What did Newt really say about free speech and terrorism?
From Newt's blog-
NEWT GINGRICH: …The third thing I want to talk about very briefly is the genuine danger of terrorism in particular terrorists using weapons of mass destruction and weapons of mass murder, nuclear and biological weapons. And I want to suggest to you that right now we should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of if it weren’t for the scale of threat. (emphasis-Smoothingplane), and (snip)
This is a serious long term war, and it will inevitably lead us to want to know what is said in every suspect place in the country, that will lead us to learn how to close down every website that is dangerous, and it will lead us to a very severe approach to people who advocate the killing of Americans and advocate the use of nuclear of biological weapons.
And, my prediction to you is that ether before we lose a city, or if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying us.
This is a serious problem that will lead to a serious debate about the first amendment, but I think that the national security threat of losing an American city to a nuclear weapon, or losing several million Americans to a biological attack is so real that we need to proactively, now, develop the appropriate rules of engagement.
And, I further think that we should propose a Geneva convention for fighting terrorism which makes very clear that those who would fight outside the rules of law, those who would use weapons of mass destruction, and those who would target civilians are in fact subject to a totally different set of rules that allow us to protect civilization by defeating barbarism before it gains so much strength that it is truly horrendous. (emphasis-Smoothingplane)
This is a sober topic, but I think it is a topic we need a national dialogue about, and we need to get ahead of the curve rather than wait until actually we literary lose a city which could literally happen within the next decade if we are unfortunate. So…
(APPLAUSE)
And, my prediction to you is that ether before we lose a city, or if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying us.
This is a serious problem that will lead to a serious debate about the first amendment, but I think that the national security threat of losing an American city to a nuclear weapon, or losing several million Americans to a biological attack is so real that we need to proactively, now, develop the appropriate rules of engagement.
And, I further think that we should propose a Geneva convention for fighting terrorism which makes very clear that those who would fight outside the rules of law, those who would use weapons of mass destruction, and those who would target civilians are in fact subject to a totally different set of rules that allow us to protect civilization by defeating barbarism before it gains so much strength that it is truly horrendous. (emphasis-Smoothingplane)
This is a sober topic, but I think it is a topic we need a national dialogue about, and we need to get ahead of the curve rather than wait until actually we literary lose a city which could literally happen within the next decade if we are unfortunate. So…
(APPLAUSE)
A very, very sober topic. Ungraspable by too many people. Grasp rhymes with gasp. At the sight of planes hitting the tops of buildings, people gasped, "Oh my God!". We ought to hold those pictures in our hearts, and look into our hearts everyday. My darkest nightmares for this country and western civilzation I will not say. In my imagination grim scenes play, too much suffering. Where is the national will? Will it be rousesd before catatrophe calls? By whom? We must fight to preserve what is too easy to destroy, more difficult to build. At the vary prime of the Industrial Revolution, the first machine-made objects were costly, and luxury items. Handmade things more plentiful and cheap. The skills needed to make that first machine which then made other machines were of the highest order. British author David Pye, in one of his books, (maybe this one, the Nature and Art of Workmanship), talks about using a file to make the first truly, to modern tolerances flat, steel plate. Once that was done, more could be made by registering off the first. I don't want to go back to a time before toothpaste and flush toilets, much less flat steel. In my own craft, woodworking, I know how difficult it would be to go from log to board, flat and square on all four faces, using no machines. Imagine much of our built up edifices degraded or destroyed: confidence in world banking plummeted, fuel transport lines shattered, food delivery systems halted. Can you flatten your own boards? Do you own a cow? Do you have a good recipe for toothpaste? Aspirin? Insulin? And these are just things. What if civility is destroyed by a combination of ice storms, power outages and introduced bubonic plague/ Human beings make pretty good angels, and horrible devils when desperate and hungry. Do you share or shoot? Any grim little scenario come true will show how petty are the press 'gotcha 'games and the pointless political name-calling festivals. This cannot happen...again? Why not? The D.C. snipers terrorized more than a few acres, and they were just random, ha, shooters. Besides violence on the roads, the enemy is also the unknown, a dropping pit in the stomach. What's next, and now what?
We are engaged in spiritual warfare. Prayer works. To those with faith...
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