In the global anti-free speech movement, Maria Ressa stands apart. The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner and Columbia professor has used her celebrated position to call for censorship in the name of tolerance and diversity. She is showered with accolades as she calls for curtailing speech with a highly sophisticated, though at times Orwellian, pitch. In the cause of tolerance, she calls for viewpoint intolerance, particularly in the regulation of speech on the Internet.
That was evident this week as she spoke at Dartmouth’s Division of Institutional Diversity and Equity Social Justice Awards. The most insidious aspect of this campaign is how academic and other groups regularly portray Ressa as a free speech advocate.
A couple of years ago, I spoke at the World Forum in Berlin on free speech. It would be my first in-person exposure to Maria Ressa, the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who also spoke about free speech. However, as I wrote at the time, rather than an ally on free speech, I found a diehard advocate for censorship. Ressa has been embraced by Europeans as a champion of speech regulations, using her status to call for limiting speech around the world.
A supporter of Hillary Clinton (who has also called for Europeans to use the infamous Digital Services Act to censor Americans), Ressa has attacked figures like Elon Musk for dismantling censorship systems. For the anti-free speech community, she is the perfect Trojan horse speaker. She is billed as a champion of human rights, yet she spreads the same anti-free-speech narratives.
In her speech at Dartmouth College, Ressa pushed back on attacks on her comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany. While such criticism is the exercise of free speech, she told the Dartmouth College student paper that the state of free expression in the U.S. is “horrific.”
The statements to The Dartmouth are vintage Ressa. She declared
“I think we are living through the Filipinization of America. America has long been the beacon of freedom and democracy that you aspire to. It’s horrific to see that change and to see the country that anchored the post-World War II world begin to destroy it. I’m shocked to see Americans afraid to speak out.”
The problem is that Ressa is selective about who can speak and about what she declares “false information.” She views conservative governments as virtually synonymous with “authoritarianism” and demands “accountability” for social media companies that do not censor disinformation. That includes cracking down on anyone she considers to be “online trolls” or people who engage in “misogynistic and racist attacks.”
She has continued to espouse the same narrative that Russian disinformation was behind the 2016 win of Donald Trump. In her prior remarks, she declared:
“If the tactic worked on us, then it was deployed for you. That’s what happened in 2016, when 126 million Americans were targeted by Russian disinformation, and on January 6, in the violence on Capitol Hill when Silicon Valley’s sins came home to roost.”
She often demands censorship to combat conservative governments and causes that she opposes because she is right and they are… well… fascists, of course. At Harvard, she proclaimed:
“In Cambridge Commons just on the other side of that gate, there’s a marker to American patriot William Dawes, who, like his more famous friend Paul Revere, rode through here sounding the alarm: ‘The British are coming.’
…I will say it now: ‘The fascists are coming.'”
She wants regulators in control of speech to guarantee that the “truth,” as she defines it, is given greater attention:
“Now, Big Tech is now choking traffic to news sites, which means you will get less news in your feeds. How do you know what’s real, how do you know what’s fact when your emotions are what’s manipulated, when our biology is hacked? Instead of facts, And instead, the “enshittification” of the internet is in full bloom: more trash, more propaganda, more information operations that push our emotional buttons. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo deleted X last year, calling it a human sewer.”
Dartmouth shows how many in academia will continue to use Ressa to spread this anti-free speech narrative under the guise of a champion for human rights. Some of us believe that free speech is a natural right, a human right. That makes Ressa less than an inspiring figure on the world stage when she campaigns for speech controls and censorship.
Ressa is a reminder that censorship in the United States is more likely to come from the left under the guise of fighting fascism than an actual fascist government. It will be rationalized as an act of tolerance by enforcing viewpoint intolerance.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
It seems to me that the unspoken goal of these leftist anti-free speech fascists is less about preventing what can be said than preventing what can be heard, the ultimate goal of the totalitarian.
That’s always the goal. Controlling what is said and written is a means to a goal … controlling what you and I can hear and read is the true goal, the end zone.
Turley Writes:
She has continued to espouse the same narrative that Russian disinformation was behind the 2016 win of Donald Trump.
* * * *
A.I. SUMMARY
President Trump did not entirely dismantle the overarching FBI Cyber Division, but the administration did conduct massive purges of career officials and shifted structural enforcement priorities across federal cybersecurity.
Key actions taken by the administration include:
Leadership and Staffing Purges: Under FBI Director Kash Patel, the administration forced the departure of numerous senior FBI personnel and intelligence analysts, specifically targeting those tied to previous investigations.
