Author: Redactor

The Colluder-in-Chief

When government pressures private companies to censor people, the government is itself acting to censor people.

That the Biden administration is acting to censor unapproved discussion of COVID-19 isn’t a guess. It has publicly urged social-media companies to prohibit “misinformation.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki, for example, has said that Biden’s administration is “regularly making sure social media platforms are aware of the latest narratives dangerous to public health that we and many other Americans are seeing. . . . You shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others.”

The Liberty Justice Center is now suing the administration and firms like Facebook and Twitter for violating the First Amendment rights of people like Justin Hart, a plaintiff in the case.

Hart is a data analyst who questions the effectiveness of requiring children to wear masks in school. For his fielding and repeating those questions, he was booted from social media accounts.

Explaining its litigation, the Liberty Justice Center observes that “dominant social media platforms and the White House are openly collaborating to eliminate social media posts about COVID-19 that the administration finds objectionable, and to cancel or suspend the Facebook and Twitter accounts of people who raise issues about COVID they don’t want the public to see.”

I tend to agree with Hart’s conclusion, but that is not the point.

More fundamentally, I am inclined to discover what we might learn from unfettered discussion of the facts. Which is one of the many reasons we need that First Amendment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags censorship, Joe Biden, social media

Thought

Benjamin Constant

[C]ommerce inspires in men a vivid love of individual independence. Commerce supplies their needs, satisfies their desires, without the intervention of the authorities. This intervention is almost always — and I do not know why I say almost — this intervention is indeed always a trouble and an embarrassment. Every time collective power wishes to meddle with private speculations, it harasses the speculators. Every time governments pretend to do our own business, they do it more incompetently and expensively than we would.
Benjamin Constant, The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the Moderns (1819).

Today

After Porto

On September 15, 1820, an uprising occurred in Lisbon, Portugal, following similar insurrection in Porto the previous month. This was no bloodthirsty mob, but, instead, a popular demand for constitutional government. Unfortunately, the country was beset with imperial and monarchical problems for some time to come.

The United Nations established September 15 as International Day of Democracy, in 2007. An Independence Day is celebrated on this date in Guatemala (a Patriotic Day), El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, commemorating independence from Spain in 1821.

First Amendment rights

Our Non-Know-It-All Censors

Post author By Redactor
Post date September 14, 2021
3 Comments on Our Non-Know-It-All Censors

The censors don’t know everything.

That a censor declares Conclusion X to be the case, i.e. the truth, allegedly a good reason to prevent anyone from claiming the contrary on a forum, doesn’t actually mean that Conclusion X is true.

Consider recent predictions by Dave Rubin and Mr. Obvious that the Biden administration would impose a federal vaccine mandate. Big tech responded by censoring both men.

In July, Twitter shut down Rubin’s Twitter account until he removed a tweet about the desire of some for “a federal vaccine mandate for vaccines which are clearly not working as promised just weeks ago.”

Then Google removed a video from the Mr. Obvious YouTube channel predicting a federal vaccine mandate that would be announced only a week later.

“Maybe they thought that I was simply jumping the gun saying that Biden was going to do these federal mandates,” Mr. Obvious now comments. “Mr. Obvious was in fact right.”

These predictions did not promote criminality or terrorism.

They were based on savvy political assessments.

Those assessments are now vindicated.

Such vindication in a particular case is not required to establish the value of open discourse. But that the censors were so manifestly wrong here does dramatize a big whopping problem with censorship.

What now?

Surely, the policymakers at Twitter, Google, Facebook, et al., can see once again that their censorship is misguided; hanging their heads in shame, they will henceforth ensure that discussion on their forums is open and untrammeled.

Don’t prove me wrong, guys.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 1st Amendment, censorship, Dave Rubin, free speech

Thought

Granville Hicks

A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.

Today

John Calvin & Desmond Tutu

Post author By Redactor
Post date September 13, 2021
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John Calvin [pictured above] returned to Geneva on September 13, 1541, after three years of exile. His subsequent work in church reform and theology became known as Calvinism, and profoundly influenced the course of European and (eventually) American civilization, including several concepts of servitude and liberty.

On the same date in 1989, Desmond Tutu led South Africa’s largest march aganst Apartheid.

Thought

Thomas Massie

Mask mandates beget Vax mandates
If you comply with one, expect the other.
Rep. Thomas Massie, Twitter (@RepThomasMassie), August 28, 2020.

Today

Switzerland federalized

On September 12, 1848, Switzerland became a unified federal state with a constitution limiting central government powers and providing decentralized state (canton) power patterned on the U.S. Constitution.

In 1880 on this date, H.L. Mencken was born. One of his earliest books was a debate with a socialist, The Men versus The Man (1910); his greatest lasting contribution was probably The American Language (1919) and its supplements (1945, 1948). His work has been collected in numerous anthologies, such as Alistair Cooke’s Vintage Mencken (1955) and the author’s own Mencken Chrestomathy.

audio podcast

Listen: Where We Are Now (Politically)

Post author By Redactor
Post date September 11, 2021
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Ah, California, you keep us entertained. And not just Hollywood. This week, Paul Jacob concentrates on one disastrous policy and the judge who defended said policy against the clearly stated wishes of the Californians themselves. Also on the docket? A different judge actually helps Californians out: