Below is my column in Fox.com on renewed attacks on free speech and the apologists for this anti-free speech movement, including most recently comedian Jon Stewart. From moves to amend the First Amendment to mocking those being targeted, the left is pushing back at polls and efforts to restore free speech values.
Here is the column:
“The First Amendment Is Out of Control.” That headline in a recent column in the New York Times warned Americans of a menace lurking around them and threatening their livelihoods and very lives. That menace is free speech and the media and academia are ramping up attacks on a right that once defined us as a people.
In my new book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss how we are living in the most dangerous anti-free speech period in our history. An alliance of the government, corporations, academia, and media have assembled to create an unprecedented system of censorship, blacklisting, and speech regulation. This movement is expanding and accelerating in its effort to curtail the right that Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once called “indispensable” to our constitutional system.
It is, of course, no easy task to convince a free people to give up a core part of identity and liberty. You have to make them afraid. Very afraid.
The current anti-free speech movement in the United States has its origins in higher education, where faculty have long argued that free speech is harmful. Starting in secondary schools, we have raised a generation of speech phobics who believe that opposing views are triggering and dangerous.
Anti-free speech books have been heralded in the media. University of Michigan Law Professor and MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade has written how dangerous free speech is for the nation. Her book, “Attack from Within,” describes how free speech is what she calls the “Achilles Heel” of America, portraying this right not as the value that defines this nation but the threat that lurks within it.
McQuade and many on the left are working to convince people that “disinformation” is a threat to them and that free speech is the vehicle that makes them vulnerable.
It is a clarion’s call that has been pushed by President Joe Biden who claims that companies refusing to censor citizens are “killing people.” The Biden administration has sought to use disinformation to justify an unprecedented system of censorship.
As I have laid out in testimony before Congress, Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, extended her agency’s mandate over “critical infrastructure” to include “our cognitive infrastructure.” The resulting censorship efforts included combating “malinformation” – described as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.” So, you can cite true facts but still be censored for misleading others.
The media has been running an unrelenting line of anti-free speech columns. Recently, the New York Times ran a column by former Biden official and Columbia University law professor Tim Wu describing how the First Amendment was “out of control” in protecting too much speech.
Wu insists that the First Amendment is now “beginning to threaten many of the essential jobs of the state, such as protecting national security and the safety and privacy of its citizens.” He bizarrely claims that the First Amendment “now mostly protects corporate interests.”
So free speech not only threatens your life, your job, and your privacy, but serves corporate masters. Ready to sign your rights away?
Wait, there is more.
There is a movement afoot to rewrite the First Amendment through an amendment. George Washington University Law School Professor Mary Anne Franks believes that the First Amendment is “aggressively individualistic” and needs to be rewritten to “redo” the work of the Framers.
Her new amendment suggestion replaces the clear statement in favor of a convoluted, ambiguous statement of free speech that will be “subject to responsibility for abuses.” It then adds that “all conflicts of such rights shall be resolved in accordance with the principle of equality and dignity of all persons.”
Franks has also dismissed objections to the censorship on social media and insisted that “the Internet model of free speech is little more than cacophony, where the loudest, most provocative, or most unlikeable voice dominates . . . If we want to protect free speech, we should not only resist the attempt to remake college campuses in the image of the Internet but consider the benefits of remaking the Internet in the image of the university.”
Franks is certainly correct that those “unlikeable voices” are rarely heard in academia today. As discussed in my book, faculties have largely purged conservative, Republican, libertarian, and dissenting professors. The discussion on most campuses now runs from the left to far left without that pesky “cacophony” of opposing viewpoints.
Experts at leading universities were fired or stripped of positions for questioning COVID claims. Conservative faculty have been hounded from schools and conservative sites have been targeted by government-funded programs. Thousands have been banned from social media.
What is particularly maddening for many in the free speech community is how the left has responded to opposition to censorship and blacklisting. Some are claiming to be victims by those who criticize their work to target individuals and groups as disinformation.
Others, like comedian Jon Stewart mock those who object to the erosion of free speech by noting that conservatives are making these objections on television or online. So, according to Stewart, how can there be a problem if you are able to still object? The suggestion is that there can be no threat to free speech unless people are completely silenced.
Stewart insists that “we are surrounded by and inundated with more speech than has ever existed in the history of communication.” In other words, because people can still speak, the well-documented systems of censorship and blacklisting must not be so bad.
It is not clear what Stewart would accept as sufficient censorship. In universities, polls show both faculty and students afraid to speak openly. The government has funded a host of programs to pressure the source of revenue of conservative sites and to target dissenting voices. Yet, because we are raising objections to these trends, Stewart laughs at the very notion that free speech is under fire. After all, he is doing just fine.
What appears to be a punchline to Stewart is a bit more serious for others who have their livelihoods threatened by the anti-free speech movement.
Stewart has the benefit of being a liberal comedian on a liberal network. Try being a conservative comedian today getting air time on most cable outlets or college campuses. Like so many academics, everything seems just fine to them. With the purging of opposition viewpoints, those who remain have little to complain about.
The effort to assure citizens that “there is nothing to see here” is belied by a massive censorship system described by one federal court as “Orwellian.” Conservatives face cancel campaigns and blacklisting in academic and media forums.
As I discussed in my new book, conservative North Carolina professor Dr. Mike Adams faced calls for termination for years with investigations and cancel campaigns. He repeatedly had to go to court to defend his right to continue to teach. He was then again targeted after an inflammatory tweet. He was done. Under pressure from the university, he agreed to resign with a settlement. Four years ago this month, Adams went home just days before his final day as a professor. He then committed suicide.
Many others have resigned or retired. For them, the anti-speech movement takes away everything that brings meaning to an intellectual life from publications to associations to even employment. It is a chilling message to others not to join the “cacophony of … unlikeable voices.”
Some citizens seem sufficiently afraid or angry to surrender their free speech rights. They have lost faith in free speech. For the rest of us, their crisis of faith cannot be allowed to become a contagion. We must have a reawakening in this country that, despite our many divisions, we remain united by this indispensable human right.
Today’s assignments: 1. promote the book; 2. attack Professor McQuade. Yesterday, in his attack on Rachel Maddow and Nicolle Wallace, Turley equated their claims that a certain doctor who performed unnecessary hysterectomies on migrant women with being a “virtual Dr. Josef Mengele”, also known as the “Angel of Death” at Nazi concentration camps because of his macabre experiments on Jewish people, especially children, with a focus on twins. After abusing them, he’d kill them and then dissect their bodies. He pinned their eyeballs to his walls for decorations. He removed internal organs without anesthesia. To kill his subjects, he would inject chloroform directly into their hearts. He tried to create conjoined twins by sewing non-conjoined twins together. He deliberately amputated healthy limbs and transfused blood from one twin to another, with death sometimes resulting. He injected children with typhoid to see what would happen. He would lure children with kindness and candy, only to kill them hours later. Dr. Mengele espoused his belief that Jews were inferior humans.
I’ve thought about Turley’s ill-advised comparison and have concluded that his comments reflected not only poor judgment and lack of knowledge of facts, but were clearly anti-Semitic to the extent that they reflect on his worthiness to serve as a professor of law. Allegedly performing unnecessary hysterectomies is light years different from the unthinkable crimes against humanity committed by Dr. Josef Mengele, and to compare the 2 situations for purposes of a politically-motivated attack against pundits with opposite views is beyond the pale. Turley holds himself out as “Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law”. Aren’t the Shapiros Jewish? The family with that surname where I live are all Jewish and I am acquainted with some of them. I wonder how they would feel about Turley exercising his “free speech” right to compare the human rights atrocities committed by Dr. Mengele with what Turley claims is a false accusation of performing unnecessary hysterectomies. I’m literally stunned at Turley’s ignorance, insensitivity and lack of knowledge of the degree of monstrosity evoked by the name of “Dr. Josef Mengele”. I believe that George Washington University should conduct an investigation into Turley and whether he is fit to continue as a professor given his downplaying of the horrors committed by Dr. Mengele on Jews. The issue is not freedom of speech, but insensitivity, lying and anti-Semitism, which are or should be, disqualifying. Does Turley have a free speech right to say what he did?–yes Should someone who says what Turley did be qualified to teach at a public university? IMHO, NO!
Weird how Gigi cosplays as being outraged Nazi atrocities towards Jews – but while she’s eager to offer sophomoric, lying attacks on Professor Turley as being anti-Semitic, you never read one word from her her fellow Soviet Democrats in or defending the New Hitler Youth Movement on American campuses.
Not a word from Gigi condemning The New Nazi Movement that are the tenured professors and universities that are allowing it to target Jewish students on campus. And certainly not a word from Gigi about the Anti-Semitic Soviet Democrat Sisterhood carrying the Soviet Democrat cause in the House of Representatives: Tlaib, Omar, and of course, Another Outrageous Communist.
Gigi LOVES Soviet Democrats who are Anti-Semitic Neo-Nazis. As well as the long parade of anti-Semitic Democrat presidents, beginning with FDR. But she can’t contain her rage at Prof. Turley – HE’S the anti-Semitic one – while he does everything he can to appease the Soviet Democrat identity politics class who are the New Nazi Movement. In the public – and in the House.
Gigi’s lifetime assignment:
1. Go to Prof. Turley’s comment section.
2. Lie your Soviet Democrat police state fascist Birthing Person ass off for your fellow Soviet Democrat police state fascist, Bribery Biden, President Daddy-Daughter Sex Showers.
3. When your hyperbole, hysteria, demagoguery and lies are dismissed – double down and claim those who reject the BS must be ignorant.
It gets tiresome after a while.
George Washington University, like Georgetown University, Howard University, Gallaudet U and American U are all private universities. They happen to reside in Washington DC which makes them congressionally chartered.
GWU is private but then again the paid DNC trolls are flunkies of life and never made it out of the sandbox in kindergarten.
Fun fact: Georgetown University, founded by the Jesuits, was designated a congressionally chartered university by President James Madison. No doubt John Adams lost his mind because he loathed the Jesuits
😍
Charter of the University
An Act Concerning the College of Georgetown in the District of Columbia
(6 Stat. 152)
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That it shall and may be lawful for such persons as now are, or from time to time may be, the President and Directors of the College of Georgetown, within the District of Columbia, to admit any of the students belonging to said College, or other person meriting academical honors, to any degree in the faculties, arts, sciences, and liberal professions, to which persons are usually admitted in other Colleges or Universities of the United States; and to issue in an appropriate form the diplomas or certificates which may be requisite to testify to the admission to such degrees.
LANGDON CHEVES, Speaker of the House of Representatives
JOHN GAILLARD, President pro tempore of the Senate
Approved March 1, 1815, JAMES MADISON
https://governance.georgetown.edu/charter/
Doesn’t matter what kind of university it is, how it started or who runs it—ignorance of and insensitivity to the horrors of the Holocaust should not describe anyone on the faculty of any institution of higher learning.
Dr. Mengele espoused his belief that Jews were inferior humans.
He was a Democrat!
The things you learn on this blog from Gigi.
From CNN about the kind and caring man that Joe Biden is but he should step aside. https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/28/politics/joe-biden-social-security-gop-kfile/index.html.
Joe Biden is a kind and decent man when it comes to his son the crack addict but not so much to black crack addicts. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-an-early-biden-crime-bill-created-the-sentencing-disparity-for-crack-and-cocaine-trafficking/2019/07/28/5cbb4c98-9dcf-11e9-85d6-5211733f92c7_story.html. If they had a piece of crack as big as a quarter they were sent to prison for five years. Now Jill Biden goes to court to protect her gun carrying crack head son so he won’t go to prison. This kind and generous man thinks you should go to jail for speaking your mind. The kind and generous man story line is a bunch of you know the thing.
It’s to contain the offshore accounts that will undoubtedly arise from the upcoming trial over tax fraud. Biden has been a crook his entire tenure in office.
TiT said: “Joe Biden is a kind and decent man when it comes to his son the crack addict…”
I wonder how much kindness and decency he showed his daughter Ashley while showering with her and hypersexualizing her at a young and impressionable age?
This has all the classic earmarks of a MSM information operation
– 51 ex-Hunter Biden Drug Dealers
Russian media is not the only media that picked up on Biden’s gaff. The Australian media and the U.K. media have picked up on it too. I smell the resurrection of Russia Russia Russia rising in the air at CNN. It stunk then and it stinks now.
FWIW – A Credibility Trap:
“If you wish to see a fine example of this type of systemic corruption, watch the movie Serpico, or a good expose of a banana republic or organized crime, or read the book This Town by Mark Leibovich.
Groupthink rationalizes it, and the fear of ostracism and missing the big payday keeps everyone in line. And once you are part of this type of system, it owns you, whether you are a politician, a journalist, an economist, or a parasitic enabler. If you are in business, not to join in is a competitive disadvantage. Bad behaviour drives out the good, and banality unleashing the darkest parts of human nature is in the ascendant.
A credibility trap is when both parties pledges themselves to the powerful, monied interests, thereby putting the business of business ahead of the business of the people. The society becomes out of balance, and cannot bring itself to right because its leaders have lost their way, and corrupt all who come near them.
It always ends, often from external forces, and too often badly. But while the money is still flowing the band plays on.
“A credibility trap is a condition wherein the financial, political and informational functions of a society have been compromised by corruption and fraud, so that the leadership cannot effectively reform, or even honestly address, the problems of that system without impairing and implicating, at least incidentally, a broad swath of the power structure, including themselves.
The status quo tolerates the corruption and the fraud because they have profited at least indirectly from it, and would like to continue to do so. Even the impulse to reform within the power structure is susceptible to various forms of soft blackmail and coercion by the system that maintains and rewards.
And so a failed policy and its support system become self-sustaining, long after it is seen by objective observers to have failed. In its failure it is counterproductive, and an impediment to recovery in the real economy. Admitting failure is not an option for the thought leaders who receive their power from that system.
The continuity of the structural hierarchy must therefore be maintained at all costs, even to the point of becoming a painfully obvious, organized hypocrisy.
https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2013/09/what-is-credibilty-trap.html
“job creation” = government jobs
US House Representative Joyce Beatty (D) estimated net worth of $7,216,014 in 2018
https://www.opensecrets.org/personal-finances/joyce-beatty/net-worth?cid=N00033904
OT, but related, Ex-intel chiefs called Biden ‘ineffective messenger’ to convince public Trump supporters are threats
“Since-disbanded Homeland Intelligence Experts Group with Trump-Russia collusion hoax proponents James Clapper, John Brennan discussed using sheriffs and hosts of popular podcast to promote their message.”
https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/ex-intel-chiefs-called-biden-ineffective-messenger-convince-public
Ammoseek sometimes has great sales. Just saying
Ukraine should join NATO before Trump becomes president. Then Ukraine will be safe, or “Trump proof”.
Except that trump was to turn the clock back on the U.S. by 100+ years. leave NATO, bring back slavery and the Salem Witch trials. you know, Make America great again. like it was before we freed the slaves and everyone was a white nationalist christian.
Anonymous you forgot about throwing grandma off the cliff. I bet that you don’t know that once upon a time Biden called for the cutting of Social Security benefits. Sadly misinformed again.
I want what you’re smokin’ dude hahaha.
Another feckless Anonymous Soviet Democrat Marxist Useful Idiot coward tried Trump Russia Dossier v.7.3:
Except that trump was to turn the clock back on the U.S. by 100+ years. leave NATO, bring back slavery and the Salem Witch trials. you know, Make America great again.
It’s almost like it was Trump, not Bribery Biden, who when he was first fought school desegregation and announced he didn’t want his children forced to attend school with jungle bunnies.
Anonymous, you forgot to end with “And remember, the Russia Dossier that Obama and Biden paid an Russian FSB operative to write is verified proof that he’s a Russian stooge”.
We signed an agreement after WWII to keep the Ukraine out of NATO. All Biden needs to do to stop the bloodshed is agree to honor that agreement, that better men than him, …. and you… made on our behalf.
IF the bootlicking warmongering fools you support, manage to get the Ukraine into NATO, then World War III will begin overnight. The Ukraine IS the heart of Russia, its where Russia grew out of. And It is surrounded, by RUSSIAN SOIL. So IF you people are stupid and evil enough to allow the Ukraine into NATO, placing US missiles INSIDE of the Russian Continent then Russia will be FORCED to strike us. They’ll have no choice.
Just like we had none when they tried to place their missiles and create a strategic military ally with Cuba.
Only a complete fool or an evil corrupt warmongering liar would write a comment as stupid as what you just said.
If you want Global Thermonuclear war, then yea stupid, go ahead and put US Nuclear missiles in the Ukraine which is what will happen if they join NATO. Go ahead and threaten Russia INSIDE their own country .