Crypto Team Disbanded: The Department of Justice dismantled its National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET) in order to ease digital asset regulations and shift the focus to preventing crypto use by cartels and terrorists.
Defunding Election Security: The administration halted federal funding for key cybersecurity and election security programs, limiting real-time cyberattack threat-sharing with state and local election offices.
Dismantling Advisory Boards: The administration effectively dissolved the Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) by terminating all of its members, which halted official federal investigations into major cyber incidents.
…………………….
We’re supposed to think Russian trolls provided no assistance to Trump. Yet Trump wants to make sure our intelligence agencies never ‘harass’ Russian trolls again.
Please specify how and when “Russian trolls” helped Trump. Specifics, please.
Educated?? How thick headed can a person be? What is the first thing that is eliminated when fascist and communists take over a nation. The removal of the right to speak freely enforced by violent means is the first principle applied by totalitarian leadership. Does this woman not understand that she is in agreement with the despots of history? Beware of fascist in sheep’s clothing for they know exactly what they are doing in their quest for admiration and prizes.
She, being proven by her peers to be one of the elite will make the decisions and you better damn well like it or you will become very familiar with the gulag archipelago.
This article by Jonathan Turley is a highly skewed, bad-faith critique that deliberately strips Maria Ressa’s arguments of their actual context. Turley frames a world-renowned journalist—who faced systemic persecution and imprisonment by a genuinely authoritarian regime—as a “Trojan horse” for censorship, while completely omitting the reality of modern information warfare.
Turley acts as a defense attorney for Silicon Valley tech conglomerates, omitting the fundamental difference between suppressing free speech and regulating toxic, algorithmic manipulation.
Turley completely glossses over the context of Ressa’s background in the Philippines. She wasn’t fighting “conservative viewpoints”; she was documenting how the Duterte regime used weaponized, state-sponsored disinformation campaigns to justify extrajudicial mass murder and systematically destroy democratic institutions.
Turley champions Elon Musk’s takeover of X as a victory for “free speech.” Yet, he remains silent on Musk’s extensive record of using his power to ban independent journalists, censor government critics in countries like Turkey and India at the request of authoritarian regimes, and artificially boost his own political narratives. Turley condones corporate censorship by tech billionaires while labeling a targeted journalist who advocates for algorithmic accountability a “censor.”
Turley lectures Ressa from the ultimate comfort of a secure, tenured position at a Western university. He dismisses her warnings about modern fascism as “vintage left-wing paranoia.” It is the height of hypocrisy for an academic who has never risked his life, freedom, or career for his speech to scold a journalist who was arrested multiple times and faced decades in prison for holding power accountable.
By treating the deliberate poisoning of the information ecosystem as a harmless “exercise of viewpoints,” Turley’s critique doesn’t defend free speech—it actively defends the digital tools currently being used to dismantle democracy worldwide.
“toxic, algorithmic”
Fascinating. Your Dear Leader uses the expression “toxic algorithm” to spread her fear-mongering and to rationalize censorship, and you mindlessly repeat it.
Do you even know what a social media algorithm is? And what makes one “toxic” versus another that isn’t?
Those algorithms are based on an individual user’s choices and values. They predict an *individual’s* preferences. So when you and your speech Overlords demand that government control them, what you’re actually controlling is an individual’s choices, preferences, and speech. For their own good, of course.
Access to toxic medications is controlled because some will become addicted or otherwise misuse them in a way that will harm themselves. Those are the choices of individuals and values. Every nodding fentanyl and opioid addict is making those choices as does every alcoholic. Society seeks to minimize the harm to them and by that harm reduction, reduce harm to the others in society.
The question then is how can the conversion from ideas to actions be moderated when the result is people literally climbing walls, staving in windows, vandalizing the offices of elected representatives to the Congress, and bludgeoning police?
It has been known that entities such as Facebook keep detailed profiles of their users and that Russians actively bought advertising targeting those meeting certain conditions such as age, race, and political leanings, to send focused propaganda advertising to. Typically the ads would be along the lines that all immigrants are killers, rapists, child molesters. That minorities were going to take their homes and toss them into the street. All the usual dreck. The funniest part is they would ask for donations to “the cause” and they found that conservatives were more likely to “donate” to them in response to more extreme false claims, that liberals didn’t react with donations.
