Revisiting Censorship In the Wake Of "Nickel And Dimed.."

The dust up in Bedford over the Book 'Nickel and Dimed' continues to linger in the local news--which reminded me that back in 2009 we had a similar situation in the sleepy town of Litchfield where  comments by locals and students emerged in defense of the material on the grounds that its exclusion would constitute book banning and or violate protected free speech rights.

This was (and is), of course, total rubbish.

So I wrote at least two articles on the subject back in 2009, this one--from June 20, 2009 on the bankrupt educational-industrial culture that leads to this kind of moronic nonsense, and then a followup on censorship in general after a local ACLU lawyer felt the need to add her two cents.

What follows on the jump is my response, the article from July 5th, 2009--originally posted at NH Insider.  I believe it (and my comments in the previously mentioned post here) are equally relevant to what has transpired in Bedford over the past few weeks, and demonstrates a lack of understanding by the public (and progressives) of the differences between first amendment speech and censorship.  That this keeps coming up in the context of the public school curriculum is nothing short of ironic.

Barbra Keshen, writing for the Concord Monitor July 2^nd, (regarding recent events in Litchfield) makes it clear that the ACLU, not parents or towns, are in the best position to decide what is suitable for our kids to read in school. As an attorney for the ACLU we can hardly blame her for her preferences.

Teachers are next appointed to this end; all in the name of protecting student’s exposure to a wide range of ideas and a diversity of political views, all likely ACLU approved.

But parents, it seems, do not fit into her prescription for presenting what she calls the multiple realities of pluralistic society.  I don't know about you but that's not real big on my list of things I need  the school to teach my kids.  But assuming this is a necessary function of public education (as she does) parents we must assume lack the ability to fulfill this 'need'  where it must therefore be a job for a government run school to do.

The ACLU lawyer of course assumes too much and to defend her assumptions brandishes the politically polarizing buzz word censorship as if it were the little Dutch boy plugging up the free flowing expression of ideas through the dam of constitutional civil justice with his middle finger. But in this context censorship begins and ends with what the ACLU believes it is, which apparently trumps whatever parents believe is suitable for their children in the school they fund entirely with the fruits of their labors.

Most claims of censorship tend to focus on the presumption that any particular limitation violates our constitutional right to free speech. This is of course entirely the fault of the ACLU which has fought to expand the umbrella of what is meant by “free speech" to things that have nothing whatsoever to do with protecting the right to publicly object to the acts or interests of government without fear of oppression; the kind of thinking where a picture of a man with a bull whip in his ass is necessary to prevent the advance of tyranny, or where refusing public funding through the NEA to a woman who plays with her vagina on stage would bring the downfall of democracy.

This kind of thinking seeps into the collective unconscious where it promulgates retarded notions in the minds of students and parents alike, not just about what censorship and free speech are, but who is entitled to each and under what terms.

Contrast that with these quotes from Justice Story, a Supreme Court Justice from 1811 to 1836, and an eminent constitutional scholar with personal knowledge of the true nature and civic responsibility to free speech and the first amendment.

That this amendment was intended to secure to every citizen the absolute right to speak, write, or print, whatever he might please, without any responsibility, public or private, therfor(e), is a supposition too wild to be indulged by any reasonable man.

And

There is a good deal of loose reasoning on the subject of the press, as if its inviolability were constitutionally such that, like the King of England, it could do no wrong, and is as free from every inquiry, and afforded a perfect sanctuary for every abuse; that, in short, it implied a despotic sovereignty to do every sort of wrong without the slightest accountability to private or public justice … where it might be justly affirmed that the liberty of the press was incomparable with the permanent existence of any free government.

In this case the ACLU (or at least Ms. Keshen) would appoint the Teachers in Litchfield as King of what are both instructional and appropriate for their subjects, where independent acts of responsibility and accountability by parents or any act by their appointed representatives who exist solely to exercise their public interests could be censorship.

Such is the nature of what they have done to the protections of political speech, that people would embrace such rubbish as claims of censorship in these circumstances, when similar forms of “censorship” are in fact abundant, desirable, and necessary in the civic and public theater, and so well documented in existing law that even the ACLU has no desire to overturn them. 

Our government limits access to and the display of pornography, who may be displayed in a pornographic manner and to whom, who can see violent movies, provides warning of harsh language and sexual content in recordings for public sale, prohibits threatening or vulgar language in public, and many other forms of expression which meet many of the ACLU’s other ideas of “protected expression” as protected free speech based on terms tangential to the prohibition which Ms. Keshen now objects to in Litchfield.