And wipe all of humanity from the planet because if the rest are like you, then we’re too stupid to exist.
“ We signed an agreement after WWII to keep the Ukraine out of NATO. All Biden needs to do to stop the bloodshed is agree to honor that agreement, that better men than him, …. and you… made on our behalf.”
Russia signed an agreement with Ukraine not to invade in exchange for giving up the nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Russia didn’t honor that agreement.
Ukraine can choose to join NATO if it wants. If Russia can break agreements, why can’t Ukraine?
Only problem is “the security assurances were given to the legitimate government of Ukraine but not to the forces that came to power following the coup d’etat.”
See, the US overthrew the elected government of Ukraine – that wasn’t part of any deal…
No, it cannot, and you’re a either a liar, or a fool for saying so. Or both.
Stop pretending you don’t understand the that the Ukraine joining NATO is the same thing as CUBA allowing Russian nuclear Missiles to be placed next to our coastline.
STOP Pretending and STOP lying.
You KNOW its the same thing. RUSSIA CAN NO MORE ALLOW NATO INSIDE ITS OWN CONTINENTAL BORDERS IN THE UKRAINE ANY MORE THAN WE CAN ALLOW RUSSIAN MISSILES IN CUBA.
SAME THING STUPID.
STOP LYING AND STOP TROLLING.
If you’re referring to the ‘Budapest Agreement’, signed during the collapse of the U.S.S.R., those were still U.S.S.R. nuclear weapons (Ukraine was part of the U.S.S.R.) and their removal to the new Russian Federation, along with future Ukraine ‘military’ neutrality, was advantageous for the strategic security of all parties concerned, and the entie region, at the time.
I have little doubt if the Zelenskiy regime had ‘nuclear weapons’ today, they would not hesitate to use them.
*note. there had/has been a raging ‘civil war’ in Ukraine – literally brother against brother and their Mother Russia – since the overthrow of the duly elected gov. in Kyiv in 2014 (see also Biden et el). On Feb. 21 2022, Russia invoked article 51 of the UN charter (Just as Nato did in Yugoslavia circa 20th century.) and came to the ‘defense’ of the new Peoples Republic of the Donbas (aka the ‘DPR’) on Feb. 22, 2022.
p.s. during these negotiations, there were also ‘ironclad’ security guarantees that ‘Nato’ would not move ‘one inch further east’ than a unified Germany.
*as Putin is quick to point out, these assurances were not ‘signed’ agreements.
You just defined the problem in no uncertain terms.
Putin is responding to NATO ENCROACHMENTS ONTO THEIR CONTINENT.
If Biden and the Military Industrial Complex would STOP ADVANCING INTO RUSSIAN TERRITORY, there would be no war.
And HALF A MILLION Ukrainians, would still be alive.
One consideration aside from Putin being an Imperalist is parallel to our own Monroe doctrine. Russia will not tolerate Ukraine in NATO. Obama SA he’d the prior Ukrainian government and enabled Zelensky to seize power. Putin desires to remove Zelensky and replace the Ukrainian government with someone more aligned with the Bear. Whatever, over 500,000 Ukrainians dead in a nosing war, Russia will respond to what they see as any external threat. Basically a civil war, my opinion is end it quickly and n get rid of Zelensky, corrupt to the core.
dgsnowden said: “since the overthrow of the duly elected gov. in Kyiv in 2014…”
Said overthrow organized and engineered by US State Dept functionary Victoria Nuland and her CIA/NSA/Deep State cronies for the specific purpose of destabilizing the region and provoking a military response from Russia.
Bazinga
“Ukraine can choose to join NATO if it wants. If Russia can break agreements, why can’t Ukraine?”
Well, now we know who the idiot anonymous Ukraine troll is.
You do remember what happened to North Macedonia at the 2008 Bucharest Summit, don’t you?
Chris Weber tried this as a prelude to hysterical fearmongering:
We signed an agreement after WWII to keep the Ukraine out of NATO.
Well, this lie didn’t get off to a good start! Ukraine did not exist as an independent country in 1949 when NATO was formed as a guard against the USSR. Other countries that were also vassal states of the Soviets after WWII are Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania – all now members of NATO!
So it’s pretty weird that supposedly there is a document from 1949 or so where we/NATO made a commitment to the Kremlin that we would keep their Ukraine out of NATO. Equally weird that while we supposedly agreed to keep Ukraine out of NATO, we didn’t also agree to keep Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, etc out.
Chris, can you give us a link to where we can go read this agreement you claim exists.
I wonder how many “bootlicking warmongering fools” that claim the existence of that document and complying with it would have prevented this war are completely ignorant of the existence of a REAL document? One which concerns what we promised to do if one single jackbooted armed Russian set foot on Ukrainian soil.
That would be the one under Bush (a wee bit after WWII) where we – in exchange for Ukraine agreeing to surrender all their nukes – promised Ukraine we would come to their defense if they faced aggression after surrendering their nukes.
Would Putin have set one foot in Ukraine if they had refused our American offer to defend them, and instead still had their nukes, now aimed at his evil face?
Why did Putin give Ukraine a wide berth while Trump was president – but invaded Ukraine after Obama promised to give him space to operate if he would just behave himself until after Obama was safely reelected. And then invaded again after Trump was gone, replaced by Obama’s Third Term?
Chris… how many tours did you do over in Afghanistan/Iraq where you DIDN’T see Ukrainian troops on the ground just as you were?
You couldn’t have missed them: they were fighting beside us from the very first day we went in after 9/11 until the last day when Biden abandoned Afghanistan like he abandoned Ukraine while watching Putin forming up to invade for months before doing so.
I have a hard time understanding why they kept troops fighting beside us in Afghanistan after Obama reneged on our promise to protect them after the first Russian invasion.
You are a nutcase. Ukraine probably lost 500,000 people because of nuts like you. The war was unnecessary. Learn your history. Stay away from booze and drugs. Get an education. Find your moral compass.
Hi S. Meyer .. . fancy meeting you here.
Speaking of finding ones ‘moral compass’, did you see the recent/revised death toll in Gaza by the Lancet .. . 186,000 killed, most of them women and children.
dgsnowden wrote:
did you see the recent/revised death toll in Gaza by the Lancet .. . 186,000 killed, most of them women and children.
Yes! I did! I immediately remembered the earlier article published by the Lancet in outrage regarding unnecessary and senseless civilian deaths! Surely you remember that one! Here:
“The most lethal attack ever registered against a hospital happened on Oct 17, 2023 in the Gaza Strip (or Gaza), with hundreds of people dead and injured.1
WHO issued a strong protest.”
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)02362-0/fulltext
What telling is that shortly afterwards – after the Lancet, WHO (who won’t say shit about the ChiComs or hajjis), Washington Post, NBC, CBS, etc condemned the Israelis – we found out the Al Ahli Arab hospital that the Hamas Hajji Health Services had claimed was demolished by an IDF bomb was still standing.
In fact, what had happened is that a terrorist missile failed and fell in an adjoining parking lot instead of the intended Israeli citizens it was meant to kill. And the Hajji terrorist command center they had under Al Ahli Arab hospital was still functioning – still not yet attacked by the IDF due to the fact they had placed it right in the middle of the most vulnerable civilians.
Weird how the Lancet and our Mainstream Media got that all so very, very wrong! Anybody who blindly believed a total of 520 bodies buried in the rubble of an eight story hospital were all dug out and counted just hours after the attack should have “Useful Idiot” tattooed on their forehead – journalist or whoever they are.
BTW, placing a military facility, force, asset, etc. deliberately in or near hospitals, schools, or other similar civilian structures is a war crime. Just thought I’d mention that as a lot of genocidal terrorist sympathizers claim they’re worried about war crimes being committed. For my part, most saying that are full of shit. They just hate Israelis and they hate Jews – Arab terrorist war crimes are fine.
So… while the Lancet hasn’t even bothered to pull that earlier article about civilian deaths and apologize, now they have more numbers! Where did they get the numbers they’re using? Same place they got the information and death toll on that hospital the IDF supposedly bombed?
The Hamas Hajji Health Services was extremely helpful in providing the Lancet researchers with those numbers (you DID actually read the article, versus just copying and pasting the number, right?). Did that same source provide a reliable health services type comprehensive breakdown of how many of the total were genocidal Hamas terrorists (their brothers in terrorism and genocide)?