It wasn’t, mainly, some top secret plan from the Kremlin; it was a con job against those who were clearly easy marks for con jobs. It was online thieves inciting a wide swath of suckers.
The same suckers who voted for Trump to stop the millions of murders that must have been taking place if the advertising was true. The suckers who have seen Trump drive up prices on food and fuel and housing.
“Access to toxic medications is controlled because some will become addicted . . .”
Notice the revolting premise behind the Left’s desire for the government to control your choices, actions, life:
You are weak, pathetic, and lack self-control (just like a drug addict or alcoholic). Therefore, an omnipotent Big Brother must compel you to live by its choices and guidance. For you own good, of course.
Odd, isn’t it, how that revolting premise never applies to them or to their tyrannical bureaucrats.
Sam,
Let’s clear up the actual tech reality: an algorithm is not some neutral mirror that politely reflects your personal ‘choices and values.’ It is a proprietary, machine-learning code designed for a single, predatory purpose: maximizing platform ad revenue by keeping users hooked.Here is what you completely miss about the tech you are defending:
1. Algorithms Don’t Predict Choice—They Exploit BiologyHuman psychology is naturally wired to react to threats, outrage, and conflict. Big Tech engines are explicitly coded to exploit this vulnerability. They don’t feed you what you ‘choose’; they feed you whatever triggers an involuntary dopamine hit or a wave of anger, because that is what keeps eyes on the screen. Conflating a built-in biological vulnerability with ‘individual preference’ is completely scientifically illiterate.
2. It’s a Product Defect, Not ‘Free Speech’You claim regulating algorithms is about ‘controlling speech.’ Wrong. It’s about product liability. Major courts and bipartisan legal actions have repeatedly treated features like infinite scroll and automated amplification systems as engineered product defects. When a car company builds a faulty brake system, we don’t call regulating it ‘censorship.’ When a tech monopoly builds an algorithm that artificially boosts toxic or illegal content to make a buck, holding them accountable is called consumer protection.
3. You are Defending Corporate Manipulation, Not FreedomNo one is asking the government to control your thoughts or your speech. The demand is to stop tech billionaires from using invisible, automated black-boxes to manipulate public discourse for profit.
By pretending these corporate engagement engines represent ‘human choice,’ you aren’t standing up for individual liberty—you are acting as a useful idiot for Silicon Valley monopolies who are laughing all the way to the bank while they warp the public square.
Your glowing appreciation of Ressa is based on credentials, not content. “world-renowned journalist—who faced systemic persecution and imprisonment by a genuinely authoritarian regime” is your first but not last comment on her personal story. And you use Turley’s lack of imprisonment or risk of life, to dismiss his arguments.
What independent Journalists have been banned on X lately? Anytime X makes a mistake it’s corrected.
You want censorship too. You also think you are qualified to make this judgement for the rest of us. I don’t because no one does.
Clayton,
Understanding Maria Ressa’s credentials and lived experience matters because it separates informed, real-world warnings about authoritarianism from comfortable, academic speculation. Jonathan Turley has never had a government shut down his business or put him in a jail cell for writing an article. Pointing that out isn’t a dismissal of his arguments; it is pointing out his massive blind spot regarding the actual, physical danger of state-sponsored information warfare.
X has repeatedly targeted and suspended independent journalists, reporters, and commentators who were explicitly critical of Elon Musk or covered sensitive leaks.
High-profile independent and investigative journalists like Ken Klippenstein (The Intercept), Steven Monacelli (Texas Observer), Rob Rousseau, Aaron Rupar, and Dell Cameron (Wired) have all faced arbitrary bans and suspensions. These weren’t automated glitches. They occurred right after these journalists reported on stories critical of Musk or posted public data the platform owner didn’t want shared.
You claim these mistakes are just ‘corrected.’ They are only reversed when a massive public backlash forces the platform’s hand. When Musk arbitrarily banned half a dozen mainstream and independent tech journalists, he didn’t politely correct a mistake. He only unbanned them after international backlash from the United Nations and the European Union, and after losing a public poll he posted on his own timeline. When platforms only ‘correct’ censorship because of public embarrassment, it isn’t an error-correction process—it is a forced retreat.
If you truly oppose government censorship, you should look at X’s compliance rates with foreign authoritarian regimes. Under its current leadership, X has actively complied with aggressive censorship and takedown demands from governments like Turkey and India, silencing grassroots activists and independent journalists at the request of state authorities.
Turley often criticizes Europe of censoring speech, but he’s pretty quiet about X when they do it.
