I have previously written columns about the rising generation of censors in our country. After years of being told that free speech is harmful and dangerous, many young people are virtual speech phobics — demanding that opposing views be silenced as “triggering” or even forms of violence. Now a Pew poll shows just how much ground we have lost, including the emergence of the Democratic Party as a virulent anti-free speech party. Pew found that “Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are much more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to support the U.S. government taking steps to restrict false information online (70% vs. 39%).”
I was raised in a politically active Democratic family in Chicago. Free speech was viewed as one of the defining values of the party and championed across campuses in the country. That changed dramatically in the course of the last ten years as many liberal politicians and professors called for opposing voices to be banned or canceled. I no longer recognize the party as it pushes for censorship and speech regulation.
The result is reflected in the poll which shows that “Just over half of Americans (55%) support the U.S. government taking steps to restrict false information online, even if it limits people from freely publishing or accessing information.”
What is particularly chilling is that this poll is occurring after the disclosure of biased censorship efforts by the government and corporations, including the suppression of views that were later found to be legitimate. That includes the banning or cancelling of scientists who raised concerns over Covid-19 that are now considered valid from the lab theory to the efficacy of masks to natural immunities. It also includes the suppression of political stories like the Hunter Biden laptop.
The growing support for censorship may reflect the echo chambered media environment. Many people watch and read news that continues to downplay or entirely omit reports on biased censorship. President Biden even charged that companies who refused to censor opposing views on social media were “killing people.” Others have denounced free speech as “a white man’s obsession.” New York democrats called for limiting speech as a way of protecting democracy. Indeed, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich has declared free speech is “tyranny.”
Many journalists have joined politicians and professors in decrying the dangers of free speech. Some falsely claim that hate speech is not protected under the First Amendment. Others panicked at the notion of free speech protections being restored at Twitter. On CNN, speech limits were called a “harm-reduction model” for the media.
The result left free speech values in free fall in our country. We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West. The European crackdown on free speech has now reached our shores and there are a growing number of citizens calling on the government to limit their right to free expression. It is a form of constitutional immolation by citizens who have never known true authoritarian government.
The Pew poll shows how dire this struggle has become. Despite our long history of free speech protection, every generation can renew or rescind that support. This is a crisis of faith that we cannot ignore. Justice Louis Brandeis once warned that “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
I need a favor from all of you virtue signaling s@@tlibs. Yes, I’m talking about those with BLM signs in your yard in an all White area or “hate has no home here.”
Please no more talk about having a monopoly on understanding and tolerance. Just admit you support censorship and european style hate speech laws.
antonio
I am all in favor of censoring Democrats. Count me in.
No way do I want to censor Democrats, rico! I want them to keep on talking. The more they talk, the more obvious the agenda becomes.
“Woke” explained. Almost 1 million views since Tuesday, July 25. Recommend….
https://twitter.com/Theo_TJ_Jordan/status/1684003926180261888
I give you two comments in one:
Isn’t it ironic/hypocritical that the people that want to prevent “false” information from being allowed are the same people that support Joe Biden, the guy who just said he cured cancer?
We have gone from the ACLU defending the NAZIS right to march in a Jewish part of Skokie, Il to being a leading cheerleader for censorship and even going so far as to demand that Target remove Abigail Shrier’s book regarding trans issues. Of course the same people demanding that Target remove an erudite book written for adults yell about book banning when a book describing oral sex among boys is removed from an elementary school library. They support banning To Kill a Mockingbird and cry when Gender Queer is pulled from the 7th grade.
“We have gone from the ACLU defending the NAZIS right to march in a Jewish part of Skokie, Il to being a leading cheerleader for censorship”
Hullbobby, for the left, that is running things in DC today, censorship or not is not part of their gig. They want power. They lack concern, one way or the other, if To Kill a Mockingbird or Gender Queer is promoted or banned. They are twisting back and forth (note the 1960s), hoping to break the nation’s fabric, just like Lenin and Stalin.
A chaotic nation leaves room for those killers of humanity. The problem is they know how to destroy, but they cannot build. If they did, the Soviet Union would have been the sole superpower.
S. Meyer, I totally agree with you that the left wants to ruin America. See the green new deal and how they allow China to go nuts with coal. It is the same as when the left wanted the Soviets to deploy nukes in Europe but demanded “the Nuclear Freeze”. Same people, Ed MArkey et al, same ideology. Hate America.