So should we expect a lawsuit from the ACLU in defense of the schools right to include this material and present it to students against the objection of parents or is Ms. Keshen just blowing a perfunctory cloud of smoke for a fire they have no intention of starting?

I’d go with the latter. The bulwarks of civil order are not likely to fall on such flimsy grounds, which makes the presumption that this could ever be censorship the irrelevant musings of self contradictory trouble makers or ignorant automatons (like the Campbell High graduate who proclaimed this as censorship in the Union Leader just last week--July 2009)

Let’s be clear here. Parents and guardians are free to purchase this same material with their own money, and at their discretion. They are free to allow their children to do the same based on their own ideas about what they are ready for. And the towns elected officials have not prohibited the sale or distribution of this or any other similar material within the limits of their political boundaries. But even then, barring any political component, it would be perfectly within their rights to do so always subject to further evaluation through public hearing and public elections if the majority of the town objected to their actions.

That is how representative government works. It expresses the interests of the people who elect it.  And any abrogation of that right to any other entity depletes the public’s power to affect social or political change it deems necessary to sustain the scope and kind of the local civic order it desires. Free inquiry, as the ACLU defends it, is completely irrelevant in this context and until they bring suit to prove otherwise, they are simply trying to persuade you into thinking that their worldview is better than yours, and to make you feel guilty if you can’t explain why you disagree.



Cross Posted

The Church Of Cheeseburgers And Fries

There's some dispute regarding appearance standards in which a young woman has insisted that her pierced nose is part of her religious beliefs.  Long story short--she does not want to remove the piercing on religious grounds because she is a member of the "Church of Body Modification." 

The Church of Body Modification espouses an open minded approach to what it calls ancient body modification rites that are essential to spirituality.  Funny, that's what most ancient body modification cultures said to justify ritual human sacrifice.  You know, removing the heart, chopping off heads, that sort of thing.  Had to do it to appease the gods.  Millions 'modified.' 

And aren't clitorectomies an ancient religious form of body modification?  I wonder if they are tolerant of those as well?  Stoning women is another winner--not so much spiritual, but a religiously motivated modification none the less.

I realize these are circumstances where the person being modified might be the 'I' in T-E-A-M, and that the Church of body modification is really talking about creating a safe place to excuse self mutilation by validating it as a form of spirituality, but I can say the exact same thing about Cheesburgers and fries.  At the Church of Cheeseburgers and Fries we are very open minded, and not at all critical--unless the food is cold or one of the "brothers of the folded paper hat" screws up our order. 

There are literally thousands of sacred temples globally where we can "worship" with a manifold of diversity unlike that found in any other 'faith.' There are dozens if not hundreds of different denominations to choose from and in most cases the tithing is accessible to even the most austere budget.  And let's be honest, this will eventually modify my body--with almost no chance of infection, unlike cutting and piercing.

Throw in a sacramental Sam Adams Boston Lager and....mm-mm-mmmm.

So what if my combined cholesterol score surpasses 1000 and my blood moves like molasses in January. Too bad if I need a whole row of seats to fly coach.  Michelle Obama and her obesity initiative can take a powder--this is a spiritual exercise.  I have a religious right to participate in the ancient ritual of stuffing my face if for no other reason than it is spiritually fulfilling.  That is what those pains are right?  My hungry spirit?  Now where's that damn remote?

So you see adding a few (or a few hundred) new points of possible infection to the human body is just as deserving of first amendment religious protections as eating at the Church of Cheeseburgers and Fries.  So you narrow minded haters back off.  This is America. We have rights.

Cross Posted at Granite Grok

Hodes Monkeys With The First Amendment

Reading Paul Hodes blog at the daily KoS is the literary-equivalent of watching monkeys throw poo. What is perhaps more disgusting is that the KoS Kids roll in it like heather and serve it to each other as if it were pâté de foie gras , encouraging their own sheer ignorance as they dance nine times widdershins about the burning remnants of the US constitution.

This week’s poo fling comes after Chuck Schumer’s evil plot to water-board the first amendment failed to properly rise in the oven Schumer usually cooks his constitution in. He’d helped craft something called the DISCLOSE act, which disclosed to us just how brazen power hungry incumbents can be when their brazen power-hungriness gets the best of them. They write laws to silence the speech they don’t like while ignoring speech they do. So when the soufflé dropped after Paul Hodes already voted for it he did what any cry-baby liberal does. He grabbed his talking points and hid in the skirt of the moon-bat mother ship.

