Ron Paul, Alberto Moravia and Lord Bertrand Russell vs The Censors

Silverwolf has warned of the ominous turn our civil liberties are taking when we talk of “monitoring” certain forms of “radical” speech which the government deems “violent”, as defined in the new draconian gag-bill, HR. 1955. This bill could easily prevent a union from calling for a strike on the grounds of “economic sabotage”. It’s glaring defect is that we already have all the laws we need on the books to control violence-inducing speech under our inciting-to-riot laws, as well as the fact that the FBI and CIA are pretty much mandated to monitor exactly this kind of speech right now.  Can one doubt that if some radical violence-inducing religious figure were to use inflamatory speech, say calling for the killing of members of a certain group, be it racial or religious, or calling for the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, or calling for the killing of everyone in the world outside of that group, that the CIA or FBI wouldn’t be on to it, and be watching for the slightest violation of law to bring a case? The situation of  certain radical Muslim clerics, who talk of cutting off the heads of Christians and Jews, and who then come to America and talk to congregations where they tone down their rhetoric to the point that it conforms to our protected speech norms — that is a clear example in which one would hope the government would be monitoring the speech under current law, but solely because this persons behaviour outside the country would have been prosecutable under current American law. Silverwolf was glad to see that the British Muslims who called for violence and murder in a demonstration outside Parliament got the book thrown at them for inciting to riot. Hear hear, Brits.

And let Silverwolf here inject another opinion. American jurisprudence has itself incited violence only recently in a way that most will not think of in those terms, but which is an accurate and true assertion, and that was in the matter of the release of Arthur Bremer after serving decades in jail for the assassination attempt against the late George Wallace. The fact that Wallace was a racist caitiff is completely immaterial here. The principle is supreme, and that principle must be that anyone who tries to assassinate a candidate for public office, especially if it is the highest office in the land, should never ever be let out of jail or criminal mental hospital. Anyone who tries such a deed has committed a crime not only against the individual, but also against every person in America who cares about the political process and the progress and defence of the Republic. Bremer should never have been set free.

But Silverwolf digresses as is the wont of wolves in the forest. Wolves like to take circuitous paths, just for the fun of it, just for a giggle.  It is the humans who are always thinking in straight lines, always trying to take the shortest route, and the most efficient. That’s why they have grown comparatively dull  when compared to the robust red-blooded individualists of the early 19th century. In colonial times, three million Americans produced Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Washington, Adams, and a score more. In modern America, with 300 million, we find only Ron Paul. And as the modest politician stated, “I know I have my weaknesses as the messenger, but the message is strong. And the truth of it will get through to the people. I’m really immaterial.” Right again, Dr. Paul.

Now, tying in with this censorship issue, are the views of two great anti-Fascists, Lord Bertrand Russell, who was mentioned in a recent post of Silverwolf’s, and the great Italian novelist, Alberto Moravia, who experienced all the misery of censorship under the Italian Fascist jackanapes, Mussolini, and his corporate-Fascist goons. Moravia finally had to flee for his life to the mountains, and sat out the war there, hiding. The fruit of this time is his brilliant and engrossing “Two Women”, which led to an equally brilliant film version with Sophia Loren. A real masterpiece both ways.

Now Moravia spoke at length in his Paris Review interview on this topic of censorship. “Censorship is an awful thing! And a damned hardy plant once it takes root! The Ministry of Culture” — which controlled censorship/Silverwolf’s note — ” was the last to close up shop.” Moravia tells how, in the midst of the collapse of Mussolini’s state, and  with all in chaos, the Ministry of Popular Culture went merrily along, defending the Morality of the Public against vicious new influences like Ideas.  Moravia describes how he was trying to publish a novel and had submitted the manuscript, but it seemed it would not be approved for publication. So he went up to Via Veneto to visit in person.  They told him they didn’t think they would be able to publish this work since it was considered subversive. When the bureaucrat left the room, Moravia walked around to look at his dossier which was open on the desk, and therein was a letter from the Brazilian cultural attache, who considered himself a poet, saying that in Brazil, Moravia was considered a subversive. It was on this basis that they refused to allow publication of his novel, “The Wheel of Fortune”. Moravia continued, “I found the manuscript scattered all over the place, scattered in several different offices,  with a number of different people reading parts of it! Censorship is monstrous, a monstrous thing! I can tell you all you want to know about it.  They started out, however, rather liberal. With time they grew worse. Besides filling up the ministry with timid grammar-school teachers, the censors were either bureaucrats or failed writers; and heaven help you if your book fell into the hands of one of those “writers”.” (transl. Ben Johnson?)

