[crossposted form ProgressiveHistorians.]
As progressives we’re constantly reminded by the likes of Bill Riley, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limgaugh that we need to thank all the Americans who have died in wars gone by for our right to speak out against the government.
I’m thinking that a different kind of thanks are in order.
For the past few weeks Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and that cohort have had a clown-car of crazy coming out of their talk shows. Glen Greenwald highlighted some of it here—the kind of talk that Beck, the uber-crazy conservative spokesperson Chuck Norris, and a gaggle of retired military and intelligence officials have been spouting. The short version is that they believe that the U.S. is on the verge of destruction, and they have a plan for a bunch of militia cells to rise up and overthrow the Obama government. The kicker, according to retired military, is that the U.S. armed forces—Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard—might not follow the orders of the Commander in Chief but might instead side with the militias.
Now, everyone has the right to their personal version of crazy—even a national "news" organization like Fox News. I’m a bit disturbed by their "war gaming" the overthrow of the U.S. government, but hey, that’s freedom of speech.
Still, in some ways this kind of talk has a distinctly anti-government, even, perhaps, and anti-American flavor. After all, they’re talking about the overthrow of the U.S. government. And they’re actually helping plot it. And, in many ways, they’re encouraging it.
One could make the accusation that the media is anti-American. And this particular media seems to accuse the military of being willing to go along with it.
But that’s exactly the kind of freedom of speech that conservatives love to say came at the expense of hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers’ deaths over the years. And in that they’re right.
But I think they owe a more immediate debt of gratitude. After all, Fox is a media organization. Rush is an entertainer. Chuck Norris is . . . well, whatever he his. He has an op-ed column, and he appears on Fox. Anyway, the common denominator is that they are all part of the media.
So all that got me thinking back to the last time the media came under fire for spouting anti-American views. When was the last time that a group of entertainers was accused of being too anti-American in their views? And when was the last time the military—or at least the Army—came under similar accusation?
Sure, it was the McCarthy era. But back then the tables were turned. Back then it was liberals who were supposedly plotting anti-American activities such as the overthrow of the government. Back then it was the conservatives who perpetuated a chokehold on public speech, hauling anyone they deemed "un-American" in front of congressional committees. Squads of anti-free-speech thugs made blacklists and kept a keen eye out for anyone who might be talking about overthrowing the U.S.
What stopped that? Liberalism. In perhaps one of the finest hours in U.S. history Joseph Welch excoriated Joseph McCarthy with a single plea: "At long last sir, have you no sense of decency?"
Here was a triumph of liberalism in favor of the right to free speech—free speech that included the right to speak out against the government. From that time on the media was free to become more liberal, to question, to attack, to bring to light all the ugliness of the American government.
So, Beck, Hannity, Rush, Norris, Coulter, et al.—next time you feel like going off on a rant about how militias are going to rise up and overthrow the U.S. government, and how you think Supreme Court justices and presidential candidiates ought to be poisoned, and about how you plan to help break up the Union because you don’t like our current administration. . . .
Thank a liberal for your right to say it.
You stupid douchebags.