“. . . you should look at X’s compliance rates with foreign authoritarian regimes.”
That’s odd.
Just yesterday, you and the rest of the Left argued that if X wants to do business in those countries, it has to abide by their rules.
@Clayton
Yup. ‘World renown whatever’, means about as much as, ‘OnlyFans girl’, in 2026. And many of those girls work for studios, i.e. conglomerates, i.e. corporations. The same applies here. They really do count on us being stupid. The hubris is remarkable, I mean, just stunning. Not seen since the Middle Ages. And they do simply expect us to accept it, whole hog, such is their disdain for our intelligence. In 2026, not 1026.
It’s madness. No, thank you, and I am being far too polite. You all can get bent, and heaven help us if you decide to ignite an actual spark. The modern left are not, ‘the good guys’. Don’t kid yourselves.
This will never be resolved until there is more truth and BALANCE (*) in mainstream/mass communication entities and sources providing us with national and political news.
There is nationally a fairly even balance between left-wing and right-wing views and support across America. “Today, Americans are about evenly split between the two parties: 46% identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, and 45% identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party.”
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/fact-sheet/party-affiliation-fact-sheet-npors/
Then, COMPARE and look at which political ideology controls MSM and the main “trusted” sources of information.
(*) At first blush, it appears that some charts reflect a near-‘numerical’ balance in ‘number’ of sources, BUT Notice that the MAIN/highest national audiences sources of national and geopolitical news (MSM “mainstream,” e.g. ABC, NBC, NPR, PBS**)— all fall to the Left of center.
https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart
** also includes sources where we get most of our national and international news: AP (Associated Press), NYT, WaPo, USA Today, Time, etc., which feed down to our local news coverage network news.
Thank you to Professor Turley for his focus on this pressing issue, and Happy Memorial Day to all! (A full weekend of fun–last night we played laser-gun outdoors in the dark, -with very histrionic, theatrical “dying” scenes from those shot three times in their light-blinking chest vests).
(I also choose to use “memorial day” to “memorialize” and remember a time when my news/journalist sources were more balanced and truthful.) That was America at its best! What happened? How did we get here?
@lin
Great comment, but I disagree views are equally divided: there are a lot of people that vote dem who have no idea what they are actually supporting such has been the level of gaslighting, and it is unlikely they could be convinced.
Nevertheless, in my experience, their personal views stand in contrast to what the modern left actually represents. Based strictly on that and not voting behavior, I’d say actual support for the dems’ *agenda* is probably closer to a third. Just my opinion. But alas, ‘vote blue no matter who’. A lot of people are asleep.
The question remains how bad things would have to get for a shift in the thinking of such individuals to occur, and at this point given all that has transpired just in the past decade I’m convinced it would be a at a level that was much too late to reverse. I hope we never have to find out.
“which political ideology controls MSM”
Most are now owned and controlled by conservative billionaires.
Selling snake oil to the democrat plantation’s stockholm syndrone losers
Totally false/wrong/incorrect/untrue/lies.
Summary of below:
Owners/Media Moguls/Controllers/Media Donors to Democrats:
Wikipedia; The Atlantic (PBS Washington Week); Disney/ABC; American Journalism Project; Walt Disney Co.: ABC; CNN; ABC; Fox News Business (one of Murdoch’s sons); NPR; Facebook; VOX; Daily Beast; Investopedia; Vogue; Univision.
Owners/Media Moguls/Controllers/Media Donors to Republicans:
FOX Murdoch and other son; NewsMax; Daily Caller; Business Insider; Townhall Media; Gray Television; Washington Examiner; Daily Wire.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Details:
From https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/09/08/tracking-media-owners-political-donations/5719743001/
“Donors to Democrats
►George Soros, a major donor to Wikipedia who funds many new digital media outlets through his Open Society Foundation (see our nonprofit U.S. Media Index), gave $3,679,800.
►Laurene Powell Jobs donated over $2 million. She owns The Atlantic, could still be the largest shareholder of Disney/ABC and funds many digital news nonprofits through the American Journalism Project, which her Emerson Collective helped to create.
►Robert Iger, executive chairman of the Walt Disney Co. and who once ran ABC, gave over $1 million.
►David Zaslav, who led the merger with CNN and Discovery, donated over $240,000.
►James Murdoch, who left the family Fox News business, donated over $2.25 million.
►Afsaneh Beschloss, NPR Board of Directors, gave $614,300.
►Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, gave $500,000 mostly to Democrats.
►Pamela Wasserstein, owner of Vox and New York magazine, gave $8,100.
►Mashable’s Vivek Shah gave $30,800.
►Barry Diller, owner of The Daily Beast and Investopedia, gave $120,000.
►Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue, gave $6,000.
►Eric Zinterhofer, board member of Univision, gave $102,000.”
“Donors to Republicans
►No surprise, Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan collectively gave over $2.5 million, mostly to Republicans.
►Newsmax owner Chris Ruddy gave $365,000 to Donald Trump and his super PACs.
►The Daily Caller’s Omeed Malik donated $150,000.
►Henry Kravis and George Roberts, owners of Business Insider and the German news empire Axel Springer and who recently purchased Politico and co-founded KKR Private Equity, collectively gave over $1.2 million.
►Marc Rowan at Apollo Management, the private equity firm that recently acquired Yahoo News for $5 billion, gave $1.75 million.
►Edward Atsinger, a leading evangelical and co-founder of conservative Townhall Media, gave about $30,000.
►Hilton Howell of Gray Television gave $17,600.
►Philip Anschutz, owner of the Washington Examiner, gave $168,500.
►Farris Wilks, investor in the Daily Wire, gave $416,800 to Trump Victory and Club for Growth Action.
Any idiot can look at which group of moguls/owners came from bigger, more powerful, media voices.
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2025/06/10/the-political-gap-in-americans-news-sources/pj_2025-06-10_news-media-sources_0-01/
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2025/06/10/the-political-gap-in-americans-news-sources/pj_2025-06-10_news-media-sources_0-03/
@Anonymous
Today is my day to sucker punch you, I guess. You are an idiot, and nobody with a shred of sanity cares. We still outnumber you two to one.
How did we get here? Spaceships…
When Ms. Ressa says, “The fascists are coming, “it is she who leads the charge.” Free speech cannot be muzzled by anyone, not by ANYONE.
The way Prof. Turley throws around the vague phrase “free-speech” and its antithesis “anti-free speech” guarantees no resolution (synthesis) of the conflict can occur. His definitions of “free speech” and “censorship” are subjective and case-based, making them unable to be applied universally.
For example, X.com still has a User Agreement and a set of content standards — X.com every day deplatforms accounts that flagrantly attempt to violate those standards. But, you’ll never hear the word “censorship” used to disparage those impositions on freedom. Who know?…maybe Turley considers those limits reasonable?….but without discussing what are reasonable limits (and what are not) in terms of universal principles, we’re left to guess.
There’s a way to crack open the wall of obfuscation. It requires you to think about your worst enemy — someone who hates you and would eagerly do you and your family harm through infowarfare. It could be a foreign terrorist group. It could be the most unhinged, militant zealots of the political opposition. It could be a rival at work who wants the same promotion you think you’ve earned. Or, a neighbor who started a feud and is trying to turn your neighbors against you by spreading ugly falsehoods.
What limitations on your nemesis’ freedom of speech are you willing to impose and also find acceptable imposed on yourself?
That approach to the the problem serves to expose the hard-to-swallow truth that speech-freedom is a balancing act between two unhealthy extremes. At one extreme, you get anarchy, paranoia and dysfunction as the public square is taken over by hyper-emotional negativity, factional hatreds, contrived inauthenticities, outright deceptions and mean-spirited threats — that’s an underregulated system. At the opposite end, you get closed-minded, defensive thinking stifling out-of-the-box ideas expressed with civility, respect and goodwill, leading to conformity, timidity, misreading of intentions, and authoritarianism — that’s an overregulated system.
“I may not agree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it” — that’s laughable naive idealism penned by someone possessed of elite gentlemanly honor in a bygone era. You’re going to defend to the death someone’s right to destroy you and your family via infowarfare? That’s a complete surrender to nihilism.
So. let’s be honest. There are responsibilities that go with the freedom to speak in public. They’re not hard to pin down: authenticity, civility, open-mindedness, non-militancy. These are the restraints I need and want to have placed on those who have in mind to attack me, my wife, my children, my job, my church, my workplace, my profession, my political party, my state and country.
I’m willing to accept those same responsibilities when I speak in public, in exchange for limiting my adversaries to the same extent.
That’s a principled approach in a nutshell.
