Neocon Gingrich Calls for Trashing the First Amendment, Few Notice or Seem to Care

By Kurt Nimmo
Nov. 30, 2006

It really is quite amazing. Newt Gingrich slanders the Constitution, arrogantly suggests the First Amendment be sent to the deep freeze, and few complain, few even comment, except bloggers at Huffington, a bastion of so-called liberalism.

“Speaking in Manchester last night, Gingrich said the country may need a different set of rules to reduce terrorists’ ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message,” the Boston Globe reported.

If we didn’t live in Bushzarro times, the response would be immediate and scorching, and Gingrich would be pilloried as the fascist he is. But we live in Bushzarro times, so little was said, except at the aforementioned Huffington and a handful of other sites.

“Our rights are not Gingrich’s to eliminate, we are endowed with them by our Creator, as some dude named Jefferson wrote in 1776,” notes a post on the NW Progressive blog. “This man intends to be the Republican president of 2008. Perhaps we should change the title of the office to Unser geliebter Fuhrer with a snappy long-armed salute of respect should he win,” another post declares on the Technocrat site. “In keeping with the Republicans’ continuing power grab and trampling all over the US Constitution, Newt says free speech laws need to be changed ‘before we lose a city,’ which he said ‘could happen in the next decade,’” writes Short News, a German site.

Apparently, it takes a German to understand the Constitution. In fact, it is not a stretch to say many Europeans understand the Bill of Rights better than your average American, who is intellectually incurious and really canā€™t be bothered.

Earlier this year, I read Anne Norton’s book, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire. Norton does not really take the Straussian neocons to task like Shadia Drury, but she did point in the right direction, specifically when she observed that Americans seem to be all too oblivious when it comes to what the neocons have in mind for us.

“Europeans rightly see the shadow of fascism in Straussian politics, and … Americans fail to,” Norton writes. “Straussian neoconservatives want a 'strong state' with a strong leader. They want an expansionist foreign policy. They praise war and warlike virtues and denounce the decadence of intellectuals. They want women to return to children, cooking, and the church. They delight in the profusion of flags: flags on cars, flags on houses, flags worn in lapels. They encourage citizens to inform on their neighbors. They plan to establish a new world order to rival Rome.”

Apparently, only decadent intellectuals insist on preservation of the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights. In Bushzarro America, most people will not miss the Bill of Rights because they have nothing to hide and even less to say.

“Neocons don't believe in debate,” explains Paul Craig Roberts. “They specialize in slandering critics and stamping out debate. Dissent is not possible within the Bush administration, because dissent is equated with treason and anti-Americanism. ‘You are with us or against us.’ Increasingly, Republicans demonize their critics as ‘abettors of terrorism.’ The Republicans' intolerance for debate makes many Americans uneasy about the real purpose of the $385 million detention camp that Halliburton is building in the US for the Bush administration.”

Or it makes some Americans uneasy.

Most simply shrug and say, “I don’t have anything to worry about because I don’t have anything to hide.”

Of course, by the time the neocon government—and by this I mean both the Republican and Democrat version of neocon—demands those with nothing to hide queue up for their subdermal microchip, it will be too late.

It really would be pathetic if it wasn't so disgusting.