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Not long ago, according to news reports,
a Jewish group announced that it was teaming up with various internet
providers to censor and stop the publication of what the group doesn't
want people to see or read. We've seen the same thing from Christian
groups also, but the major difference is that the Christian groups mostly
want to censor free speech rights relating to sexual matters, while
the Jewish group is after political and philosophical speech.
The Jewish group often labels these things that they don't want people
to see or read: "bigotry, hate, racist, anti-Semitic." Now, if the call
to censor free speech was aimed exclusively at on-line threats, this
would be one thing, but chillingly, the call is to censor virtually
any free speech that the Jewish group doesn't like, and this is accomplished
through the simple device of labeling any speech it doesn't like with
one of the aforementioned boogey man
words.
Those who set themselves up as Lords of Speech and try to restrict free
speech, need to be reminded that petty tyrants throughout history have
always used some fine sounding phrases and words to deny civil rights
to others, and to censor speech that the petty tyrants didn't like.
Consider the history of the Talmud, a book revered by Jews, as just
one example of what happens when the small-minded among us have their
way. Over the centuries, the Talmud was censored, re-written, burned,
and banned, because various petty tyrants believed it was "anti-Christian,"
or "evil" or sanctioned "baby sacrifices," or any of a host of other
"hateful,bigoted,racist" things.
Because the Talmud was so labeled, mobs in various nations were worked
up into a frenzy at different times, and the result was often violent
acts against Jews based, not on a fair reading of the Talmud---which,
remember, was banned and couldn't be read---but upon the characterizations
of what it said by those who put the hateful characterizations on it.
Perhaps, if the people were able to read the Talmud they would have
come to different conclusions as to its content and much of the violence
directed at Jews, would have been prevented. Perhaps there might not
even have been a Holocaust.
The place for ideas,whether we like them or not, is right out there
in front of us. The founders of this nation realized that, and gave
us, not the l0th or l2th or 14th Amendment to protect free speech. Instead,
they put our protections for free speech right in the very first amendment.
It is the First Amendment which is the wellspring of our democracy.
It is from the First Amendment that all freedoms flow. Without the right
to free speech and expression, no other freedoms are genuine.
One of the methods used by petty tyrants in their quest to keep speech
that they don't like stiffled, is to take a worst case example, say,
something like "Kill all_____(fill in the blank)," label it "hate speech"
and then lump all other speech they don't like under this worst case
example. Another method used by the petty tyrants is to take a particularly
gruesome crime, claim that the crime was due to race or other characteristic
such as sexual orientation, and then claim that those who committed
the crime were motivated by hate speech they read or heard.
All freedom-loving citizens should resist all calls at censorship, and
particularly those that call for censoring political and philosophical
speech, which is what seems to be happening with this call to censor
the internet.
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References:
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