Right, Left Working to Destroy
First Amendment
by Dan Ehrlich

A lawyer down south is jailed for refusing to recite the pledge of allegiance and the word gay is censored from a new Hollywood film because it was deemed pejorative. You can literally say our freedom’s are being eroded right and left.

America has long been a nation where our population has been kept in check through workplace pressure. We never needed gulags or concentration camps. The very real threat of losing your job and your middle class life was enough to maintain domestic tranquility. McCarthyism had been a prime example of this until more recent times when political correctness quickly became a far more pervasive and subtle method of individual control.

Today, during what many people feel is our economic and social decline, nerves have become raw and tempers more volatile with the political and religious right still trying to ram religion and family values down our throats.

“Recite it, or you’ll be locked up, a Mississippi judge told a free-speech attorney. He sent him to jail after he refused to recite the pledge of allegiance in court..

Judge Talmadge Littlejohn demanded that Attorney Danny Lampley recite the oath during a court session and when the lawyer didn’t, he was jailed.

“I don’t have to say it because I’m an American,” Lampley said. Lampley, 49, was in jail for five hours, and was let out in time for a case he had to attend to. He said that he wasn't going to back down from the issue even though he respects the judge.

"I'm speechless. The judge needs a reminder copy of the First Amendment," Judith Schaeffer, a rights activist said. "Danny loves the Constitution. He's a staunch defender of constitutional rights." And Danny could wind up in big, big trouble. Unfortunately, there are areas of the nation where old habits just keep hanging on. The pledge, about freedom and justice was used by this judge to deny a man justice and take away his freedom.

In Nazi Germany all citizens, and especially members of the party and public officials, had to frequently give the infamous Nazi salute which was an act of loyalty to Hitler. Our pledge to the flag, while having nothing to do with Nazism, is similar as an act of loyalty to our country, just not one despot.

And a good argument can be made for the pledge, especially in schools, considering the explosion of immigrants here during the past 25 years. On the other hand an even better argument can be made for why we don't have the same requirement for many of these people learning to English.

Judge Littlejohn is part of America’s polarization between right and left, both with the goal to
mold the nation in the image they want despite the Bill of Rights.

The left seemingly has had a dream of recreating America into a nation where all gender, ethnic and racial differences will disappear in a massive polyglot of equality. But, to do this the Bill of Rights will have to be bypassed, if not so much by the government, by private industry,

Hollywood has long tried to portray slices of American life in comedic, dramatic or historical contexts. And part of this was frequent use of the common everyday language, which often included racial or sexual comments. After all this was art.

Gradually, the various minority groups that help make up America protested, often on deaf corporate ears. "There will be no censorship of art" was Hollywood’s answer….that was until money became a big factor. The top rated 70s TV show Soap was cancelled because of sponsor boycott organized by the religious right over an openly gay character in the show.

Now a new comedy film, The Dilemma, featuring a promo trailer in which Vince Vaughan says,“Not homosexual gay, but your-parents-chaperoning-you-at-the-dance gay” has had that bit cut by Universal Pictures after a protest from a gay rights pressure group. It claimed that it wasn't a positive use of the term...a word that past generations will remember meaning happy or care free.

As for art, does it come down to this: Seeing life as it is, as it should be or as the right, left and various pressure groups would have us look at things? Along with our recessionary raw nerves are endless opportunities to be more and more petty about things that never before were issues. Aside from films, everyone from sports stars to politicians who slur gays in public are open to the wrath of homosexual pressure groups.

Yet this may be how America maintains order and civility during a possibly less than bright future...workplace pressure where the kiss of death will be to be branded a racist, sexist or homophobic.. This is how pre War Britain was, where a person may have loathed minorities and Americans, fore examples, but seldom would say so in public. It just wasn't British.

So you might see where we are heading…eventually it will too risky even mentioning words such as gay in films, so along with the N word, F Word, L Word, M Word and all other letters substituted for un-PC words, add the G Word. As a transition, just the letters may be used in scripts instead of the words. Or maybe the offending un PC words will be bleeped out as on This Movie Channel.

As media self censorship increases along with America’s economic regression towards its past, we may have chance to see those banal 50s family shows, such as Ozzie and Harriet, all over again…totally inoffensive and bland. Except this time around they will be multi racial, multi ethnic and multi sexual shows, but with no mention of anyone’s racial, ethnic or sexual identity. So, what's wrong with that?












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