Where Have All The Liberals Gone? – by Matt Taibbi

There can t possibly be controversy at this point as to whether or not this censorship program is going on. Whether it s the FBI forwarding the SBU asking for the removal of Aaron Maté, or the Global Engagement Center recommending action on the Canadian site GlobalResearch.Ca, or the White House demanding the takedown of figures like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the same types of behavior have now been captured over and over.

In light of this, I have to ask: where are the rest of the card-carrying liberals from the seventies, eighties, and nineties people like me, who always reflexively opposed restrictions on speech?

Is your argument that private companies can do what they want? Then why did you think otherwise in 1985, when Tipper Gore s Parents Music Resource Center suggested record companies voluntarily label as dirty songs like Darling Nikki, and call them McCarthyites when they compiled a list of the Filthy Fifteen albums? Does that not sound suspiciously like the Disinformation Dozen ? Why were you on Frank Zappa s side then, but with blacklisters now?

Do you now think it s not really censorship if the FBI merely makes its opinion known about content, and doesn t order takedowns? Did you think the same when the FBI sent a letter to Priority Records complaining about NWA s Fuck the Police ? Did you agree then with the ACLU, whose Southern California chairman responded to the FBI s letter by saying, It is completely inappropriate for any government agency to try to influence what artists do. It is completely against the American traditions of free speech ?

Is your belief that new forms of speech constitute harm and offense to such a degree that censorship is warranted? If so, why did you once support Andres Serrano and his work Piss Christ, which Catholics insisted was an intolerable offense, and call it censorship when opponents like Al D Amato and Jesse Helms tried to pull funding for Serrano from the National Endowment of the Arts? Wasn t the Hustler magazine spread suggesting Jerry Falwell had sex with his mother in an outhouse offensive? Didn t you go to The People Versus Larry Flynt anyway?

If you re okay with the FBI collaborating on censorship with the SBU now, why oppose the original PATRIOT Act, suggesting you didn t even want the government looking at library records in search of Islamic terrorists? Why did you support the Dixie Chicks when they were blackballed for antiwar views after the Iraq invasion? Did you cheer them when you watched Shut Up and Sing?

via www.racket.news

I think it must be a generational thing. Younger persons have been taught by Marxists (for want of a better term) who don’t like free speech. Freedom of speech is one of the essential (classical) liberal values. However, Taibbi’s examples are not very good. You can perfectly well be against public funding for Piss Christ, for example, as a waste of public money and as well as be against public funding of the arts, especially bad art. The Hustler magazine question relies on a strong reading of NY Times v. Sullivan, which was probably a mistake from the beginning. You can believe in libel laws and still believe in free speech.