Gingrich raises alarm at free-speech dinner
 

Gingrich raises alarm at free-speech dinner

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire -- Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich yesterday said the country will be forced to reexamine freedom of speech to meet the threat of terrorism.

Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a "different set of rules" may be needed to reduce terrorists' ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.

"We need to get ahead of the curve before we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade," said Gingrich, a Republican who helped engineer the GOP's takeover of Congress in 1994.

Gingrich spoke to about 400 state and local power brokers last night at the annual Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment award dinner, which fetes people and organizations that stand up for freedom of speech.

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At risk of displaying outrage fatigue....

:zzz:

It's not like Gingrich is part of the government or anything. We only encourage him by paying attention to him.

I'm just intrigued at the idea of losing a city. How careless?

He thinks he's going to be your next President.

I don't appreciate your attitude, we're trying to maintain a sufficiently paranoid electorate to justify our roll back of the Bill of Rights, current level of overeseas deployments, and absurd military spending. Shame on you for calling us on it.

Griff, your sig is killing me... not because it is mine... because of the visual it is giving me out of context.

He gave you a star. That can only be a good thing.

I just see Seuss characters running around with their big yellow bouffants on fire. It's beautiful.
Get out of here
Get out of there
We need to get the f*ck out of everywhere

So the quote is mis attributed. It should have listed Dr Seuss as its author.

LOL.

Whatever meds tw is on... I want some. lol

Gingrich was speaking to a bunch of people gathered to honor champions of/for free speech and the article didn't mention the reaction of the attendees to his remarks? I find that piss poor (or bias) reporting.:eyebrow:

I think given that its a CNN article and that the audience was adequately described as free speech advocates that the reaction was somewhat predictable.

Since it would have been much easier for Mr. Gingrich -regardless of one's opinion of him- to "tell the audience what they 'paid him to tell them'" it gets my attention that he, instead, chose to tell them like it is.

It would appear that bin Laden has enjoyed more success than he could ever have imagined in terms of eroding America from the inside. To hear such as this from someone like Gingrich is indeed sobering if not alarming.

We may really be faced with choices tougher than we are ready to face. Is it truly necessary for us to sacrifice what we are to protect ourselves? When some smart guy (help me out with who it was) said anyone who gives up freedom for security deserves neither - did he contemplate a 9/11 world? Would he say the same thing today or would he side with Newt?

Time for America to decide what it wants so it seems. We can either take the pricipled position and take a hit or we can become less "American" and give more power to the government to protect us. Personally, I think we should stick with what got us here. Even it its my town to go up in a mushroom cloud. At least the rest of America can "martyr" us and defend our existing principles.

America is no stranger to shedding blood to defend its right to exist as conceived. I see no reason to revisit that - potentially personal sacrifices not withstanding.

They die for a purpose. We die for a purpose. We kill for a purpose. They kill for a purpose. But the idea that we have to become more like them to defeat them is to hand them a victory without exacting a price. Nothing American about that. Nothing. Sorry Newt. I vote to retain rights granted to me and guaranteed to me. Find another way to win. If I have to pay for my descendents' freedom than so be it. Somebody paid for mine so its only fair.

Ben Franklin, Beestie: he of "A Republic -- if you can keep it."

Of course, we and a great deal of the rest of humanity -- and our cause is humanity's, as our foes are explicitly antidemocratic -- are much better off once we win this war. The particularly tricky part, I think, is how we'll know we have indeed won -- amorphous terrorist groups hardly have territory to defend, though their national sponsors do, nor capital cities. If anything but bigotry motivates our foes at bottom, I've yet to hear of it and to be convinced. I'm even less convinced that we should "take a hit" from such a lot of swinish fascists. Should they not suffer for their disenlightenment? Do we have to decapitate all the authoritarians or can we get the job done at a half or a third? I think it is the unfree, the slavemongers, who must tremble at our righteous wrath.

There are those who expect all our nation's troubles to originate from those parts of the world not meaningfully connected to the greater global economy: most of the continent of Africa and a considerable swatch of Araby; the Axis of Evil, and on a back burner places like the Transcaucasus. Note this sample includes a lot of Islamic countries.

I wondered about that too... but, it may be hard to "report" ten min. of stunned silence.