Michael Barone: The Coming Obama Thugocracy
Liberals' behavior demonstrating that free speech has its limits.
“I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors,” Sen. Barack Obama told a crowd in Elko, Nev. “I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face.” Actually, Obama supporters are doing a lot more than getting into people’s faces. They seem determined to shut people up.
Obama fans jammed WGN’s phone lines and sent in hundreds of protest e-mails. The message was clear to anyone who would follow Rosenberg’s example. We will make trouble for you if you let anyone make the case against The One.
Other Obama supporters have threatened critics with criminal prosecution. In September, St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce warned citizens that they would bring criminal libel prosecutions against anyone who made statements against Obama that were “false.” I had been under the impression that the Alien and Sedition Acts had gone out of existence in 1801-02. Not so, apparently, in metropolitan St. Louis. Similarly, the Obama campaign called for a criminal investigation of the American Issues Project when it ran ads highlighting Obama’s ties to Ayers.
These attempts to shut down political speech have become routine for liberals. Congressional Democrats sought to reimpose the “fairness doctrine” on broadcasters, which until it was repealed in the 1980s required equal time for different points of view. The motive was plain: to shut down the one conservative-leaning communications medium, talk radio. Liberal talk-show hosts have mostly failed to draw audiences, and many liberals can’t abide having citizens hear contrary views.
Corporate liberals have done their share in shutting down anti-liberal speech, too. Saturday Night Live ran a spoof of the financial crisis that skewered Democrats like Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and liberal contributors Herbert and Marion Sandler, who sold toxic-waste-filled Golden West to Wachovia Bank for $24 billion. Kind of surprising, but not for long. The tape of the broadcast disappeared from NBC’s Web site and was replaced with another that omitted the references to Frank and the Sandlers. Evidently NBC and its parent, General Electric, don’t want people to hear speech that attacks liberals.
Then there’s the Democrats’ “card-check” legislation, which would abolish secret ballot elections in determining whether employees are represented by unions. The unions’ strategy is obvious: Send a few thugs over to employees’ homes — we know where you live — and get them to sign cards that will trigger a union victory without giving employers a chance to be heard.
Once upon a time, liberals prided themselves, with considerable reason, as the staunchest defenders of free speech. Union organizers in the 1930s and ‘40s made the case that they should have access to employees to speak freely to them, and union leaders like George Meany and Walter Reuther were ardent defenders of the First Amendment.
Today’s liberals seem to be taking their marching orders from other quarters. Specifically, from the college and university campuses where administrators, armed with speech codes, have for years been disciplining and subjecting to sensitivity training any students who dare to utter thoughts that liberals find offensive. The campuses that used to pride themselves as zones of free expression are now the least free part of our society.
Obama supporters who found the campuses congenial and Obama himself, who has chosen to live all his adult life in university communities, seem to find it entirely natural to suppress speech that they don’t like and seem utterly oblivious to claims that this violates the letter and spirit of the First Amendment. In this campaign, we have seen the coming of the Obama thugocracy, suppressing free speech, and we may see its flourishing in the four or eight years ahead.
Michael Barone is a senior writer for U.S.News & World Report and principal coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics. Click here to contact him.
» wrote on 10/10/08 @ 12:29 AM
*cough* free speech zones *cough*
» wrote on 10/10/08 @ 09:21 AM
Obama has never owned a business or had a real job, if you want bigger government and higher taxes vote for this liberal..Foolish
» wrote on 10/10/08 @ 10:03 AM
Mr. Barone offers us the all too familiar ruse, something for people to fear (and hate) as a distraction from the real issues we face. The trick here is to present seemingly comprehensive support for the argument that most readers will never take the time to check.
Desperate (and despicable) tactics from desperate people.
» wrote on 10/10/08 @ 11:09 AM
Oboma has been attending a church for over twenty years that hates America, and hates white people.Obama’s also has friends who have killed police officers, but never talks about it. Wolf in sheeps clothing.
» wrote on 10/10/08 @ 12:18 PM
Of Course! Liberalism is one step away from Socialism. We all not that some socialist governments in Europe have the authority to block some speech.
» wrote on 10/10/08 @ 04:07 PM
Obama did not say go talk to your neighbors and bully them into submission, if you read the whole text he said go talk to them and tell them the truth of where I stand on issues. McCain and Palin are exagerating and fabricating the Ayer’s issue, and whatever else they can drum up to create fear and hatred. It seems to me that you too, Mr. Barone, are trying to create a sense of fear, an “us against them”. Universities are havens for liberals, really? I found them to be institutions in pursuit of truth, and the scientific as well as philosophical understandings of Life. We are the UNITED States of America where gender, race, economics, religion, and party allegiance should not be judged against us. As we go to the voting booth, we should be looking at the candidates’ history and current ability to manage and lead this country of mixed peoples. This “us against them” sets up civil unrest within the Union that is in itself currently falling apart. Now is the time to pull together and commit to a higher order of doing business with one another and other nations, with respect and civility.
» wrote on 10/10/08 @ 06:55 PM
Thank you for this. I too have felt the backlash from liberal friends, who’ve call me stupid, vitriolic, delusional, racist and “high” on koolaid.
Whoever wins this election, the world goes on. My BEEF began when it became so obvious that the press in this country IS biased. Fortunately, there are sources like Fox, and BBC, and international CNN, Reuters, and hooray! for YouTube. There are writers like Melanie Phillips (http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips) author of “Londonistan.”
I care about getting ALL of the news out. Whatever side you choose, WE have a RIGHT to be fully informed. And we have a right to VOTE without FRAUD.
» wrote on 10/10/08 @ 07:14 PM
Just to be clear on the context of the quote referred to:
“I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face,” he said.
“And if they tell you that, ‘Well, we’re not sure where he stands on guns.’ I want you to say, ‘He believes in the Second Amendment.’ If they tell you, ‘Well, he’s going to raise your taxes,’ you say, ‘No, he’s not, he’s going lower them.’ You are my ambassadors. You guys are the ones who can make the case.”
Sounds like Barack Hussein Obama is a better Republican than the Republicans. I will take the change to him anyway in hopes of keeping the Bush family farther away from the world of war they prefer. Can anyone believe the media and this commentator? Always a bias that we try to see thru.
» wrote on 10/10/08 @ 08:40 PM
The Chosen One hasn’t even accepted his new crown and the revisionist history is already setting in.
I followed the link in the column and, interestingly, the Associated Press writer had the exact quote that Barone did. So, in addition to Barone and Bush and Rove and McCain and every Republican since the dawn of time, the Associated Press is now in on the conspiracy to deny The Chosen One his rightful place in the Universe? Give me a break.
As nutty as The Chosen One is, his cultists are just plain creepy.
» wrote on 10/10/08 @ 09:22 PM
“ In this campaign, we have seen the coming of the Obama thugocracy, suppressing free speech, and we may see its flourishing in the four or eight years ahead.”
With a few weeks to go it might be possible for Republican rhetoric to get wackier but Barone sets a high bar.
» wrote on 10/10/08 @ 09:22 PM
The actions of a few are not grounds to condemn the whole. Furthermore, you have no evidence that Obama knows of or condones any of this.
Some of your stories have no sources, and bringing up the non-issue of Ayers is a sure-fire way to hurt your credibility.
» wrote on 10/11/08 @ 11:42 AM
Obama will go after American companies, and tax them into bankrupcy force then to downsize or force them to move to other countries. Many large American companies have alredy moved because of too much regulation and high taxes. The country can’t let a socialist in, and college students who have never worked want to change America???? Wait until they see their depleated paychecks or there are no jobs. They will want what we are killing today-- freedom.