Dr. Steven Choi with U.S. Marines on Veterans Day 2007. As a young man,
Dr. Choi served in the South Korean military alongside US soldiers, in the DMZ, opposite Communist North Korea.
Irvine City Councilman Steven Choi, who is a candidate for the 70th Assembly District, has reacted to the attack on his freedom of speech by local Democrats by writing a letter to the Orange County Register. Choi shared the letters with us.
It should be noted that Choi knows something about fighting for freedom. As a young man he served alongside our troops in Korea, in the DMZ, opposite communist forces.
Here is Choi’s take on the blue party reaction to his protest of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at last weekend’s Democratic Party of Orange County Truman Awards Dinner:
Honor Republicans’ freedom of speech too
Orange County Democrats have criticized me for joining a large group of people outside an Irvine hotel where the Democrats’ big dinner featured House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Someone put a sign on my back that depicted Speaker Pelosi as a socialist. It was obvious hyperbole and satirical, yet the Democrats are having fits. I guess they think that freedom of speech does not extend to Republicans.
I am very troubled by the actions of Congress, particularly regarding health care and the lack of effective steps to significantly improve the economy. You may disagree. That’s fine – we’re all Americans. When a prominent leader comes to town, we all have the right to express our opinions.
Orange County Republicans claim that this County is the most Republican in the country. That claim carries responsibility. I hope they will participate more than they have in important national discussions. I hope we all will.
Sincerely,
Irvine City Councilman
I have to wonder a bit about this: He “fought alongside our troops in Korea…”
Since the Korean War ended 56 years ago Choi must have been a real young warrior. Either that or his “fighting” was more allegorical than actual.
David,
I will ask him. I am supposed to meet with Dr. Choi today.
Steven Choi was born January 15, 1944
The Korean War was from 1950 – 1953. He must have been a hell of a little fighter considering he was 6 years old when the war started.
I saw Steven Choi on Thursday at the new Lyon Air Museum’s Grand Opening. He did not look old enough to have served in the Korean War (1950-53). It’s more like he served alongside U.S. forces in peace time at the Demilitarized Zone or DMZ.
He had every right to be out there, have a sign and say or do whatever.
But so do those who take exception with what he said.
Jim,
Attacking someone freedom of speech is not the same thing as respecting someone to voice a concern in anyway they choose. I think that is what he was saying about the critics that bagged on him calling him a nut ect… I dont know about you, but i do not put people down for voicing their opinion. That seams to be a liberal thing!
I am very impressed with Mr.Choi. He is right about the so called republicans ie… the Orange County Supervisors, they are as liberal and as underhanded as Nanny P.
David,
I met with Dr. Choi tonight. I misunderstood the nature of his service. He did indeed serve in the DMZ, alongside our troops.
I will post the interview on Monday. Suffice to say, in the interim, that he was thoughtful, intelligent and engaging. I look forward to sharing his thoughts with our readers.
Oh brother, I turn my back for half a day and you’re all back to “they attacked Choi’s freedom of speech!” It’s useless to write any comments on this blog, it’s like in one ear out the other if anyone even reads it, so I’ll just repeat from two days ago:
Did the DPOC have Choi ejected from the Truman Dinner? Didn’t think so.
Did Dan C, Chris P, and Beth K jump up from their tables, run over and lunge on Choi, and yank the silly sign off his back? Also didn’t think so.
Is the DPOC, or Nancy Pelosi, suing Choi for his little prank? No, didn’t think so again.
So how is anybody attacking his freedom of speech? I could just as easily say the “admin” here is attacking the freedom of speech of Choi’s critics. Except to me, words mean something.
More surprising Vern is giving this guy coverage. Thats what he wanted.
Come on, a stunt like that had no purpose other than to grab attention and apparently it worked.
For a guy that “served alongside” soldiers defending democracy, I would think he would have more respect for what democracy means in the face of communism.
