By Dan Foley
In a widely reported campaign event earlier this month, this is what Barack Obama said before a cheering crowd in
“I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face.”
As columnist Michael Barone has observed, Obama and his most radical Left-wing supporters are doing a lot more then getting into people’s faces.
Obama supporters did just that in
The message from Obama Nation is this: Anyone who thinks about building a case, doing research, speaking out or otherwise informing the public that anything, anywhere, might not reflect favorably on BHO had better watch out. We will make your life miserable. There will be trouble. We will try to harm you — professionally, financially, academically — any way we can.
When you’re dealing with Obama Nation, you’re dealing with serious, hard-driven lefties.
My question is this: What ever happened to the First Amendment? Where is the American Civil Liberties Union when actual civil liberties are threatened?
More threats
Can you believe that Obama supporters have threatened anyone who criticizes Obama with criminal prosecution? A few months ago, St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce warned citizens that they would bring criminal libel prosecutions against anyone who made statements against Mr. Obama that were “false.”
When did the government become the libel police?
What about these folks spending a little time protecting the sanctity of the election process in their states? How about protecting voters from organizations hell bent on destroying the foundation of our government? How about stepping forward and defending the concept of having an electoral system in which it is “easy to vote, but hard to cheat.” What about those kinds of liberties?
Maybe these left-wing zealots should spend less time acting like “defense” attorneys for Obama and more time going after ACORN. They would have more credibility with classic liberals, like me. Today’s “modern liberal” has nothing at all in common with the original liberals in American history. We even have to use distinguishing terms to separate them. The majority of our founders, whether we talk of 1776 or 1787, were liberals. But they believed in real free speech, not just free speech for themselves and lawsuits or heckling (electronic or otherwise) for their opponents.
Modern liberals are oblivious to our historical underpinnings. The Obama campaign called for a criminal investigation of the American Issues Project when it ran ads highlighting Mr. Obama’s ties to Mr. Ayers. In other words, how dare anyone ask the tough questions of Obama?
Trying to stop political speech
Trying to stop political speech has become routine for modern liberals. Congressional Democrats tried to implement the “fairness doctrine” on broadcasters, which, until it was repealed in the 1980s, required equal time for different points of view. The motive was clear: Shut down the one conservative-leaning communications medium, talk radio.
Modern liberals have failed to draw an audience with their left-wing rant radio shows, and cannot stand to have people in our country hear ideas that disagree with their point of view. I wonder if they would have NBC and Saturday Night Live follow these rules. How about MSNBC?
To be sure, not all Democratic Party members agree with this. There are a few like House Appropriations Chairman David Obey who voted against the “fairness doctrine.” On this point at the very least (I don’t know that much about Obey) he has taken a position consistent with classic liberalism — and consistent with his apparent longstanding support of free speech. But I guarantee you, should there be an Obama presidency with overwhelming Democratic majorities in Congress, we will see the “fairness doctrine” emerge on the front burner.
In such an eventuality, I believe they will go for it. They will overreach. The prospect of a fascist-like grip on the political communications will be too much for them to resist. But it will be a mistake reminiscent of FDR’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court. The public will rebel.
The Media’s role
Corporate left-wingers have done their share to keep any anti-left speech from being heard as well. Saturday Night Live had a funny skit dealing with the financial crisis that really made Democrats like House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank and Democratic donors Herbert and Marion Sandler look very bad, though factually and appropriately so. (The Sandlers sold toxic-waste-filled Golden West to Wachovia Bank for $24 billion.) After the Sandlers, and no doubt, the George Soros crowd as well, protested, the video of the broadcast suddenly disappeared from NBC’s Web site. Gone.
No further mention of Barney Frank — who, by the way, was overseeing Fannie Mae and refusing to apply any regulations while his then-significant other was a ranking official at Fannie Mae. Can you imagine if he had been Mark Foley? We’d never hear the end of it. Apparently NBC and its owner, General Electric, want to make sure people cannot see or hear anything that attacks modern liberals or Democrats — at least until after the election.
Union power
Then there’s the good old Democrats’ “card check” legislation that prevents secret-ballot elections to determine whether employees have to have a union. The unions clearly are afraid to allow people to vote in private because then they cannot send a few goons over to employees’ homes and get them to sign cards while the goons are watching them. That kind of tactic tends to trigger “union victories.”
Imagine that. With actual secret ballots, however, the unions have had considerably less “success.” “Hmmm, maybe freedom’s okay,” you might think they may be saying. But more likely it is, “Naaaah, send the goons over, let’s win this one for the bosses.”
Liberals, actual liberals, used to talk about a time when they prided themselves as the staunchest defenders of free speech. Union organizers back in the 1930s and 1940s made the case that they should have access to employees so that they could speak freely to them. And union leaders like George Meany and Walter Reuther were ardent defenders of the First Amendment.
College professors
Today’s modern liberals seem to be taking their marching orders from others. These orders are coming from the college and university campuses where professors (like Ward Churchill and other noted “scholars”), armed with talking points, have for years been attacking basic fundamental ideas associated with the American experiment. And they have been forcing sensitivity training on students who dare to utter thoughts that modern liberals find offensive. The college campuses that once prided themselves as zones of free expression are now the least free part of our society.
Obama and his supporters have found the campuses congenial. Barack himself has chosen to live almost all of his adult life in university communities, when not working for ACORN. But the modern liberal thugs, who often pose as college professors, “civil liberties” lawyers, union leaders and political activists, seem to find it OK to suppress speech they don’t like. And they seem utterly oblivious to claims that this kind of activism violates the letter and spirit of the First Amendment.
Sounds to me like they have no memory, even from a history book, of the fights waged by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., among others, who thought free speech was a God-given right. To borrow a phrase from Barone, during this election process we have seen the coming of the Obama thugocracy, the willful desire to suppress free speech. We may see it’s flourishing in the four years ahead.
Foley, a Republican, is the outgoing minority whip in the New Mexico House of Representatives.