How many of those in that total are among those from the very first days of the war? Remember the Hamas Hajji Health Services enlisting the news media to tell the world that Israel bombed a major hospital and reduced it to rubble? How many dead did the Hamas Hajji Health Services tell the world died in that attack? 520, wasn’t it?
Did the Hamas Hajji Health Services providing that number detail how many of those dead Gaza Arabs were civilians shot by Hamas because they dared to try and get some of the food the world has been shipping to them that Hamas commandeers on arrival for the sole use by their terrorist murderers and rapists? Or they decided not to share that number – or claim it was IDF who killed them?
How many in that number you provided were killed as a result of being FORCED to remain in the immediate area of Hamas terrorists – forced because Hamas doesn’t give a shit about them, and they know if they get killed when the IDF comes to sort their cowardly Nazi asses out, their deaths will be used by hajji propagandists and Useful Idiots on campus for the propaganda war.
Or maybe (you must know this as you apparently read the Lancet) this followup article published in the Lancet a day ago gives a clue as to whose team the author of the study providing the numbers you mentioned is playing for:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01250-9/fulltext
One thing no normal American can miss noticing: when The New Hitler Youth Movement is screaming and howling on campuses and the Anti-Semitic Soviet Democrat Hamas Sisterhood is doing the same in the House of Representatives… you never see a single one at the same time demanding that the Arab terrorists release their hostages.
You’ll never see The New Hitler Youth Movement on the streets or in the House demanding that the anti-Semitic genocidal hajji Arab terrorists stop forcing civilians to stay in their vicinity to serve as human shields and sometimes get killed as a result of that.
That’s REALLY weird – because The New Hitler Youth Movement justify their protests, “River To The Sea” chants, etc because they claim they’re just concerned about the civilians with no allegiances to the Hamas terrorists. And yet, not a word about forcing Arab civilians to stay in their vicinity where they could be killed in the fighting.
It’s almost like the New Hitler Youth Movement supporters of the genocidal Arab Hamas terrorists aren’t aware that it is a war crime to seize hostages, rape hostages, murder hostages etc. And that specific war crime includes civilians engaged in helping Hamas terrorists keep and rape hostages.
Also like our new Nazi identity politics class are not aware that Hamas is committing further war crimes in forcing those Arab civilians that they claim to care so much about to be their human shields to protect them from being fired on by the IDF forces they’re shooting at.
The laws of war allow any opposing military to summarily carry out field executions of terrorists like these genocidal Hamas terrorists, irregular fighters – and allegedly civilian Arabs in Gaza either holding Israelis hostage for Hamas or offering resistance to IDF troops rescuing them from the terrorists.
In my opinion, the Israelis being soft on terrorism out of a belief that hopefully the UN will then view them fairly has been a mistake. They should have been fighting their terrorists as we fought ours in the first years after 9/11 before we also went soft with ISAF and “democracy projects”.
Arab hajji terrorism has been killing Jews, Europeans, and Americans since the early 1970’s when the Egyptian terrorist Yassar Arafat working with the Muslim Brotherhood sold the idea to the UN that such a thing as a people called “Palestinians” had existed in history and still existed. Never has, but the claim has taken hold.
The difference is, now there’s Europeans and Americans apologizing for and defending Arab hajji terrorists. That’s new.
The best solution to the Arab civilian death toll in Gaza (weird how Israeli civilians still being killed by hajji terrorist missiles are never mentioned) is metric:
5.56mm, 7.62mm, 81mm, 84mm, 150mm, etc. Remove appeasement restrictions on Israel, turn them loose on these culls and get on with it.
Speaking of finding ones ‘moral compass’, did you see the recent/revised death toll in Gaza by the Lancet .. . 186,000 killed, most of them women and children
Well the people of Gaza did elect Hamas who have made anti-semitism their number 1 strategy. So yeah, Moral compass indeed. File it under FAFO
Hamas wins huge majority
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2006/1/26/hamas-wins-huge-majority
Dgsnowden, Old Airborne already responded to your Stupidity, which is doubly stupid because you should know that your information is fictitious and comes from terrorists. In this case, it was in a non-reviewed, meaningless letter. You don’t know that an Al Jazeera reporter held some of the hostages. That demonstrates your absolute ignorance. You don’t know that the 1,200 Jews killed were by civilians as well as terrorists. You don’t know that the terrorists pledged to do the same in the future. You are nothing more than an ignorant Nazi trying to climb the ladder of success, but instead tumble off and end up in the sewer.
If you want to sound slightly intelligent, try to voice your opinion based on facts while discussing the issues. Your alternative is to remain the ugly anti-Semite you are.
Hide behind your wife and children while throwing stones at people. See where that gets you.
Got some really bad news for you. Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, has had meetings with Zelensky, Putin, Xi and now had a meeting with Trump. Orban posted to X, “It was an honor to visit President [Donald Trump] at Mar-a-Lago today. We discussed ways to make peace. The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”
Of course Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said, “Whatever adventurism is being undertaken without Ukraine’s consent or support is not something that’s consistent with our policy, the foreign policy of the United States.”
Seems a number of people are interested in peace, but Zelensky, Biden and you.
Tell us, if by chance Trump were to secure a peace deal between the Ukraine and Russia, ended the fighting, the dying, the destruction, would you cheer for peace?
If hundreds of thousands of both Ukrainian and Russian troops sighed in relief and cheered for peace, would you cheer with them?
That is a ridiculous framing of the issue.
What would the peace entail? Ceding ~18% of its territory to an aggressor nation, that after previously doing so with Crimea, has demonstrated that it has no intentions to abide by such agreements?
You do realize that Crimea was taken by Russia in 2014, right?
Ukraine would be safe until the next democrat/neo-con took office and started WWIII w/ Russia.
Yes, let us by all means guarantee permanent military support to a regime that just last month (with highly regrettable U. S. complicity) conducted a missile attack deliberately targeting civilian vacationers on a beach in Sebastipol. We definitely want to lock ourselves into continuing support for that kind of high-minded and moral conduct.
MTG ordered to report to court for not paying a fine.
Jeffry Clark being disbarred.
trump a convicted felon.
Looks like the trump party believes in laws for thee but not for me.
yea, I want more of these people leading our country.
My mistake, it was Louren Boebert that was ordered to court.
MTG is just the quintessential person of integrity after being divorced by her husband.
How many trump lawyers have been disbarred now?
And yet, the Big Guy is STILL behind by double digits… Even worse, your VP is even less popular
He’s behind by at least 10%!
That Trump lawyers are disbarred for taking meritorious cases is the worst abuse of socalled “ethics panels” and enforcement we have ever seen in American history. The catch all Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4 is now abused by liberals as punishment for taking cases they don’t like.
This was presaged by decades, in the cases US v Anastaplo, and a companion case called Koenigsberg. They subordinate the 1st amendment rights of lawyers to the 11th amendment in short, allowing state supreme courts to appoint ethics “enforcers” who pursue the interests of the hidden plutocracy in this country
Sad to see how far our noble constitutional ideals have slid towards the gutter.
Its ok, when it call comes down, we won’t be worrying about the Enlightenment notions held by the Founders anymore, either. But the hirelings of the billionaires, and they, will pay.
Saloth Sar
Another Anonymous Soviet Democrat making a pitch for the morality and the ethics of the Bribery Biden White House Crime Cartel LLC:
MTG ordered to report to court for not paying a fine. Looks like the trump party believes in laws for thee but not for me.
Hillary Clinton NOT indicted for destroying subpoenaed evidence, NOR four years of espionage act felonies
Hillary Clinton NOT indicted for perjuring herself to Congress while giving testimony
Bolshevik Barack’s last two Attorney Generals NOT indicted for perjuring themselves to FISA courts
Bolshevik Barack’s Attorney General Eric Holder NOT indicted for perjuring himself to Congress and ignoring a subpoena
Bolshevik Barack’s FBI Director James Comey NOT indicted for perjuring himself repeatedly to FISA courts
Bolshevik Barack’s FBI Director James Comey NOT indicted for perjuring himself to Congress
Bolshevik Barack’s FBI Assistant Director Andrew McCabe NOT indicted for perjuring himself to FISA courts
Bolshevik Barack’s FBI Assistant Director Andrew McCabe NOT indicted for perjuring himself to FBI investigators
Bolshevik Barack’s FBI Assistant Director Andrew McCabe NOT indicted for perjuring himself to Congress
Bolshevik Barack’s former FBI Director Robert Mueller NOT indicted for perjuring himself to FISA courts doing his “Russia Dossier investigation”
Bolshevik Barack’s CIA Director John Brennan NOT indicted for perjuring himself to Congress
Bolshevik Barack’s DNI James Clapper NOT indicted for perjuring himself to Congress
The First Felon Son, The Family Cashier Formerly Known As The Crackhead Kid NOT indicted for ignoring a subpoena
Ilhan Omar NOT indicted for immigration fraud for marrying her brother (not to mention that incest is still illegal)
…
…. but tell us again about MTG… what was the fine for again? How much?