Vern,
So you’re OK with the blue boys at the Lib OC calling on Choi to resign? You don’t think that is an attempt to silence him?
And you’re OK with Chris Prevatt comparing Choi to Dean Grose, the former Mayor of Los Alamitos who emailed that picture of the Obama White House with the watermelon garden?
The gross over-reaction to Choi’s silent protest is an attack on free speech. If you don’t understand that, then there is really nothing I can do to change your mind.
Choi by the way did not enter the Truman dinner. He was outside of it. He protested silently and I cannot blame him.
Bringing Pelosi to our County was an affront to all of us.
It will be fun to see what his political oponents do with those photos of Choi’s “free speech” in action.
A dopey picture is worth a zillion words….
Red,
Choi’s Republican opponents dislike Pelosi too! And if they use the pictures in the primary they will garner more votes for Choi.
The more damaging pictures would be those of Beth Krom with Pelosi.
You’re not going to trick me into wasting my busy day going over to the Liberal OC and seeing what those boys actually wrote. I’m sure that whatever hyperbole they engaged in, they are not affecting Choi’s freedom of speech.
I may as well ask, Why are you attacking the freedom of speech of Choi’s critics?
Or a la Voltaire: I may find what PREVATT, CHOI, and CHMELEWSKI say to be ridiculous, but I’ll defend to the death their right to say it!
Jesus, no matter how I put it you don’t get my point: It’s just that FREEDOM OF SPEECH doesn’t enter into it. Some day someone’s Freedom of Speech WILL be under attack, and then nobody will believe you! (read The Boy Who Cried Wolf.)
To pretend that Dr. Choi’s Freedom of Speech is endangered is almost as ridiculous as… well, making him out to be some war hero in the service of Freedom just for fulfilling his South Korean military duty marching back and forth with US troops in the DMZ.
Vern,
OK. Let’s try this again. Choi silently protests Pelosi’s presence in the OC. The Liberal OC lunatics then call him a racist and call for his resignation.
The story then gets picked up by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Drudge Report.
Unfortunately for the blue boys all this backfired. Choi showed me the hundreds of emails of support he got from folks all over the country!
But the bottom line is that Choi’s freedom to speak out was indeed attacked by the blue boys, who insisted that it was grounds to remove him from office. Luckily common sense prevailed and now they look stupid.
As for Choi’s service in the DMZ I hope you realize that it was indeed dangerous in the time he was there. The war had ended a few years before and there was still a lot of tension in that area. Heck, there still is.
The chickenhawks at the Lib OC didn’t serve alongside our troops, but Choi did. And the point is that he knows what communism looks like – and Pelosi has that stink about her.
Vern,
One more thing. Lib OC came in number eight on the BNN blog rankings. We came in at #2. They had their biggest week ever and still couldn’t top us…
Vern, thanks for the good laugh on your post #13. I love it!
Hey Art, what is it that LibOC did this week that made it their best week ever? Was it their pix of Choi – personally, I thought that was a good catch on their part. But like Vern, I just don’t visit over there. It’s pretty much them talking to the walls is how I remember it from past visits.
WHO came in at #1 this week?
I react badly when candidates try to drum up a military record for their own political advancement. In this case I obviously have no idea what this fellow did in the ROK army. I’m sure back then service was compulsory (okay, I’m not sure).
But the guy is a librarian, and while this doesn’t preclude grunt service in the DMZ, I really have to wonder.
BTW, I thought the picture of Pelosi was pretty damn funny and hardly worth any of the faux outrage against (but not worth any of the faux outrage about free speech, either).
What is it with all the faux?
Red,
Some L.A. blog. They must have put up pictures of Villaraigosa hanging out with Tiger Woods…peas in a pod!
The Lib OC Choi story got picked up by the Chronicle and the Drudge Report. And they still couldn’t beat us…
Dave,
Not sure. But I respect that he served his country. And he was smart enough to head for the U.S. later.
