Posted by
Patrick Henry on Tuesday, October 20, 2009 11:40:45 AM
A pattern of actions by the Obama administration cloaked as "information management" now verges
on virtual nullification of first amendment rights to free speech in America. The thinly veiled campaign
to stifle dissent has, instead, spawned a growing tsunami of backlash with the potential to wash away
the president's chances for ramming through his radical agenda or, for that matter, being re-elected.
He has used his bully pulpit to impose a unilateral (and unconstitutional) gag order on insurance
companies challenging his healthcare reform initiative, indicted financial and other corporate interests,
labeled those opposed to illegal alien amnesty as "demagogues," and legitimate creditors of the failed
auto giants as "greedy," and most recently has launched an all-out offensive against Fox News calling
it "not a real news network" and encouraging other networks not to cooperate with it. The problem here
is that in addition to threatening first amendment rights to free speech and dissent, the charges don't
stand up in the light of day.
Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief of staff and hatchet man, and David Axelrod, White House advisor
who lies for a living, have publicly accused Fox of having a "point of view." The most thoughful response
to such a criticism is "so?" Could anyone deny that the mainstraem media had a "point of view" during
Obama's election campiagn? Could anyone seriously argue that CBS was not advancing a particular
"point of view" when it gave Obama a prime time spot from the White House to hawk his healthcare reform
while denying his naysayers equal time to rebut him? Is it even remotely conceivable to argue that Chris
Matthews and Keith Olbermann of MSNBC do not have a "point of view" when they slobber over the
president's every word? So much for that lame argument. The problem is not that a network -- any network --
has a point of view, because all of them do. The problem for Obama is that Fox News does not share HIS
point of view, and they have more viewers than any competing network.
The current strategy of the White House is to stifle dissent by any means possible, whether namecalling,
orchestrating a conspiracy against those who disagree or claiming that those who report on ideas contrary
to their agenda are not actually reporting news. From Anita Dunn, Obama's communications director whose
face is an eloquent commercial for Botox to Obama's 40 Thieves," the unelected czars who daily plot the
demise of conservative talk radio and government control of the internet, the objective seems unfied. Silence
all critics. This must be what Dunn alluded to when she touted her love affair with Mao Tse Tung. They have
a quick and easy way of dealing with dissent in Communist China.
But it won't work here for three reasons. First, it is as amateurish as it is boorish for a president to declare
and prosecute a war against a single news network. Even the liberal intellectuals are running from this puppy
at flank speed. Such an attack does not detract from credibility, but guarantees it. It will not reduce market
share but increase it. It will not stifle dissent, but encourage it. Whether born of naivete or downright
stupidity it is a losing strategy and clearly demonstrates how out of their depth Obama and those around
him really are.
Second. it will not work because of the first amendment to the Constitution which, at the end of the day,
guarantees Americans the right to speak freely and dissent from government policy. Obama's phony czars
can enact all the critic-stifling rules and regulations they want to, but they will all be challenged in court
and, when push comes to shove, if they in any sense deny free expression will be thrown out as unconstitutional
by the Supreme Court. This will turn short-term victory for the Obamorons, who give new meaning to the
term "demagogue," into long-term humiliating defeat.
Third, Obama will have no more success in stifling the voices of Americans, whether they be the Tea
Partiers, the Glenn Becks, the Shawn Hannitys or the minority party in congress, than King George V
had in muzzling Patrick Henry, George Washington, John Hancock and the others who overthrew his
tyrannical regime and kicked him uncermoniously out of America. Truth has this nasty little habit of
surfacing, no matter how hard you deny it, try to embarrass those who tell it, or orcghestrate elaborate
cover ups. Just ask John Edwards, William Jefferson, Rod Blagohevich and Charluie Rangel.
As it turns out the man whom the NY Times' Maureen Dowd labeled the "brainy black president"
isn't so brainy after all. Neither is the oligarchy of deceit that surrounds him. There's a great scene in
the movie Ghostbusters when the heroes are invited to choose their own demise just by thinking it.
When the character played by Dan Ayckroyd inadvertently thinks of of the Sta-Puff Marshmallow Man,
that spectre becomes the "destructor." Obama and his professional liars have conceived their own demise,
and their "destructor" may well be the first amendment.