I’d offer you a link, but I’m not that cruel. But if your curiosity has gotten the best of you, or you are simplly smitten with seeing the literary equivalent of simian patty pitching, there’s a cross-post over at that pot- hole Boo Hoo Hampshire; still a liberal dive but a slightly more tolerable pond to stick your virtual toe in if you must.

As to what Hodes has done by supporting the Act, that is worth far more time and attention than his posturing on influence and money in politics and anyone who has ever looked at his funding knows that the poo isn’t just air born; a large portion of it remains under confinement. Because wail as he might, what Mr. Hodes has tried to do by supporting the DISCLOSE act is attempt to protect his incumbency by stifling speech using the power of the federal government and nothing he says can change that.

Enough exposition; let’s get to the charges.

Mr. Hodes voted for a bill that would allow the federal government to define paid political speech differently for different kinds of group’s organizations. Oddly enough groups that favor Mr. Hodes and his party have an easier time of it than those who do not. That's Mr. Ethics for you.

"The DISCLOSE Act should really be renamed the New　Sedition Act—it is clearly intended to intimidate and deter organizations, including nonprofits, from engaging in any　political criticism　of incumbents like its main sponsors,　Chuck Schumer　and　Chris Van Hollen," said　Hans A. von Spakovsky.

The eight former FEC commissioners describe how the bill would introduce asymmetrical rules for unions and companies for the first time since the early twentieth century. Unions, for example, would not be subject to the bill's ban on political spending for government contractors or companies with a small percentage of foreign ownership.

Mr. Hodes voted for a bill that would encumber the effort of engaging in political speech such that groups and small business owners, many of them LLC’s right here in New Hampshire, could neither afford, nor take the time to understand and meet the government’s requirements for exercising their first amendment rights.

This bill has been promoted as ‘mere disclosure,' but through the expanded definition of electioneering communications combined with the ban on electioneering communications by even the smallest of contractors, it actually prohibits a tremendous amount of political speech that was legal before Citizens United," said Bradley A. Smith. "Congress can't respond to a decision striking down speech prohibitions by outlawing still more speech, yet that is what this bill would do."

…

"The ‘DISCLOSE Act' contains a bevy of burdensome, unnecessary and constitutionally suspect provisions," said　Michael E. Toner. "If the First Amendment's clarion call for Congress to ‘make no law... abridging the freedom of speech' is to have any force, this legislation must be summarily rejected."

Mr. Hodes voted for a bill that will make it almost impossible for grass roots groups to exercise free speech without fear of violating the law—it is therefore a deliberate effort to silence opposition through intimidation and regulation of the current government and to Mr. Hodes himself in the midst of an election he and they happen to be losing.

The commissioners' analysis, though, explains how the bill adds a complicated scheme of arduous and vague rules-with no hope for clarification through the rulemaking process-designed to confuse and intimidate grassroots groups while midterm campaigns are underway.

"In America, good-faith errors by those attempting to comply with our complicated maze of campaign finance regulations should not result in jail time or eye-popping fines," said　Lee Ann Elliott. "These regulatory burdens fall hardest not on large-scale players in the political world but on grass-roots movements, low-budget campaigns, and unwitting volunteers. Congress would worsen this situation by passing ‘DISCLOSE' without giving the FEC time to implement regulations for it.".

Mr. Hodes greatest crime should be thinking that he has the right to regulate political speech at all. But he takes it further by signing on to a law that would rig the rules to favor speech destined to benefit him while complicating matters for his opposition. If he were a store clerk or even just a dopey liberal lawyer he would be dismissed as naieve or ignorant, but as a congressman with designs on the US Senate it violates common sense, our god given rights, equal protection under the law, his oath of office, and borders on treason.

Cross posted at Granite Grok

Bigger Anti-Free Speech Fish To Fry

Maggie Hassan’s (Hate) Free Speech amendment may be dead but it’s inspiration, the DISCLOSE act lives on.  Big brother is no less wicked nor is it any less partisan.  According to the Center for Competitive Politics (CCP), the DISCLOSE Act would…

(1) single out business groups for outright bans on political speech: government contractors would be prohibited from engaging in political speech as well as companies in the United States (even those with 80 percent of American shareholders) that attract  minimal foreign investment—no similar restrictions were included for labor unions with foreign connections, unions receiving government money or public employee unions negotiating for salaries and benefits; (2) create a far more onerous and vague disclosure regime than the Supreme Court cited in Citizens United, deterring grassroots groups from speaking out in midterm campaigns; and (3) explicitly sow chaos and confusion among those attempting to comply with campaign finance law by mandating that the law go into effect without clarification by the FEC of numerous vague and undefined provisions as well as slowing down the judicial review process.