It’s obvious by his long winded treatise that pbinca thinks that he should one of those who should decide what you can or can’t say. The problem is who gets to be the arbiter. The principle of defending the rights of those with whom you do not agree is still applicable today and not some kind of ancient chivalry. pbinca believes that because his thoughts are of more value than your thoughts that he should be the one who decides. Narcissism could not find a better definition.
Think, why don’t you speak for yourself instead of speaking for me?
Your tactic of mind-reading and oppo-branding reminds me of a progressive’s infowarfare style. You can do better.
No, I’m not asking to be the one to decide what can or can’t be said. I’m asking you to think about applying the same standard of free speech to yourself and your fiercest enemy. That leads to actually resolving the conflict, rather than mindless, unproductive side-taking.
No, Pbinca. I strongly disagree. Any standard you set for speech will be hijacked and weaponized, probably by the left.
The only restrictions that should be applied are incitements to violence and copyright infringements, which are legitimate concerns. Individual platforms have other content restrictions, but those are almost always restrictions that the left wants. YouTube routinely has used racism restrictions to silence legitimate criticisms of the black, immigrant, and the so-called science communities.
So no, I reject your call for “authenticity,” etc.
Let me ask you this, when leftists call for violence (they do all they time), do you condemn them? Do you want them censored? Specifically on Charlie Kirk’s assassination? Please, tell that to the trolls who want more censorship–and include your home address–and see what happens.
Yes, I do condemn calls for violence, and strongly support social media policies that prohibit violence ideation.
When you study the closed-chat-room conversations that led into the Charlie Kirk assassination (which circumvent mainstream platform rules), you find disturbed teenagers feeding on each other’s alienation, and competing for status by who can nudge younger teens into self-harm – with a suicide as the jackpot. Would you be willing to draw a limit at such utter depravity?
I argues AGAINST militant tactics such as doxxing. Would you go along with restrictions on doxxing?
And, what’s the problem with demanding authenticity in the public square? Are you OK with impersonation via deep fakes as protected by free speech? In other words, you no longer own your face, voice and likeness from malign abuse?
I’m vehemently against giving the State broad policing powers over public speech! I propose using civil lawsuits with much faster processes to counter the degradations of civility and honesty in the public square. That way, ordinary people — normal people — retain the power to decide and uphold standards of speech conduct. The community has a right and obligation to enforce standards of conduct. The techies in Silicon Valley, immature “wantrapreneurs”, have no inherent power to strip the community of that traditional power. But that is exactly what they recklessly, hubristically, naively do if it means making $.
“And, what’s the problem with demanding authenticity in the public square?”
Often, fakes can be handled by copyright infringement, etc. Also, I have no problem with requiring the labeling of fakes as such, but I don’t agree with banning them. I’m kind of ok with banning doxxing because it implies a call to physical harassment or violence.
Pbinca, just be careful with whom you identify. The leftists calling for censorship are not interested in authenticity. They’re after control and retribution, and they’ll sic the mob on you in an instant.
@Diogenes
I am with you. I appreciate Pbincas’ comments, but no, just no. I do not know for a fact, but I suspect they are of a libertarian bent, and that is never going to work, IMO. We are simply not that evolved, and seem to be de-evolving by the day. It may make sense to them – folks of such a mindset fail utterly to tale anyone else into consideration and some of us have to deal with that, every day. Their vision simply will not work, and I suspect it is due to cloistering, even if it makes sense on paper or in minds. We are human, not spreadsheets or statistics. Period. It is my biggest beef with libertarians. They just presume everyone else is a carbon copy of them. We are not.
Sigh. This is me again. Typos or whatever.
James, your typos are priceless compared to troll scat 🙂
I’m not a libertarian either. I think in many contexts, the logical extension of capitalism isn’t always libertarianism. Instead, capitalism devolves into oligarchy in too many parts of the world. It’s less of an issue in the West, but the left is trying to change that by making corporations part of their enforcement arm. Debanking, “too big to fail,” Harvard Business School, etc., etc., etc. We don’t have enough Elon Musks, so maybe we need to keep antitrust.
Diogenes, you say you are not a libertarian, but then, what are you? What am I? These political labels describe only one side of the coin. In my worldview, these principles must contain a countervailing element so that both sides of the coin are recognized.
For instance, looking at the Kabbalah Sefirot, I believe in justice, but without mercy, there can be no justice, and without justice, there can be no mercy. That is the fundamental problem with strict, one-sided terms such as libertarian. That is exactly where the purest of libertarians fail. They possess no complement to pure libertarianism, such as mercy, leaving their system completely out of balance.
