Does Obama believe in free speech?

[_richardMdBorn]

A week ago on Wednesday, the Obama campaign tried to disrupt the appearance of Stanley Kurtz on a friend's show on WGN in Chicago. They failed though the pro Obama callers were generally pretty stupid.. Here's the audio of the show. I posted it before but think it deserves a separate thread.

http://caster.wgnradio.com/podcasts/x72 ... 080827.mp3

[_dartagnan]

I just saw his interview with Bill O'Reilly and it was hilarious watching him trying to squirm his way out of admitting he was wrong about the surge.

These are the facts:

McCain proposed the surge.
Obama voted against the surge.
Obama admitted the surge was an amazing success.

Yet, Obama refused to admit he was wrong to be against it. Now by that logic, if Iraq turns out to be unsuccessful, this doesn't mean politicians were "wrong" to vote for it.

[_aussieguy55]

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceN ... 6020080919

[_richardMdBorn]

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN1953066020080919

What is the relevance of this to my thread?

[_richardMdBorn]

Pertinent comments from a respected reporter

The Coming Obama Thugocracy
Attempts to shut down political speech have become routine for liberals.

By Michael Barone

‘I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors,” Barack Obama told a crowd in Elko, Nev. “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.” Actually, Obama supporters are doing a lot more than getting into people’s faces. They seem determined to shut people up.

That’s what Obama supporters, alerted by campaign emails, did when conservative Stanley Kurtz appeared on Milt Rosenberg’s WGN radio program in Chicago. Kurtz had been researching Obama's relationship with unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers in Chicago Annenberg Challenge papers in the Richard J. Daley Library in Chicago — papers that were closed off to him for some days, apparently at the behest of Obama supporters.
Obama fans jammed WGN’s phone lines and sent in hundreds of protest emails. The message was clear to anyone who would follow Rosenberg’s example. We will make trouble for you if you let anyone make the case against The One.

Other Obama supporters have threatened critics with criminal prosecution. In September, 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 Obama that were “false.” I had been under the impression that the Alien and Sedition Acts had gone out of existence in 1801-02. Not so, apparently, in metropolitan St. Louis. Similarly, the Obama campaign called for a criminal investigation of the American Issues Project when it ran ads highlighting Obama's ties to Ayers.

These attempts to shut down political speech have become routine for liberals. Congressional Democrats sought to reimpose the “fairness doctrine” on broadcasters, which until it was repealed in the 1980s required equal time for different points of view. The motive was plain: to shut down the one conservative-leaning communications medium, talk radio. Liberal talk-show hosts have mostly failed to draw audiences, and many liberals can’t abide having citizens hear contrary views.

To their credit, some liberal old-timers — like House Appropriations Chairman David Obey — voted against the “fairness doctrine,” in line with their longstanding support of free speech. But you can expect the “fairness doctrine” to get another vote if Barack Obama wins and Democrats increase their congressional majorities.

Corporate liberals have done their share in shutting down anti-liberal speech, too. Saturday Night Live ran a spoof of the financial crisis that skewered Democrats like House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank and liberal contributors Herbert and Marion Sandler, who sold toxic-waste-filled Golden West to Wachovia Bank for $24 billion. Kind of surprising, but not for long. The tape of the broadcast disappeared from NBC’s Website and was replaced with another that omitted the references to Frank and the Sandlers. Evidently NBC and its parent, General Electric, don't want people to hear speech that attacks liberals.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YjUwZWIwZTNhY2Y0YTFkYzFmZTIyZWUwZWNkYjk4ZGM=

[_Angus McAwesome]

National Review, huh? I call and raise you...

From here. The former Publisher of the Nat Review endorses Obama.

A Conservative for Obama
My party has slipped its moorings. It’s time for a true pragmatist to lead the country.
Leading Off By Wick Allison, Editor In Chief

THE MORE I LISTEN TO AND READ ABOUT “the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate,” the more I like him. Barack Obama strikes a chord with me like no political figure since Ronald Reagan. To explain why, I need to explain why I am a conservative and what it means to me.

In 1964, at the age of 16, I organized the Dallas County Youth for Goldwater. My senior thesis at the University of Texas was on the conservative intellectual revival in America. Twenty years later, I was invited by William F. Buckley Jr. to join the board of National Review. I later became its publisher.

Conservatism to me is less a political philosophy than a stance, a recognition of the fallibility of man and of man’s institutions. Conservatives respect the past not for its antiquity but because it represents, as G.K. Chesterton said, the democracy of the dead; it gives the benefit of the doubt to customs and laws tried and tested in the crucible of time. Conservatives are skeptical of abstract theories and utopian schemes, doubtful that government is wiser than its citizens, and always ready to test any political program against actual results.

Liberalism always seemed to me to be a system of “oughts.” We ought to do this or that because it’s the right thing to do, regardless of whether it works or not. It is a doctrine based on intentions, not results, on feeling good rather than doing good.

But today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don’t work. The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war—led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative” credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask.

Today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world “safe for democracy.” It is John McCain who says America’s job is to “defeat evil,” a theological expansion of the nation’s mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth.

This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse.

Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.

“Every great cause,” Eric Hoffer wrote, “begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.

Write to wicka@dmagazine.com.

Also, Rich, would it kill you to learn how to dress a url? FFS, all you have to do is highlight it and press the "URL" button when you're writing your post.

[_richardMdBorn]

Angus,

The question is whether or not Obama believes in free speech. What do you think about this issue. If you think he does, please present evidence for this.

[_Tarski]

Angus,

The question is whether or not Obama believes in free speech.

Yes he does.

What do you think about this issue. If you think he does, please present evidence for this.

Please present evidence that MCCain believes in free speech.
I suspect most of it will be the same.

By they way, right-wingers shout me down all the time and try to prevent me from speaking.

Stop being ridiculous.

[_bcspace]

The question is whether or not Obama believes in free speech.

Yes he does.

Would he be willing to impose the Fairness Doctrine on the mainstream media? I doubt it. I've never known a political lefty in favor of free speech.

[_Angus McAwesome]

Would he be willing to impose the Fairness Doctrine on the mainstream media? I doubt it. I've never known a political lefty in favor of free speech.

Ok, now I'm calling BS, BC. Reason being is that the Fairness Doctrine was first erroded under President Reagan's watch by then FCC Chair Mark Fowler. In 1987 Congress tried to preempt the FCC's decision and codify the Fairness Doctrine in law only to have it vetoed by Reagan. In 1991 Congress tried again only to have the whole thing shelved because President Bush threatened another veto. In fact, the last three Senators that ahve gone on record as supporting bring back the Fairness Doctrine are Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Richard Durbin (D-IL), and John Kerry (D-MA). The GOP has constantly and consitantly opposed reinstating the Fairness Doctrine at every point since the FCC first moved to abolish it in 1985.

So take that "lefties don't support free speech" horse crap and cram it directly up your ass.