Are we being stripped of our "Freedom of Speech" rights?

Question

Is the Bush administration the only ones who still have this right?

Answer 1

yes because of the "Patriot Act"

Patriot Act takes away american civil rights

Answer 2

absolutely more and more with each passing year. We are supposed to ahve freedom of speech but if you say the wrong thing then it is trouble for you. We are supposed to have freedom of expression but yet we are told what we can express. Where exactly is the FREEDOM

Answer 3

Interesting question. I'd say of the 2 political parties whom run our nation. The Democrats punish you for not agreeing with them. The Republicans waffle and will not stand up to anything.

Therefore, you are free to say anything you want. You'll get stomped by one and the other will run for cover.

The age of political correctness move on.......

Answer 4

You all have no idea what you are talking about do you? Didn't think so.

Answer 5

yes and yes

Answer 6

yep.

say good bye to the good ol days...

Answer 7

Has not happened on Answers.....YET

Answer 8

This is a rerun from nearly five years ago, something I wrote two weeks after 9/11. You can draw your own concusions as to whether it's gotten better or worse.

Radio Does The Goosestep (The George Bush 1984 Blues)
September 23, 2001

I attended a Peace Rally today at a small local college. As expected, we were occasionally taunted, spat at, even rushed and threatened with violence once or twice. We were called unAmerican, commie agitators, f@ggots, MFs, every insult I’ve ever heard along with some bizarre new ones. I fully expected that when I went in... to be candid, I’d have been slightly disappointed otherwise. It would have been unnatural. We were voicing our opinions peacefully, passively, eloquently, and we turned the other cheek placidly without exception.

As a nice counterpoint, we also had a larger turnout of supporters than I would have expected in our tiny rustbelt town. People brought us coffee, food, blankets, drinks, they offered us chairs, glared at the warmongers, and defended us when it turned ugly. Our supporters were not always who I would have expected— we had a small group of veterans...and not all ‘Nam vets, either, although they are traditionally the most dependable majority. A few grizzled WWII and Korean conflict vets stood among a small handful of Gulf War vets. If they opposed our “peacemongering,” they were surely very kind and respectful about it and you’d have never known it by talking to them. They stuck up for us when the hawkish rowdies erupted from time to time. There was a microcosm of everybody there: farmers, off-duty cops, waitresses, college professors, shop owners, suits, factory workers, housewives, firemen, truck drivers, nurses, doctors, mechanics, a little bit of everybody... I doubt if they were all infiltrators. They seemed very sincere with their support. There were a lot more of us than I would have thought.

If our little demographic representation is any indication, the reports that claim Bush has a ninety-percent war approval rating are pure BS— nothing but sleazy, unfounded tabloid-grade propaganda. This swill is probably manufactured by the very same high-priced, high-powered PR team that fixed the election, a real Richard Mellon Scaife Far-Right snowjob if I’ve ever seen one. It looked like fifty percent at best were hawks from what I saw today and you can always expect plenty of opposition at a peace rally. I thought, maybe there is still hope for peace. But, as always, the warmongers were by far the loudest. That’s their nature, to act like barbarians, like they’re the only ones that matter, having no patience with anyone who isn't a sheep or a lemming...

Ironically, all the aggressive “patriots” were trying their best to deny us one of the most important and basic freedoms guaranteed in this allegedly free country. Some of us have learned nothing. I felt like I had taken a time machine back to the sixties.

Usually, once I muster up the courage to speak, I can be fairly expressive, but never as much as when I can write in privacy and take my time about it. Today, I did pretty good for about five minutes and then I just clammed up. It wasn’t the crowd or fear or stage fright. A more or less hostile crowd usually inspires me. I wasn’t particularly scared or nervous. I just went blank. I guess I’m kind of rusty. I haven’t done this in awhile. At least nobody else seemed to notice my abrupt departure as much as I did, but I was still extremely disappointed in myself. I had so much to say and I said so little. It seems like I always choke when something is this important to me. I did much better working the crowd. Thank God I wasn’t a total waste, although I sure felt like one at the time. The others did much better. I was very proud of all of them.

I usually find some folks to party with after a gathering like this, and I typically manage to drag a Peacenik chick home. Tonight, I was just glad to go home alone.

When I finally dragged myself into the house, I just couldn’t deal with the feverish warmongering on television. It’s been whipping the country into a mindless frenzy for almost two weeks, the same meaningless bullsh!t over and over and over until I can’t stand it anymore. I’m not destructive by nature, but tonight I wanted to put a boot through the TV screen. Instead, I called Tina (not her real name), an old friend who works at a local FM station. I knew I’d never be allowed to do an online voice-over in this repressive quagmire, so I thought a musical request would be a more appropriate method to get my point across. The Opposition requires at least a token gesture of “equal” time and symbolic representation and I was calling the coolest station in our area.

“Hi, Tina, went to the big rally today. How are you doing?”

“Hi, Bake. I’m okay, but the station is driving me ape right now. I drove by at noon to do a remote broadcast, but our station manager decided to pull the plug on it at the last minute. I saw you there. Did you see me? Was it as bad as it looked?”

“I wish I would have seen you. You can’t ever have too many friends these days. I made an @ss of myself when it was my turn. Other than that, it was alright. It was kind of ugly at first, lots of warmongers came to try to shut us up. Skinheads, real Nazis, nazi wannabes, nazi groupies, rednecks, klukkers... dregs of society since seven o’clock this morning. Hell, they were there before we were. I couldn’t believe how many great people showed up later, though. It evened out and turned into a pretty good day. We might still have a chance. I wasn’t anticipating as much outside support as what we got. I figured there would be about two hundred of us and a couple thousand hawks. I was pretty much expecting to feel like Marilyn Manson on the Pat Robertson Prayer Hour. It started out even worse than that. The first hour or so I had visions of Custer at Little Big Horn. It was pretty peaceful, really, after all that. Hey, could you do something for me?”

