Targeting America: Mark Twain, the Tea Party and Freedom of Speech in the crosshairs of Political Correctness

Within moments of the first news bulletin about the shooting in Arizona Rep. Giffords, I pulled up Google News and clicked the first news link which was to UK's Telegraph. Well before it was even known who all was shot and how seriously or who the shooter was, they had already launched into the 'Target' meme, targeting Sarah Palin and Conservatives:

"Miss Giffords had been named in March as a political campaign target for conservatives in November’s elections by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin for her strong support for the health reforms of President Barack Obama.

Mrs Palin had published a “target map” on her website using images of gun sights to identify 20 House Democrats, including Miss Giffords, for backing the new health care law."

In other words, without a second thought (or perhaps even a first), the assumption was made that if a Democrat Rep. was shot, it MUST be for political reasons, those reasons must be partisan reasons, and obviously it must be Right Wingers in general, and Constitutionalist Tea Partiers in particular, which would be responsible. Responsible for stirring up 'unrest', responsible for 'targetting' the left, and responsible for pulling the trigger.

I've little interest in whatever else they might have to say on the subject (But if you do, here's a darned good starting point (T/W Gagdad Bob):here, here, here, and here) or about political conspiracies ready to be sprung, this article is from the U.K. - Philosophy has no need for political conspiracies, it moves minds in like directions far better than any Machiavellian conspirator dreamt up by the very best thriller writer could possibly conceive of - that is the key we should be paying attention to, because the results have the potential to be far worse than mere conspiracies could ever conspire to.

These knee jerk assumptions that have been made about Sarah Palin and Conservatives, are the result of Political Correctness (more properly known as Cultural Marxism), they are the anti-thesis to thought - operating from positions, rather than conceptions - and are seriously dangerous when allowed entry into the political process, let alone the legislative process, where it becomes a danger to freedom and liberty itself.

This morning I'm hearing about lawmakers proposing a measure to ban 'politically sensitive' terms, or angry speech directed towards lawmakers, words like 'Target' are to be verbotten in public speech. That should chill you to the bone, no matter your political persuasion.

But it shouldn't surprise you. Not in the least. Just last week, we heard about a Professor from Auburn University, proposing a new version of Mark Twain's classic "Huckleberry Finn" - minus just a few words.

Professor Gribben wants a sanitized version "Huckleberry Finn" so that schools could read a less offensive version of Twain's tale. Forget the fact that Twain deliberately wrote the tale in as offensive a manner as possible in order to call people's attention to what really transpired, and how shallow and foolish the bigotry behind it was (towards race and dialect), how about having a look at the intent of the Professor? :

"Twain scholar Alan Gribben and NewSouth Books plan to release a version of Huckleberry Finn, in a single volume with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, that does away with the "n" word (as well as the "in" word, "Injun") by replacing it with the word "slave."

... In the new classroom, it's really not acceptable." Gribben became determined to offer an alternative for grade school classrooms and "general readers" that would allow them to appreciate and enjoy all the book has to offer. "For a single word to form a barrier, it seems such an unnecessary state of affairs," he said"

He wanted to see the tale told in a less offensive language. There's a few degrees of appalling to dive into there, but just right off the top... do you want a story focused on the folly of racism, to have the expressions of racism be... less offensive? How about the the idea of a crucifix being submerged in urine... not worthy of being made less offensive? Wouldn't it be less offensive to replace urine with water? How about rap lyrics? How about South Park? How about Beck, Olberman, Joe Bidden, Clair McCaskill, etc?

What do I mean? Bill Hennessy provides us with a useful list here of those on the left using 'angry words' in the news:

• Democrat McCaskill calls for Americans to take up arms if Democrat tax increase
  fails.  (It did. And Gabrielle Giffords helped it fail.)
• Democrat Joe Biden threatened to strangle Republicans if they didn’t accede to his wishes.
• Democrat Frances Fox Piven called for a violent overthrow of the US systems.
• Democrats . . . love to call for violence against Americans.

This is a list which the pushers of PC (or at least those addicted to it) would do well to consider, for someday the political winds will reverse and blow in the other direction... what will become of 'their' freedom, if those constitutional protections are removed in order to target 'our' freedoms today?

Targeting Freedom
The Poed Patriot points points us to the latest this morning:

""You can't threaten the president with a bullseye or a crosshair," Mr. Brady, a Democrat, said, and his measure would make it a crime to do so to a member of Congress or federal employee, as well."