In the crucible we call life we all have one story and we all have history to view the points of challenge that brought positive change. Sadly what I hear from influential speakers today is a a mind set that returns to where we came from. That of pompous intolerance , better than thou voices…. I reject the harshness of of the content this mindset flourishes! But who am I? A single old voice born in 1941. Educated under the guidance of Dominican Nuns and the Bazilian Priest of St Thomas High School Houston… This Nation is under the influence of dark philosophy that is eating away at the core of our founding Fathers! We best stop reflect and retool! michaleR
You’re not alone, MichaleR. The moral virtues we seniors learned as youngsters are the ones that built our great nation. The morass we’re slipping into is one that nobody intended, that only a few foresaw. Basically, technologies afforded vast new freedoms and power to individuals without any concern or clarity about new responsibilities. I was working in the tech industry and saw it happen up close.
Responsibility is not an innate concept — children don’t come into the world with any. It has to be taught and conditioned. Freedoms have to be balanced with responsibilities to do no harm in their exercise. But, looking through the comment section of this blog — and JT’s position — imposing responsibility as a condition for public speech is immediately denounced as supporting “censorship”. In other words, most commenters here are only too happy to rope off freedom-of-speech from any discussion of responsible public-speech behavior.
This way of thinking leads to abandoning standards. It paves the road to radical individualism, unbounded corporate power, and society-at-large alarmed by how little power we still have over our future.
I never knew the standards for getting a Nobel Peace Prize were so low.
I gotta get me one of them Nobel Peace Prizes right away!
Of course the Nobel committee standards are low. You must have missed the one they gave to Obama.
And Gore got one for climate cultism. It would be better named the Nobel Political Endorsement Prize.
Nobel Prizes for literature were awarded to Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn. That was a lifetime ago. The Nobel has fallen a long way since then.
The scientific community has always had a streak of red treachery, and they are the filthy pigs who captured the Nobel Committee. The Union of Concerned Scientists spent the Cold War peddling Soviet propaganda. If we had listened to them, we’d still be paying the Soviets not to invade Europe… kind of like Obama paying the mullahs not to spread terrorism and proxy wars… and they did anyway.
The Nobel Prize has fallen, the ACLU has fallen, the Anti-Defamation League has fallen, Law Schools have fallen, Med Schools have fallen, Journalism Schools have fallen, high schools have fallen and now grade schools are falling. Of course the level of discourse has fallen, the level of intelligence has fallen, the right to free speech almost fell under Biden, Scary Poppins and the EU and the Democrat Party has fallen. Oh yeah, Europe has fallen too. The only things that haven’t fallen (yet) are the United States, Israel and Eastern Europe and JONATHAN TURLEY.
The Nobel prizes were established in recognition of promising young contributors; it was laziness that allowed them to generally be a reward for exemplary efforts, but the original goal was to give financial support to those at the beginning of their careers.
Strange that Ms Ressa is condemning the United States for not censoring free speech when she was arrested in the Philippines for demonstrating and speaking for free speech. As such she ran afoul of President Duarte and was arrested and detained then convicted. How can she then turn around and advocate censorship. Her inability to see the contradiction in her stance on free speech and censorship is remarkable.
But we know that this has nothing to do with free speech but more to do with the “right speech” where your opposites in thought and speech are the only ones that should have their rights curtailed or totally revoked.
Granted that free speech can be a sewer but a person capable of thought and judgement is usually capable of getting down in the sewer and pulling out the useful thoughts and points of view and saving them for posterity and humanity.
There is a lot that rolls by each of us every day. Our job is to determine what to snatch from the sewer, pull it ashore, examine it, measure it against what else is found and determine what truth it can show to us. We don’t need a filter upstream guiding our thoughts and denying us the right to make our own decisions. Certainly not Ms Ressa or Hilary Clinton.
Her inability to see the contradiction in her stance on free speech and censorship is remarkable.. Not all all. Read her books. Open you calcified mind to idea and theories.
She sees it, it is calculated. She spews confirmation bias enabling garbage for the morons to grab onto.
She is mouthpiece singing for her supper. In the filipinization of the US, she is projecting ping-pong balls to the blinded
So, what “Now, Big Tech is now choking traffic to news sites, which means you will get less news in your feeds.” news traffic is being chocked off?
Seems to me, do a Google search and the first page will be mostly leftist MSM.
She’s right and you just confirmed it. Google? Only old people use it; too lazy to investigate other possible sources for info. Try AI embedded SE’s.
