From: samamcclung@gmail.com
On Monday, August 29, 2005 at 7:10:39 PM UTC-5, Sam wrote:
> reposted:
> Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk
> From: Sam McClung
> Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 21:51:49 GMT
> Local: Wed, Oct 17 2001 4:51 pm
> Subject: Why Censors Always Fail In Free Societies
> For if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter,
> which may
> involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the
> consideration
> of Mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken
> away, and,
> dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.
> General George Washington, address to the officers of the army, Newburgh,
> New York,
> March 15, 1738. - The Writings of George Washington, ed. John C.
> Fitzpatrick, volume
> 26, page 225 (1938)
> I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a
> system of
> censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own
> their
> indisputable right to criticise their own public officials. While exercising
> the
> great powers of the office I hold, I would regret in a crisis like the one
> through
> which we are now passing to lose the benefit of patriotic and intelligent
> criticism.
> President Woodrow Wilson, letter to Arthur Brisbane, APril 25, 1917. - Ray
> Stannard
> Baker, Woodrow Wilson, Life and Letters, volume 6, page 36 (1946).
> Without free speech no search for truth is possible, without free speech no
> discovery
> of truth is useful, without free speech progress is checked and the nations
> no longer
> march forward toward the nobler life which the future holds for man. Better
> a
> thousandfold abuse of speech than a denial of free speech. The abuse dies in
> a day,
> but the denial slays the life of people, and entombs the hope of the race.
> Attributed to Charles Bradlaugh. - Edmund Fuller, Thesaurus of Quotations,
> page 398
> (1941). Unverified.
> Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the
> long run of
> history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure
> weapon against
> bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest
> path to
> wisdom is a liberal education.
> A. Whitney Griswold, president of Yale, "A Little Learning," The Atlantic
> Monthly,
> November 1952, page 52. Address to students at Phillips Academy, Andover,
> New
> Hampshire, spring 1952.
> Without an unfettered press, without liberty of speech, all the outward
> forms and
> structures of free institutions are a sham, a pretense - the sheerest
> mockery. If the
> press is not free; if speech is not independent and untrammelled; if the
> mind is
> shackled or made impotent through fear, it makes no difference under what
> form of
> government you live you are a subject and not a
> citizen. Republics are not in and of themselves better than other forms of
> government
> except in so far as they carry with them and guarantee to the citizen that
> liberty
> of thought and action for which they were established.
> Senator William E. Borah, remarks in the Senate, April 19, 1917,
> Congressional
> Record, volume 55, page 837.
> Our nation stands at a fork in the political road. In one direction lies a
> land of
> slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous
> phone call
> and hustling, pushing, and shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything
> to win.
> This is Nixonland. But I say to you that is not America.
> Adlai E. Stevenson, The New America, ed. Seymour E. Harris, John B. Martin,
> and
> Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., page 249 (1971) These words were written in 1956
> during
> Stevenson's second presidential campaign.
> I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of
> speech was
> the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to
> encourage
> him to advertise the fact by speaking. It cannot be so easily discovered if
> you allow
> him to remain silent and look wise, but if you let him speak, the secret is
> out and
> the world knows that he is a fool. So it is by the exposure of folly that it
> is
> defeated; not by the seclusion of folly, and in this free air of free
> speech men get
> into that sort of communication with one another which constitutes the basis
> of all
> common achievement.
> Woodrow Wilson, "That Quick Comradeship of Letters," address at the
> Institute of
> France, Paris, May 10, 1919. - The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, ed. Ray
> Stannard
> Baker and William E. Dodd, volume 5, page 484 (1927)
And so it failed leaving behind splinterings in the neo era "We're polite
politically correct censors...er, uh, moodraters" gruppes begging for monies
to sustain them in their quest to buoy the faltering publishing industry.
“If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our
destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books
in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all—except the
censor. We must know
all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms.
Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of
Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty."
JFK, Saturday Review, October 29 1960
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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