I think the Lib OC guys piled on Choi because he beat Agran last year. That didn’t go over too well with the blue boys, who worship Agran despite his corruption.
number 8 is still a good distance from number 2 😉
I wonder if the number one spot is the former police chief’s blog? Sam something….? He used to be number one all the time. He had some good reader contributions, too. It’s fun to think OJ is giving him some competition!
And Choi is a clown. Trying to reinvent him into anything else is just ridiculous. Your animosity toward Irvine and the Irvine council makes you sympathetic to Choi. It’s OBVIOUS, Art 😉
Well, if Choi WAS run off the Council for his silly protest, that WOULD be objectionable, and a violation of his Freedom of Speech, and it’s a good thing that whatever LOC boy called for that (if they did) is just a blogger at the #8 blog instead of somebody in real authority who could achieve that goal.
Let’s hear it for this great nation’s Freedom of Speech where Dr. Choi can make an ass of himself trying to equate a decent moderate Democratic Speaker of the House with a murdering Communist tyrant, while LOC boys are free to fantasize themselves about Stalinist purges (if that’s what they’re doing now.)
And meanwhile the #2 blog can include Art who laughably portrays Dr. Choi as a heroic truthteller and martyr to the First Amendment, as well as me who calls Dr. Choi a buffoon whose career has now peaked with his stint as an obstructionist on the Irvine City Council and will now spend his remaining months in the limelight providing us with a Figure of Fun.
Vern,
So, to be clear, you approve of the constant corruption and cover-ups by the Agranistas?
I don’t get it. Agran is the worst type of corporate Dem. Krom too. Why would any decent Dem support such hackery?
I can see why so many Dems are quitting their party and going Green or decline to state…
BTW, 22% of the voters in the 70th AD are decline to state. The Reeps have 43% of the vote. The Dems have about 31%. The rest are third party voters.
The Dems have no shot at the 70th. Choi just might win DeVore’s seat…
Oh, re-read the comments, and I just have to take issue with this – again, ONLY so that words don’t start losing their meaning here:
The chickenhawks at the Lib OC didn’t serve alongside our troops…
To be a chickenhawk requires more than just not serving in the military; it also requires cheering on unnecessary wars. The term isn’t really useful in this little debate.
Vern,
Didn’t most of the Dems in Congress approve the two wars we are in?
Doesn’t Pelosi support the Obama war policy, which is essentially a continuation of the Bush policy?
Didn’t Obama keep the Bush people in charge at the Pentagon?
Doesn’t the Lib OC support Pelosi and Obama?
Have the blue boys called for an end to these wars?
The way I see it, only the Greens and the Libertarians are calling for an end to these wars…
The Dems and Reeps are chickenhawks. Unless you can show me some that actually oppose the wars.
The fact is that the doctrine of Obama’s church in Chicago, based on Black Liberation Theology, is a lot like a reverse racist version of the Christianity that the Nazis forced on the Evangelical churches during the Third Reich. People spend all their time defended charges against someone like Dr. Choi that has the good sense and the moral fortitude to speak out. But they do not have the sense to look into Obama’s own Nazi-like religious background and bring him and his supporters to task about that.
The basic doctrine of Obama’s church is that the white race and America are satanic and must be destroyed to liberate the (non-white) world. If you don’t have the common sense, the moral courage or the intellectual capacity to investigate and criticize Obama’s Nazi-like religious belief, you don’t really deserve to be free. You might as well submit to your new masters Obama and Pelosi. The founding fathers would be ashamed of this generation, I believe. For more info, see this link:
http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/battle-within-tea-party-movement-roger.html
Most people these days are just a bunch of whining moral cowards. Much thanks to Dr. Choi for showing some good sense and moral courage and speaking out. He is an immigrant, who understands the spirit of America better than most Americans these days and is willing to act in spite of risk to his political career and of being personally attacked.
