Starving free speech

Some people take a very spiteful approach with regard to your right to free speech. They don't just want an equal right; they want yours taken away.

That approach is at work in a liberal group's attempt to silence conservative commentator Glenn Beck.

The group -- Color of Change -- is trying in vain to starve Beck and Fox News of advertising revenue by instigating a boycott. Why? Ostensibly because Beck opined that he thinks Obama is racist.

Notwithstanding the fact that such an opinion is mild compared with what the left said about President Bush, Beck has an absolute right to that opinion -- as do liberals who find a "racist" behind every tree (the latest being New York Gov. David Paterson, who says he is being attacked for being black, not for being inept).

We don't think Barack Obama is racist. His mother was white and he talks lovingly of the white grandparents who helped raise him. Still, we recognize others may disagree. It's their right.

One interesting fact about the assault on Beck: The organization leading it was co-founded by Obama adviser Van Jones, an admitted communist who now happens to be Obama's "Green Jobs Czar."

The real issue here should be Jones -- and the fact that Obama has used yet another unelected, unconfirmed "czar" appointment to elevate someone, in this case someone who has openly admitted being a radical leftist.

It's quite possible that both Beck and Fox News are popular enough -- they regularly attract more viewers than other cable news outlets combined -- that the boycott may only backfire. We hope so, and we encourage those who believe in free speech to resist attempts to silence it.

But it's frightening indeed that in 2009 America, one cannot legitimately criticize the president without being the subject of threats and coercion. And not everyone has the resources or throngs that Fox News has to beat back such attempts at censorship.

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