[Mb-civic] FW: We Have The Right To Remain Silent But The Duty To Speak

[richard haase]

i loved lenny bruce
michael you are becomign a curmudgeon
lol
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Butler" <michael at michaelbutler.com>
To: "Civic" <mb-civic at islandlists.com>; "HAIR List"
<mb-hair at islandlists.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 1:01 PM
Subject: [Mb-civic] FW: We Have The Right To Remain Silent But The Duty To
Speak


> Remember when we produced LENNY.
> I hated his act but believed in his right to perform it.
> Michael
>
> ------ Forwarded Message
> From: ean at sbcglobal.net
> Reply-To: ean at sbcglobal.net
> Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 20:07:08 -0800
> To: ean at sbcglobal.net
> Subject: We Have The Right To Remain Silent But The Duty To Speak
>
>
> Today's commentary:
> http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-02/15z.cfm
>
> ==================================
>
> ZNet Commentary
> We Have The Right To Remain Silent But The
> Duty To Speak
>
> February 15, 2005
> By Mickey Z
>
> Submitted for your consideration: "He was prosecuted because of his
> words.
> He didn't harm anybody; he didn't commit an assault; he didn't steal; he
> didn't engage in any conduct, which directly harmed someone else. So,
> therefore, he was punished, first and foremost, because of the words he
> used."
>
> That's not Colorado's Governor Bill Owens taking about Ward Churchill.
> These are the words of a former assistant district attorney who helped
> prosecute comedian/social commentator Lenny Bruce. The last line of that
> quote reads:"We drove him into poverty and used the law to kill him."
>
> The repressive wrath of state power played a major role in Bruce's
> premature death...but Bruce and Churchill are but two of many who have
> endured the time-honored American tradition of stifling dissent.
>
> >From the Founding Father's Alien and Sedition Act to today's PATRIOT
> >Act...Ice T has it right when he raps: "Freedom of speech? Just watch
> >what you say."
>
> Another fine example of gagging opposition was the case of Eugene V.
> Debs.
> America's entrance into World War I provoked a tightening of civil
> liberties, culminating with the passage of the Espionage and Sedition Act
> in June 1917. This totalitarian salvo read in part: "Whoever, when the
> United States is at war, shall willfully cause or attempt to cause
> insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or
> naval forces of the United States, shall be punished by a fine of not more
> than $10,000 or imprisonment of not more than 20 years, or both."
>
> One year after the Espionage and Sedition Act was voted into law, Debs
> was
> in Canton, Ohio for a Socialist Party convention. He was arrested for
> making a speech deemed "anti-war" by the Canton district attorney. In that
> speech, Debs declared, "They have always taught and trained you to
> believe
> it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves
> slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the
> people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it
> certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared
> by the people."
>
> These words led to a 10-year prison sentence and the stripping of his U.S.
> citizenship. (While serving his sentence in the federal penitentiary, Debs
> was nominated for the fifth time as the Socialist Party's presidential
> candidate, campaigned from his jail cell, and remarkably garnered 917,799
> votes.)
>
> Some forty-odd years later in 1965, as Lenny Bruce was just beginning to
> wilt from the relentless heat he was facing, William S. Burroughs' novel,
> "Naked Lunch" was prosecuted as "obscene" by the state of Massachusetts
> (soon followed by other states). First published in 1959 by Maurice
> Girodias and Olympia Press, "Naked Lunch" quickly became infamous
> across
> Europe...even in countries where it was banned.
>
> Among those who served as an expert witness in defense of Burroughs and
> his vision was Norman Mailer (Massachusetts Superior Court Judge
> Eugene
> Hudson famously asked Mailer if any of his own novels involved "sex in
> the
> nakedsense.") The trial combined such unusual testimony with facts like
> the words "fuck, shit, ass, cunt, prick, asshole, and cocksucker"
> appearing a combined total of 234 times on 235 pages. Eventually, Hudson
> ruled against the book.
>
> A year later, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared the work
> "not obscene" thus upholding the U.S. Supreme Court's Brennan doctrine"
> (the decision that cleared Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" of obscenity
> charges and holds that only works "utterly without redeeming value" could
> legally be banned). It would prove to be the last time a work of
> literature was prosecuted on obscenity charges in the United States.
>
> Today we have Ward Churchill taking a hit for words of a different
> kind...words deemed obscene for their political weight. You may agree or
> disagree with his thesis and/or his method of articulating that thesis,
> but to support the witch hunt is to contribute to the current zeitgeist of
> fear and conformity. To those who call Churchill's opinions "treasonous,"
> I declare that the genuine treason we Americans can engage is to accept
> the silencing of others (most recently Lynne Stewart) and to remain silent
> ourselves.
>
> Eugene Debs had reply when the same charge of treason was leveled at
> him:
> "Do not worry over the charge of treason to your masters, but be
> concerned
> about the treason that involves yourselves. Be true to yourself and you
> cannot be a traitor to any good cause on earth."
>
> William Burroughs had this to say about keeping our opinions to
> ourselves:
> "Modern man has lost the option of silence."
>
> Lenny Bruce summed up: "Take away the right to say fuck and you take
> away
> the right to say 'fuck the government'."
>
> Mickey Z. is the author of several books and can be found on the Web
> at:http://www.mickeyz.net.
>
>
> -- 
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>
> "In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
>    ---   George Orwell
>
>
>
>
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