I still can’t help myself from perusing the nonsensical diatribe in Artvoice. And this week’s Earth Day edition (which bears no sign of being printed on recycled paper) features a real gem from Michael Niman, a recovering victim of Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Niman, who still thinks Al Gore won Florida in 2000, despite all the recounts that proved the contrary, is hellbent on equating President Bush with Big Brother. The whole article is ludicrous but this part really got to me:
The problem is that during the course of this administration, government as we know it, on all levels, has lost whatever credibility it has had with the American people. We have a generation of college students, for example, that has lived their entire adult life under President George W. Bush. We are now hiring police officers from a demographic cohort that has grown up with “indefinite detention,” “coercive interrogation,” “preemptive” violence, “free speech zones,” and a comatose Bill of Rights. We have a new generation of voters that take as normal warrantless wiretaps and surveillance cameras at the end of their streets. Our journalists have become a spineless pack of mortgage-saddled career stenographers living under the thumb of a military entertainment complex, seduced by consumerism and terrified of jail. As a society we’ve come to value civic sterility more than civic engagement.
As of this moment, the only person in government found guilty of breaking federal wiretap laws is Democrat Jim McDermott, who violated the civil rights Republican Congressman John Boehner. I’m sure Artvoice would only have been outraged by that incident had McDermott leaked a tape terrorists plotting to attack America.
And then there’s Niman’s insinuation that so-called “free-speech zones” are the result of a Bush/Cheney/Rove/Rumsfield/Fill-In-The-Blank-Member-of-The-Bush-Administration plot to stifle dissent. Now there’s a laugh. In recent years, the freedom of speech of pro-life activists has been gradually limited to larger and larger distances from abortion clinics… Deval Patrick, the Democrat Governor of Massachusetts, signed legislation last year that restricted freedom of speech within 35 feet of abortion clinics. Did Karl Rove make him do it?
But my favorite was during the 2004 Democratic National Convention, held in Boston, MA. I was there, and all protesters were literally put in a cage. A cage!
This so-called “free-speech zone” kept us protesters out of sight and out of mind from Democrats who have continually accused President Bush of trampling on the Bill of Rights. Had there been an abortion clinic in the neighborhood, they probably would have shipped all protestors to New Hampshire for the duration of the convention.
While the folks at Artvoice think up new imaginary ways that the Bush Administration has turned the Land of the Free to an Orwellian Dystopia, they ought to care more about real instances where the first amendment rights of myself and others have actually been infringed by Bush’s biggest critics.
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