Re: Clinton blathering about Internet

[Rich Graves <llurch@networking.stanford.edu>]

[By the way, that ILF/SAC rant WAS a joke. It's disappointing how many
people were trolled, but on the other hand, it taught me something about
how I come across, and to be more careful.]

On Thu, 18 Apr 1996, Tom Cooper wrote:

> > To be fair, I don't see any blathering, just "expressions of concern." The
> > blathering quote comes from the SPLC, not Clinton.
> >
> Get real dude. Of course it's blathering. Either he really is that stupid
> or he's trying to appeal to people's ignorant fears about the Net as some
> sort of Satanic gathering place, just to get reelected.

You have extrapolated this from a sentence fragment taken from an
off-the-cuff answer to a question from a Japanese reporter? Either you
have a subtle mind indeed, or you're blathering, too.

Remember that speech Clinton gave to the Association of Community Colleges
where he blamed the Oklahoma bombing on talk radio hosts and called for
censorship? Didn't happen. My friends in the NRA, and the occasional fund
raising letter (I've been a member of the NRA for years), keep bringing up
this speech for propaganda purposes, but it's much more a legend than a
truth.

http://docs.whitehouse.gov/white-house-publications/1995/04/1995-04-24-president-to-association-of-community-colleges.text

|             In this country we cherish and guard the right of free
| speech.  We know we love it when we put up with people saying things we
| absolutely deplore.  And we must always be willing to defend their right
| to say things we deplore to the ultimate degree.  But we hear so many
| loud and angry voices in America today whose sole goal seems to be to try
| to keep some people as paranoid as possible and the rest of us all torn
| up and upset with each other.  They spread hate.  They leave the
| impression that, by their very words, that violence is acceptable.  You
| ought to see -- I'm sure you are now seeing the reports of some things
| that are regularly said over the airwaves in America today.
|
|             Well, people like that who want to share our freedoms must
| know that their bitter words can have consequences, and that freedom has
| endured in this country for more than two centuries because it was
| coupled with an enormous sense of responsibility on the part of the
| American people.
|
|             If we are to have freedom to speak, freedom to assemble,
| and, yes, the freedom to bear arms, we must have responsibility as well.
| And to those of us who do not agree with the purveyors of hatred and
| division, with the promoters of paranoia, I remind you that we have
| freedom of speech, too.  And we have responsibilities, too.  And some of
| us have not discharged our responsibilities.  It is time we all stood up
| and spoke against that kind of reckless speech and behavior.

This sounds like "fight speech you disagree with with more speech" to me.

> > Clinton, though, is pushing the unconstitutional "anti-terrorism"  bill,
> > which is all blather, and worse, he's letting the Republicans add an
> > unrelated rider that emasculates habeus corpus.

I'd like to retract that "Republicans" bit. There are good Republicans and
bad Republicans, as with any other group of people. I meant "pro-death
penalty, anti-civil liberties wackos," of which there are a few in the
Republican Party, but which do not represent the rank & file or even the
balance of the GOP Congressional delegation.

> Letting the Republicans? Clinton's on their side all the way.

Not on habeus corpus. To refresh your memory, I'm talking about the
amendment that seeks to curtail death-row appeals. Clinton has condemned
it as irrelevant to the "anti-terrorism" bill, but that it's a compromise
he can accept. He's wrong.

-rich