I'm an absolutist about the First Amendment, but the left is mostly blowing smoke out its ass about repression in this war. We are not being suppressed. You want suppression? Check out resisters to WWI. ----- Original Message ----- From: "R" <rhisiart at charter.net> To: "LBO-Talk" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2003 8:45 PM Subject: [lbo-talk] taft
> from no less a pinko leftie than Robert Taft. my how US politics has
> changed.
>
> R
>
> Robert Taft, December 19, 1941, in Chicago:
>
> As a matter of general principle, I believe there can be no doubt that
> criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of
> democratic government. Perhaps nothing today distinguishes democratic
> government in England so greatly from the totalitarianism of Germany as
the
> freedom of criticism which has existed continuously in the House of
Commons
> and elsewhere in England. Of course that criticism should not give any
> information to the enemy. But too many people desire to suppress criticism
> simply because they think that it will give some comfort to the enemy to
> know that there is such criticism. If that comfort makes the enemy feel
> better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned,
> because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do
> the country maintaining it a great deal more good than it will do the
enemy,
> and will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur.
>
> Source: The Papers of Robert Taft (Kent, 1997), p. 303.
>
>
>
>
> _____________________________
>
> Quis custodiet istos custodes?
> "Who will watch the watchers?" ~ "Who is to guard [us from] the guards
> themselves?"
> -- Juvenal's Satires, VI. 347, circa 110 AD
>
>
>
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