I watched a few minutes of a documentary this morning about free speech. It had several segment about American citizens exercising their right of free speech. One was a professor who was railroaded by Fox News due to something he wrote 5 years earlier about the 9/11 attacks. He was finally fired on other grounds.

Consider yourself lucky. The documentary was on HBO - Shouting Fire.

I am working on my study presentation for a study meeting tomorrow. I searched on "Many in body, one in mind" and found your entry from November 26, 2004 titled "Many In Body – One In Mindlessness" and read it. It seems nothing has changed in SGI. I put on the study prep video while writing about Nichiren's life on Sado. All I heard was "Pres. Ikeda, Pres. Ikeda, Pres. Ikeda" There is no lecture besides Pres. Ikeda's. We can not add anything.

I have decided to present what I want to present and then say it is related to the gosho.

Everytime I prepare for one of these study meetings, I do a search on the title and find at least one entry from FWP and I am so proud.

Nancy:

I went back and reviewed that blog of "Many in Body, One in Mindlessness," and was pleased that it has held up well.

In defense of PI and the SGI, I admitt that the capable staff that write his many, many, many.... speeches, actually do a magnificent job in hitting all the marks. There is a tremendous amount that can be learned from PI's guidance and people should learn from it.

At some point, though, it becomes time to think for yourself, draw your own conclusions, and see the big picture. I used to have a leader who would say, "Don't think like that!" My response was, "Don't tell me how to think, ever!" This exchange happened many times. PI is great, but you need to be your own person. I surrendered myself to the master and became lost. Whenever I see my longtime SGI friends, I see this loss of freedom in their eyes and hear it in their words and opinions. Bless them all. However, it would be great to do a lecture without once mentioning PI said this or that. I don't think the butusdan would begin to levitate or the King Devil of the Sixth Heaven would lunge out of the plastic shikimi.

Charles

I read teh definition of Many in body and one in mind from the LB, and that was it. The rest was me.

At one of the e-groups, Andy Hamlen posted an article about cops getting into it with people for dissing them. That does not really bother me; smarting off to a cop is usually a bad idea.

What bothers me is when cops arrest people for talking back, on phony disorderly conduct charges. A cop is no more deserving of common courtesy than anyone else. That said, I am courteous and helpful to almost everyone, even the police. Some of my best friends happen to be cops.

Even more troubling is that the police have started arresting people for taking pictures or videos of them. They will sometimes make up a dubious charge about interfering with a police officer, seize the camera, and erase the pictures.

Robin:

More than the cops, I would like to have heard you chime in on this specific situation of state officals, tracking down a guiltless citizen through info supplied by the DMV, to confront someone who wrote a critical letter to the editor about the State!

I suppose if it did not happen to you (anyone), it might not seem too bad. But just imagine if a badge carrying State offical showed up to question you about your conservative views as expressed in your blogs. You and your wife would be disturbed.

Re: the cops in the most current civil rights moment. I am deeply suspicious of the cops verses the African-American professor caught breaking intohis own house and the president calling the cops actions "stupid." My spidey sense tells me that there was uncooperative belligerence on the part of the professor that accelerated the problem. It sounds more like provocation and obstruction of justice than a cop, black harrassment incident. I wasn't there, but that's the way it seems to me based on the 911 call and audio of the incident.

Charles

What happened top you was absolutely bizarre. What you wrote was in no way threatening. It sounds like you handled it well. I think I would have felt a bit flattered that they even noticed. I just saw some parallels to what Andy just posted about cops seizing cameras and arresting people for taking pictures of them. I have not fully wrapped my brain around it yet.

We live in a strange world. Asking a black man for his ID is racist. Taking a picture of a cop in action is interfering. Writing am open letter suggesting state employees are lazy is threat. A man who operated an anti-abortion group was charged and found civilly liable under RICO because people who read his literature picketed abortion clinics.

I agree with your take on the Cambridge incident, but the cop should have walked away. He was on the professor's property and had seen his ID. The "yo mama" bit was uncalled for; but the cop has no more right to be treated well than anyone else.

Here is a quotation from the article:

>>> "By any account of what happened—Gates', Crowleys', or some version in between—Gates should never have been arrested. "Contempt of cop," as it's sometimes called, isn't a crime. Or at least it shouldn't be. It may be impolite, but mouthing off to police is protected speech, all the more so if your anger and insults are related to a perceived violation of your rights. The
"disorderly conduct" charge for which Gates was arrested was intended to prevent riots, not to prevent cops from enduring insults. Crowley is owed an apology for being portrayed as a racist, but he ought to be disciplined for making a
wrongful arrest."

I know you handled the dork politely; but imagine if you had reacted like a lot of people on that campus? We are sliding toward thought crimes. From the left; we have speech codes against offending the easily offended. From both sides, we have people who see criticizing the 'gubament' as sedition. Who gets head up depends on which Party is in power. Illinois is pretty much one Party Dem these days, so this one is not on the Republicans.

Maybe I can come up with some coherent thoughts tomorrow.

Namas te

robin