A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that the baseboard in the guest room was discolored and soft. There was no water puddles nor dripping. About a week later I could hear a very faint sound in the wall. This week, I opened up the sheetrock and discovered hidden plumbing and a tiny pinhole. What was worse was the black, wet goo that was once the wood that was in contact with the concrete. The plumber came and expertly repaired the leak and indicated that the workmanship of the plumber who worked on the house during construction rendered substandard workmanship. He cut away the black moldy 2x4s and we have fans drying it out and it is being soaked in bleach throughout the day. It will take some length of time before the wall can be sealed up again. The photographs of before and after the hidden problem was discovered and amended is stunning. Once exposed, I experienced a great deal of relief but it makes me wonder what is lurking below the floor.
I was thinking about this when I read this post. Any person that has been on this planet for some years has come to the realization that human nature, unchecked, is cruel and deceitful. Until human nature changes, the biggest weapon we have is truth. True truth. Every single person who holds office, has any official responsibilities or who has power should but put under bright spotlights and made to account for their actions. If they are a public figure, they are fair game for satire, standup comedy, scrutiny.
Having a free society that values truth and transparency and the right to bring the truth from its hiding place and expose it for the world to see is messy and inefficient (at times) but it is the only way that people can reach their full potential. Just like the plumber who hid his shoddy work behind the wall, even though it took years to manifest, once it was exposed, it could be assessed and repaired.
The age-old question is how to deter outright deceptive infowarfare while still nurturing an open-minded truth-seeking culture? It comes down to: Who decides fact from fiction (in the most consequential feuds)? If we look to the Nicholas Sandmann-CNN/WaPo case, the Sandy Hook-Alex Jones case, and the Dominion Voting-Fox News case,
the answer comes into focus. We have a Civil Torts system — bringing together a neutral Judge, 2 adversarial advocate parties, strict rules of evidence, a timetable for resolution, and a Jury of 12 ordinary citizens that serves as decider-of-facts.
The Juries in these defamation cases got the facts right, and, whether criminal or civil, juries under this process have an exceedingly low error rate. The facts ascertained by the Jury are final — they cannot be unravelled during appeal. They are official, and the population generally accepts what the Jury finds, knowing that the group looked at more details, at a deeper standard of corroboration than any journalist could do. The Court of Public Opinion demurs to the findings of a Jury.
So, Defamation Civil Torts points the way toward the “Who decides? (and how?)” quandary. We merely need to expand it to cover Public Frauds. Under this theory, the Public has a need to get to the truth in a timely manner when the infospace is racked by conflicting narratives, and therefore, the Public can sue the deceitful infowarrior since frauds and falsehoods are damaging to public decisionmaking. The government has no advantageous position, and can be the one sued for intentional deceit.
We have a prototype of what we need in Defamation Law. And, other than its slow, plodding pace (which would need to be sped up for Public Frauds), we have the necessary elements of objectivity, thoroughness, fairness and closure. We have a working model of how to prevent the tyranny of propaganda from coming to dominate the infospace.
The age-old question is how to deter outright deceptive infowarfare while still nurturing an open-minded truth-seeking culture?
If you knew anything about “age old” reality, you would know survival has always been the most pressing issue as a continuum. Life is based on survival of the fittest. Why do you leftists hate science? For millions of years, organisms that were fit did just dandy. Those that were not fut were eradicated and that was on them
You historically post dishonest comments, like the one to which I am replying. Yet, instead of appealing to a higher authority to curb your enthusiasm, I just ignore your crap. This isnt that difficult.
we have the necessary elements of objectivity, thoroughness, fairness and closure.
utter gobbledegook. Kamala Harris is your speech coach. Noted.
We have a working model of how to prevent the tyranny of propaganda from coming to dominate the infospace.
What we need are legions of dinosaurs to be unleashed in America so that tyrants like you are forced to make a choice: run like the dickens or serve as an appetizer for Tyrannosaurus rex. One suspects your BMI > 35 like Gigi, which means T Rex would love you.
Fun fact: T Rex can not run. Now go run some laps around your backyard to practice. Take Gigi with you
😅
I’m in no way who you think I am. I’m a conservative-minded problem-solver, looking to continue perfecting civilized, free society thru evolution of rules-based systems (law). Reading your comment,
it seems you’d prefer to be eaten alive by the strongest predator — you have to break out of your fantasy that you are the apex predator — there’s always someone tougher than you with a more reptilian brain than you.