Jeffry Clark being disbarred.
Kevin Clinesmith, FBI lawyer who altered an exculpatory document and perjured himself to FISA courts with that document, convicted, but NOT disbarred
Marc Elias,Clinton and Biden election lawyer who money laundered payments to foreign spies NOT disbarred, only fined for election interference
Michael Sussmann, Clinton election lawyer indicted for lying to Special Counsel, NOT disbarred
…
Seems to be a trend…
trump a convicted felon.
Reference all the Soviet Democrat felons above who were NOT indicted.
Barack Obama, found guilty of presidential election campaign crimes, let off with a massive fine.
Hillary Clinton, found guilty of presidential election campaign crimes, let off with a fine.
Mark Zuckerbureg, found guilty of election campaign crimes – let off with the biggest individual fine in history
Hillary Clinton, found to have committed four years of serial felonies as Obama’s Secretary of State, NOT indicted due to the “no reasonable” card from her own DoJ
Joe Biden, found by his own hand picked Special Counsel to have committed four DECADES of felonies – NOT indicted due to the same “no reasonable” card from his own DoJ
Hunter Biden, family cashier, First Son Convicted Gun Felon – now Oval Office primary advisor to his partner in crime, unindicted felon Bribery Biden.
Imagine that: it was bad enough when Bribery Biden was giving The Crackhead Kid access to 40 years of stolen classified documents to share with their Chicom and Russian customers. Now the two of them are sharing the nuclear codes in the Oval Office.
yea, I want more of these people leading our country.
Yeah, you want more Obama/Biden Soviet Democrat police state fascist two different standards of justice – it’s worked great so far!
Convince us you actually have anything resembling morals and standards. And when that Soviet show trial that convicted Trump gets tossed out by SCOTUS for being the national embarrassment it was???? Or if Trump, without you being unable to use the ‘felon’ label, picks an AG who promptly indicts The Big Guy and all those involved??????
I WANT THEM TO PACK THE COURTS!
Tom Robinson Found Guilty of Sexual Abuse!
07/12/2024
Today, after deliberating nearly three hours, Tom Robinson, a black handyman, was convicted of the sexual abuse of E. Jean. Carroll. Ms. Carroll was uncertain of the year the abuse occurred, and never bothered to file a police report. Over 20 years later, Ms.Carroll reported that she retained the clothing that she was wearing at the time of the incident, and that it had unidentified male DNA on the dress. Mr. Robinson offered to provide a DNA sample. The offer was rejected. The Donna Karan dress in question was not made until long after the alleged incident occurred. The civil action was funded by a wealthy individual, who did not like Mr. Robinson.
I’m a 64 year old tree climber & cutter, not a conservative I don’t join political parties or adopt ideologies. I go with the truth, always just the truth. Whoever’s speaking it.
But my comments and such tend to support conservatives more these days because the liberals have turned into Red China. (what we are seeing is nearly identical to the Chinese cultural revolution of the 90’s). So when I post on my Fakebook or Instacrap accounts for work, occasionally a conservative thought or two slips out.
Well that doesn’t apparently fly well with Instagram. I woke up yesterday to find my Instagram account of 5 years “Boomer In the Trees” was “Suspended”. It was supposedly “suspended due to some violation of their guidelines.
Problem is, I haven’t posted anything on IG for nearly a month. No posts, no comments other than I told another climber they were “amazing”. That’s it. That’s all I’ve written in a month.
Yet yesterday Instagram emailed me declaring I had violated their terms, my account was Suspended and if I did not “Appeal” then 5 years worth of videos would be deleted permanently and I’d be permanently locked out.
So when I went to hit the “Appeal” button, it demanded I first verify and had me click to send a 5 digit code to my cell phone. I did, but the text with the code never arrived. I tried again, only now it told me “You cannot use this feature to protect us from SPAM”.
A day later I still get that error message. It is important to point out that the phone number they displayed to me was correct and my phone IS working fine and receiving text messages. But theirs never arrives, so I cannot appeal the decision and its like they’ve blocked me from appealing.
What’s worse is the tyrannical nature of it all. They have never told me what rule I supposedly broke. And since I haven’t posted anything in nearly a month its impossible for me to have broken one. I’d have to actually write something to break their rules wouldn’t I?
Also I never post anything other than video clips of my work and have for 5 years. None of that could have gotten me flagged.
The only thing I can think of is in 2017 I photographed then President Trump (and likely soon to be again) at Arlington. I took some nice pictures of him along with the Joint Chiefs, Rence Priebus and Kelly Anne Conway.
I think its possible, not sure but I’m thinking its possible some “bot’ they run to review accounts saw those pictures of Trump and Priebus, Conway, Ben Carson, Mike Pompeo and others I photographed that day, and flagged my account as a “MAGA” and blocked it based on that.
I have no proof of course, but that’s the problem. They are tyrannical in silencing free speech. They don’t tell you why you’re being silenced, they don’t give you (or at least me) a chance to appeal. They just silence you, and in the process I am losing 5 years worth of videos, many of me with my old dog Max who is now gone, that I have no where else because they were done live.
I could care less about losing the instagram account, I don’t use it for anything other than video clips of work but over the years I built up a following of about 400 tree cutters and its not fair I should lose contact with them, many I talk to routinely in there. Also its not fair to lose all those videos. But i’ll get over it.
What bothers me is I am silenced by IG and accused of doing something without any right to even know what I am being accused of and no way to defend myself against this tyrannical censorship.
I think its because they think I’m a “MAGA”., but even if I were that would not be justification for this. In fact that would make it worse.
Censorship is REAL, and its coming from the left almost exclusively. I don’t trust the right much more to honor free speech once they get back in power, but right now its the left doing the censoring and weasels like this troll calling itself “GEORGE” come in and deny its happening, showing they are just part of the bootlickers who support this sort of unholy authoritarian fascist control.
Professor Turley is one of the bastions for free speech, his words, testimonies and writings are defending a core American right that spineless bootlicking cowards want to give away. After hundreds of thousands of Americans have died over centuries to protect it, these cowards want to just hand it away.
Don’t let them. Stand up to them and deny them. And when the right wing takes power again, and they will, make sure they honor free speech, and just don’t turn around and start silencing liberal speech.
Free speech is for both parties, both sides and everyone in between. If you don’t support it for everyone, then you’re not an American or a free person, you’re a fascist and bootlicker, and a traitor to freedom.
Chris Weber,
First sorry to hear the loss of all the pics of your dog, Max.
As to IG, I would guess their bot, algorithm found your pics of president Trump, deemed you MAGA, and thereby to be forever tossed into the purgatory “in violation of our standards!” bin. I would be surprised if they did reinstate your account.
Again, sorry to hear about your dog.
“It was supposedly “suspended due to some violation of their guidelines.”
“not a conservative” is fine, Chris and I am sorry this happened to you, but that demonstrates one has to think before stepping into the leftist agenda, which is where the entire Democrat Party fell into. Potential exceptions to specific rules, making sense at the time, are used by leftists today to censor you. That is why one must consider what they support when those positions might compromise individual freedom cherished by most conservatives on the blog.
You went out of your way there making a word salad but its meaning is ambiguous at best.
In other words, I have no idea what your point is.
Are you trying to infer I support liberal agenda? Or I somehow “step into it”?
I’ve had my IG account for over 5 years like many tree climbers and cutters. Its pretty normal.
And other than some photos of Donald Trump and his cabinet, most of what I post is just photos and videos of my work. No agenda of any kind other than seeing trees coming down safe (or sometimes not so safe ha ha)
So I’m not sure what your point is. I’m very situationally aware of EVERYTHING around me, both in my near world and far. And I’m just as aware of republican efforts to censor when republicans held power, as I am now of the democrats agenda to do it.
Only theirs has been much worse. Much more blatant. Much more open and in your face. Much more controlling and authoritarian. And much wider spread to a much wider audience.
