Are We Ignoring Bedrock American Values Of Freedom? By Jeff Smith LAST WEEK BENJAMIN Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat met in D.C. and shook hands. The week before they wouldn't even talk on the phone. While they weren't talking, their people were killing each other, so you'd think anybody with a lick of sense would agree it was a good idea for Bill Clinton to invite them both to Washington to talk about peace. True, they didn't agree on much, but they didn't spit on each other like some baseball players I could name, and they did shake hands and smile. So I was a little dismayed when Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole ragged Clinton's ass for convening the talks, called it "a photo-op summit" and said it was a sorry spectacle to see a President who couldn't control world politics any better than that. I guess if Clinton held a press conference tomorrow and announced he'd just signed an executive order creating perpetual, universal peace, prosperity, health and happiness...and that he had signatures in blood from every world leader, binding their nations and their heirs in perpetuity...and if Clinton could prove it was true and that he personally had done it... ...Bob and Newt would call it a cheap political stunt and point out all the bad things about peace, prosperity, health and happiness. And if Bob Dole did the same thing, the White House would find some flaw in the plan and hold a press conference debunking it. The operative attitude is "if you ain't with us 100 percent, we're agin' you a hundred." And this is one of the major factors responsible for the twin evils of political correctness at one extreme, and intolerant ignorance on the other. It all was brought to focus for me last week in an op-ed piece I read in The Arizona Daily Star. It deals with a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, in which it will be decided whether protesters at abortion clinics must literally back off and give clients and patients a little more room and a bit more quiet. It's down to a First Amendment issue. Now ordinarily, in the current environment of political correctness, one can expect the liberal wing of the political spectrum to support the right of free speech, or free expression, in all its iterations. But such purity of purpose takes a hike when the iteration at issue is abortion protesters standing in the middle of sidewalk and screaming nose-to-nose at staff and clients of abortion clinics. Not too long ago it was virtual consensus that free speech included almost everything except shouting "fire" in a crowded theater. Assuming it wasn't actually on fire. It would be okay to have shouted "fire" at Grauman's Chinese Theater back when it burned to the ground and killed almost everybody in it, but that's not a good example. Today the right-wing is arguing like an ACLU lawyer that mobs surrounding abortion clinics and getting in the face of folks with legit business there, are only exercising their right of free expression. They sure weren't sounding like this when the free expression involved setting fire to the Stars and Stripes, but then the ACLU wasn't siding against max expressiveness then, as it is now in the abortion clinic issue. See what I'm getting at? It really doesn't matter as much in America today what fundamental principles of thought and deed we believe in, but how we can spin our principles to suit our political preferences of the moment. We ought to cleave unto the bedrock principles on which our union was so presciently founded. I think the United States of America is unique in the world in its clear vision of the freedom which is the natural birthright of humankind. I believe we should hold firmly to those freedoms we inherited at birth, and let common sense and civility be our individual guides as to the application of these freedoms. Common sense and civility can tell us a lot about the responsibility that comes with freedom. So if a gang of anti-abortionists wants to stand in front of a clinic and shout admonitions at people who work or seek help at that clinic, I believe that under the First Amendment they have that right. But I believe just as firmly that as grown-up human beings they have the responsibility to respect another person's freedom to come and go from that clinic unimpeded. I believe both sides ought to be polite and limit their impassioned rhetoric to matters aside from personal accusation and insult...but I also believe that when emotions reach the boil and when push literally comes to shove, the person pushed has the right to shove back. In other words, if a protester gets into a doctor's face, screams personal insults and showers him with bad breath and saliva, I believe the doctor is within right and reason to give the protester an anatomically distressing blunt trauma. Scrotal, for instance. Common sense and good manners would lead neither side to give the other cause for such behavior. But America today is at war with itself. The same fine folks who said in 1965 that you can't legislate morality and therefore shouldn't arrest pot-smokers, today are trying to impose extra-legislative morality through a mechanism known as political correctness. Our world is turned upside down by the increasing tendency to believe in freedom for oneself but no one else, to believe in rights only if they involve acts we enjoy performing ourselves. The '90s are sounding more like the '80s. The '00s are coming up--new decade, new century, new millennium. Triple witching-hour. Maybe we can shut up, listen up and make a fresh start.

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