by B.D. Bolin

Created on: February 12, 2008

As the Fox News Channel has risen in viewership and significance in the media landscape, a terrifying new breed of ultra-conservative thought has eeked into the public sphere. The hard right has convinced a nation of people too intoxicated by sensationalistic television news to do any research that speaking out against the President's illegal, hypocritical, and grossly immoral actions somehow amounts to treason. It is our duty as Americans to reclaim our right to voice our opinions, and to question the leadership of our country.

Talking head facists like Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter have polluted the national discourse by insisting that their views (which are extreme, reactionary, and out of step with educated Americans) are the "American" views, and that those that disagree are somehow not patriotic. Besides the fact that I don't think either of them actually belive that (they're both well-educated and masters at media manipulation), it is patently false. It's not for nothing that the very first amendement to the Constitution guarantees that citizens can speak freely, without fear of reprisals from the government. By mobilizing an army of people who aren't free thinkers, who have a childish, black-and-white view of the world, and who aren't particularly well-educated, they have built a voting block of people who are warmly embracing facism, all the while thinking their waving a flag of freedom.

Freedom cannot exist in the absence of dissent. Look at countries like China, where political rebels and journalists are routinely jailed or "disappeared" for expressing views that contradict what is coming out of the government. In Islamic fundamentalist states, those who speak out against the ruling parties are frequently killed in gruesome ways. These are not the kinds of governments we should be patterning ourselves on, yet the corporate interests that fund the Republican party are desperate to stop the spread of free speech, and the connected ideas of workers rights, living wage, environmental responsibility, and corporate accounatability. By silencing his critics with the "unpatriotic" label, Bush and his criminal cronies have successfully turned our democracy toward theocratic totalitarianism, a situation our citizens are only now waking up to, now that our record surplus is an unprecedented national debt, and thousands of our brave young men and women have been slaughtered for the profit gain of large multi-nationals.

It is not only unpatriotic not to speak out against Bush and his crimes, it is unpatriotic to suggest that we shouldn't. It is Coulter, O'Reilly, and their ilk that are the traitors, and if they don't like the freedom that my country provides, they can get the hell out.

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