Participants: Lincoln Steed (Host), Allen Reinach
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000233B
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00:07 Welcome back to the Liberty Insider.
00:09 Before the break I was in a fit of hot dungeon over 00:13 the so called free speech zones. 00:15 Most people don't know about this but it exist I think-- 00:18 College campuses has been a big huge problem 00:21 where free speech is being relegated 00:24 to very out of the way places. 00:28 Yeah and to me it's bizarre. 00:29 Now it is true and our viewers should know 00:32 that in England and Australia or the British Common Wealth 00:36 they got a great tradition, 00:37 you know, from Hyde Park in England 00:40 where you could stand up 00:41 put the soapbox up and can hold forte. 00:43 So there would be a set-aside spot to say your piece 00:47 and you could say seditious stuff 00:49 that's where of course Marx and Engels 00:53 and others like them have indulge themselves in England. 00:58 So I understand that but it never 01:00 was only there and not anywhere else, 01:03 We've made a such an exclusionary zone 01:05 that it makes a mockery of the very term free speech. 01:08 Well, free speech has really 01:11 taken a hit legally in our society. 01:15 We just don't seem to have the same value on 01:18 and especially free press 01:20 also with the Bradley Manning Prosecution 01:25 the administration has been cracking down 01:28 on leakers and threatening to punish journalists 01:32 who publish what are classified documents 01:37 and now they're wanting to consider them 01:40 guilty of espionage. 01:42 You know, and I am sure many of them, very few of our viewers 01:45 would know the story of the Aurora. 01:48 No. 01:49 There was a newspaper 01:50 run by Benjamin Franklin's nephew 01:54 I think it was. 01:55 That was real gadfly against a numbers of the leaders 01:59 then particularly Jefferson 02:01 and the efforts were made to shut them down 02:03 but they're able to say the most outrage-- 02:05 Or not certainly write the most outrageous things. 02:07 So it's not that the conflict 02:09 between political power and its purgatives 02:12 and free speech just recent. 02:15 It's been from the beginning 02:16 but it's only recently that I think is 02:17 outright intimidation of the-- 02:19 We had the Alien and Sedition Acts that John Adams passed. 02:22 So, no, this battle Anthony Lewis wrote 02:25 a marvelous book called freedom for the speech we hate. 02:28 You know the history of free speech 02:31 and we have always somehow found a way 02:33 to restrict the speech of the descendants. 02:37 And that's a good thing to point out. 02:39 Free speech doesn't mean anything 02:42 unless it's just the most hateful 02:45 and objectionable stuff that you allow. 02:47 Everyone will allow what they agree with, 02:49 that's not free space. 02:51 That's like-mindedness. 02:52 But coming back To, you know, 02:54 my favorite way to characterize 02:56 all Americans believe in religious freedom, right. 02:58 Well, yeah of course. 02:59 everybody aesthetically in religious freedom 03:02 but what most people think of as religious freedom 03:05 is freedom to believe the way I do. 03:07 Yeah. 03:08 You have freedom to think and speak 03:10 the thoughts that I agree with 03:12 but if you want to speak something 03:14 that I disagree with, 03:15 we all know you're not afraid to do that. 03:18 Well, I will tell it again 03:19 because I think it's just illustrates your point so well. 03:21 Years ago I heard the minister of religion 03:25 for the Maldives interviewed by on BBC 03:28 and he was to rhapsodizing 03:29 about religious freedom in their country 03:32 and which is a almost 100% Islamic country, Muslim country. 03:36 And the interviewer Said, well, that's fine 03:38 but most of your people are of one religion. 03:41 He says, you know, I am a Christian 03:43 would I be allowed to practice my faith, 03:45 if I came to your country? 03:46 And instantly he says certainly not. 03:48 He says we might as well invite 03:50 Al-Qaeda into our country. 03:53 And you know his analogy was wrong anyhow 03:56 but it was interesting instantly his sensibility 03:58 on what religious freedom is was disrupted. 04:00 No way. 04:01 Of course there is freedom for the majority. 04:03 Yes, when everyone is comfortable 04:05 and it's worth mentioning 04:06 what we've said on this program 04:07 before and you know the statistic 04:09 that's I see it expressed different ways 04:12 at least 60 but usually 70% of the world's population 04:15 exist under periods of places of severe religious oppression. 04:19 But the point is in those areas 04:21 most of those people don't know-- 04:23 Because they are of the majority. 04:25 Absolutely. Right. 04:26 They really have no choice 04:28 but they don't feel it 04:29 because they're going with the flow. 04:32 Bringing it back to the issue of the national security state 04:34 and religious freedom, most Christians 04:37 in America feel like they're free to go to church, 04:40 to carry out their religious activities. 04:43 The same is not true if you're a Muslim 04:46 participating in the life of the mosque. 04:50 FBI leaders met with the Muslim community 04:54 in Southern California a few years ago 04:57 to reassure them, that they were not infiltrating 05:01 and monitoring the activities of the mosques 05:04 and then what came out a few years later 05:08 was that the one of the mosques reported a new member 05:16 who was behaving suspiciously and it turned out 05:20 that he was an FBI plant 05:22 and so they filed a federal lawsuit against the FBI 05:27 and draw moral police. 