Let America ponder the words of this lifelong anti-Fascist who, in Silverwolf’s opinion, was the greatest novelist of the 20th century, if not of all time. A claim he makes not lightly after having read something by almost all of the major novelists of the last two centuries. Mark well Master Moravia’s words “They started out, however, rather liberal. With time they grew worse.”  When the U.S. Congress starts “monitoring” Constitutionally protected speech, and defining what is “violent radicalization”, we have taken the first step towards Mussolini’s Fascist charnel house.

The other great anti-Fascist we are looking at, besides Dr. Ron Paul, is old Lord Bertrand Russell, who mercifully keeled over in his garden when he was well into his 90’s and never knew what hit him. A gift from a grateful G-d to an atheist who had lived so religiously, and saved so many lives with his opposition to World War I alone, and for which opposition he was jailed by the Leviathan State of 1914-18 Britain. History proved his stand the correct and moral one.

Lord Russell was a ferocious opponent of censorship, and felt it did far more harm than any harm that could come out of not censoring. He took an extreme and “radical” view on censorship, as he put it himself, and believed virtually anything should be permitted in print.  He was a vocal opponent of the censorship of pornography, at a time when people spent long years behind bars in Europe for possessing a few grainy black-and-whites and a tarnished reputation for life. The good old days.

Russell felt it was utter moral blasphemy for the state to tell the individual what he should or should not think, or making what a man thought a moral crime. Like Libertarians, he looked only at a man’s actions, and didn’t give a damn what he believed or thought,though as a Rationalist he believed that prejudice clouded rational thought. Silverwolf agrees and thinks that only three things are required of a citizen of a Western democratic constitutional Republic like the U.S.(and being a citizen implies an unvoiced allegiance to the government that need never be explicitly forced from an individual, say, by a loyalty oath, unless in certain security branches of government like the military or the Justice Dept.), these requirements being, firstly, to obey the laws in so far as they accord with the deep moral values of a person, though he must be willing to face the music if he violates these laws (Thoreau’s night in jail for refusing to pay taxes to fund the immoral U.S. war against Mexico), secondly, to refrain from violent overthrow of the government as long as it remains lawfully elected and does not violate certain drastic norms of moral behaviour like genocide or enslavement of one segment of the populace based on race or creed, and, finally, to pay one’s share of ones legally apportioned taxes. So obey the law, don’t overthrow the government, pay your taxes.  That, in Silverwolf’s eyes, is all that should be required of the citizen in a constitutional democratic republic like the U.S., or a democratic constitutional monarchy like Britain. What you think, what your opinions are, your beliefs or lack of them in a Supreme Deity, your prejudices — none of these should fall within the realm of government or its influence on popular morality.  Lord Russell saw this clearly. The Quislings  and the peabrains of the  U.S. Congress, many of them mis-calling themselves Liberal Democrats, have voted against the advice of Lord Russell and Alberto Moravia, because most are craven cowards in the face of public opinion. Only one voice has dared to stand up and say: “you don’t have to give up any liberty to secure security. But trying to secure security by trashing the Bill of Rights will surely lose you your liberty”.

Lord Russell and Moravia had more brains in their little fingers than 404 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Only 6 Congressmen deserved that title by voting against HR 1955, the first gag law in a country that is fast losing its Jeffersonian philosophy of trust in individual liberty.

And Ron Paul is clearly on the side of Lord Russell and Moravia in his anti-Fascist views, and his knowledge of the wisdom of insecurity and freedom, in the face of religious and political fascism, the deadly desire for certainty and control. Ain’t no such thing in the cosmos.

Ron, Alberto, Bertrand, you are and were miles ahead of ‘em all. You knew the secrets of Civil  Libertarianism long before it dawned on the dinosaur-brained dimwits of the U.S. Congress. No wonder Americans are ashamed of their politicians.

That is, except for Ron Paul.

“Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom to howl.”   Hooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. —    Silverwolf

Tags: Alberto Moravia, Arthur Bremer, Bertrand Russell, censorship, HR.1955, Mussolini, Ron Paul