Curious Why Your Google News Feed Feels So One-Sided? Study Reveals 73% Left Bias
A new study by AllSides has found that major news aggregators, including Google News and Microsoft’s Bing News, continue to feature a disproportionate number of articles from left-leaning outlets in their non-personalized sections.
Why is Google so left leaning, and what are we going to do about it?
https://support.google.com/googlenews/thread/423210827/why-is-google-so-left-leaning-and-what-are-we-going-to-do-about-it?hl=en
https://dallasexpress.com/national/curious-why-your-google-news-feed-feels-so-one-sided-study-reveals-73-left-bias/
AI Content Is Swamping The Internet: How It Impacts Critical Thinking
“What’s more troubling is a Pangram/YouGov study in May that found only 55 percent of participants, all of whom were Gen Zers aged 18 to 28, were able to identify fake or misleading AI-generated material.”
It appears the Gen Zers are not very bright.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/ai-content-is-swamping-the-internet-how-it-impacts-critical-thinking-6026954
Ressa is a Fascist. There is no other way to describer her and those of her intolerant ilk.
Fascist? Considering you call everyone and their mother a fascist…
Let the censorship start with her and her ilk. How many battalions does Columbia University have?
Why her?
Maria Ressa expresses a form of self-delusional bias that only others can begin to understand. The same trend she expresses is present in most European nations that have experienced an influx of immigrants with personal belief systems based on Islamic traditions. The first thing they must oppose is free speech, because it allows blasphemy, which transcends all civil laws and notions of freedom. The Philippines, Ressa’s country of origin, has a population in which more than 10 percent of the people are Muslim. Compare that with the U.S., where our Muslim population is about 1.4 percent. In the UK and Germany, the Muslim population is quite large and growing at more than 6 percent of the population. The answer, the only answer, is tolerance, but, alas, this is frowned upon as being blasphemous by some, like Ressa, as being an evil tool of the infidel.
self-delusional bias yo say? Your comment can also be construed as self-delusional bias. You got a Nobel Prize? She does.
From a good annony,
“I never knew the standards for getting a Nobel Peace Prize were so low.
I gotta get me one of them Nobel Peace Prizes right away!”
https://jonathanturley.org/2026/05/24/ressa-at-dartmouth-anti-free-speech-figure-calls-the-state-of-free-speech-in-the-u-s-horrific/#comment-2637051
and so does Yasser Arafat and Barack Obama, the latter just for showing up. Ha!
Disney Asks FCC To Declare ‘The View’ A News Show, Exempt From Equal Time Rule
Disney is asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to declare the daytime talk show “The View” a “bona fide news” program to bypass the federal equal opportunities law, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr announced May 22.
By Jill McLaughlin – The Epoch Times ~ May 23, 2026
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/disney-asks-fcc-declare-view-news-show-exempt-equal-time-rule
She has the right to spew nonsense.
She absolutely does.
She has no right to use force to accomplish her goal of limiting the freedom of others.
Force huh? Whatever you say Say.
Anon– “She has the right to spew nonsense.”
Not in her opinion.
Does Reesa have the Rahm Emanuel Honorary Professorship at the Clinton Foundation as well? You know old Rahmy said – never let a good opportunity (aka crisis) go to waste. Looks like Comrade Reesa is turning free speech into a crisis that can only be solve by crushing out unapproved thoughts. Well done Comrade Reesa – train those empty headed DODO BIRD students.
This is a odd way to start a Sunday.
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Once again, in a retrial against Weinstein, prosecutors were unable to score a win. Yet another charge against the former Hollywood bigwig has ended in a mistrial, this time over Jessica Mann’s rape allegation. And according to one female juror, the split was rather interesting… all the women voted not guilty, and three men voted guilty.
Typical Dustoff, always odd, every day of the week.
From Ressa to Weinstein. You didn’t read Turlery’s piece.
Pay attention fool. Remember that saying (Believe all women) Most of all when it comes to rape.
How things in The Bigger Picture fall into line, like that of Free Speech Censorship.
(Watch the full video to the ending ~ 2hrs.)
Economist Exposes How Banks Manufacture Wars, False Flags & Famines to Usher in the New World Order
Virtually every major war begins under false pretenses. German economist Richard Werner explains what the current global conflict is actually about.
The Tucker Carlson Show • May 22nd 2026 • 126 mins
https://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show-richard-werner-052226
It’s a small college, but there are of us that used to love it