Two bills — SOPA, and PIPA — both purport to shore up copyright law and end online piracy. They were written by content industry lobbyists with no input from the technology industry. As a result, as written they would place overly broad powers in the hands of content owners — those same content owners have already proved to be unworthy of the more basic trusts afforded them with the DMCA. More, these bills meddle with the fabric of the Internet — with DNS, with linking and embedding of content, with Fair Use.

Free, unabridged speech and the robust exchange of ideas on the Internet has become central to my every day life: my work experience, my ability to write, to create, to share neat stuff I’ve found online with friends, family and wide-ranging communities of interest. It’s become ever more important to how we get our news, and shapes our political process. Inhibiting speech in the pursuit of commercial interests is wrong. Congress shall make no law abridging the rights of free speech… no matter how much the lobbyists pay them.

All the anger in me has been bled. So too the jingoistic rush, the fierce urgency of nationalism that the events of ten years ago engendered. All that remains today is sorrow. Sorrow for our loss of innocents, and the loss of our innocence. Sorrow for the further losses of our young men and women who volunteered in the pure white heat of anger to take our response to their shores… whoever they were, and wherever that might lead them.

Ten years ago today I was glued to my television, witness to history and the awful, unfolding events of the day. Today… I’m tuning out. I might wish today’s commemorations would do more than mourn our losses, individual and collective. I might hope we could search for wisdom in the rubble of our ruins, rather than sow anger and fear anew. But that’s not good television, is it?

“All that serves labor serves the nation. All that harms is treason. If a man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool. There is no America without labor, and to fleece the one is to rob the other.”

— Abraham Lincoln

The actual quote, delivered by Dr. King in remarks to Atlanta’s Ebeneezer Baptist Church — just two months before his assassination — reads:

“If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.”

The version carved in stone on the north face of the MLK memorial — paraphrased to fit the available space after site planners changed their minds on the memorial’s layout — instead reads:

I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.

Um. There’s quite a lot missing there… for example, the clause that creates the context for the quote. The whole, “If you want to say…” part that responds to King’s detractors, those trying to marginalize his work, and the civil rights movement, itself.

Let us consider how a similar sort of paraphrasing might affect the words of other prominent figures. Click the tweaked versions below to see the original, more familiar quotations. Let’s examine a rather famous quote from Abraham Lincoln, which — while every bit as true to the *words* that Lincoln used (or at least as true to those words as the phrasing of Dr. King’s quote) — might be considered a bit of a departure from his actual intent in any number of ways:

Eighty-seven years ago our fathers brought forth a new nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are equal.

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Similarly, the words of Confucious  – while no less wise — lose a certain something when paraphrased:

By three methods we may learn wisdom: by reflection, by imitation, and by experience.

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”

Curiously, by applying the very same paraphrasing principles, some quotes read a bit more clearly than the originals. Consider this paraphrased version of Sarah Palin’s word salad on the historic, midnight ride of Paul Revere (and don’t forget to click for the original!):

He's riding his horse through town, to be sure, and we're going to be free.

“He who warned, uh, the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms, uh, by ringing those bells, and um, makin’ sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed.”

You betcha.

It’s surely possible to paraphrase a quote in such a way that it’s not stripped of its original meaning and intent… but it’s so improbable the result will be an improvement that there’s little to recommend it, and no reason at all when the very point is to memorialize the content of an individual’s character.

“With the release of his memoir, In My Time, the former vice president very clearly aims to have history reflect he is — at the least — a Dick to be reckoned with. In this matter he will no doubt succeed.”

I’m awestruck already by the volume of brazenly stupid assertions being put forth throughout the GOP camp, and astonished at the audacity of the untruths. Politifact and FactCheck.org are going to be very, very busy this year. I wish only that their services were available in real-time, so that each time a politico made a false assertion a loud buzzer would sound — all game-show like. And for each truthful statement, a pleasant bell. I can almost hear it now…

“I’m running for president”. (Ding.)

“Evolution is a theory, son. It’s got holes in it.” (Buzz!)

“I was right when I said the debt ceiling shouldn’t be raised.” (Buzz!)

“The country’s bankrupt. (Buzz!)

“We’re inches from no longer having a free-market economy.” (BUZZ!)

Better still, perhaps we could have John Scalzi moderate our national political debate. After a flurry of comments surrounding a post with a political bent, John posted the following on his site (this is an excerpt…go to his place to get all the goods.):

Notes on Arguing

1. One is entitled to one’s own opinions, but not one’s own facts. Commensurately, anecdote may be fact (it happened to you), but anecdote is usually a poor platform for general assertions, since one’s own experience is often not a general experience.

2. If you make an assertion that implies a factual basis, it is entirely proper that others may ask you to back up these assertions with facts, or at least data, beyond the anecdotal.

3. If you cannot bolster said assertion with facts, or at least data, beyond the anecdotal, you have to accept that others may not find your general argument persuasive.

4. This dynamic of people asking for facts, or at least data, beyond the anecdotal, is in itself non-partisan; implications otherwise are a form of ad hominem argument which is generally not relevant to the discussion at hand.

5. If you offer evidence and assert it as fact, you may reasonably expect others to examine such information and to rebut you if they find it wanting and/or find your interpretation incorrect in some manner.

I’d love to see this list in the gripped fist of every news reporter, anchor, political commentator, pundit, spokesman, spinmeister and editorialist. Most of all, I wish the candidates would just dispense with the bullshit, already.

“If you are one of those people for whom everything does have to be about politics, consider a hobby.” — John Scalzi

“The problem with town hall meetings is, unlike your wallet, the people there aren’t sorted by denomination. You could spend a few minutes talking to somebody who dresses nice, only to learn that they’re wearing everything they own. And that’s just wasteful.”

– Every Member of Congress You Know