If you truly believe in rule-of-the-jungle as the solution to progressive idiocy, why not put it the test and move to Somalia. I hear it’s run by warlords — Go see if you like it. Maybe you can become a warlord.
For a few weeks.
why not put it the test and move to Somalia. I hear it’s run by warlords
Worse. I am from Cuba, and I am here to be your distasteful reminder that life is hard, work takes effort and no one promised you a rose garden.
Estovir,
That was a brutal take down.
As if I have anything to teach you, a farmer, about work. Sheesh!
I imagine the heat wave is tempering your farm chores. be careful out there
LOL
“Who decides fact from fiction (in the most consequential feuds)? If we look to the Nicholas Sandmann-CNN/WaPo case, the Sandy Hook-Alex Jones case, and the Dominion Voting-Fox News case,
the answer comes into focus. ”
We have video from the Sandman case that proved the MSM liars. No jury needed, no truther checkers needed.
Sandy hook alex jones was an immense corruption of the judicial system and free speech. Pure kangaroo court lawfare and an immense joke unto itself, so your theory has failed there. What is true, is the “justice system”, whined as completely corrupt against minorities by YOU for DECADES, has been turned into your political tool in a more severely corrupt fashion. No doubt you are well pleased, since truth, justice, and the American way is the furthest thing from your mind.
Fox was taken over by the demoncrat lying lefty children, and they probably wanted to fund Dominion and it’s theft of the next election. So that one is a fail as well. IT WASN’T EVEN PART OF YOUR JURY SYSTEM PRAISE, so your stupidity is glaring.
Courts ARE RIGHT OR WRONG JUST AS OFTEN AS THE SUN RISES AND SETS.
As our society crumbles under the marxist genus of many species of communism, lies win and truth fails, more and more often, in court and elsewhere.
Anti-American haters are now front and center and in power it seems near everywhere. It is exactly the wrong time to declare censoring the infospace is a good move toward truth.
My concern is, who decides what is, or is not, FALSE INFORMATION!
The same people who lie that restricting your right to own a gun will somehow stop psychopaths from killing people.
The same people who lie that killing a preborn child is “women’s rights”.
The same people who lie that men can be women by changing their name and putting on a dress and lipstick.
The same people who lie that an increase in inflation is a decrease.
The same people who lie that black men are hunted down and shot by police with no accountability.
The same people who lie that illegal immigration is not sucking up social services paid for by, you know, Americans.
The same people who lied and told you that taking an experimental vaccine would stop the transmission of Covid.
The same people who lied that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation.
The same people who lie that despite the U.S. covering 2% of Earth’s surface area and having 4% of Earth’s human population, if the government taxes you enough, regulates you enough, and bans you from owning gas powered cars, stoves and generators, and forces you to buy uneconomic fuel to enrich Democrat donors in alternative energy companies, then the government will magically control the weather.
Those people will decide what’s true and false.
Secession is the answer. The people are irreconcilably divided.
Who seceeds? Then what? Foreign policy? Trade agreements? National defense? Did it ever occur to you that the same gnarly problems of politics and governing don’t ever go away, even after secession?
I do not want to understand, dialogue or reconcile with these people, I want a divorce.
antonio
Ivan,
Yeah, secession has been discussed before.
Take a look at the voting map at the county level and you will see pockets of deep Red or Blue in Red or Blue states. How does session work on that level?
Or do we pull a 1947 Partition of India like movement?
There are secession movements all over the US and not just from ‘evil’ MAGA types. It is an official position of La Raza, a Mexican Chicano organization.
Trying to make a mulitcult liberal democracy work is similar to something akin to making communism work. They both go against himan nature.
Egalitarianism is creationism for leftists.
antonio
The “multi-cultural” idea of the ’70s ran head-on into changing immigration demographics. This disaster was made clear when CA designed and published its Ethnic Studies curriculum (which chose 4 ethnicities to study).
The public comments were overwhelmingly “Where is my ethnic group?….Why did you leave us out?”
This was all predicted 60 years ago. A more sensible approach is post-racialism — which we are rapidly becoming — America is destined to be a post-racial meritocracy. Multiculturalism is unproductive and divisive.
Well there is one of the most frightening headlines I’ve read in awhile, and I have read some scary ones. Why not, I suppose. Worked great in Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s USSR, and Mao’s China to gain and retain power, so I can see why they are in favor of it here.
“[S]upport the U.S. government taking steps to restrict false information online . . .”
