Category: First Amendment rights

Too Many Tiananmens

tiananmen, protest, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan,

Chinese students suddenly occupied Beijing’s Tiananmen Square for seven beautiful weeks in the Spring of 1989.

Millions more from all walks of life joined them.

Protesting tyranny, they demanded democracy and freedom of speech.

Then, 31 years ago to this very day, the Chinese government sent in tanks and soldiers, opening fire on citizens outside the square, killing thousands. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) followed up the massacre with arrests and lengthy prison terms for those committing the unspeakable crime of speaking out for freedom.

Fast-forward three decades and the ChiNazis in Beijing are currently engaged in snuffing out the civil liberties and democratic aspirations of the people in Hong Kong.*

In mainland China, the CCP has always squelched any mention of the Tiananmen Square massacre, but every year Hongkongers have held a vigil. Not this year. It has been banned.

The world should have learned two obvious lessons: (1) the Chinese people want freedom and democracy, and (2) the ‘Butchers of Beijing’ will brutalize to prevent it.

Far more powerful than in 1989, CCP tyrants now wield a much more effective police state against Chinese citizens.

Now is the time to honor the Tiananmen demonstrators, but clearing Lafayette Park of protesters so President Trump can walk to a church seems … disquieting.

Not a memorial.

And suggesting he might invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to engage the military in domestic policing? Trump’s defense secretary rightly opposes.

Comparisons to Tiananmen Square have not unreasonably been drawn.

The difference? Americans can revolt … peacefully, which our government cannot put down.

For the sake of the free world and all those — including 1.4 billion Chinese — in the unfree world, now is no time to abandon peaceful protest and political action for insurrection, riot, and military suppression.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* This is brazen violation of the 1997 turnover agreement made with Britain, of course.

Additional Reading:

What It Means

What Tiananmen Inspired

Tiananmen & Term Limits

All the Tyranny in China

I Am Hong Kong

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First Amendment rights media and media people

Who’s Banned What?

Facebook, censorship, protests, corona virus, Covid, pandemic, epidemic,

Has dissent about pandemic policy been outlawed?

I mean, “for the duration”?

Well, no.

The Internet displays every possible view of policy and epidemiology, expressed with every possible degree of temperateness or intemperateness.

Yet we are indeed seeing signs of indifference to freedom of speech even when that speech cannot entail breathing a coronavirus on anybody.

According to CNN, Facebook told the network: “Anti-quarantine protests being organized through Facebook in California, New Jersey, and Nebraska are being removed from the platform on the instruction of governments in those three states because it violates stay-at-home orders.”

Online posts “violate stay-at-home orders”?

Who knew?

Obviously, a protest that violates social-distancing rules (if it does) is not the same thing as a communication about the protest.

Apparently, Facebook is a willing functionary of whichever state governments will instruct it to carry out their censorship. Tyler O’Neil opines that “it is disconcerting that Facebook would work with local governments to remove pages organizing protests against them.”

Yes, indeed.

But such reports have been disputed. Facebook may be acting on its own. For example, a spokeswoman for New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy says that his office “did not ask Facebook to remove pages or posts for events promoting lifting the provisions of the Governor’s stay-at-home order.” Nebraska also denies making such a request.

Which version of the story is true?

Which is worse?

Both are creepy.

I just hope that this muzzling-speech-just-to-help thing doesn’t start spreading like a virus.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies political challengers

Dem Noodles

Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, Citizens United, free speech, money,

Though skipping Iowa and New Hampshire, Michael Bloomberg’s advertisements are ubiquitous on television and YouTube seemingly everywhere in America.

“New Hampshire voters to Steyer: Make it stop!” reads a Politico headline sparked by that taller, poorer billionaire’s unbearable barrage of spots.

At Reason, Eric Boehm notes that Bloomberg and Tom Steyer — both very rich and both running for the Democratic nomination for the presidency — are proving that money cannot buy elections. “Given how Bloomberg and Steyer have struggled to gain traction despite their willingness to set fire to their respective campaign war chests, it’s a bit ironic to hear some of their Democratic primary opponents repeatedly bemoaning the influence of money in politics.”

But Senator Elizabeth Warren’s complaints about the two billionaires are almost certainly just playing to partisan prejudice, which has been seeded for years by the left’s relentless complaints about the Citizens United decision.

Eric Boehm argues that the reality is the opposite of the propaganda: overturning Citizens United would make it easier, not harder, for rich folks to game the system.

But in Free Speech America, the Bloomberg and Steyer advertising efforts are proving unimpressive. “While it is foolish to rule out any electoral outcome in a world where Donald Trump is president,” Mr. Boehm writes, “voters have responded to both Democratic billionaires with a resounding meh, and there seems to be little reason to think that will change next year, no matter how much money the two candidates pour into the race.”

You don’t eat spaghetti by pushing wet noodles. You gotta entice voters to slurp down your message.

Bloomberg and Steyer, the very soggiest of noodles, are living proof..

