Category: First Amendment rights

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Accountability First Amendment rights social media

The Expert De-Platformed

Covid, Fauci, science

Dr. Robert Malone researched mRNA technology in the 1980s at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. He helped develop mRNA vaccines. He is a founder of Atheric Pharmaceutical. He’s got plenty of credentials. 

So you might think social media companies would respect his voice in the area of his expertise.

But no: for disputing official government assurances about the super-safeness of the vaccines, he’s been banned by Twitter (and copycat LinkedIn).

What precisely did he say that triggered the social media giants?

Well, Dr. Malone argues that for many youngsters the risks (like myocarditis) of being vaccinated outweigh the benefits of being vaccinated against what is a very low-risk infection for most younger people.

“I may be one of the very few that has this depth of understanding of the technology that doesn’t have a direct financial conflict of interest,” says Dr. Malone, who is himself vaccinated. “If I’m not allowed to speak about my concerns, whether they’re right or wrong . . . who is a valid person to participate in the dialogue?”

Nobody, doc. It’s because you’re so credible that you finally had to be stomped by the likes of Twitter. You’re too credible.

At the strongholds of official government doctrine, it’s not about figuring out the truth, encouraging independent judgment of risks and alternatives, or logical persuasion. Argue all you want, as rationally or irrationally as you want — just as long as you hew to the protean prescribed dogma.

Unsure what the set-in-stone dogma du jour is, precisely, on matters pandemical and vaccinatory? That’s easy. Just look up the very latest utterances of one Anthony Fauci.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism social media

Tom Paine Sues Facebook

Thomas Paine, truth, offense, censorship

The ghost of Thomas Paine is suing Instagram and Facebook.

Mr. Paine, the eloquent champion of the American Revolution who penned such zeitgeist-capturing volumes as Common Sense, The American Crisis, and The Rights of Man, is going to court to protest the indignity that these social-media forums recently inflicted upon his spirit by censoring his statement that “He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”

The statement comes from an op-ed Paine published in the April 24, 1776 issue of the Pennsylvania Journal: “Cato’s partizans may call me furious; I regard it not. There are men too, who, have not virtue enough to be angry, and that crime perhaps is Cato’s. He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”

Mr. Paine seems to be saying that persons of craven mettle often eschew the challenge of being standard-bearers of truth, especially when controversial matters are involved. Articulating such views forthrightly tends to offend — somebody.

The particular mentalities of censorious Facebook flunkies and algorithms are new to Mr. Paine, of course. But he is ready to fight.

“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered,” he declares when asked to assess his prospects, “yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. . . . [I]t would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

If that be hate speech, Mr. Paine seems to suggest, make the most of it.

This is Common Sense. Happy New Year! I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom national politics & policies social media

Should I Sue?

Senator Amy Klobuchar, censorship

Well, why not? According to some politicians, I have a perfect right to. 

But, you ask, on what grounds?

Because of the emotional injury I suffer when I listen to these bozos.

Legislation being considered in Congress would permit social-media companies to be sued for causing physical or “severe emotional injury,” a provision of the Justice Against Malicious Algorithms Act.

This legislation would amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act so as to make Internet service providers liable if they algorithmically recommend content that results in “severe emotional injury to any person.”

The text of the legislation is — you guessed it! — vague and murky. And would doubtless be applied with extreme selectivity if enacted.

Other bills being pondered would tackle things like “health misinformation.” Senator Amy Klobuchar declares that it is “our responsibility to take action.” 

Uh, what action?

The action of penalizing social media for inadequately censoring those with whom the senator disagrees.

Such rationalizations of assaults on freedom of speech are severely emotionally injurious to me.

Will I sue? Nah. I wouldn’t win. I doubt I would be one of the ones allowed to collect such bounties. Nor would any successfully passed legislation ever permit congressmen to be sued for their own psyche-pummeling lies, psy-ops, and blather.

Perhaps more importantly, it’s wrong to seek to penalize others merely for exercising freedom of speech, no matter how lousy or dispiriting that speech.

Lousy legislation, though — yes. If only we could sue for that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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F-Book Goes Meta

Metaverse, Facebook, VR, virtual reality

When Mark Zuckerberg changed the name of Facebook’s parent company to “Meta,” months back, a lot of people found this funny.

But for some of us older folks, the name was more funny-peculiar than funny-ha-ha. We’re used to “meta” as in Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics — the latter so-called because the book came “after the Physics.” 

So what does Zuckerberg’s desire to take the lead in the “shared virtual reality” market (Meta’s confessed goal) have to do with “after” anything? After real reality, there’s meta-reality? Uh, OK.

I don’t think I’ll be an early adopter of that waste of time. I still have things to do.