So yes, I stand up against the liberal agenda to censor.
But don’t think for two seconds that I am naïve enough to think that when the other side of this 2-sided Counterfeit coin we keep selecting our leaders from takes power, that they’ll be any better.
They’ll just censor liberal things, using laws and precedent being now set by the liberals.
I see more than most of the partisan hacks in this blog see, because I don’t wear the partisan blinders.
I can see what’s in front of me, behind me and most importantly in a fight, I can see and pay very close attention… , to the periphery.
Chris, I went out of my way not to insult you and keep things pleasant, but you have a bush up your a$$, which makes you blind to everything else.
My comment involved today’s Democrat Party.
This could well have been because of your conservative POV and posts. OTOH, it is my personal and professional observation (I had a 38 year career in IT, much of that in software design, coding and development) that Facebook, and presumably Instagram, is a veritable cesspit of pathetically poor design and botched, incompetent coding. Your experience could also be attributable to that, although the two possibilities are not mutually exclusive.
Dear Mr. Turley, George @ 12:22 p.m. has it all wrong regarding Conservatives. We are not thin skinned in any way. However, we do not resort to violence as the Left often do. We do not see any reason to burn buildings and loot stores because we didn’t get our way. So, if we are quiet, it is because we value our life and the lives and property of others.
LOL!
“ We are not thin skinned in any way.”. Sure, that’s why you always whine and gripe and insult.
“ However, we do not resort to violence as the Left often do”
Sure, you just assault law enforcement and break into federal buildings, steal, vandalize, and defecate.
Slow and Stupid George is lying again. I have protested many things in my lifetime. I picked up after myself and never caused anyone harm. Most people are similar, but your type of person sh!ts where he eats and stinks. I saw your type up close when I was younger. That is what taught me to stay away from leftists. They leave people dead in the streets.
S. Meyer,
We have all seen it. One of The Free Press’s journalists went to cover a pro-Hamas rally in NYC. Just her mere presence, of covering the rally, sent the leftists into a rage. They surrounded her, tried to take her phone, her notepad, screamed at her and even assaulted her. She made a police report.
It used to be sane, normal people would think they could make a conservative comment, and a discussion would ensue.
Not today. Say the wrong thing and they would be surrounded, screamed at and even possibly assaulted.
S. Meyer, sure. YOU didn’t do those things. Problem is I wasn’t talking about YOU.
Trump supporters didn’t do what YOU do. They did worse. Assaulted law enforcement, broke into government buildings, vandalized them, desecrated, and defecated in the halls of Congress.
THEY did do that. I’m sure you were the boy scout of protesters in YOUR day. Unfortunately, others of your kind were not so….polite and tidy as you.
Aww, come on George. Just a little civil disobedience. I thought you were all for that?
“Trump supporters didn’t do what YOU do. They did worse. Assaulted law enforcement, broke into government buildings, vandalized them, desecrated, and defecated in the halls of Congress.”
Slow and Stupid, your comment seems to apply to leftist mobs such as BLM that did those things. It applies to the Hamas riots. It doesn’t apply to Trump supporters, as most are peaceful and clean. You like spouting obvious mistruths because the best thing about you is you are a liar. That is better than what your friends do when they kill innocent people.
Tell us the people who kill others and riot. You will find a few people with questionable politics, but when you look closely, most will be your leftist friends.
Confederate constitutionalist George, still glowing from his 2020 Four Months Of Mostly Peaceful Rioting, Burning, Pillaging And Murder posted this:
Sure, you just assault law enforcement and break into federal buildings, steal, vandalize, and defecate.
Audience, we have a clue! It’s Proud Confederate George who wrote the script that Jussie Smollett used about being attacked by MAGA thugs.
Let’s see, The Soviet Democrats street thugs in Black Liars and Marxists and Pantifa carried out over 540 violent riots – including the day long attempted assault on the White House, attempting to get at Trump to murder him and his family. Total damage from George Mostly Peacefully Protesting was more than for Hurricane Katrina.
Federal and local courthouses and police facilities firebombed, assaulted and occupied. Some burned to the ground. Over 30 murdered, including some who were federal law enforcement. Areas of some cities occupied by force of arms as George’s fellow Antifa patrolled them with what the Soviet Democrats call Evil Baby Killer Assault Weapons.
And of course, all those people assaulting law enforcement, screaming “defund the police” and defecating in the streets of San Francisco – they’re all wearing MAGA hats.
Worst. Attempt. At. Channeling. In. History.
Jan 6, 2021 was a picnic at the Capitol Building right?
Give me a break, can you get any more removed from reality than you are?
Another Anonymous Soviet Democrat cowardly Useful Idiot tried this:
Jan 6, 2021 was a picnic at the Capitol Building right?
I’ll call you with the Soviet Democrats’ street thugs in Black Liars & Marxists and Pantifa kicking off their four years of rioting in Washington DC on the day of Trump’s inauguration.
And I’ll raise you four months of Mostly Peaceful Rioting, Burning, Pillaging And Murder by the same Soviet Democrat street thugs prior to the three hour riot of January 6th.
Over 540 violent/mostly peaceful riots. Federal and local courthouses and police facilities firebombed, assaulted and occupied. Some burned to the ground. Over 30 murdered, including some who were federal law enforcement. Areas of some cities occupied by force of arms as Black Liars & Marxists and Antifa patrolled their occupied zones with what the Soviet Democrats call Evil Baby Killer Assault Weapons. More damage in total than Hurricane Katrina
Seeing as you remember the date Jan 6 2021, how well do you remember the date June 1 2020?
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11752998/trump-secure-bunker-friday-george-floyd-protests-white-house/
It was mostly a peaceful protest.
Well this is pretty demonic. Corporate collusion to suppress free speech because the First Amendment was written by white men, so it must be bad:
https://www.uncoverdc.com/2024/07/11/garms-harm-member-corporations-allegedly-boycott-demonetize-and-censor-disfavored-viewpoints
Do zombies poop?
Yes, that’s how you came to be.
Illiberal progressives have become ever more notorious for exercising free speech to attack free speech. It should seem they could have no hope of succeeding in making people who love opportunity “afraid” of free speech, but the fruit on the vine of freedom too may wither to the point when collectivists outnumber individualists and acceptance of servitude transcends all desire for self-determination.
IMO we are fast approaching that eventuality.
It has been found that Hillary Clinton falsely claimed six million dollars as campaign expenditures. No porn star was involved. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-dc-circuit/116360594.html
Dear Prof. Turley,
Thank you for this excellent essay. I hope you won’t mind my mentioning that I wish you would discuss the fact that it’s really not just conservatives who have been censored (and thus it’s not just they who should be concerned about this trend); it’s everyone who pushes back against whatever line is currently being pushed by those who control the censorship apparatus. There are many long-time independents or disaffected progressives who have also been widely censored for, e.g., defending Assange, criticizing the US’s involvement in Ukraine or its support for the genocide in Gaza, to mention just a few matters of concern. It’s simply stunning to me that so many Democrats support the construction of a vast censorship apparatus, given the strong possibility that sooner or later, Trump or some other conservative protrayed by Democrats as an evil tyrant will doubtless acquire the power to wield this apparatus against them. I feel it would be useful to try to bring this point home to people at all points on the politicial spectrum: increased censorship is lethal to democracy no matter where on the political spectrum you stand.
One more point: I do not believe a lack of censorship caused all of the problems proposed to be solved by increasing it. One must also mention a decline in education around critical thinking and perhaps civility; and perhaps even more importantly, there’s the fact that we’ve begun turning to alternative news sources that may not always be the most reliable because we’ve repeatedly caught our government and the media lying to us. I urge that we do what we can to strengthen critical thinking and media literacy ( including the importance of checking sources [including who’s funding them!]), and also that the government and media be held accountable for their knowing or reckless lies.
Thanks for all your efforts in behalf of our fundamental rights.
PS: I realize that accountability for lying, etc., may seem like unrealistic goals, but they will never happen so long as we never talk about them.
Carolyn S.
Well Said and Spot On.
Plus much of this can lead to self-censorship
which can lead to less truth seeing the light of day, etc.
Carolyn S. wrote:
There are many long-time independents or disaffected progressives who have also been widely censored for, e.g., defending Assange, criticizing the US’s involvement in Ukraine or its support for the genocide in Gaza
I certainly respect the free speech rights of those who presumably are adults while repeatedly lying that genocide is actually occurring in Gaza. There’s no condition on free speech rights that prohibits either exercising it to lie, or prohibiting saying stupid crap that is not true because you think with your emotions rather than as an adult.
