Conservatives hate free speech.

[kentuck]

Otherwise, why would they be working so hard to get theaters not to show Mike Moore's new movie, Fahrenheit 9/11? They love to hear the sound of their own voices all day long on talk radio and cable television. But, they have a problem when someone speaks up and disagrees with their point of view. Their first impulse is to find some way to censor the opposing viewpoint. Just like they didn't want the Reagan movie on CBS. But they were successful in that censoring attempt, unfortunately.

They seem to have no problem with shutting down voices that disgree with them? Just like they shut down callers to their talk shows...You see, they hate our freedoms. They really do. Especially our freedom of speech.

[bluestateguy]

1. We didn't try to prevent them from seeing "Passion of the Christ"

We may have made a few cracks about it, but we made no effort to stop it from airing. We let the conservatives have their movie.

[TowelBoy]

4. Hey hey hey

When the hell did the Passion become a conservative movie?! Jesus was a liberal or I'll eat my hat!

[kentuck]

5. The Religious Right adopted it as "their" movie...

Although you are right about Jesus being a liberal. But in todays world, the "Christians" are exclusionists. Liberals are not permitted to be part of "their" movie....

[TowelBoy]

8. Oh, I disagree

My church is very liberal. Kerry is a perfect example of how many Catholics are still sane. Though I have to admit the rift is getting... it's getting tense, to say the least.

[Delano]

9. The Passion was not about Jesus or his teachings.

It was an endless orgy of torture & gore porn.

[Mechatanketra]

10. Exactly the distinction to make.

It's entirely possible for The Passion to be a "conservative" movie even though Jesus's teachings seem rather liberal, because the conservative strain of Christianity is all about marginalizing Jesus's actual teachings in favor of his mythic-martyr status. It's only important to them that "he died for your sins!", and anything he said before then is petty details.

[Solon]

2. One of the many differences between them and us...

I would not dream of suppressing their voices, either in the media, or on the street. I simply want all viewpoints to be presented fairly in the news and for everyone to be allowed the freedom to voice their opinions.

[DBoon]

3. Why Rush cries "censorship"

when Tom Harkin wants to ADD liberal voices to his existing 1 hour per day program.

I always thought censorship was preventing someone from speaking their mind, not allowing others to speak as well

[TowelBoy]

6. Bah

It pisses me off sometimes, it really does. Next person who tells me F 9/11 shouldn't be played in a movie theatre, I'm seriously going to teach him the importance of my second amendment, too. Assholes.

And yeah, that wasn't very liberal of me, but sometimes ya gotta vent, nyet?

[Cat Atomic]

7. They also endorse state torture, execution, genocide,

police brutality, institutionalized racism... hell, some of the extremists at Free Republic want domestic concentration camps for the "undesirables".

A distaste for free speech is not surprising from people who despise the Constitution so much. But give 'em a break. They're cowards. They're very scared, and scared people do stupid things.

[Mechatanketra]

11. Conservatives hate ANYTHING being free.

They want you to have to BUY it. ;-)

Seriously, though, this is one of the most significantly ingrained traits to the modern right-wing mind: intellectual cowardice. The difference between the two faces of conservative opinion -- the smug 'horse sense' lecturer and the foaming-mouth psychotic -- are basically divided entirely by whether or not they get the security blanket of an abort switch on the debate. (Bill O'Reilly is an incredibly well-documented example of this Jekyll-Hyde routine -- on the air, where he's master of the domain, he struggles to maintain the appearance of arrogance born of confidence in one's facts and record of successful deductions; 'in the field', when confronted in an environment where he doesn't get to edit after the fact and control what's said and what's heard, he becomes a Neanderthal.)