Roseburg, Ore. In the United States, we have free speech—as long as not very many people are listening. If the ruling elite can’t totally muzzle the expression of ideas, it can unplug the microphone, and black dissension out of the press. In Oregon, they actually set up a physical blockade to shut out interested listeners.
Long-term progressive incumbent Peter DeFazio has refused to debate conservative Arthur Robinson, a world-class scientist and newcomer to politics, who is trying to unseat him from the U.S. House of Representatives. DeFazio set up four “forums,” with rules totally controlled by him, and Robinson agreed to participate—on condition that the public be freely admitted.
About 300 Robinson supporters who came to the Oct 18 forum at the Douglas County Fairgrounds were shut out. Many more were discouraged from coming by radio ads; the limited number of required $20 lunch tickets had quickly sold out.
The Robinson campaign rented an adjacent room, behind an air wall. Repeatedly, Robinson asked DeFazio to “tear down this wall.” DeFazio stared straight ahead and refused to reply. Requests to at least pipe the sound into the room were also denied, so that voters waiting in the room could not even listen.
AAPS executive director Jane Orient, M.D., explained details of ObamaCare, for which DeFazio cast a deciding vote, while voters waited for the wall to be opened, or the forum to end so Robinson could speak to them.
A television cameraman roamed around, possibly looking for a disruptive-looking person wearing a Robinson button to film. But the hundreds of peaceful, polite, ordinary-looking Oregonians were not newsworthy. Neither was the wall that kept them from hearing the event. Neither was the Robinson event after the forum, where the candidate answered voters’ questions for more than an hour, until everyone had had the chance to speak.
DeFazio spoke to the media for a short time after the forum, and then was escorted out by armed police officers, to protect him from constituents’ questions.
That evening, at the fourth forum, at the Egyptian Theater in Coos Bay, organizers made it impossible to hold a post-forum “debate,” in which Robinson could debate DeFazio’s record when he refused to appear himself, and answer voters’ questions. The wall in this case was not physical, but a procedure that controls the questions to be asked, and prevents in-depth discussion of any issue or adequate response to mudslinging tactics.
