Anthony Man The Sun-Sentinel & The Miami Herald

August 31, 2009

Anthony Man
The Sun-Sentinel & The Miami Herald
200 East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301

RE: I’m terrified – A comment on your story in today’s Sun-Sentinel about Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz shedding her Ms. Nice Guy persona.

Mr. Man,

The sun was not yet up when I read your scary story about Little Debbie “going on the offensive”. I guess that means “punch back twice as hard”.

Now that she’s member of Congress and, as such, has access to guys with guns and Federal badges there’s no telling who she will enlist to her storm trooper brigade to stifle speech. Scratch a modern American Liberal and you find a brown shirted thug who always thinks a boot to the face, to cite Orwell, is the way to respond to someone who voices anything contrary to her revealed truths.

I say this because when she was a Florida State Senator she sent the cops after me because she didn’t like what I wrote about her.

2 men, Agent Thomas and Agent Mineva, both members of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, men with badges and guns, showed up at my house on September 18, 2001 to “discuss” my letters to her.

It was the classic good cop/bad cop routine. I asked them whether I should continue writing to her. Agent Mineva said “Stop writing to her”. Agent Thomas was nicer. He said I should be more conciliatory.

Forget the particular cast of characters. Armed police officers came to my house at the behest of an elected member of the Florida legislature to “counsel” me on what I wrote to a politician. “Slippery slope?” “Chilling effect?”

Modern American Liberals, of whom Congresswoman Wasserman-Schultz is the poster girl and template, are always hectoring every one else about “slippery slopes” and “chilling effects”. There is a perpetual exception to this. It is when she is having the pie thrown at her. God knows what she can do now. Perhaps her friend in the White House can send a few SEALs to the homes of those who dare to question her. Perhaps, assuming that Camp Gitmo is emptied of Muslim terrorists, it will be filled with those who dare to question her.

Freedom of speech permitted a dozen naked homosexuals to masturbate in front of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan. Who went “on the offensive” then?

Her C.V. says that she has both a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree in Political Science. It would be deuced difficult to get one and absolutely impossible to get both without some knowledge of Greece and the Agora. She managed to do both.

It all began there.

Speech, particularly political speech, is either free or it isn’t. It’s like being pregnant. You either are or you aren’t. It is or it isn’t.

Your lead paragraph
“U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, D-Weston, went
on the offensive Sunday night against critics of health care reform”
should have included that she was on the telephone. She was so sure of her plan that she was afraid to be there in person to explain it. She owed her constituency the courtesy to talk to them face to face. In fact, it was her duty to do so. So what if she took a few metaphorical pies in the face.

“Politics ain’t beanbag.” It is filled with sharp elbows, sharper words, and still sharper passions. That we do it for no other reason than we can is sufficient to do it.

It is a gift of ours “from beyond the stars”. No benevolent monarch, no “good” government, gave it to us. We had it at birth.

Sophocles fleshed it out 26 centuries ago.

“FREE MEN SPEAK WITH FREE TONGUES”

Good advice then; good advice now. Men have died so that others can exercise it.

Nat Hentoff wrote a book titled “Free Speech for Me But Not for Thee”. The title has become Little Debbie’s guide to current politics.

Gods forbid that there should be an American Tienamin Square. I don’t know who will step in front of the tank. I do know that Little Debbie, AKA Hauptman Wasserman-Schultz, will be driving it.





Kevin Smith