Whoa… got back from playing the second half of my church service, and a LEGION of strawmen await me. I hack, I cough, I spit out straw, I reach blindly for my machete…
So, to be clear, you approve of the constant corruption and cover-ups by the Agranistas?
I am sure that I’ve never written anything about the Agranistas and their corruption and cover-ups, I don’t know enough about it. I probably would if I lived in Irvine. This is the very definition of a strawman argument. Everything I wrote above is plain and simple as day. Where does Agran enter into my statements? Just, whoa!
Didn’t most of the Dems in Congress approve the two wars we are in? etc. etc..
I actually do go check out the LOC a couple times a week to see if I’m missing anything worthwhile. And I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard them cheerleading for unnecessary wars, which is what it would take to label them “chickenhawks.” I’ve always agreed that they could & should be bolder arguing with and criticizing the Democratic Party when it’s not progressive enough. But in their defense, the Dems oughtta have SOMEBODY shilling for them in a County where you can’t throw a rock without hitting a GOP shill!
The only people in Washington fighting AGAINST unnecessary wars are Democrats – a whole lot of brave progressive Democrats – with the lonely additions of Republicans Ron Paul and Walter Jones, and independent Socialist Bernie Sanders. And a lot of us campaigned hard for Obama largely because he talked sense and truth about Operation Iraqi Fiefdom. He was by far the lesser of two evils, when it was either him or “Bomb bomb bomb Iran” McCain.
I dunno, your whole comment 23 now that I look at it is a convoluted attempt to justify calling those LOC boys “chickenhawks,” but it takes a lot more for them to deserve that word. It takes CHEERLEADING (not mumbling acquiescence at best) for UNNECESSARY wars (which means Iraq but arguably not Afghanistan.)
Vern, pull your head out that that dark place where it’s lodged. Obama made his religion racial hatred of white people and America and you are still defending him? You can verify this yourself, although the media won’t touch it. The books on Black Liberation Theology can be bought on Amazon. Obama’s self-described spiritual guide said on national television that this doctrine of racial hatred and bigotry is the doctrine of that church.
Have you had a lobotomy? It’s high time to stop this epidemic of denial about Obama. Only morons would think it is okay for the President to have been in a Nazi-like religion that had destruction of America as a religious goal. Any kind of comparison of Obama and his supporters to totalitarians is completely appropriate and justified, due to the totalitarian hate group that he was a member of for 20 freaking years.
If you think Obama’s background of religious bigotry and hate does not qualify him and his supporters for comparison to totalitarians, then you should move to North Korea, where such comparisons are also considered to be in poor taste. We get Dr. Choi and North Korea can have all the followers here of the Black Nationalist Messiah and world savior. A perfect exchange, if there ever was one. North Korea already has their own Messiah, by the way, that you can worship. So you will feel right at home there.
Ooh, YOU obviously feel very strongly about this, Roger, don’t you? Well, I’m sure not going to argue as you’ve obviously got it all figured out. Keep the faith brother!
Vern, check it out yourself, if you are not just a waste of skin and have a brain. You don’t have to believe me. Don’t just carp about useless nonsense all the time. How important is it that Dr Choi, wore this sign on his back, compared to Obama making the destruction of America his cult-like religion? That is what Black Liberation Theology is. “God Damn America” was not just Jeremiah Wright’s opinion, it is the basic tenet of their religious doctrine. They did not teach anything else their. Get a clue. This pandemic of denial about Obama, needs to end and soon.
Oh brother, how pathetic. It is NOT about freedom of speech, nobody is questioning his right to speak. Look, I have the right to FART during dinner, doesn’t mean I should and doesn’t mean you can’t hate me for doing it.
I am hugely disappointed in Choi for his action. I went from someone who respected him to someone who thinks he’s a jerk. So he can go right ahead and practice his freedom of speech and I will practice my right to hate him for it.
Roger… are you sure you want to discuss the history of religion??