I may wonder whether they are just abjectly stupid like the ‘Homosexuals For Hamas’ (who in Gaza would quickly get a one way flight, airmailed from a rooftop to the ground). Or just fellow travelers with the new genocidal Arab hajji Hamas Nazis. The Hamas Nazis vowing the genocide of all Jews, that Israel made the deadly mistake of forcibly removing all Israelis from Gaza and handing it over to these vile sub-humans and their fellow Arab supporters whose vow was to exterminate Jews and Israel from the face of the earth.
I will call them liars every time they claim genocide is occurring in Gaza – for a very efficient fighting force, the IDF seems incredibly incompetent at wiping out the Arabs fraudulently called “Palestinians” in Gaza. The hajji Arab Hamas terrorists have done a better job of killing their fellow Arabs in Gaza over the last near 20 years than Israel ever has.
I will call them liars every time they claim they are being widely censored – where I can watch their New Hitler Youth movement screaming and threatening and assaulting Jewish students on our campuses, while their fellow Hamas terrorist sympathizers running those institutions or teaching there both encourage and at times take part. I can see it on YouTube. I can even see them uncensored right here.
In fact, I can watch the Soviet Democrats’ Anti-Semitic Soviet Democrat Sisterhood in the House of Representatives: screaming and bugling their hatred for Jews and Israel itself. I can remember almost eight years now, members of the Anti-Semitic Hajji Sisterhood saying “The Jews are all about the Benjamins, baby” and “Thinking of the Holocaust gives me a warm feeling”.
I kind of grit my teeth when I think I spent 30 years in uniform, doing deployments including one to the Golan Heights when Yassar Arrafat was at his peak of promoting Arab Muslim terrorism against Americans as well as Jews – and I was defending the right of these genocide minded anti-Semitic defenders of Hamas terrorism to speak their filth. I have to remind myself that you don’t get to defend just the rights of the best of us- but also the free speech rights of the filth that are a stain on our body politic and country.
As a closing note, anybody who defends Julian Assange and believes he didn’t knowingly cause the death of hundreds of people, perhaps thousands, helping America by risking their lives to provide us with intelligence from inside Communist China, Cuba, etc and other adversarial countries may have the excuse that they’re simply just an abject idiot.
The belief that Assange – or Snowdon – read every page of the millions of documents they gave over to the hands of the Russians and Communist Chinese prior to turning them over to ensure nobody could be identified from the pages of those documents is the thinking of an emotional child.
Damn…. you people are stupid. Deadly stupid. Whether ‘Homosexuals For Hamas’, women fighting for Hamas to continue forcing women into beekeeper suits, or believing Assange doesn’t have buckets of blood covering him from head to toe.
It’s also confirmed that she personally funded and authorized a knowingly false Dossier that cost Americans taxpayers $40M. Additionally, this fraud perpetrated against a duly elected sitting president to subvert his ability to govern is an act of treason. She and ALL those involved should be held accountable.
As I re-read the essay, I considered this:
“Wu insists that the First Amendment is now “beginning to threaten many of the essential jobs of the state, such as protecting national security and the safety and privacy of its citizens.” He bizarrely claims that the First Amendment “now mostly protects corporate interests.”
So free speech not only threatens your life, your job, and your privacy, but serves corporate masters. Ready to sign your rights away?”
Perhaps this was correct. Is the free speech so important that it should be granted to things that do not exist? Should the robot have the free speech, or perhaps the talking alarm clock that tells you the time and the weather? These things at least exist, but the corporation does not exist. It is the legal fiction. It is the virtual being. It is the société anonyme – and it possesses not the real body, the real arms and legs, the real head.
So why then should this thing which does not exist have the right of the free speech, when it can not speak or think? Only those beings which are employed by the société anonyme have the head and the tongue, and when the non-existent being speaks, it is only their voices and their thoughts which can be heard.
Go ahead and grant your corporation and our société anonyme the right to speak, but only them, and not the people who manage these virtual beings. Let those human beings speak for themselves.
I think you make a very good point! In America, techniques used in marketing and advertising are also utilized to shape public opinion. One such technique is the “appearance of consensus”, to make it look like everybody is buying Lucky Strikes, and everybody wants a Slinky! That leads to an inflation of the people behind something. One person, the head of 17 intelligence agencies, says something, and it is presented as “17 Intelligence agencies!” said the thing. Same with corporations. So much more consensus-y to say “National Public Radio” said, as opposed to saying “a female, liberal nut” said. Plus you can bring in the argument by appeal to authority.
Sadly, far too many Americans, particularly Democrats, fall for this stuff.
Floyd,
Great comment.
I would also note this is one of the problems with Marxists. They argue how bad corporations are. But I still have free will to go into a mall, walk around for a few hours and not buy a single thing. I am not a mindless consumer. I may be exposed to commercials and ads, but nothing says I have to buy a particular product.
UpstateFarmer said: “nothing says I have to buy a particular product”
Not until the only products available are those from government-favored corporatist entities, at least.
Andre Toulon wrote:
Go ahead and grant your corporation and our société anonyme the right to speak, but only them, and not the people who manage these virtual beings. Let those human beings speak for themselves.
You would appear to be in the group that hates the Citizens United decision. The word “corporation” has a magical effect on communists, Marxists, socialists – and some who think of themselves as conservatives.
Citizens United said (among other things) that the President of the United States could have his bureaucrats censor speech he did not want seen. It arose out of the prosecution of Citizens United for publishing a documentary about Hillary Clinton’s corruption during one of her election campaigns. The decision said the legislation that gave the president the power to have his bureaucrats pick and choose who they would censor and who they wouldn’t was unconstitutional.
It is somewhat bitterly amusing to see some people outraged at the government sending the FBI to do censorship through proxy using Facebook at the same time hate the Citizens’ United decision that ended THAT government censorship.
So your view if I understand you correctly is you want corporations censored as far as free speech from those elected to run the corporation. Only those who are the individual members of the corporations are allowed to have free speech if I understand you correctly.
For the two small corporations my wife and I still have: the two of us are the board, as well as all the members, that’s no biggy.
Probably also not a biggy for George Soros and other billionaires with their privately owned companies held by one or two people. George Soros can go spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get police state fascists like those prosecuting Trump elected, without being limited by the rules you propose.
Now how far do you want to go?
How about the NRA and other 2nd Amendment rights groups. Do you want them prohibited from free speech coming from the “legal fiction” NRA? The members who choose the board of directors must instead each individually speak for themselves? Free speech lobbying – every member has to do that for himself; buy a plane ticket to Washington DC and pay for a hotel to do his lobbying? Each NRA member individually paying for the legal expertise to lobby all by himself?
How about the Salvation Army? Or Red Cross? No free speech soup for them either – only individuals within those organizations get free speech?
Well, how about unions? No free speech soup for unions? Each individual member if he wants his message heard or wants to be in the public square must do it for himself?
We have a group of hunters who own and hunt with Wirehaired Pointing Griffons; we’re organized as an LLC. Any of that free speech soup for our group when issues of concern come up to us? Or only as individuals?
I don’t think I like the version of Citizens United that you and many others do.
I must turn off the alert from email when I go to bed. It is 2:30 here. Merci for your thoughts. If the NRA has no body and no head, then how can it express an opinion? Can the NRA possess the pistol, or the shotgun? Should the NRA go to purchase the pistol, then Charlton Heston must sign the documents. Or whoever is the officer of the corporation. It should be the same with speech. To say that artificial beings have not the right of free speech does not mean that automatic censorship must follow. When the NRA, she goes to Congress, does she go, or does her employee go? Her employee. When the NRA, she goes to Congress, does she speak to the Congressperson, or does her employee speak. Her employee.
I do not think that this means that the NRA can not collect the money, or send out the letters. Should the government try to interfere, what is it that protects the NRA? I do not think that it is the right to free speech, but that the government, he has not been granted the right to interfere with legitimate commercial business. This is because the government, he is the one who allowed the creation of the artificial being, for the purpose of engaging in the business in the primary place. These beings are given life, of a sort, for a particular purpose, whether it is to make the tires, to make the automobile, to collect the money for the stray dogs and cats, and to allow the segregation of funds from the business separate and apart from the funds and wealth of the owners.
