Obama Truthiness In Missouri And Beyond

By Jason Kenney | Monday, September 29th, 2008 | Politics

Bill Taggert puts it well when speaking about Obama “Truth Squad Regulators For TRUTH!” in Missouri:

A famous man once said:

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

That man was John F. Kennedy.

As much as people across the political spectrum want to speak about rights being squashed over the last eight years, how on earth can anyone excuse First Amendment violations such as creating a policing squad to halt “untruthiness” with legal threats from state officials?  This is frightening.

The Obama campaign has shown that it’s not about to engage in debate with people spreading what they view to be a filth and lies:

If you value free speech, the proper response is to say yes, thanks, when the radio host invites your campaign to send someone to debate the enemy on the air.

Obama’s campaign declined.

So it did a month earlier, too, when the same WGN-AM radio host, Milt Rosenberg, gave time to yet another anti-Obama writer, Stanley Kurtz. There is no shortage of these people, it would seem.

Then, as now, the campaign refused to join the critic on the air, preferring to sic supporters onto the station’s complaint line instead. The second time that happened, the host found an Obama supporter to balance out the show, albeit one not connected to the campaign.

You can understand the campaign’s inclination not to give such writers more cred by showing up to debate them.

And yet, shouldn’t the campaign rebut these allegations in the venue where they turn up?

The response instead is to try and shut critics up.  Avoid debate, drown dissent.  Line up or be drowned out.

This is especially odd considering it’s from a candidate who routinely says that he’d be willing to speak to foreign leaders without preconditions, even leaders from such states as Iran which not only promote terrorism but speak of the annihilation of Israel as a must have in order for them to sleep at night.  The “truth squads” aren’t out in force to protest Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York despite his hateful and false rhetoric.  They’re too busy flooding AM talk shows wiht phone calls.

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