On 12/09/2009 01:46 PM, Rick Monteverde wrote:
Jed Wrote:
I expect the researchers are guilty of suppressing opposing points of view
through the peer-review system, but the other accusations are silly.
Yeah, a real minor thing, that.
Nick Palmer has zero credibility on this particular issue as he has
openly advocated on this forum that it should be ILLEGAL to voice
opposition to the theories of global warming! Suck on that, you
intellectually inferior First Amendment huggers.
Excuse me? What, exactly, is a "First Amendment hugger"?
("Intellectually inferior", yeah, I got that part, it means "stupid".
As it happens, though, I'm not sure any regular contributor to Vortex
qualifies as "stupid". Crazy, maybe, a few of them, but certainly not
stupid.)
Given that, in the United States, it's legal to express disbelief in the
airplanes that hit the WTC on 9/11, it's legal to express disbelief in
the moon landings, it's legal to express disbelief that the President is
an American citizen, it's legal to express disbelief that there's a
legal requirement to pay taxes (and it's legal to work to convince other
people to evade tax payments as well), it's legal to try to convince
people that the world is only 6,000 years old (or convince them of the
opposite), it's legal to try to convince people that environmental
issues are irrelevant because God is coming and God doesn't allow
species extinction or creation (or work to convince them of the
opposite), it's legal to flaunt swastikas and claim Hitler was innocent
and/or that the Holocaust never happened, and it's legal to claim in
print that Obama is responsible for the current deficit, I can't help
but think any assertion that expressing any particular belief "should be
ILLEGAL [in the United States]" must be nothing more than a personal
expression of frustration, or possibly a straw man set up to start an
argument.
To actually achieve
that would be the ultimate expression of the inherently vicious
suppressive intent of such people, the nature of which has been exposed
not only by those emails, but right here as well by Mr. Palmer’s
previous comments. “Just say No to Democracy and Diversity” should be
their slogan.
I’ve also noted a corresponding increase in the calls to criminalize
opposition to the current US administration’s policies as well.
"Calls" to do one thing or another are a dime a dozen. It ain't gonna
happen.
Big Brother may very well materialize one of these days as a real
entity, spying on all of us, because that can happen silently, sneakily,
behind the scenes, in the crevices of the Web, where nobody sees. But
publicly passed laws which seriously compromise free speech are not
likely to fly in the U.S.
There
must not be the slightest doubt that such laws, if they ever are
implemented in the US, will end in tears and probably bloodshed, whether
it’s the “left” or the “right” who succeeds in that goal. This is a very
serious matter, and not all the frogs in this pot are oblivious to the
rising temperature of the water (NPI).
And that is one reason it ain't gonna happen -- a whole lot of frogs are
not oblivious to such things. In the United States, a major fraction of
the population values personal freedom above ... well ... nearly
anything else, as far as I can tell. So, rest easy, Rick; you're not
fighting the Good Fight alone, no matter how it may sometimes seem in
this hotbed of liberalism(???) which we call Vortex.
One such (rather outsize) frog which comes to mind is the ACLU --
they're widely hated on the right for championing left wing causes, but
they're also occasionally attacked from the left for championing
right-wing causes. Who they're offending at a particular moment depends
mostly on who's being muzzled.