Joe is an average citizen who, according to the censors, can’t be trusted to speak freely or to distinguish fact from fiction.
Yet once Joe becomes a bureaucrat, he somehow magically transforms into one who is omniscient (and therefore should be omnipotent).
Tell me: How does that magical transformation take place?
The rapid rise of censorship in America goes hand-in-hand with the rapid rise of openly politically biased mainstream media. How is this any different from the state-run Pravda back in the days of the USSR ?
“How is this any different from the state-run Pravda back in the days of the USSR ?”
The people in the USSR knew Pravda was lying.
Democrats.
The ignorant party.
The fascists party.
The totalitarian party.
“Hate Speech” is as amorphous as “Hate Crimes”, both of which presume that another person’s mind can be read, and that thoughts are crimes. Micro-agressions and triggers are in the mind of the person who “detects” them — they may, or may not be intended by the transgressor. It would seem like typical left-wing insults such as “MAGA Republican” or “right wing conspiracy theory” would be banned as hate speech. Truth can be a slippery concept. When all words and phrases that have actual meanings are scrubbed from language, communication dies in darkness.
Books like “The Gulag Archipelago” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn should be mandatory ready for high schoolers. Until then, we will see a constant infringement in our inalienable rights.
True that, along with “Life and Death in Shanghai” and “Children of the Arbat.” Heck, I’d be happy if adults would read them, too.
Please don’t forget 1984!
I’m a big fan of the trilogy “1984”, “Brave New World” and “Fahrenheit 451”. Top it off with a quick read of “Animal Farm”. But, the one thing that the trilogy lacks is, even though they are amazingly prophetic, they are fiction. The scary thing about “The Gulag Archipelago” is, this really happened.
Liberty must be defended in every generation, which is why its price is eternal vigilance.
My only quibble: Justice Louis Brandeis once warned that “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
That may have been true in his day, but the censors of today are not well meaning and they understand exactly what they’re doing.
You nailed it, Kansas.
“Liberty must be defended in every generation, which is why its price is eternal vigilance.”
Entropy.
I hope the problem lies in the way it was phrased. “Just over half of Americans (55%) support the U.S. government taking steps to restrict FALSE information online, even if it limits people from freely publishing or accessing information.” My emphasis on the word FALSE. It could be that these supporters are assuming only clearly fact-based false information would be blocked, rather than editorial or other debatable content. However, I fear that our limited education system has ill prepared many of the young to recognize that facts are not always factual when information is incomplete.
Just how is that any better? You either have free speech or you don’t.
It’s not any better, it just may explain the poll results. The wording in poll questions frequently skews results, usually intentionally.
Upon closer examination, not true. In business, fraudulent claims and promises are challengeable with lawsuits. In publicly-traded securities, false claims are not protected by 1A.
Free-speech rights are protected by 1A, but as the speaker veers into propaganda (intentional deceit), that protection starts to evaporate. It’s not government’s role to decide fact v. fiction, but rather a jury of 12 average citizens who have been exposed to all the relevant evidence, where govt. provides a neutral Judge, a courtroom, and the power to enforce the jury’s decisions regarding consequences.
So, the limits on free speech are being sued. That’s how fact v. fiction is decided under our system — juries are deciders-of-fact. This is a very advanced system of truth-seeking, and juries only rarely err in sussing out the facts.
” It’s not government’s role to decide fact v. fiction, but rather a jury of 12 average citizens who have been exposed to all the relevant evidence …”
Since when is a jury exposed to all the relevant evidence ? The government hides evidence 100% of the time.
WeThePeople could use AI and censure Conpress, House, and MSM. After 10%of the public view what they are saying isn’t true a 220 volt of current will straighten them up. What do you think?
assuming only clearly fact-based false information would be blocked,
WHO makes that determination? The people with the power of Goverment to punish? Your in the same stupid loop.
This post mentions the COVID response. All the changing ‘facts” and the federal govt leading the way in disinformation. But the govt has all that power. So if your vaccine, isn’t really a vaccine, the govt changes the definition of ‘vaccine’, to match what this new never before used treatment actually does. Humpty Dumpty, not science is in charge
Yes, we are being governed by Humpty Dumpty
Covid is my go to example of what happens when the Government appoints itself arbiter of “facts” That data points created by the govt lies surrounding the Pandemic are massive.
Isn’t Robert Reich’s name ironic. He would have fit in well in Nazi Germany. Love to hear him debate RFK Jr on this subject. Is he serious free speech is tyranny
You can’t make this stuff up! I had to modify this post. It is moderation. I have used asteriks to “cloak” the innocuous word.
