Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/10/12
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 04:09 PM 11/12/03 -0500, B. D. Colen wrote: >I have no idea what the specific conditions are in those other >countries. But even given my total ignorance, I'll put the best of the >U.S. media - and the freedom of the press in this country, up against >that in, oh, say Latvia, any day of the week. Well, BD, I find that the Bush 43 Administration is a bit more open than was the Clinton Administration -- it took Hillary, what, four years to find her law firm billing records and no one in the Press protested? But, save for that minor cavil, I agree with all that you say. I believe it was Voltaire who sated that "I might not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it", and so I feel. I believe in absolute freedom of the Press: I like having an insolent prig such as Rush Limbaugh and a reasonable and calm fellow such as Neal Boortz and a Christer such as Hannaday (all US talk-radio jocks, incidentally) available on a local station through the day. I appreciate the fact that my local paper could teach lessons to PRAVDA and the NEW CHINA TIMES on how to spin things for the drooling morons of the Left -- but I WANT them to keep it up, as they only make themselves increasingly marginalized as time goes by. (They endorsed 27 candidates in recent elections, and three won, including one whom I had opposed, for a success rate of 11%. This is as low as they've gotten so far but, then, they've been falling since 1943, when they did hit 47%.) And I appreciate that, for most of the day, I tune in to National Public Radio, with its far left-wing news slant coupled with lots of really grand classical music and a fair amount of jazz, some of it even being decent. Free speech DOES mean what it says, and we have it here. Arnold Schwarzenegger can use Jay Leno and Jay Leno can use The Gubernator, each for their own ends. Leno made an ass of John Kerry last evening with some dog-puppet (well, I would see it as John Kerry making an ass of himself for being on the show in the first place, but, then, I do have my biases against Leno.) BD can write a letter to the editor of the Roanoke TIMES decrying the presence in this community of one Marc James Small, whom he probably would accuse of being a "crypto-Fascist" -- I have a retort to that, though William F Buckley used it first. Heck, I can write a letter to the President of whatever school it is that gives BD a forum and tell him what a jerk BD is, with attachments. None of this matters: I have my friends and BD has his and we both have our opinions and thank God the US is big enough to include the both of us. The US is an INCLUSIVE polity. We have room for those who believe in monarchy, such as Norton I, and those who believe that we should all become members of the Communist Party, and those who are skinhead Fascists, and bikers and drag queens and cocktail waitresses and those who build bridges. This is a humongeous country with a humongeous appetite to absorb differing views. Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg and that last of the strolling troubadors, Vachel Lindsay, could describe its scope. I cannot. But it is broad and deep and it is a call for liberty of expression and belief, and thank God for it. Should Free Speech ever depart from these shores, BD and I will be among the first who are swept into the camps, as we are too outspoken to hold our tongues, though our words are worlds apart. Thanks, BD, for defining this issue so clearly. Marc msmall@infionline.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bąs fir gun ghrąs fir! - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html