Cass Sunstein, the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration, wrote a paper in 2008 titled "Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures," in which he recommended ways the government could "ban conspiracy theories."
In other words, he advocated for speech and thought control.
Then last year, the Missouri DHS “fusion center” issued a report called "The Modern Militia Movement" which
mentions such red flags as political bumper stickers for third-party candidates, such as U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, who ran for president last year; talk of conspiracy theories, such as the plan for a superhighway linking Canada to Mexico; and possession of subversive literature.
They're stepping up their game too ... With the Southern Poverty Law Center behind their back, everyone who doesn't agree with the government is being targeted as dangerous, as well as a potential terrorist too.
Freedom is under attack in America, so "we the people" better wake-up soon!
The Slippery Definition of Extremism
Americans are once again hearing of the perils of extremism. But the definition of this offense is slippier than a politician’s campaign promise. The definition of extremism has continually been amended to permit government policies that few sober people previously advocated.
Prior to September 2001, anyone who suggested that the U.S. government lead a crusade to “rid the world of evil”would have been labeled both an extremist and a loon ...
Prior to 2002, anyone who suggested that the U.S. government create a Total Information Awareness database of personal information on tens of millions of Americans would have been considered an extremist ...
Prior to late 2005, anyone who asserted that the National Security Agency was routinely and massively illegally wiretapping Americans’ phone calls and email without a warrant was considered paranoid — as well as an extremist ...
Prior to recent years, anyone who suggested that Uncle Sam should be able to take naked snapshots of all airline passengers would have been considered a lunatic, as well as an extremist ...
Time and again, the U.S. government has adopted policies that only extremists advocated a few years earlier. And yet, no one is supposed to think that the government has become the biggest extremist of them all.
Lowering the bar on incitements to violence
Unless you’ve been visiting some other planet somewhere in the universe, you already know about Comedy Central’s South Park debacle.
There are a couple of points I want to make about this whole embarrassing debacle — embarrassing for Comedy Central, which shows that it’s offensive only when it’s safe; and a debacle, because it’s one more nail in the coffin of the free speech that has always been an integral part of America’s political and social culture.
In the old days, the notion of incitement to violence examined whether the speaker literally incited violence. For example, the speaker might say to the crowd “Kill the President” ... The threat of violence wasn’t implicit in the speech; it was explicit.
We’ve now entered a brave new world that redefines “incitement to violence” away from its traditional meaning of explicit demands for blood, death or revolution. Now, “incitement to violence” includes speech or images that hurt someone’s feelings or offend their sensibilities.
What’s even worse ... is that we’re out-sharia-ing sharia, and caving, not to the demands of the moderates, but to the extremists. (Frankly, we’ve become such a PC, identity-politics obsessed culture that we’d cave to moderates too if we felt it would spare the feelings of someone defined as a victim in the PC lexicon.) The wholesale ban on any Mohamed images whatsoever is an extremist ban.
[I]t seems to be a harbinger of things to come. It’s conduct is the thin of edge of the wedge when it comes to a cultural decision to give in and, by giving in, give away the constitutional freedoms that generations of our forebearers fought bravely to defend.
This is just one more reason to get back to our classical liberal traditions, starting with our individual natural rights.
