O.G. "freak" Frank Zappa gets Socratic on Crossfire!

A great many people are terrified by how Neocons have managed to turn American political discourse into a monologue by cramming their social agenda down their opponents' throats. Their appropriation of power didn't happen overnight: what we are currently witnessing are the fruits of a forty year strategy to undermine diversity, silence dissent, cast Christianity over the land, and make a lot of money in the process.

A key social victory in this crusade was the mid-'80s moral panic that led to "Parental Advisory" labels on "inappropriate" albums. Civil libertarians, left-wingers, artists, and constitutional conservatives cried out against government censorship, but in the end lost the battle when record labels agreed to apply the self-policing stickers on potentially offensive records.

Few fought harder against the labels (and censorship in any form) than the maestro from the Mothers of Invention, Frank Zappa -- one of my personal heroes. In 1986, when the issue of censorship was the hottest of hot-button issues, Zappa made an appearance on CNN's "Crossfire". Click below where it says "clickety-clack" to view the complete episode of the show.

And so maybe, JUST maybe, if today's liberals learn to stand their ground and talk shit to conservatives the way Frank verbally bitch-slaps John Laughton, then perhaps the US wouldn't be tailspinning into the draconian abyss it's headed for today. (Pay special attention to how Zappa described the damage wrought by the Reagan administration -- twenty years later, it's a different president, but the EXACT same bullshit.)