’s opinions about U.S. leaders and 9/11, U.S. Senator Judd Gregg is quoted as saying that “there are limitations to academic freedom and freedom of speech” and that “it is inappropriate for someone at a public university which is supported with taxpayer dollars to take positions that are generally an affront to the sensibility of most all Americans.”
Senator Gregg, President Obama’s choice for Commerce Secretary, was among those New Hampshire Republican politicans who wanted the University of New Hampshire to fire Professor Woodward. Apparently they don’t agree with the Supreme Court (or several appellate courts) repeatedly upholding academic freedom as a First Amendment right.
Now, while most of us eventually come to learn that discretion is the better part of valor and eventually learn to state our opinions in such a way that others don’t feel like we’ve just run them over with a short bus, the fact remains that those who don’t share our opinion(s) are still allowed to speak their mind. Personally, I feel that this is one of the major blessings bestowed upon this nation by our Founding Fathers, who wisely realized that open discourse, even if it rankles, is the only means by which the safety of the collective may be assured.
As a lawyer and an elected official for 30 years, Senator Gregg should be intimately familiar with this and though that might well be the case, that he would choose to silence those who voice an opinion with which he doesn’t agree ought to strike as much fear into your heart as does having an Attorney General who doesn’t believe citizens have the right to own guns.
I’m not the only one questioning President Obama’s…ummmmm…judgement in light of his selecting what is fast becoming a litany of tax cheats and liars for some of the most key positions in his cabinet. Though admittedly it’s not a bad way to start filling the government coffers, what should now be becoming at least a little obvious is an insidious pattern in the mindset of those with whom he is surrounding himself.
The First Amendment is bad.
The Second Amendment is bad.
Translation: They don’t want you to talk (think) and they certainly don’t want you to carry a gun.
Of course this is wrapped up in pretty words delivered with great skill so the unsuspecting won’t see it coming. That’s the real purpose of “community organizing” when following the methods taught by the late Saul D. Alinsky. Does any of this sound familiar?
“There’s another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevski said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families – more than seventy million people – whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year [in 1971]. They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don’t encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let’s not let it happen by default.” (Emphasis mine.)
Saul Alinsky wrote these words in the prologue of his final book, “Rules for Radicals”. And it was this that President Obama learned and it was this that President Obama taught others while working for Gerald Kellman’s Developing Communities Project in Chicago’s far South Side.
And it was this upon which President Obama based his election campaign.
While there are certainly things that need changing right here and now, to do so by voluntarily dumbing down, by surrending our sovereignity and our weapons isn’t the way to go about it. There are far better ways to use that frustration and turn the future into something more viable than blindly follow those who wish our Republic become a socialist regime, to go – and pardon the mixed metaphors – as lambs to a slaughterhouse where those who now glibly blather on and on about unfairness do so only in order to get their own greedy butts to the top of the pigsty.
It’s surely an ill wind that blows across Capital Hill these days and I truly fear we’ve not yet seen the worst of what is possible. My crystal ball tells me the stimulus bill is little more than smoke and mirrors to hide from us an upcoming power ploy whose sole purpose is to drive those who choose to remain oblivious into deeper blind admiration, and hence subservience. The better to steal our freedoms with, my dear.
We would all do well to ponder these eerily prescient words penned by Joan Baez back in 1975:
“Idols are best when they’re made of stone,
A savior’s a nuisance to live with at home.
Stars often fall,
Heroes go unsung,
And martyrs most certainly die too young.”