But that’s old Facebook news. Now, ready yourself for today’s Facebook news: defending itself from John Stossel’s defamation lawsuit over a bad case of pseudo-fact-checking, Facebook has admitted that its fact-checking is, from a legal point of view, opinion.

“In referring to its frequent use of ‘fact-checker’ labels on posts,” explains The Patriot Post, “the conglomerate stated in its motion for dismissal, ‘The [fact-check] labels themselves are neither false nor defamatory; to the contrary, they constitute protected opinion.’”

Truth is, as the New York Post observes, the whole “fact-check industry is funded by liberal moguls such as George Soros, government-funded nonprofits and the tech giants themselves.”

Facebook is moving beyond reality fast. Meta-fast. When bad “fact-checking” is defended as mere opinion, reality refracts to the point of unintelligibility.

Maybe Facebook’s name should be changed to Fraudbook, for while opinion is protected speech, labeling one’s opinions “facts” under the rubric of “fact-checking” sure looks, if not like legal fraud, exactly, certainly fraud in common parlance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom judiciary Regulating Protest

No Longer Compelled?

Adam Germain

In October, Pastor Artur Pawlowski, who had been jailed during the pandemic for holding church services in Calgary, Alberta, was ordered as one condition of his probation to always append a statement of official government doctrine to his own public uttering of opinions about pandemic policy.

According to the October 15 ruling by Alberta Justice Adam Germain, when “exercising [their] right of free speech” to speak against lockdowns and vaccines, Artur Pawlowski, his brother Dawid, and Whistle Stop Café owner Chris Scott must also recite a disclaimer.

It reads, in part: “I am obliged to inform you that the majority of medical experts favour social distancing, mask wearing, and avoiding large crowds to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Most medical experts also support participation in a vaccination program.”

Pastor Pawlowski told Fox News that he would “not obey this court order” to self-denounce, and he likened the issuing court’s proceedings to the judicial proceedings of the Soviet Union.

“This crooked judge wants to turn me into a CBC reporter or CNN reporter, that every time that I am in public, every time I’m opening my mouth, I am to pray their mantra to the government.”

On November 25, Justice Jo’Anne Strekaf of Alberta’s Court of Appeal lifted this order compelling specific speech, which Justice Germain pretends is compatible with freedom of speech. Whether this latest ruling is permanent depends on what happens at a June 14, 2022 hearing.

Until then, at least, the creepy order has been suspended.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture international affairs

Which National Church?

Finland, religious freedom

Juhana Pohjola, writes Joy Pullmann in The Federalist, may be “the first in the post-Soviet Union West to be brought up on criminal charges for preaching the Christian message as it has been established for thousands of years.”

While it may seem strange that Bishop Pohjola’s being prosecuted for saying Christian things — considering that he heads the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, and the Lutheran Church is the country’s state church — the truth is that Finland is majority nonbeliever, now, and the actual state religion might best be called Wokianity. 

That is why he’s being prosecuted.

And he’s not alone. 

Former Minister of the Interior and current Member of Parliament Päivi Räsänen also faces charges: “The medical doctor, mother of five, and grandmother of seven is accused of having engaged in ‘hate speech’ for publicly voicing her opinion on marriage and human sexuality in a 2004 pamphlet, for comments made on a 2019 radio show, and a tweet directed at her church leadership.” 

That last is a quotation from the ADF International, which describes itself as “a faith-based legal advocacy organization that protects fundamental freedoms and promotes the inherent dignity of all people.” The tweet quoted a Bible verse.

At issue is protecting “government-privileged identity groups,” in this case LGBTQ folks, from “centuries-old Christian teachings about sex” that “incite hatred.” 

A sign of the times: Finland, which used to be very liberal, is now merely “progressive” — making the assault on Christian beliefs for being un-woke completely unsurprising.

And worth noting here in America. For this sort of attack on free speech and freedom of religion is obviously what many on the left wish to implement.

It’s Wokianity versus Christianity . . . those with political powerful against the most basic rights of the First Amendment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights international affairs

Disney’s Memory Hole

Simpsons, China, censorship

China’s leaders fear Winnie the Pooh.

And The Simpsons.

The totalitarian regime’s opponents liken Xi Jinping, the latest Dear Leader, to Winnie the Pooh — due to an obvious resemblance. So Xi’s government works hard to expunge Winnie images.

The Chinazis also want everyone in China and Hong Kong (not to mention across the universe) to forget the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, when hundreds or thousands of people demanding democratic reform were killed. 

The Walt Disney Company is eager to cooperate with this besieging of memory.

The Simpsons is part of its new streaming service in Hong Kong, where citizens have been losing the last remnants of political freedom permitted under the two-systems agreement of 1997. Whether preemptively or in compliance with instruction from the Chinese government, Disney has deleted a certain episode from the series’ archive available to Hong Kongers.