When congress is allowed to name some words, symbols or ideas as being offensive and legally unacceptable, and others as not, there's one thing you can be sure of: the knotty list is going to grow exponentially in size and really fast as well, at least as quickly as the Income Tax went from "Only the richest 1% of Americans will EVER be affected by this tax! Those who say otherwise are alarmists!", to applying to all Americans, some of whom are now 'graciously' exempted after the fact, due to income levels, some of whom are enabled by it to receive some of your income (which is one way of 'spreading the wealth around').

This measure, and the like minded ones lining up to follow it, will not, in any way, stop at offensive words. An attack on ideas and your Right to express them, is an attack on Rights as such, and if we allow one aspect of one Right to be taken away, then all others will follow, in a manner of speaking, 'follow' I mean - the fact is that if you infringe on one Right, all rights have been dispensed with already, it's just a matter of 'boiling the frog' slowly enough to not shock people into a realization of the fact.

For instance, right behind the attack on the words and Ideas of Mark Twain, we now have an attack on the words and ideas used in political speech, and swiftly following that we are moving from the 1st amendment to an attack on the 2nd amendment and the Right to bare arms.

""Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., one of Congress’ fiercest gun control advocates, is looking to strike while the iron is hot. “My staff is working on looking at the different legislation fixes that we might be able to do and we might be able to introduce as early as tomorrow,” McCarthy told Politico Sunday. Rep. McCarthy said that she plans to meeting with House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to see “if we can work something through” this week."

And right behind that, together with some preparatory work with Net Neutrality 'enacted' for Christmas of last year, comes an attack on the right of the people to peaceably assemble, 21st century style, across the Internet:

"President Obama is putting plans in motion to give the Commerce Department authority to create an Internet ID for all Americans, a White House official told CNET.com.
White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt told the website it is "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet."

An "identity ecosystem" wow, that's American style freedom through and through, isn't it?
Or have a look at this from the same article:

"The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace is currently being drafted by the Obama administration and will be released by the president in a few months.

"We are not talking about a national ID card. We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy, and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities," Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said at an event Friday at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, according to CNET.com.

Locke added that the Commerce Department will be setting up a national program office to work on this project."

Govt monitored, controlled, passwords for access to the Internet. Control that, and you control the one thing which made the Tea Party movement possible, the one thing which made the new Republican majority in congress possible, the right to meet each other and peaceably assemble, online first, and together at a physical locations, second. Eliminate that 'glitch' in the "identity ecosystem", and you eliminate a bunch of bureaucratic nightmares for those who want to do good to you.

Recall that with the 16th amendment passed in the 'year of doom', 1913, the income tax was adopted with a 1% tax on net personal incomes above $3,000, with a 6% surtax on incomes above $500,000. In less than 5 years the income tax was increased to 77% on income over $1,000,000. After WWI, the top marginal tax rate was 'generously' reduced to 58% in 1922 then to 25% in 1925, and finally to 24% in 1929 thanks to the administrations of Harding & Coolidge,

"The collection of any taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. Under this republic the rewards of industry belong to those who earn them. The only constitutional tax is the tax which ministers to public necessity. The property of the country belongs to the people of the country. Their title is absolute."

, but with the election of another proregressive, Hoover, by 1932 the top tax rate rose to 63% during the Great Depression and continued increasing up to 92% by 1952. From there on out, it has been the task of heartless conservatives (Left and Right, remember JFK reduced tax rates) to reduce that rate by a few points whenever possible, but always to accusations of obstructionism.

Obstructing Liberty
Obstructionism to what? In a word: Liberty. For in all the wrangling over how much shall be taken through the Income Tax and from who, the real question has been forgotten, that being 'Who has a right to their property - the person who earns it, or the Govt who wants to spend it?', and the real question behind that is, Are the source of your Rights in you, by nature of your being a human being, or in Govt, by dint of it's having assumed power over you?

If you cling to any of the denials that things will not perilously proregress from there, compare these current denials to the flat out denials that your Social Security Number would NEVER be used for identification purposes.

You get the picture? Yeah, that's right.

Connect this all, legislating away 'angry words', creating a safe 'identity ecosystem' across the Internet, and together with with Net Neutrality enabling control of the 'net itself... and ladies and gents... something wicked this way comes.