{"id":162833,"date":"2015-07-01T13:19:08","date_gmt":"2015-07-01T13:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=162833"},"modified":"2015-07-01T13:19:08","modified_gmt":"2015-07-01T13:19:08","slug":"final-link-chain-around-neck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/final-link-chain-around-neck\/","title":{"rendered":"The Final Link in the Chain Around Your Neck"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cIf you don\u2019t want a man unhappy politically, don\u2019t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it\u2026. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of \u2018facts\u2019 they feel stuffed, but absolutely \u2018brilliant\u2019 with information. Then they\u2019ll feel they\u2019re thinking, they\u2019ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they\u2019ll be happy, because facts of that sort don\u2019t change.\u201d \u00e2\u20ac\u2022 Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451<\/em><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How do you change the way people think? You start by changing the words they use.<\/p>\n

In totalitarian regimes\u2013a.k.a. police states\u2013where conformity and compliance are enforced at the end of a loaded gun, the government dictates what words can and cannot be used. In countries where the police state hides behind a benevolent mask and disguises itself as tolerance, the citizens censor themselves, policing their words and thoughts to conform to the dictates of the mass mind.<\/p>\n

Even when the motives behind this rigidly calibrated reorientation of societal language appear well-intentioned\u2013discouraging racism, condemning violence, denouncing discrimination and hatred\u2013inevitably, the end result is the same: intolerance, indoctrination and infantilism.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s political correctness disguised as tolerance, civility and love, but what it really amounts to is the chilling of free speech and the demonizing of viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite.<\/p>\n

As a society, we\u2019ve become fearfully polite, careful to avoid offense, and largely unwilling to be labeled intolerant, hateful, closed-minded or any of the other toxic labels that carry a badge of shame today. The result is a nation where no one says what they really think anymore, at least if it runs counter to the prevailing views. Intolerance is the new scarlet letter of our day, a badge to be worn in shame and humiliation, deserving of society\u2019s fear, loathing and utter banishment from society.<\/p>\n

For those \u201chaters\u201d who dare to voice a different opinion, retribution is swift: they will be shamed, shouted down, silenced, censored, fired, cast out and generally relegated to the dust heap of ignorant, mean-spirited bullies who are guilty of various \u201cword crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

We have entered a new age where, as commentator Mark Steyn notes<\/a>, \u201cwe have to tiptoe around on ever thinner eggshells\u201d and \u201cthe forces of \u2018tolerance\u2019 are intolerant of anything less than full-blown celebratory approval.\u201d<\/p>\n

In such a climate of intolerance, there can be no freedom speech, expression or thought.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf you don\u2019t want a man unhappy politically, don\u2019t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-162833","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162833\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}