Tina let out a low whistle, paused, and moaned, “I REAAALLLY hope you’re not going to ask me for a peace song, sweetie.”

“What’s wrong with that? I was going to ask you to do a whole set.”

She stammered, fidgeted around, and finally whispered, “Doug, you didn’t hear this from me, but they've ALL BEEN BANNED.”

“All Ben Band? Is that anything like 4 Non Blondes or the Donnas? Catchy name, but I’ve never heard of ‘em until just now. What are you talking about?”

“No, B-A-N-N-E-D as in blacklisted, not band like musical ‘band.’ They’ve all been banned! I’m not allowed to play any songs on The LIST and they’re all there, mostly the peace songs!”

“WHAT? Let me get this straight. There’s a list, like a McCarthy Era-type list. Right now you're playing ‘Nuke the Corksuckers’ by A-Bomb-I-Nation. It’s not on the list. You're telling me you can play that gestapo marching sh!t, but you can't play a single PEACE SONG? Not even ‘Give Peace A Chance’? You’re just messing with my head, right?”

“No, I am dead serious, Doug, and that’s the very first song on The Banned List. Like I said, you didn't hear this from me, but we’ve got eighteen pages of banned songs, more coming in on the fax all the time. Some artists are banned completely-- their whole catalog, every song they do-- Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, for some weird reason I can still play Ringo, but Simon and Garfunkle are banned, Cat Stevens, Country Joe, Arlo, the Youngbloods, even their frigging instrumental songs are banned, for chrissakes! The chain that runs our station owns most of the FM channels in the country. I hear that the heat came down from Washington and the radio syndicate was happy to comply. They’re behind all this sh!t! So are the biggest sponsors! Jeffy got fired for playing John Sebastian and it was his birthday! We’re under siege here! I gotta swill schnapps and chug valiums by the handful just to get through six hours of this stupid BS! I can’t play a single friggin’ request without checking the list first. They even put a fax machine in my booth so I can’t say I missed any updates. I’m going crazy in here!”

“Well, Sig Heil and suck my swizzle stick! You can’t even play ‘Fortunate Son’? Everybody’s heard that one so much that it couldn't possibly offend anyone,” I asked.

“I can’t even play ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ or ‘Bridge Over Troubled Friggin' Water’ and I don’t even know what the frick they’ve got to do with protest. If you can figure it out, explain it to me. It's all being called subliminal, subversive, or outright unAmerican.”

“Music is one of the purest and most basic things in the world. Banning music is unAmerican. My god, Tina... It’s really that bad? How long before somebody tells Bush about Fahrenheit 451 and we’re burning books and readers and authors? Do you suppose Asscroft will kick my door in and murder me to get rid of my Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young collection? I think I’ll go out to the van and play “Ohio” full-blast over the emergency channel on my CB radio. Maybe the FCC will put me out of my misery. This is bullsh!t! They can only do this if we let them and this is still America. Don’t sweat it. Frick ‘em all. You should just speak your piece, play a set of the most radical tunes you can muster, and tell them to stick it up their Nazi @sses.”
I hung up before she could answer.

The war songs were still playing when I turned her channel off. I scanned 120 different channels and it was the same everywhere. I cleared all my presets, removing obscure jazz and blues stations it took me years to locate. I euthenized my tuner, a final gesture of defiance, but I was well aware of the impotence of my actions. You can shoot a horse with a broken leg, but that still doesn’t fix the horse...

I popped open a beer, knocked the dust off my bowl, and filled my CD deck with John Lennon, Country Joe, Neil Young, Simon and Garfunkle, John Sebastian, Arlo Guthrie, The Youngbloods, CSN&Y, and Scott MacKenzie. I put it on random mode, shuffling the songs like a deck of holy cards. As I sit here, “Imagine” plays and I cry so wretchedly that I cannot see to type.

Oh, My God... the goddam*ed taliban has already won the freaking war. This Country has folded like a two-bit poker player with a dead hand. Country Joe said it best when he said, “What are we fighting for? I don't know, but I don't give a damn.” There truly is nothing left to fight for, to die for, to defend when we’ve become a nation that can sink to this level of censorship and mindless goose-stepping. Asscroft is Goebbels. Hitler’s back, too, and not only is he living among us, but he’s leading us.
Some of us.

I reflect back on my screeds before the last election. At times, I was afraid that I was too hard on George Walker Bush, but I didn’t care. I knew mine fuehrer would lead this country to ruin, decimate the economy and the federal reserves, kill freedom, and lead us into the war to end all wars. I knew that, and I screamed it loudly with everything I wrote. I'm no politician. I can survive on a one-percent approval rating as long as I’m in that one percent. I knew that evil Nazi bastard was going to do every single thing he's doing right now, I screamed it at the top of my lungs, but it made no difference. Absolutely none. Zilch. Nada. Goose eggs.

The Country I loved is gone forever. It won't be back, not even after the war, not after they got a taste of blood and saw what we’re made of. We are the new nazi germany and I anxiously await my last train ride. No matter how horrendous it is, it will be a merciful killing when they drag me into the showers. I will not flinch. I'll thank the evil swine bastards all the way to the grave. We’ve already lost the war. At least we can keep our Souls.