Okay, So I Was Wrong. Big Deal.

So...I've been thinking. (Having too much to drink over a holiday weekend will do that to you.) I decided I'm wrong.

Freedom isn't about what you do, or what you can read, or how you can act. It's all a state of mind. It's what goes on between your ears, see? That's all.

So I just don't understand why people get all worked up about things like this:

I've received email from a person with an [army.mil] address. This person is stationed in Iraq, and he/she tells me that The Memory Hole is blocked on military computers. Trying to get to the site results in the following message:

"Access Denied (content_filter_denied)

"Your request was denied because of its content categorization: 'Extreme;Politics/Religion'

"For assistance, contact your network support team."

How interesting. I post raw documents created by the government, military, and corporations. These days, that apparently amounts to"political extremism."

That person with the army.mil address can still think whatever he wants, so what's the problem? He's probably a traitorous SOB anyway, and that military address is just a cover.

It's a sad state of affairs when even a Medium Lobster understands this, but so-called intellectuals don't:

But what to do about this pernicious enemy within? Analytical wunderkind and concerned lover of law Glenn Reynolds muses,"Freedom of the press, as it exists today (and didn't exist, really, until the 1960s) is unlikely to survive if a majority -- or even a large and angry minority -- of Americans comes to conclude that the press is untrustworthy and unpatriotic." Quite true, Professor Reynolds. And America will likely need that angry minority if we're to inforce patriotism on our press, and end the nightmarish salvo of information and journalism that threatens to cripple the war effort. For this is not merely a war for freedom. Indeed, it is also a war against freedom - specifically, that freedom which seeks to destroy freedom.

These concepts may be too complex and nuanced for the unsophisticated or Democrats [or libertarians!--ed.] to fully grasp, but the Medium Lobster will endeavor to explain. A free-loving society must protect not only its freedoms, but the society which enables those freedoms to be protected, for if that society was to be destroyed, then all freedoms would disappear. In order for freedom to persist, we must outlaw the freedom to destroy or damage society. Thus, freedom cries out for us to destroy those freedoms which would destroy freedom, such as murder, genocide, violent revolution, sedition, criticism of good wars, publication of disheartening news regarding those wars, criticism of the Commander In Chief during wartime, the teaching of seditious literature, obscenity.

See? Even Medium Lobster understands. So what's your problem?

Freedom is all a state of mind. What's that you say? You have freedom to think whatever you want even in a dictatorship or a tyranny? Really?

Oh, stop with the facts already. You're confusing me. It's the first day of the work week. I'm not ready for facts or arguments. Check with me in a few decades, or when the war on whatever is over. And meanwhile, you can think whatever you want!

You are the luckiest person on the face of the Earth, and you don't even know it. You are a pathetic excuse for a human being. But we still love you. We pity you, but we love you.

(Thanks to tex for the links.)