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

[Michael Butler]

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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