"We talk and talk, but the necessary connection between talk and action to redress the grievances and address out future has been lost. The idea of the framers of our constitution was to allow open exchange of opinions with a view to convert the resultant agreements into law or policy, a goal roundly ignored by the body politic these days. We all complain about the war, environment, gas prices and a thousand other things, but damn few do anything, and those that do are largely ignored or trivialized in reporting."
Free speech ain't free if it's all just talk.
Travus T. Hipp Commentary From The Sparks Tribune
http://fatchance.org/travus/comment.htm
Sparks Trib 1/15/06 FREE SPEECH IS WORTH EXACTLY THAT
I can remember when free speech was rare and valuable in the late '50's as the McCarthyism of the cold war took hold. Those were the days of college loyalty oaths for professors and the FBI bugging suspected communists in the Labor movement and anywhere else they could find dissenting opinions.
Which, of course, made dissent all that much more popular, breeding quarterly magazines of social and political radicalism that influenced and instructed a generation of the curious and slightly alienated in America. There were coffee-houses in every major city and college town devoted to lengthy conversations on the meaning of life and Lenin, between readings of socially deviant poetry.
There free speech was allowed and even encouraged. Chicago's "Bughouse Square" was the most notorious, peopled on a sunny day by upwards of two dozen orators from every radical clique on the left, and occasionally the far right. Standing on short stools or planter walls to expound their own utopian view of the future , after the revolution. Crowds would form and listen, sometime drifting from one speaker to another, sampling the rhetoric and bombast of the day for entertainment. The International Workers of the World preached a system without bosses, where workers enjoyed the fruits of their labor. Anarchists talked of Barcelona and the success of localized political power from the militia to the farm cooperatives. Most everyone agreed that smashing the state was a necessary first step, but the state remained content to let talk ease the real tensions of the times.
Today, talk is cheap. The relatively low cost of Talk Radio has made the AM band a haven for every half baked pundit with a clear speaking voice. Most of these demagogues come from the far right wing, owing to the overwhelming number of corporate conservatives who own the airwaves since de-regulation removed the multiple ownership rules, leaving the medium open to neo monopolistic control. Added to that the hundreds of hours weekly of talking heads on the various network and cable news and public affairs programs and the cacophony drowns out whatever reasoned discourse might take place without the bombast. Political commentary and news have become background noise in our media dominated society, and that begets apathy.
We talk and talk, but the necessary connection between talk and action to redress the grievances and address out future has been lost. The idea of the framers of our constitution was to allow open exchange of opinions with a view to convert the resultant agreements into law or policy, a goal roundly ignored by the body politic these days. We all complain about the war, environment, gas prices and a thousand other things, but damn few do anything, and those that do are largely ignored or trivialized in reporting.
Free speech ain't free if it's all just talk.
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