Tag: 1st Amendment

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political challengers social media

Ron Paul & the Fascisti

Ron Paul

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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First Amendment rights Internet controversy

Ron Paul vs. Fauci, YouTube vs. You

Ron Paul, Fauci, Covid, censorship, free speech, 1st Amendment

It’s new news but also, unfortunately, old news.

Tech-​giant providers of forums for public discussion keep banning discussion of the issues of the day. The latest victim: Ron Paul, medical doctor, former congressman and presidential candidate, father of U.S. Senator Rand Paul.

Alphabet/​Google/​YouTube has pulled a video from Dr. Paul’s YouTube channel in which he criticized Fauci for, among other things, reversing his advice about wearing masks to combat COVID-​19. YouTube warns of further suppression if this kind of thing (debate, I guess) continues. You can still watch the video, since there are competitors to YouTube (and we hope there will be many more). SoundCloud has it.

Paul linked to an image of the YouTube communiqué. “Your content was removed due to a violation of our Community Guidelines. . . . Medical misinformation.”

“If this happens again,” Paul’s channel will be hobbled for a week.

And if even then he still speaks freely, like any red-​blooded American would? Still more sanctions, presumably.

Alas, there are many examples of these obnoxious policies.

We’ve recently complained about YouTube’s removal of a Mises Institute talk — once again, for failure to follow the pandemic panic party line. We’ve also complained about how WordPress buzz-​sawed The Conservative Treehouse blog for nebulous violations of policy, violations suddenly discovered after years of hosting the blog.

We could go on. We probably will. Like the proverbial “broken record.” 

When’re we gonna stop?

Well, right after the tech giants stop their accelerating efforts to suppress debate.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies too much government

A Modest Extrapolation

civil rights, discrimination, 1st Amendment, free speech,

The big news from yesterday’s Supreme Court decisions (in June, they typically come in chunks) regards discrimination law, in which the court decided, 6 – 3, with Neil Gorsuch writing the majority opinion, that discrimination “against an employee for being gay or transgender violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” As covered at Reason it makes for fascinating reading.

Still, there are many problems here. The whole employment discrimination issue assumes that people have a right to be judged suitable for employment based only on strict consideration of job performance.

This is intrusive into private decision-​making, and opens up hiring and firing to huge legal costs.

But a bigger issue lurks here.

It is now commonplace for employees to be fired under public pressure for merely having political opinions that have little or nothing to do with their jobs.

Anti-​discrimination civil rights law was designed to curb this sort of thing — public pressure for reasons of antipathy and social mania — but only on a limited number of criteria, racism and sexism against protected groups being the areas carved out.

Since we have a First Amendment right to speak, mightn’t that right be applied via discrimination law to prohibit mob deplatforming or resulting loss of employment?

Sure, 1964’s Civil Rights Act limited the scope of its intervention into employment contracts and the “public accommodations” realm of commerce to the above-​mentioned isms, on grounds of a long history of bigotry and invidious private discrimination. But right now, that sort of discrimination is primarily an ideological matter, not racial or sexual. 

Extending the scope of the First Amendment via an anti-​discrimination rationale would seem a natural.

At least for those who favor consistent government intervention over freedom. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people

Wrong Field for You

New York Times, toilet paper, editorial, censorship, 1st Amendment,

“If you’re an emotionally unstable baby who regards disagreement as ‘violence,’” tweeted “roving journalist” Michael Tracey, “journalism is probably the wrong field for you.”

Only half-​right. Given their goals, filling jobs that would otherwise be filled by journalists is indeed the right thing for hysterico-​new-​new-​Left activists — just as bank-​tellering is right for inside men helping bank robbers rob banks.

Tracey is commenting on how New York Times “journalists” — and others — apoplexed over the Times’ sin of permitting unqualified disapproval of mass rioting to grace its editorial pages. In his June Third op-​ed, U.S. Senator Tom Cotton argued that the rioters, “if not subdued, not only will destroy the livelihoods of law-​abiding citizens but will also take more innocent lives.” He recommended invoking the Insurrection Act in order to deploy the military.

One can argue about whether invoking the Act would be a good idea. 

Or one could, even in the Times … if one weren’t thereby invading the “safe space” of pseudo-​journalists who had supposed that they need never face the hazards of fundamental debate within its pages.

An abject but vague apology now prefaces the op-ed. 

The Times has also fired the editor who let it be published. 

After all, by the time it reached print, Cotton’s piece did continue to contain evaluations with which someone might disagree.

This is a new low for the Times, which continues its downward spiral. The rest of us, I trust, will escape that vortex, resisting the great flush down to the sewer at civilization’s end.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture media and media people

Lockdown and Shut Up

John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, free speech, 1st Amendment, First Amendment,

“I think it’s a shame,” HBO comedian Bill Maher told Dr. David Katz, “that people like you who sound reasonable — maybe it’s not the exact one true opinion you hear somewhere else — has to go on Fox News to say it.”

For years, I have told liberal friends that they miss important stories by not paying attention to Fox, because most other TV media eschew non-​progressive perspectives they oppose (but perhaps fear we might support).

Last month, Katz wrote a New York Times op-​ed, entitled, “Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease?” Rather than the current lockdown strategy, the physician advocates “a middle path” where “high-​risk people are protected from exposure” and “low-​risk people go out in the world.”

Once upon a time, social media promised regular folks a chance to communicate and even organize without government interference or media filters. 

Not so much these days. 

Last week, I decried Facebook removing posts informing people about planned anti-​lockdown protests, reportedly “on the instruction of governments” in California, New Jersey, and Nebraska because those protests might violate “stay-​at-​home orders.”

This week, YouTube removed a video that you and I must not see, with California Drs. Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi explaining why they think the lockdowns are bad policy.* 

“Anything that would go against World Health Organization recommendations,” clarified YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, “would be a violation of our policy” — and will be blocked. 

Our society’s first principle is freedom of expression.

The idea? Unfettered information will best lead us to the truth. 

Increasingly, our social media and news outfits no longer trust us with information not heavily controlled by them. 

Which means we cannot trust them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The doctors also confirm, as I suggested might happen, that medical personnel are being pressured to “add COVID” to death reports. 

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John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, free speech, 1st Amendment, First Amendment,

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First Amendment rights ideological culture

Phil of It

Elizabeth Warren,

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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Elizabeth Warren,

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