Much of what I post passes, apparently, unnoticed or at least uncommented. But there's a few threads that, probably due to good placements in Google, seem to take on a life of their own. Quixtar for example.

Another such thread are my comments regarding Tim Robbin's play "Embedded", charging that the media's reports were censored and altered by the military. I ask for evidence supporting this central proposition. Apparently, this is not allowed unless I have seen the play.

I find it amusing that liberals often talk about people being "muzzled", but it seems to me they do quite a bit of it themselves: You can't support a war unless you personally are enlisted, you can't speak an opinion on abortion unless you can conceive (or have had one), and you can't ask for evidence regarding the central thesis of play unless you've first paid the guy who wrote the play some money.

Yet, nobody turns this around. How about this? New rules: You can't be opposed to a war unless you're willing to go to Iraq and act as a "human shied", standing between our troops and whoever they might shoot. You can't be for abortion unless yourself were on the receiving end of one, as a fetus. (That would shut down dissent quickly.) And you can't advocate in favor of Robbin's play unless your were a reporter whose reports were altered or censored when tried to send them back from your embedded post in Iraq.

Seems turnabout ought to be fair play, no?

But conservatives don't typically use these tactics. Not that I've seen, anyway.

That seems telling.

Ever notice that strident liberals spend a lot of time talking about "voices" and alleging "censorship" of theirs? Yet ever also notice how they will often shout down a dissenting opinion (rather than refute it calmly with evidence) or attack Bush, saying some topic (such as 9/11) is "out of bounds" when they themselves use it all the time, or use lawsuits to shut people down? Ever notice they, themselves, in academia, author endless "speech codes"?

Given this irony, this appears to be a classic case of "projection", of charging others with one's own crimes. Extremist liberals (the mainstream, today) talk about speech as "violence" because that's how they see it, and how they use it. They charge conservatives with "censorship" because it's exactly what they want to see happen. And they talk about being "muzzled" while trying to do it to any opinions they find uncomfortable or disconcerting.