I was compelled to research this Citizens United you spoke of. To be honest, I did not well understand it. Perhaps my English is not so good on matters of law. Perhaps I am just sleepy. But what I read seemed to concern political speech and again I question, how can the virtual being have the opinion on who should be President? Was the artificial being created for this purpose? Should the corporation, she be granted the right to cast the ballot also?
I do comprehend that a corporation, the artificial person, must be granted some rights as a practical matter, and some responsibilities. But do those rights include each and every right that is granted to a human being? Can the corporation, she go into the confessional booth to ask for absolution? Can the corporation, she partake of the Sacrament? Can the corporation, she be married? Clearly, she can not. Can the corporation, she adopt the child? No.
So, where does the line be drawn?
A corporation “possesses not the real body, the real arms and legs, the real head.”
So those individuals who run and work at corporations are merely ghosts. I did not know that ghosts could eat, gesticulate, walk, and think.
I suspect that A. Toulon intended to question the doctrine of corporate personhood as established by a series of legal decisions. I also question the rationality of that doctrine. There are many ways in which a corporation is not a very good analogy to a live human, and the Constitution and other founding documents were written for the latter. That doctrine has also had the practical effect of shielding decision makers from the consequences of their decisions, in many cases leading to predictable negative results. However, the doctrine has become so intertwined in our legal system that I couldn’t begin to find any way to extricate it without doing a hufe amount of damage in the near term, so I am resigned to its persistence.
Dear Mr. Turley, it seems to me that the leftist are only demanding the Conservative voices be silenced. Their arguments are weak, and they know it. So, the only solution is to hammer the 1st amendment. Too bad they do not realize how precious the Constitution is. It is the envy of the world.
They are not demanding anything. Professor Turley is just peddling sensationalistic nonsense about an alleged “ anti-free speech movement” to hawk his book as much as he can.
It’s essential a shameless promotion for his book by peddling fear mongering of an “anti-free speech movement.”
Turley’s book is not expounding on anything new. He also has a lot of competition among books on free speech. That’s why he has to push its promotion as much as possible.
Confederate George told us we shouldn’t believe our lying eyes with this:
Professor Turley is just peddling sensationalistic nonsense about an alleged “ anti-free speech movement” to hawk his book as much as he can.
This is George’s shameless and sophomoric attempt to attack the owner of this blog. George lacks the mental capacity to publish his own blog… or perhaps he knows the only way anyone will view his trash is if he posts here as a parasite. George and his Confederate demands regarding who is and isn’t a citizen and who should be allowed to speak can only survived when people who reject his racism and totalitarianism are silenced. Which makes Prof. Turley his sworn enemy.
Hopefully we don’t have to fight another civil war to once again grind today’s evil Confederate racists like George into the ground once again. They seem to believe they’re on the ascent.
What a cringeworthy piece of work George is.
You do realize that there are two posters here who use the name “George”, and who have radically different political philosophies and takes on current events, do you not?
One of the hundreds who post here as ‘Anonymous’ posted:
You do realize that there are two posters here who use the name “George”, and who have radically different political philosophies and takes on current events, do you not?
You do realize that I figured out long ago that there are at least two posters here who use the name “Anonymous”, who have radically different philosophies and takes on current events?
I don’t do kneejerk replies to a username, whether it is “Anonymous” or “George”. I reply to the CONTENT in what they posted.
Old Airborne Dog said: “I don’t do kneejerk replies to a username, whether it is “Anonymous” or “George”. I reply to the CONTENT in what they posted.”
Right. Would you care to identify the CONTENT in the post by “George” to which you replied that justified the appellation “Confederate George”?
Today’s evil racist confederates…okay Tecumseh “the butcher” Sherman. Here’s a clue from then to now, States Rights.
Don’t forget the carpetbaggers.
Traveller posted:
Today’s evil racist confederates…okay Tecumseh “the butcher” Sherman. Here’s a clue from then to now, States Rights.
Andersonville Prison… War has always sucked for the civilian population when the war is in their back yard, not just the soldiers.
America firebombing Japanese cities…. Butcher Sherman v2.0??? Or do we get a pass on that because it wasn’t our Civil War and Sherman doesn’t because it was a civil war?
How do we view States Rights from then until now? States Rights on slavery?
We leave the Confederate slave states to remain slave states while those who aren’t slave states watch from the sidelines for a century or two until they decide to self correct?
Context and nuance are kind of important.
What slave states? New York, Pennsylvania? Sherman unleashed total war on the Southern noncombatant population. Burned farms, houses, livestock, looting and murdered in his march to the sea. So context of your post is that this was all to suppress those evil racist confederates?! Recall please, immediately after the civil war, Grant sent Custer and Sherman westward to exterminate the native Americans. Were Yankees Grant, Custer, Crook, Sheridan, Howard and Sherman vile racists practicing genocide also? We seem to agree on much but being from the South and having family that died on both sides it is a touchy subject. Slavery can never be justified, neither can genocide, neither can spinning the facts.
Is free speech out of control? Of course it is and that is healthy. Free speech by its very nature is supposed to make one think and in many cases offend. It is uncomfortable, but if one was always comfortable, then one would become complacent and lazy.
The fact the charge is being led out of higher education does not surprise me in the least. I have found some of the most educated are generally the most narrow minded. It is not really their fault, they have spent so much time educating themselves they cannot begin to understand not everyone agrees to their opinion.
I will say this, there is a history lesson for those that want to only censor what they do not approve. Robespierre, led the charge to the guillotine until the crowd turned on him and made him the final victim to the reign of terror.
You can say what you want, but censorship is terror by another name. The censors bill will come due for them.
If people enjoy hurting me, then why shouldn’t I enjoy watching them get hurt by nuclear weapons?
Who is hurting you?
Everyone I perceive.
Then that would be a mental health issue.
Perhaps this person is doing the absurd things as an act, much as Ionesco did when the entire town save one turned into the rhinocerii. The film was made of this:
I wonder if the posts border on libel where naming and discrediting valid commenters as “Puppets”, in an effort to distract from the validity of their comments infringes upon their first amendment rights.
He gives me the treatment all the time, and I just pass it off as mental illness. I mean look, supposedly the dude or whatever it is, was banned from here, yet still hangs around. That is probably some narcissism, some OCD, some psychopathy and some loneliness all rolled into a big blob of mental illness. I do enjoy his daily puppet report, though. I find it very helpful! 🙂
Got some really bad news for you. Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, has had meetings with Zelensky, Putin, Xi and now had a meeting with Trump. Orban posted to X, “It was an honor to visit President [Donald Trump] at Mar-a-Lago today. We discussed ways to make peace. The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”
Of course Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said, “Whatever adventurism is being undertaken without Ukraine’s consent or support is not something that’s consistent with our policy, the foreign policy of the United States.”
Seems a number of people are interested in peace, but Zelensky, Biden and you.
Conservative students and professors afraid to speak out on college campuses in today’s Amerika for fear of retaliation, kind of like the Germans who were afraid to speak out in the late 1930’s. And we all know how well that turned out…..
True! What Toulan said earlier about being free in spirit and being brave is probably the more important thing.
No, they are too thin skinned to express their views. They fear being mocked and ridiculed. So they cry foul and claim to be persecuted because they are conservative. Free speech does not mean being immune from mockery, derision, ridicule, and insult. But conservatives seem to feel they should be immune from those consequences by crying “censorship!”
George the virulently racist Confederate Constitutional Useful Idiot tried this:
“Free speech does not mean being immune from mockery, derision, ridicule, and insult. But conservatives seem to feel they should be immune from those consequences by crying “censorship!”
George claims he’s a constitutional scholar – while at the same time doesn’t know that being PREVENTED from speaking is different from being subjected to ridicule and derision.
Like we subject his pontificating racist, sophomoric ass to every time he makes one of his Useful Idiot demagoguing and/or projecting posts. If only he would sign an organ donor card, there would be some hope he’ll contribute something useful at least once during the time he exists as a stain on the planet.
Georgie Boy… ever wonder why that censorship by shouting down, threatening, etc shit doesn’t happen to people wanting to speak in the public square in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, etc?
Because in places like that, anyone trying to block, threaten, prevent free speech from anyone wanting to do so in the public square are going to get their angry Antifa/Woke/Useful Idiot/Soviet Democrat fascist asses kicked. Which is why you won’t find Antifa and Black Liars & Marxists trying their crap in states like that.
Besides, what comes after the First Amendment?