So much like our own evil cousin, this attempt at disclosure is more the big bully majority bending the speech curve in their favor.   CCP elaborates here.

“Although corporations are forced to certify that foreign investors hold less than 20 percent of the company’s voting shares, unions are not required to certify that 20 percent of their members are not foreign. In rejecting such similar treatment, Democrats cited the rationale that unions lack the luxury to choose their members. The fact that corporations also do not choose their shareholders is meaningless when the true purpose of this act is to protect the Democratic majority as opposed to promote similar treatment across various types of organizations. Democrats offered weak excuses to justify their opposition to this and other measures, citing the lack of an explicit mention of labor unions in the Citizens United decision or a worry for small unions—just not small groups like the Mom and Pop store owners who wish to speak out about a candidate threatening to raise taxes that would cripple their business. Ultimately, Democrats included an outright ban on the political speech of countless companies while leaving similarly situated union allies untouched.”

 Hodes and Shea-Porter wish this upon you so read the whole thing, it’s very enlightening. 

So our job is not done yet.  It would be a shame to have put in all this effort to kill partisan speech profiling right here in the Granite State only to have the lefts Godverment impose it on us from atop the sacred mount.   So get busy.  None of them are to be trusted, but Democrats in particular are the perfect fertilizer for growing domestic constitutional threats. 

One final point.  CCP managed to translate the acronym DISCLOSE for us given its actual and obvious purpose.   “Democratic Incumbents Seeking to Contain Losses by Outlawing Speech in Elections.”   

Live Free or Die.

The Bitch Is Dead

Justice Scalia was never so revered by left wing radicals in New Hampshire as he was yesterday.  In Wednesday morning’s Union Leader amendment ghost writer and former New Hampshire Democrat party chairman Kathy Sullivan threw down 789 words in defense of political profiling, several of which quoted Justice Scalia.  This to validate her new three ring circus approach to controlling registering paid political speech participants in the Granite State.  Not long after the paper hit the front porch, Democrat State Senator Maggie Hassan the amendment “sponsor,” is reported to have invoked Scalia as well. 

What are the odds that the two radical leftists who colluded on the construction and deployment of a heavy-handed amendment designed to intimidate paid political speech would call upon the wisdom of the same Supreme Court Judge on the same subject, in the same way--if not exactly the same words--within hours of each other? 

I guess complex liberty-choking amendments to legislation are not the only thing they collaborate on. 

Scalia’s words, no doubt sounding empty coming from the mouth of Maggie Hassan did not change the original party line vote.  The State Senate passed the bill (watered down but still poisonous amendment in tow), on a party line vote 14-10 with the same 14 democrat Senators voting to stifle speech again.

But the New Hampshire House was not as impressed.  The House, no doubt moved by words coming from closer to home, killed the amendment and the bill 184 to 135 with some 80 representatives ‘not voting,’ an intolerable number on an issue of such magnitude. 

Democrat Jim Splaine, a reliable liberal vote under other circumstances, continued to press against the changes. 

“I find it shameful that the Senate has already approved this today, and I would be sad if the House went along,” Splaine urged. “We’re creating a bureaucracy that does very little, but create hoops and loops for groups. If all of the “T’s” are not crossed and all of the “I’s” are not dotted, they’ll be brought into court.” 

And Splaine has it right.  The legislation is not just about disclosure.  It would give lawyers like Sullivan, with a penchant for using the legal process to intimidate opponents, the ability to skip past the AG and file legal suit against anyone who even appears to have missed a hoop.  Sullivan wrote it that way, and the democrat bloated conference committee made sure that provision survived the reconciliation process. 

So the Hassan amendment had a very specific purpose.  It would complicate any corporate act of political speech with plenty of chutes and ladders—scaring off more than a few people in the process.   It would also open up the threat of legal action against anyone who dared to speak and might have missed a chute or a ladder.  And according to Sullivan, the regulations would expire at the end of 2012 unless renewed, so it was specifically designed to give the democrats a political speech advantage (media corporations and unions did not appear to be affected--you know, first amendment rights and all) until after the 2012 presidential elections.  Is that transparent enough for you?

And now that bitch of an amendment is dead, thanks to bloggers, and House Reps, and Activists Oh my!  But we best not forget who supported it and why.

And while Maggie Hassan and Kathy Sullivan might not think so, I believe Justice Scalia would be proud of us today.