Extremism In The Defense Of Liberty

Some artists such as Keb Mo have taken a different path. Instead of protesting the war and the Iraqi reconstruction, courtesy of Halliburton, Keb Mo’s new album, Peace…Back By Popular Demand, covers such songs as the Rascal’s “People Gotta Be Free,” Dylan’s “Times They Are a Changing,” as well as Lennon’s “Imagine”. Keb Mo sought to take a more positive approach. “This is not the time to be angry,” Keb Mo said. “Some people are going to want blood for blood, but that is not the answer.” Mo may have a point that being anti anything is not positive and that offering messages of peace, love, and understanding is. Unfortunately Clear Channel, Sinclair, and other media behemoths won’t stop their censorship. “Imagine,” a song that asks the listener to do exactly that, still tops the list of do not play material at both networks. 

How much influence Springsteen and others have in swaying the voters remains to be seen. While it is encouraging to see major artists such as Springsteen and Jackson Browne taking a stand against an unconscionable war, it is equally frightening to see how easily those voices are kept to a minimum. While some “independent” stations may buck the broadcast blackout on artists and songs protesting the war, one has only to look at the numbers of corporate owned stations in every major market to see that cities like Denver have no other media outlets than those owned by conservative conglom- erates that back the president. 

The government through the Patriot Act and it’s ever expansion of powers is controlling what can’t be controlled through ownership. Government censorship in the defense of democracy is nothing new to this country. Eighty-six years ago President Wilson signed the Espionage Act, which was readily passed by a cooperative Congress. The act gave sweeping powers to key federal figures, most of whom were presidential appointees. The legislature only balked at legalizing outright censorship of the press, even though Wilson deemed it “an imperative necessity.” 

The Espionage Act gave the Postmaster General the right to refuse to deliver any periodical he viewed as unpatriotic or critical of the Wilson administration. Thomas Gregory, Wilson’s Attorney General, demanded that libraries report the names of patrons who requested books deemed “questionable and unpatriotic.” Following on the heels of the Espionage Act came the Sedition Act. This bold bit of legislation made it a crime punishable by 20 years in prison to “utter, print, write or publish any disloyal profane, scurrilous or abusive language about the government.” To make certain this law was enforced the FBI created a volunteer organization christened the American Protective League. In just a few short months this watchdog group had nearly 100,000 members. Even the progressive Walter Lippmann called society “too big, too complex for the average person to comprehend,” and urged that citi- zens subordinate self-rule to “order.” 

Recently Cat Stevens was denied entry into the United States. The Homeland Security Forces diverted his London to Washington flight to Bangor, Maine so they could remove the former pop singer and send him packing back to England. Obviously, Tom Ridge must have felt that Cat Stevens was a security threat to the country or at the very least that a song like “Peace Train” carried some subversive message harmful to U.S. citizens. 

Born Stephen Georgiou in the United States, he changed his name to Cat in the late 1960s. After a string of pop hits Cat abandoned his career and changed his name again, this time to Yusuf Islam. He also converted to Islam and changed his U.S. address to an English one. Cat has denounced the events of 9-11, the Spanish railway bombings, and the Chechnyan attack on the Russian grade school, all perpetrated by Muslim extremists. A visit to his website reveals all sorts of archaic 1960’s peace/love messages. Obviously, the peace messages must be in code that Ridge and his cohorts were able to crack. The irony was that Stevens/Islam was en route to Washington to promote a CD that has half of its royalties going to the 9-11 Fund.  

The reason Yusuf Islam aka Cat Stevens was deported was that his name is on the Homeland Security’s “no-fly” list. This is the same security system that also put Senator Ted Kennedy and Representative John Lewis on the “no-fly” list. Somehow a Cat Stevens CD doesn’t seem to be part of Al Qaeda’s attack of terror on the United States. The real attack is far more insidious. It comes from a White House administration that sells fear like bottled water. Hopefully, Americans won’t get fooled again, as Pete Townsend would say, and allow their civil rights and Constitutional freedoms to disappear. A democracy lacking basic civil rights sounds awfully close to a dictatorship at worst and a monarchy at best and we already told the British that homie don’t play that back in 1776.