[Leica] BD's Point and Free Speech

[Marc James Small <msmall@infionline.net>]

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!


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