In the memory-holed episode, “Goo Goo Gai Pain,” Homer, presiding over the corpse of Mao, opines that Mao is “like a little angel that killed fifty million people.”

Another character has a stare-down with a tank, recalling the briefly effective “tank man” confrontation with a row of tanks in that fateful June of 1989.

The episode also satirizes the Chinazi determination to erase all discussion of Tiananmen. For instance, the Simpsons see a sign at Tiananmen Square announcing “on this site, in 1989, nothing happened.”

Instead of appeasing Xi’s government, what should Disney do? 

What anybody who is paid to help repress a people and blank out the past: Stop doing that. 

Forfeit the money. 

Stand up for human rights. 

Or lose them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies

The Senatorial Suppressor

Elizabeth Warren, censorship, 1st Amendment, free speech

The brazenness of governmental assaults on freedom of speech continues apace.

In addition to “aggressive IRS scrutiny” of conservative groups, using campaign finance regulations to suppress speech, and FBI raids on homes of perpetrators of journalism, we are seeing government officials openly demand that private firms suppress speech.

In September, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote a letter to Amazon chastising it for promoting books that contradict the government line about matters pandemical.

One target of Warren’s finger-wagging is The Truth About COVID-19: Exposing the Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports, and the New Normal by Joseph Mercola and Ronnie Cummins.

I don’t know how cogent it is. I’m willing to let the authors make their case.

Not Senator Warren.

In her public letter, she rebukes Amazon for being “unwilling or unable to modify its business practices to prevent the sale of falsehoods . . . .” That’s a lot of book-warehouse-burning implicitly rationalized. How many classics of Western civilization contain falsehoods? Not to mention the I Ching.

Now the authors and publisher of The Truth About COVID-19 have sued Warren for acting to violate the First Amendment by proxy. Their filing cites a 1963 Supreme Court ruling that politicians violate the First Amendment when telling booksellers that selling certain books may be “unlawful.” Exactly what Warren does in her letter.

As that Court put it, “people do not lightly disregard public officers’ veiled threats.” 

Let’s hope that today’s Supreme Court recognizes the same reality.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights

The Freedom to Say “Jesus”

Brian Hickman, religion, freedom, dance

Some people have it tough to begin with. Then others make their lives even tougher for no good reason.

Fifth-grader Brian Hickman has cerebral palsy. Inspired by his mother, Adriana, he doesn’t let it keep him down.

His resilience has recently been tested. One of the things Brian loves to do is dance, and he spent weeks preparing for a talent show at his elementary school. 

Then the school said no.

He wanted to dance to “We Shine,” a contemporary Christian song that mentions Jesus. In accordance with the school district, administrators told him he couldn’t use it. 

Too offensive.

The principal opined that permitting the song would violate “separation of church and state.”

Well, “separation of church and state” is a term of art for what is in the Constitution: the right to free exercise of religion, and a prohibition on establishing a state church.

Letting Brian dance to his preferred music could not have resulted in the imposition of a prayer schedule on the citizenry, in forcing Episcopalians to become Lutherans or vice versa, or in otherwise coercively establishing religion.

No, officials were merely consulting their own sensibilities and deciding that they or the students could not abide exposure to Christian sentiments. Since Brian likes only Christian songs, any alternate he might have come up with would probably also have been refused.

But why make him start from scratch anyway?

His mother knew what to do: enlist the help of Alliance Defending Freedom, which promptly filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Unified School District. Which promptly reversed course and let Brian dance to the music he wanted.

Case closed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Bright Sheng Dimmed

Lawrence Olivier, Othello, race, censorship

Resolved: pedagogic enthusiasm plus naivety about the likely reactions of the “safe space” brigade shouldn’t be a burning-at-the-stake kind of offense. 

Or any kind of firing offense.

Bright Sheng, University of Michigan professor of composition and survivor of China’s Cultural Revolution, showed his class the 1965 movie “Othello,” which stars Laurence Olivier. Olivier was in blackface. 

Sheng failed to give a trigger warning so that safe-space aficionados could either gird their loins or skip the class.

Uh oh.

As Reason magazine’s Robby Soave notes, Olivier’s use of blackface “was controversial even at the time.”

Given the sub-venial nature of the sin, what might any sane-but-offended student have done? Go up after class and say, “Gee, Professor Sheng, love your class, but shouldn’t you have made some preparatory comment about the blackface? Well, have a nice day.”

But no. It’s got to be a wailing reenactment of Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream, with rabid students (and others) demanding Sheng be booted. No attention to context, no proportionality, no common sense.

Sheng has offered an abject apology, saying, in part, that “time has changed, and I made a mistake in showing the film, and I am very sorry.”

Was the mob demanding his ouster appeased? No. The mob never is.

The professor has for now stopped teaching his class, and the university is “investigating.”

The investigation actually needed, alas, will not be done. What administrators must discover is a backbone.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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