05:29 What was the outcome of the federal lawsuit? 05:32 The FBI defended and asked the court 05:36 to dismiss it saying that 05:37 all of the evidence was classified 05:40 and so it could not be revealed in a federal court. 05:44 And the federal judge went along with that. 05:47 So the fore scope of FBI infiltration 05:51 and monitoring of mosques in America. 05:54 Now, you know, is unknown 05:57 as a point of fact as a point of speculation 06:00 we have to assume that the FBI 06:02 is closely monitoring the activities 06:05 of the entire Islamic community here in America. 06:08 Well, it's a little more then that 06:09 because I can remember 06:10 the announcement of the directive, 06:12 it was to regularly monitor religious meetings, 06:17 as was done during the Vietnam era. 06:20 Well, and during the 1980's 06:22 when we had the trouble in Central America-- 06:24 The Sanctuary Movement. We had the Sanctuary Movement. 06:26 Now it's not that the government doesn't have their right, 06:29 I mean I better qualify I mean to be interested 06:32 and to realize that things maybe said in some context, 06:35 but a wholesale intrusion like that, 06:38 I think it's a very dangerous development 06:40 especially when it's denied. 06:42 So I interviewed the lawyer 06:43 who was representing the mosque in that case, her 06:47 one of her partners is a colleague of mine 06:50 in the plaintiff's employment law community in California 06:55 and what I found out was predictably 06:58 that this episode had a detrimental affect, 07:02 the chilling effect we lawyers call it 07:04 on the life of the Islamic community. 07:06 They would refuse-- they stopped having potlucks 07:10 or whatever their equivalent is, they stopped 07:12 having social gatherings and the community 07:16 was decimated by the fear 07:19 that someone in their midst would be reporting to the FBI. 07:24 How would you feel? 07:25 Listener, if you go to church 07:28 and you suspect that all the license plates 07:33 are being recorded by the government, 07:35 that somebody sitting there listening to the sermon 07:37 and watching who's coming and going 07:40 and monitoring your activities. 07:42 How would that impact the life of the congregation? 07:45 And more than chilling effect, 07:46 I believe it has the potential 07:48 as we have seen with the American foreign policy 07:50 being influenced by some forms 07:53 of evangelical Christianity 07:56 in their in time viewpoints. 07:58 It starts to shape religious thought itself, 08:02 there's lot of subconsciously to make it 08:04 what some times without any input perhaps from authorities 08:08 but what they feel is more compliant less threatening, 08:11 more generic form of whatever the religion is. 08:14 So what does it serve religious freedom 08:16 and obviously doesn't serve freedom at large. 08:20 It's part of the paranoia that's gripped 08:22 in this case the government I think. 08:24 Americans are going to have to deal 08:27 with the reality of the choice. 08:31 Do we have a free society 08:33 or do we have a national security state. 08:36 Yeah. 08:37 The choice is largely been-- 08:38 This is facing out-- Well, the entire world 08:41 at some point but particularly the western world 08:43 which feels under threat since 9/11 from radical Islam 08:47 in particular and Europe and the US 08:50 with the illegal migration from the south, 08:53 it feels under demographic threat. 08:57 Well, we can live in fear 08:59 or we can have the courage to live as free people. 09:03 Well, I think we have the courage. 09:05 I hope we do, but I am not necessarily convinced. 09:09 Somehow I fear that we have been seduced 09:11 by too many iPads, iPods, digital entertainment 09:16 that we are largely being entertained and dumb down, 09:21 so that we don't think a meaningful thought 09:23 and don't have, you know, any descent 09:26 and we're simply good little consumers 09:28 doing our part for the global economy 09:31 and meanwhile our freedoms are just going away 09:36 with drones coming to the Americans skies 09:39 and privacy a thing of a past. 09:44 It's worth remembering that the inquisition in Spain 09:47 arose out of the need for security following 09:50 the Christian reconquest of Spain 09:53 after hundreds of years of Moorish 09:56 or Islamic domination. 09:59 One would think that the enemy 10:01 at that time would have been Islam, 10:03 but in reality most of the efforts 10:05 of the inquisition were focused 10:07 not just on Christians themselves 10:10 but against Jews in particular 10:12 and the most feared element of the Jewishness 10:16 within their midst were those who falsely converted. 10:21 The net effect was horrible suspicion 10:24 within the community and yet as 10:25 I look back on the historical record, 10:27 no evidence ever that Jews turned on Christianity. 10:31 Similarly today we're in a time of global security 10:36 in fear of Islamic terrorism 10:39 and the net effect is that we're 10:40 lashing out to their own citizens 10:43 and creating an order of suspicion 10:45 that is ill serving freedom. 10:48 It will ill serve freedom in general and religious liberty 10:51 in particular will suffer greatly. 10:53 I believe in a parallel way to have the inquisition 10:58 a time of spiritual darkness descended not just on Spain 11:02 but the entire Christian world. 11:05 We need to avoid a repeat of that dynamic in our era. 11:10 For Liberty Insider, I am Lincoln Steed. |
Revised 2014-12-17