Pubdate: Wed, 05 Apr 2000
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2000 The Dallas Morning News
Contact:  P.O. Box 655237, Dallas, Texas 75265
Fax: (972) 263-0456
Feedback: http://dmnweb.dallasnews.com/letters/
Website: http://www.dallasnews.com/
Forum: http://forums.dallasnews.com:81/webx
Author: Rolf Ernst, Vice President, Americans Against The Drug War

IF WE'RE NOT CAREFUL, WE MIGHT BE NEXT TARGET

Re: "White House reportedly gave magazines benefits for promoting anti-drug 
policy," April 1.

Free speech is one of the most basic rights in this country. For hundreds 
of years free media served as a bulwark against an authoritarian government.

Now all this is changing.

It is not only that federally mandated messages fly under the banner of 
free editorial content or that this sort of compliance has turned into the 
proverbial gravy train.

It is not that all this is happening clandestinely and that the 
Constitution is sold at 30 pieces of silver per article.

It is not only that civil liberties have become a matter of product 
placement or the Orwellian magnitude of what is transpiring.

It is the nonchalance in which the administration glances over the betrayal 
of its constituency.

What will be the next message that will be oozing out from our journals and 
TV sets? The policy du jour concerning our privacy and how it hinders law 
enforcement procedures? Our opinions on necessary force in policy arrests? 
Freedom of religion? Racial equality?

All this can easily be manipulated and we should make darn sure we struggle 
as hard as we can not to hand over that power to those in power.

Because, otherwise, we ourselves might be the next target.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart