Stephen L. Goldstein, The Sun-Sentinel

May 1, 2011

Stephen L. Goldstein
The Sun-Sentinel
200 E. Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301

RE: How crowded does the theatre have to be before I can’t yell “Fire”? – Some comments on your column suggesting that everyone but you and your true believers can do with a few “chilling effects” on that notorious “slippery slope”.

My dear Professor,

First, since I believe that “modesty is an overrated virtue” I congratulate myself for turning a promise made into a promise kept.

I “eschewed obfuscation” and, as a serendipitous bonus, the persiflage so required of fire breathing, card carrying modern American Liberal for all of Lent.

It was easy. I stopped reading you for Lent.

Laus tibi Cristi! He is Risen!

As a reward for my good deed I get to come back at you with a poleax, wit, a scalpel, irony tinged by a sardonic view, History, or all as the situation dictates.

Your topic today is free speech with the usual modern American Liberal caveat of while all speech is free some speech is more free than others. As much as I would like to take credit for that line I must tell you that Orwell beat me to it.

May I suggest some reading material as you wait for this year’s “summer of recovery” to kick in? Nat Hentoff, as true a modern American Liberal as can be found save for his apostasy on abortion, wrote a book titled “Free Speech For Me But Not For Thee”. One of his premises is that when “eclectic indignation”, that is to say your guy versus their guy, rules standards shift. Of course, if standards shift they can’t be standards can they?

As a personal example my daughter missed graduating from college with honors by .008 of a point. Ouch! When the chains are stretched out it sill takes 10 yards to get four more downs, doesn’t it?

Despite never having met you I hereby name you Czar Stevie the First. Instead of a mace and scepter you have the world’s boniest, sharpest pointing finger. You need this digit when you lecture from the esteemed Mrs. Grundy Chair at the prestigious Pecksnifian Institute.



I am sure it will surprise you when you find out that all your negative examples, all, with no exceptions, are Republicans. I rather imagine that the last Republican you liked was Abraham Lincoln. Speaking of “free speech”, I don’t know if you aware that the Democrats called him a “baboon” in the campaign of 1864. Further, the Democratic Party wanted a settlement with the South. The only Logical conclusion to be drawn from that would be that the Democrats supported slavery.

I recall Mr. Justice Marshall saying that the most bigoted, most racist President in the 20th century was T. Woodrow Wilson. When he ran for re-election in 1916 he said “he would not send American boys to fight in European Wars”. That seems to be a lie associated with several other Democratic Presidents in both the 20th and 21st centuries. Is it OK if I say that? Do you suppose there was a connection when Wilson sent his Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, he of Palmer Raids fame, after all the bad guys? From a management stand point he would have made Peter Drucker proud. He didn’t let the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments get in the way. Whatever the 1919/1920 version of waterboarding was called he did it.

15 years later, at the urging of a Democrat White House, an overwhelmingly Democratic House gave us HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee. Packing the Supreme Court made sense too. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. Later, when Governor Earl Warren was asked to round up all the Japs and put them into the 1942 version of Gitmo, he did it willingly. The results of the 1940 Census proved invaluable in separating the Japanese from the Chinese.

Am I a “loudmouth” yet?

Like a typical mush brained modern American Liberal you confuse and misuse terms. Thus, when you say “rhetorical sparks are flying” you display a total ignorance of Rhetoric. Rhetoric is a vital part, one third of a troika known as the Trivium. The other two, Logic and Grammar, are capstones of what can be called Western Civilization. Since modern American Liberals recoil at both the standards and proscriptions that make up a civilization it is understandable that “those words mean exactly what you want them to mean”. A wink is as good as a nod to a blind mule, right? What you meant to say was that “sophist sparks are flying”.

Did not Candidate Obama promise us that when he was elected “the oceans would stop rising”? The truth is I never believed that but I never said it. Did the fact that he said it make him a liar? If so would my calling him that make me a “loudmouth” who is guilty of sedition?

I ask this because I have had members of various police departments, men with badges and guns, come to my house because of things that I wrote. You’ll be surprised to know that in each and every instance the aggrieved public official was a modern American Liberal. Is that the mAL solution to criticism? Send in the cops?


We have had a Democratic member of the Wisconsin legislature tell a Republican member that she was “fucking dead”. Where would you rate that on the “loudmouth” scale?

Have the Brown shirts of the ‘30s been replaced by the Purple shirted SEIU thugs who beat up people in wheelchairs? The Attorney General has said that it is OK for armed Black men to intimidate White voters? Imagine the clamor if a Meese or an Ashcroft has said “my people” like Holder did. At least we know that Palmer’s brand is still on the Justice Department.

Since you confuse sophistry and Rhetoric there is no chance that the following will be known to you either.

“FREE MEN SPEAK WITH FREE TONGUES”

Don’t tell me to shut up.







Kevin Smith