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Feb. 8, 2013

Rabbi Berel Wein: Lofty ideals must be followed with grounded applications

Clifford D. May: Letter from the West Bank
Steve Rothaus: Judge OKs plan for gay man, lesbian couple to be on girl's birth certificate
Gloria Goodale: States consider drone bans: Overreaction or crucial for privacy rights?
Environmental Nutrition Editors: Don't buy the aloe vera juice hype
Michael Craig Miller, M.D.: Harvard Experts: Regular exercise pumps up memory, too
Erik Lacitis: Vanity plates: Some take too much license
The Kosher Gourmet by Susie Middleton: Broccoflower, Carrot and Leek Ragout with Thyme, Orange and Tapenade is a delightful and satisfying melange of veggies, herbs and aromatics
Feb. 6, 2013

Nara Schoenberg: The other in-law problem

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. : A see-no-jihadist for the CIA
Kristen Chick: Ahmadinejad visits Cairo: How sect tempers Islamist ties between Egypt, Iran
Roger Simon: Ed Koch's lucky corner
Heron Marquez Estrada: Robot-building sports on a roll
Patrick G. Dean, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: How to restore body's ability to secrete insulin
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: 3 prostate-protecting diet tips
The Kosher Gourmet by Emma Christensen 7 principles for to help you make the best soup ever in a slow cooker
Feb. 4, 2013

Jonathan Tobin: Can Jewish Groups Speak Out on Hagel?

David Wren: Findings of government study, released 3 days before Newtown shooting, at odds with gun-control crusaders
Kristen Chick: Tahrir becomes terrifying, tainted
Curtis Tate and Greg Gordon: US keeps building new highways while letting old ones crumble
David G. Savage: Supreme Court to hear case on arrests, DNA
Harvard Health Letters: Neck and shoulder pain? Know what it means and what to do
Andrea N. Giancoli, M.P.H., R.D.: Eat your way to preventing age-related muscle loss
The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington Baked Pears in Red Wine and Port Wine Glaze: A festive winter dessert
Feb. 1, 2013

Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb: Redemption

Clifford D. May Home, bloody, home
Christa Case Bryant andNicholas Blanford Why despite Syria's allies warning of retaliation for Israeli airstrikes, the threats are likely hollow
Rick Armon, Ed Meyer and Phil Trexler Ex-police captain cleared by DNA test is freed after nearly 15 years
Harvard Health Letters: Could it by your thyroid?
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: When 'healthy food' isn't
Sue Zeidler: Coke ad racist? Arab-American groups want to yank Super Bowl ad (INCLUDES VIDEO)
The Kosher Gourmet by Nealey Dozier The secret of this soup is the garnish
January 30, 2013

Allan Chernoff: Celebrating 'Back from the Dead Day'

America isn't a religious country? Don't tell Superbowl fans!
Mark Clayton Cybercrime takedown!
Germany remembers Hitler rise to power
Israel salutes U. N. --- with the one finger salute
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: Get cookin' with heart-healthy fats
Ballot riles Guinness World Records
The Kosher Gourmet by Elizabeth Passarella Potato, Squash and Goat Cheese Gratin
January 28, 2013

Nancy Youssef: And Democracy for all? Two years on, Egypt remains in state of chaos

Fred Weir: Putin: West is fomenting jihadi 'blowback'
Meredith Cohn: Implantable pain disk may help those with cancer
Michael Craig Miller, M.D. : Ask the Harvard Experts: Are there drugs to help control binge eating?
David Ovalle Use of controversial 'brain mapping' technology stymied
Jane Stancill: Professor's logic class has 180,000 friends
David Clark Scott Lego Racism?
The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali The celebrated chef introduces us to PANZEROTTI PUGLIESI, cheese-stuffed pastry from Italy's south


Jewish World Review January 13, 2009 / 17 Teves 5769

Shut up, they explain

By Paul Greenberg


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Americans have faced threats to their freedom of speech before. How else did we get a First Amendment except in response to such threats — and in anticipation of more of them in the future?


But seldom have such attempts to limit freedom of expression been put forward in so superior, so condescending and oh-so-enlightened fashion. These days we're not so much gagged as politely muffled.


The various new ways to restrict our freedom of speech, it is explained, are being proposed only for our own good. And that of society as a whole. So say those who know best what we the mere people should be allowed to say and hear, read and write. It's a perfect example of the soft tyranny of the majority that Tocqueville foresaw in his classic study of "Democracy in America."


There are so many signs of the increasingly stifled times that they're beginning to add up to a whole new era of suppression — always for the most public-spirited of reasons. For example:


  • The McCain-Feingold campaign reform act that gags political advocacy just when it's most needed — 30 days before election day — lest we the people, unthinking cattle that we are, be stampeded by a rush of propaganda over the airwaves rather than the establishment's enlightened, approved-for-public-consumption line.

  • The return of the Unfairness Doctrine, which would make free and untrammeled speech impractical for broadcasters. Obliged to give equal (and free) time to all opinions, radio and television stations would soon learn to avoid broadcasting opinion at all, which is how they reacted when the original "Fairness Doctrine" was in foul bloom.

    But now this gag rule can be rationalized in the most high-flown language, like the president-elect's during his smooth campaign, when he subtly endorsed the idea. Some folks will go to any lengths to shut up the Rush Limbaughs among us, though always of course in the name of "fairness." They lack the candor to censor opinions they don't like outright; they'd much rather rig the system.

  • The kind of "net neutrality" that isn't neutral at all but would tell distributors of opinions (and everything else) over the Internet which ones they may distribute when and how and at what speeds — rather than leave such decisions to competing interests and new developments. This is to treat the internet as a common carrier delivering head of cattle or widgets rather than a wide-open frontier of ideas where competition, cooperation, innovation and all of the above should be allowed to develop largely on their own.

    Regulation that isn't working to everyone's benefit will soon enough invite the kind of competition that will. The way the stultified broadcast networks spawned wide-open talk radio. That's how Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is supposed to work — if we'll let it. The Internet, like all business, needs to be policed for the public's benefit and its own, but not choked. When a centralized government decides just how a frontier should look, operate and be governed, it's no longer a frontier but a planned development.

  • College speech codes, it seems, we will always have with us, no matter how clear it becomes that they restrict expression rather than encourage it. That they should flourish on some of the most prestigious campuses in the country is evidence of the sad state of real dialogue within the American university. There was a time when it was considered a truism that the best answer to a bad idea was a better one; now the arbiters of thought take it upon themselves to decide which ideas are good enough to be expressed and which must be suppressed. That's not debate; it's indoctrination.

  • Then there are those laws that deny Americans' right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances," to use the First Amendment's phrase. Oklahoma's attorney general, Drew Edmondson, has been hounding Paul Jacob — a nationally known advocate of term limits — for daring to circulate petitions in that state.


Mr. Jacob's petitions seek to limit legislators' free-spending ways, but Oklahoma has a law barring nonresidents from gathering signatures for such petitions. Or at least it did have. The Tenth Circuit of Appeals, following the lead of the Sixth and Ninth Circuits, has struck down Oklahoma's law as a violation of "core political speech." Chalk one up for the First Amendment. And yet Oklahoma's attorney general continues to prosecute/persecute Paul Jacob; his office says General Edmondson may appeal the Tenth Circuit's ruling.


The moral of the story: The rights of Americans are never won once and for all. They must be defended again and again, for eternal vigilance remains the price of liberty. It takes only a cursory survey at the varied challenges to the First Amendment in our oh-so-enlightened time to reveal that, when it comes to being gagged, Paul Jacob has got a lot of company.

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JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.

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