Category: social media

Ron Paul & the Fascisti

Yes, you can make this stuff up.

But long before you could add your implausible idea to your farfetched script about the weird dystopian future or recent tyrannical past, some big-tech social-media company will have galumphingly implemented that notion.

Former Congressman Ron Paul said the following on Facebook, reprinting a column on his site:

“Last week’s massive social media purges — starting with President Trump’s permanent ban from Twitter and other outlets — were shocking and chilling, particularly to those of us who value free expression and the free exchange of ideas.

“The justifications given for the silencing of wide swaths of public opinion made no sense, and the process was anything but transparent. Nowhere in President Trump’s two ‘offending’ Tweets, for example, was a call for violence expressed explicitly or implicitly. It was a classic example of sentence first, verdict later.”

Then Facebook blocked Dr. Paul.

“With no explanation other than ‘repeatedly going against our community standards,’ Facebook has blocked me from managing my page,” he reported on Twitter, itself no sturdy redoubt. “Never have we received notice of violating community standards in the past and nowhere is the offending post identified.”

Can humongous corporations really jerk people around so dishonestly? Is it legal?

Paul further argued that “this assault on social media” is not merely “a liberal or Democrat attack on conservatives and Republicans.”

“As progressives like Glenn Greenwald have pointed out,” explains the doctor, “this is a wider assault on any opinion that veers from the acceptable parameters of the mainstream elite, which is made up of both Democrats and Republicans.”

The narrowing of opinion down to what elites find acceptable is one definition of fascism: a no-opposition-allowed corporatist state.

I’m not making this up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 1st Amendment, Big Tech, censorship, free speech, Ron Paul

partisanship social media

Consigned to Outer Darkness

Post author By Editor
Post date January 11, 2021
10 Comments on Consigned to Outer Darkness

mass media, establishment media, censorship, free speech

Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Amazon are on a de-platforming binge.

The official rationale? Anyone “associated” with rioting must be expelled from virtual society.

Yet these social media outfits have hardly ousted endorsers of violence against innocents with anything like consistency. Iranian Boss-man Ali Khamenei still has a Twitter account. Socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Cortez, who has opined that some people “have no choice but to riot,” is still merrily blathering on Twitter.

The latest victim of Big Tech’s assault on speech is not an individual but a competing platform, Parler, whose support for free speech is its main selling point.

Apple has kicked Parler off its app store, and Parler got booted from the Google Play store, too.

Now Amazon, which provided storage for Parler, is kicking Parler off its servers with essentially zero notice because Amazon employees “were lobbying the company to disconnect Parler from AWS for hate speech,” which is like arguing that USPS or the Constitution must be shut down because it enables hate mail.

Apparently, once enemies of speech employed by a big-tech service provider scream “Deplatform so-and-so,” any erstwhile reservations of top management — Jeff Bezos, in this case — pop like a soap bubble under a hot iron.

Parler was one possible landing place for the President of the United States, booted from Twitter for allegedly inciting the capitol riot.* It now seems that Trump may find refuge at Gab.com, where his tweets expunged from Twitter have been republished.

But note: Gab has long been out in the wilderness, denied service on Google’s and Apple’s systems.

Folks who demand inclusion sure do practice exclusion well.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Rush Limbaugh deactivated his Twitter account in protest of Twitter’s action. And I deactivated mine as well — something I meant to do when Twitter blocked the New York Post’s truthful reporting on Hunter Biden during the election.

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social media The Draft

Terrible Twisted Tweet

selective service, twitter, tweet, handcuffs, the draft,

Close your eyes and imagine a young American.

Got a picture in your mind? Does the youngster have his or her hands cuffed behind his or her back?

No?

Well, clearly, you’re not the Selective Service System (SSS).

“When the threat of force is your first argument that somebody should do something,” James Leroy Wilson wrote at Medium.com, “you have no other.”

Wilson added, “And there is no reason for Selective Service to exist, as exemplified by” the agency’s “threatening, bullying” (and since deleted) tweet:

Some people don’t want to register because they think ‘laws and government suck.’ But truth be told, failure to register is punishable by a fine up to $250,000 and imprisonment up to 5 years. Also, failure to register results in a lifetime of denied benefits. #MythBusters

And what a compelling picture of coercion!

Is that supposed to be your kid?

Let’s start with some myth-busting of Selective Service’s so-called #MythBusting. For all their threats of imprisoning young men who don’t register, no one has been prosecuted in over 30 years.

I know because I remember those handcuffs quite well. Exactly 35 years ago today, three FBI agents arrested me at my home in North Little Rock, Arkansas, for my unwillingness to present myself and submit to signing a draft registration card.

My reasons — like those of only 13 others convicted of disobeying this unconstitutional demand — were more clearly articulated than the SSS tweet suggests: namely, a respect for the higher law of the Thirteenth Amendment and basic human rights, a desire to inform my government that I wouldn’t fight an unjust war, and an understanding that conscription was the way unfree countries fill their armies — anathema to the values that make America worth defending.

Today, non-registration continues to be massive. Admittedly, only half of young men in urban Washington, DC, and barely 60 percent in more rural North Dakota have complied with draft registration.

Moreover, most registrations are now passive, meaning men are registered while getting a driver’s license or applying for student aid — often without their knowledge.

Not exactly oozing with patriotism.

Last year, the agency did send over 110,000 names to the Justice Department for prosecution, but there were no prosecutions . . . which would spark public opposition to the program.

For now, draft registration continues even though former Selective Service Director Bernard Rostker contends, “My bottom line is there is no need to continue to register people for a draft that will not come; no need to fight the battle over registering women, and no military need to retain the [Military Selective Service Act].”

But Congress has empaneled the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service to investigate and provide a report: (1) whether to extend draft registration to women, in keeping with a federal court ruling, or to end the registration program altogether, as it should; and (2) whether there should be a compulsory military draft or civilian national service program.

I believe the draft violates individual freedom and makes our country less safe. We shouldn’t force young women to register or be drafted into combat along with men; we should end this conscription program for everyone.

I fought the draft 35 years ago when it was about me. I plan to double-down now that it is about my kids. And grandkids. And yours.

What say you? Please go tell the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service — HERE — to listen to your Common Sense today.

Thank you. I’m Paul Jacob.

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