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture

Phil of It

If Punxsutawney Phil peaks out and sees his shadow, are we doomed to another six weeks of political pall?

And speaking of palls, Senator Elizabeth Warren, slipping in the polls, has unveiled YET ANOTHER PLAN.

Contemplate that very fact for a moment. The Distinguished Pocahontas Professor of Planning proposes to “combat disinformation by holding big tech companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google,” Sunny Kim regales us from CNBC, “responsible for spreading misinformation designed to suppress voters from turning out.”

Warren vows to “push for new laws that impose tough civil and criminal penalties for knowingly disseminating this kind of information, which has the explicit purpose of undermining the basic right to vote.”

Notice her flip of America’s script?

Swapping free speech for policed speech doesn’t upgrade politicians, regulators and judges to philosopher king status, able or justified to distinguish true information from mis- or dis-.

And is our basic right to vote really being undermined by “memes”?

Give me a break.

Confusing rights with influence, or some virginal lack thereof, is pure political poison.

Or it would be if anyone took Warren seriously anymore.

Meanwhile, PETA is horning in on Punxsutawney’s celebrated Groundhog Day.

“People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is calling on the keepers of the weather-forecasting groundhog to let him retire,” CNN tells us, “and to be replaced by an animatronic groundhog.”

PETA got what reads like a Babylon Bee article into the news. “By creating an AI Phil,” the group’s letter to the Pennsylvania operation runs, “you could keep Punxsutawney at the center of Groundhog Day but in a much more progressive way.”

Is Elizabeth Warren’s notion also ‘progressive’?

Seems the opposite. But animatronics might be involved.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights

We, the Riffraff

Suppose I disagree with you — say, on whether I have the right to bear arms. I favor, you oppose. (We’re just supposing here.)

In the heat of online argument, I call you a scoundrel or other unkind things. I am intemperate but avoid libel or threats. Should I be jailed? (Remember, we’re just supposing here. Don’t call the constables!)

You and I would say “No.” But we can’t take our freedom of intemperate speech for granted, or our freedom of any speech at all that ruffles the feathers of rulers like those currently ruling the roost in Virginia.

Our forefathers understood the danger of abusing power to squelch dissent. Hence the First Amendment’s sweeping protection of even obnoxious peaceful speech.

Yet right after launching a massive assault on our Second Amendment rights, Virginia legislators are now launching a massive assault on our First Amendment rights. House Bill 1627 would make a Class 1 felony of “Harassment by computer”: “threats and harassment,” “indecent language,” “any suggestion of an obscene nature” when directed against the governor or other Virginia potentates in state government. Possible penalties include jail time.

Who will decide when rhetoric is mean and vulgar, blunt and honest, or some jumble of all the above? Or when the bill’s ambiguous catchall provisions, if enacted, are being violated?

Why, the only* people it’s meant to protect: those in government … who don’t like it when the people get angry and loud.

This legislation does not defend you and me. The opposite of the First Amendment, it’s designed to keep us plebs — the riffraff — silent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The special protection pointedly covers only “the following officials or employees of the Commonwealth: the Governor, Governor-elect, Lieutenant Governor, Lieutenant Governor-elect, Attorney General, or Attorney General-elect, a member or employee of the General Assembly, a justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, or a judge of the Court of Appeals of Virginia.”

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First Amendment rights media and media people political challengers

The Silence Option

gatekeeper, Twitter, Facebook, censorship, political advertising,

“While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said last month in announcing a complete ban on political advertising for candidates or issues, “that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions.”

But is it the risk to “the lives of millions” that is at issue here?

Really?

Pressure for social media companies to police “renegade” voices came mainly from the left … in Congress and major media. These are the groups with the most to lose by the free flow of political debate, as spurred by paid political advertising, which is what challengers often use to break through the incumbents’ natural advantage.

Congress is filled with incumbents, by definition.

Major media sees itself as gatekeeper for political discourse, and feels threatened by an unregulated online culture.

Accordingly, Twitter’s ban received rave reviews from the political left. “Good call,” progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded. A spokesperson for former Vice-President Joe Biden’s campaign called it “encouraging.”*

“Good,” tweeted Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (also sort of a presidential candidate). “Your turn, Facebook.”

But Facebook is thankfully not bending to pressure.

“[I]f Facebook were to cut off political ads, it could end up undercutting the scrappy, first-time candidates …,” reports The Washington Post. “Voters are more likely to see Facebook ads than television ads from challengers, according to the findings, published in a working paper whose first author is Erika Franklin Fowler of Wesleyan University.”

“Online advertising lowers the cost and the barriers to entry,” Fowler told The Washington Post.

Which is bad for the political establishment because it is good for challengers, the outsiders.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Perhaps the ban encourages top Democrats for the same reason the president’s campaign manager sounded the alarm: “This is yet another attempt to silence conservatives since Twitter knows President Trump has the most sophisticated online program ever known.”

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