The United States of America is a farce. We have a constitution that is a lie to all its people. Amendment 1 states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
It clearly says peaceful assembly and freedom of speech shall never be prohibited. Sure there are circumstances in which this doesn’t apply. One can’t yell fire in a crowded movie theatre for fun and one can’t make threats. However peaceful decent has always been an American right, and incidentally it’s also an international right as defined by the United Nations.
Often we associate our forefathers of the revolution with its outspokenness of the British government. Others such as Martin Luther King Jr. exemplified peaceful dissent while advocating government change. More recently, Americans everywhere are made to believe that our democracy enables us to freedom of speech.
Unfortunately free speech in our country is a mirage. If you want to say that President Bush is the worst president ever, expect to be moved out-of-sight from the president and the media. Ironically, when the president comes anywhere to speak, no one is allowed to openly dissent. Instead they are chained far from the action at a town park or baseball field labeled a “Free Speech Zone.”
This is absolutely absurd for a democratic nation. All Bush supporters are allowed to remain near the president’s talks, while any in opposition to the policies of the administration are removed by the Secret Service.
Here’s the scary and unconstitutional and unAmerican part of the story. If an individual peacefully refuses to leave, then the Secret Service arrests that individual. That’s correct; anyone who peacefully opposes President Bush is placed in handcuffs and thrown in jail.
Bill Neel, a 65-year old veteran is one such man arrested for his peaceful disobeying of the free speech zone. The local police, under orders from Bush’s Secret Service, charged Neel with disorderly conduct for not going to the free speech zone. His conduct included holding a sign that said, “The Bush family must surely love the poor – they made so many of us.” The sign wasn’t threatening and it was somewhat witty, but too bad our president is scarred of criticism.
At the ACLU defended court case, the judge threw out the disorderly conduct charges against Neel commenting, “I believe this is America. Whatever happened to 'I don't agree with you, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it'?” Unfortunately Bush doesn’t want to hear what anyone has to say, nor does he defend anyone’s right to say it. Rather Bush enjoys revoking that right to free speech.
This story is repeated in state after state to regular good-natured American citizens. According to the American Conservative Magazine, a man in South Carolina named Brett Bursey was arrested for holding a sign that said “No War for Oil.” When his charge of trespassing was dropped because there is no such violation on public property, U.S. Justice Strom Thurmond stepped in on behalf of the Bush administration and charged Bursey with “entering a restricted area around the president.”
On April 11, 2003, while visiting Bethesda, Maryland soldiers medical centers, President Bush was asked about the war in Iraq. According to a White House press release, Bush responded by saying, “We believe in freedom. We believe freedom is universal.” Later in the interview he begins another sentence with, “Wonderful thing about free speech and a lot of TV stations is you get a lot of opinions.”
Not surprisingly, Bush forgot the article before wonderful, therefore his sentence makes little sense. Despite himself, Bush conveys his message that free speech is wonderful and so are varying opinions, yet as evident from this article, Bush prevents free speech and places little emphasis on varying opinions.
Anyone who disagrees with the president isn’t allowed in shouting distance. And none of the media outlets have presented this story to the public. Searching on the internet shows that not one major newspaper has carried a story on free speech zones. A lack of articles might be due to the fact that the media is restricted from these zones, which is just one more example of this poor situation.
I must say that President Bush is a terrible president and does not represent the values of our country. Let’s just hope my words don’t offend the president.
White House, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/04/20030411-13.html
ACLU, http://www.aclu.org/FreeSpeech/FreeSpeech.cfm?ID=13693&c=86
American Conservative, http://www.amconmag.com/12_15_03/feature.html
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Copyright 2004, Kevin Semanick