Shut Them Up!

It was nice to see some praise for Congressman, and Republican Presidential hopeful, Ron Paul, in today's Eureka Reporter. I have no idea who the guy is that wrote this guest opinion.

Paul's breaking with the rest of the pack on Iraq and 9/11 has raised some eyebrows from all sides of the aisle. At least one on the Left as called Paul "my new hero". Some in the GOP want him excluded from future candidate debates. Michigan's GOP Chair, Saul Anuzis being one calling for exclusion.

Would that be condsidered censorship? I don't know. If not, it probably comes close.

*********

As I've mentioned here not long ago, we've seen our own calls for exclusion from public debate, mostly in letters to the editor. Unlike the Ron Paul affair, the letters I've noticed criticizing the papers for printing non- politically correct letters seem to come mostly from the Left.

I believe I commented on one sent in by our very own Robash which suggested the paper shouldn't be publishing letters from a particular person. For the life of me I can't remember the subject Robash wrote on, though.

Then, there was a letter on May 2 in the Times- Standard. I couldn't find the original letter online but a letter in response is here.

In the first letter a writer criticized the paper for including hurricane expert, William Gray, in an article dealing with supposed global warming. The problem: Gray felt the oceans are more responsible for global temperatures than man is. What got me is that was one of the more even handed news articles I'd read on the issue.

But that's not politically correct. Don't listen to Gray and don't publish him. He's a nut case.

Such efforts to suppress the open and free exchange ideas should be of concern to those on all sides of the aisle.

*********

But all doesn't appear to be lost, at least here on the North Coast.

I've read time and time again about various schools, both lower and upper level educational institutions around the country, quashing written opinion because it's not poltically correct. They often do it by calling such non- pc opinion Hate Speech.

Not so at Arcata High School, of all places. Sure, some are protesting the publishing of a letter in the school newspaper calling homosexual behaviour, among other things, an immoral lifestyle. But school staff are defending their publishing of the letter.

Good for them. Then again, I suppose the fact that such a letter raised enough controversy to be considered newsworthy isn't probably all that good of a thing.

Robert Atkinson, pastor of a church in Fortuna was quoted in the article as saying, "If saying no to any behavior is hate speech, then I think we're really in trouble.".

I couldn't agree more.