Hard to pin point a beginning.
I could go back to the Federal Government successfully creating the first “protected” class of citizens. That singled them out for special treatment. That included legal action against anyone that offered an opinion that showed the class in a bad light.
Ever since then, the rush to attain special “protected class” status, has been unrelenting. We created some mystical other world power for the ‘N’ word.(or words close, dont use ni**ardly in a sentence) That single arrangement of letters, could get the speaker, or writer cross ways with law enforcement, and the speaker or writer lost all constitutional protections, because a protected class, supersedes, enumerated rights.
From there censorship of all manner of communication sprung. The whole camel entered the tent.
* represents the letter g
I had a great sociology teacher in high school, Mr. Leonard, who tried to explain to us why the KKK got police protection for their rallies. Mr. Leonard was a diehard Democrat as I later realized who abhorred the KKK, just like the rest of us. He explained that if you have someone in a room deciding who has the right to speak and who doesn’t, the end result will be that the only person who has free speech is the person in that room. I still disagreed with him. But now I understand. This is one of the results of the dumbing down of Americans. People simply cannot see beyond the end of their noses. “Good people should speak, bad people should not” sounds like an irrefutable argument to a child. To an adult, it should sound terrifying. Information, and facts and science, are not static. They are in a constant state of evolution. Tomorrow’s facts are today’s misinformation. It’s not really THAT hard to understand.
Deboluccia,
This is an excellent comment.
Excellent comment. I’m sure others in this forum have heard this same statement from their Constitutional Law professors that I heard from mine: “The best remedy for bad speech is more speech, not less.” It’s really terrifying when this many American adults think censorship is a good thing, particularly with today’s technology. Time to go back and read all those dystopian books and watch the frightening, futuristic movies from the middle of the last century.
@mary
1984 would be a good place to start but I’m afraid it has gone down the memory hole.
antonio
Deboluccia,
Well said.
Thing is, it is the Democrats who want to be the only person in that room.
@deboluccia
That’s the thing, and even today virtually no one wants to talk about it: it’s generational. We have raised multiple generations at this point who are simply not grown up in their adult years and not even half as educated as previous generations. Much has been written about this and people still don’t seem to understand the consequences even though we have begun to live them each day.
Who do you think runs Silicon Valley, The New York Times, or Disney? Who do you think is in charge of studies carried out at universities, or who comprises the body of modern professorship? I always investigate the ages of the worst offenders, and they are nearly always under 45, usually younger than that, not that there aren’t also long standing veins of radical activism. The dem party is no different, I can assure you Biden is not sitting around tweeting. We have created monsters. Us. We did it. It is one factor that simply can’t be easily mollified through law.
It isn’t any surprise to me that generations that don’t know consequences for their actions exist because they have never encountered them either through deferment or simple youth without the natural ramifications of age wouldn’t think full term abortions or Hunter’s behavior or shutting down other people as in your example are a big deal. I began to notice this in the tenor of online communities when these cohorts first began to trickle in. ‘Red Guard’ is unfortunately not too much of a stretch. We really may have to do all that again on this planet.
James,
Well said.
Hard to pin point a beginning.
I could go back to the Federal Government successfully creating the first “protected” class of citizens. That singled them out for special treatment. That included legal action against anyone that offered an opinion that showed the class in a bad light.
Ever since then, the rush to attain special “protected class” status, has been unrelenting. We created some mystical other world power for the ‘N’ word.(or words close, dont use niggardly in a sentence) That single arrangement of letters, could get the speaker, or writer cross ways with law enforcement, and the speaker or writer lost all constitutional protections, because a protected class, supersedes, enumerated rights.
From there censorship of all manner of communication sprung. The whole camel entered the tent.
For me, the beginning was the UPenn water buffalo incident..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_buffalo_incident
Yep this lunacy has been going on for over 30 years. Back then it was called PC, today it is called woke, but it’s the same old garbage. One if the great ironies was that the university president’s last name was Hackney.
What Fools the sheep are.
Perhaps you should study the Marxists history of the Twentieth Century. The University of Hawaii did a study on Democide; Death by government.
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
Remember the scene with the sheep being herded off the cliff in “Far From the Madding Crowd?” We’re heading there at breakneck speed. Thanks for the article.
Sounds like the scene at the end of this video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CTAud5O7Qqk