Tag: censorship

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education and schooling First Amendment rights

A Lesson for the Board

free speech, censorship, 1st Amendment

Shawn McBreairty has the right to speak at public school board meetings in Maine.

That may not sound like the most controversial of contentions, but many school boards and even the Justice Department have been treating parents as criminals for publicly objecting when schools 

  1. teach kids to feel racially guilty, 
  2. unlearn the biologically obvious about sex, and in general 
  3. engage in radical indoctrination at the expense of education.

The parents’ sin in such cases is that of nettling board members and others who want a free hand to inflict such policies.

Mr. McBreairty has gotten in hot water with more than one school board in Maine. The recent court ruling that he has the right to speak at board meetings was occasioned by the actions of the RSU 22 school district, which barred McBreairty from its own board meetings.

When he tried to attend one in June, the board used local police to stop him.

The judge in the case, Nancy Torreson, has no sympathy for the board’s antics, characterizing its rationale for trying to muzzle McBreairty as “evolving, ad hoc, and unsupported.”

Judge Torreson concludes that McBreairty’s expression of “school-​related concerns at the podium during the public comment period of School Board meetings constitutes speech that is protected under the First Amendment.” Her ruling grants the motion for an order temporarily restraining the school board from stopping McBreairty from attending and speaking at its meetings.

Even if board members disagree with him.

McBreairty and the school board are in America, after all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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international affairs privacy

Delivering to Evil

China, privacy, donor, freedom

Will Americans who demand the outing of anonymous donors to political causes listen to Jianli Yang?

One reason that people donate to organizations anonymously — just as they want their votes and other personal information to remain confidential — is to avoid being harassed by political opponents.

But being bullied in a restaurant is hardly the worst that can befall donors stripped of anonymity.

Jianli Yang is a Chinese dissident. In 2008, after spending years in a Chinese prison for his activism, he founded Citizen Power Initiatives for China, a US-​based organization working to advance rights and democracy in China.

Yang notes that Chinese supporters of his organization, even if residing outside of China, “can face extreme consequences when they are identified by the Chinese government.” Without the right to protect donor privacy, affirmed in a July 2021 U.S. Supreme Court decision on the associational rights of donors, donors can end up being punished by the Chinese government.

The risk isn’t just theoretical. In April 2021, one Mr. Lee, a businessman, was forced to appear on Chinese television to “confess” to supporting Citizen Power Initiatives for China. The government also sentenced Lee to eleven years in prison.

We must fight both the CCP and their wannabe branch in DC. Things are nowhere near as bad in this country as in China. But we don’t know what threats we will face the day after tomorrow even from our own government.

We need every First Amendment protection we can get.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights Internet controversy social media

A Welcome Discovery

Joe Biden, censorship, Twitter, Facebook, 1st Amendment, free speech

In recent years, several lawsuits have been launched alleging collusion between the Biden administration and big social media companies to violate our First Amendment rights.

Unfortunately, most of these suits have been dismissed.

Journalist Alex Berenson did obtain some satisfaction after suing Twitter for suspending his account last year because he questioned the efficacy of COVID-​19 vaccines.

The suit accused Twitter of acting “on behalf of the federal government in censoring and barring him.” Berenson’s account was finally reinstated as part of the settlement. But only Twitter was required to take any remedial action; the government was required to do nothing.

Still ongoing is a lawsuit launched by the attorney generals of Missouri and Louisiana against the Biden administration for urging social media giants to suppress speech about things like COVID-​19 and elections “under the guise of combating ‘misinformation.’ ”

Now a judge has granted the states’ motion for discovery, enabling the attorneys general to make document requests and issue subpoenas to social media platforms. The AGs hope to learn which federal officials have been urging censorship and what exactly they said.

In a certain respect, these actions seem almost superfluous, since administration officials, including Biden, have repeatedly and publicly called on social media to censor harder.

But the more evidence we can get on how the federal government has been urging firms to censor on its behalf and in violation of the First Amendment, the better. 

That brings us closer to getting it to stop.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights general freedom

Squelched in Quebec

Quebec, censorship, free speech, Covid

It’s a Université Laval thing; a Quebec thing: a Canada thing.

These are no places to be if you want to debate questions about pandemics and vaccines now “settled” by government-​mandated consensus. Professors Patrick Provost and Nicolas Derome, who both teach at Laval, recently got the message in spades.

Provost, professor of microbiology and immunology, has been suspended for two months without pay for doubting the wisdom of giving COVID-​19 vaccines to children. Kids face only a very low risk of serious consequences from the disease and a nonzero risk of being hurt by vaccination.

A newspaper that quoted his thoughts on the data and on free speech has cravenly deleted the offending article, stressing that “we can’t subscribe to” Provost’s views.

Laval also suspended Derome, professor of molecular biology, for expressing doubts about the value of vaccinating kids.

Canada’s authoritarians enjoy no monopoly on smothering academic and other speech. Many governments strive to more diligently repress their citizens. But Canadian officials fancy themselves pioneers in this area, and perhaps they are.

The hazards of squelching discourse about life-​and-​death matters should be obvious. It’s in our interest that scientists and everybody be able to freely investigate and discuss facts and interpretations without worrying whether an unauthorized assertion will cost the speaker two months of salary.

Or worse.

But some care nothing about logic and evidence — or, apparently, how useful these are to both individuals and to society at large.

It’s not an attitude consistent with … Common Sense.

I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture Internet controversy

Two Thumbs Up for Netflix

Netflix, Dave Chappelle

Although a new “Artistic Expression” section in Netflix’s culture memo could be improved, I’m giving it two thumbs up instead of the customary one and a half accorded to promising but imperfect credos.

In these censorious times, why not applaud any sincere testament upholding freedom of speech?

Even if called “diversity,” in Netflix-speak.

According to the revised memo, the company supports “a diversity of stories, even if we find some titles counter to our own personal values. . . . If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.”

This is probably not about Netflix’s willingness to rent The Wizard of Oz no matter who objects to the spectacle of weepy tin men or broom-​riding green-​faced women in pointy hats.

Recently, Netflix has been roiled by employee protests against videos they find annoying, especially Dave Chapelle’s comedy special “The Closer.” Chapelle, who appears to lean more left than right, turns out not to be the type to run his riffs by a lefty censorship board.

Now let’s see how Netflix follows up on its delicate suggestion that working for Netflix “may not be the best place” for employees demanding censorship. Will Netflix show the door to all sullen saboteurs of speech-​diversity?

Also, will it more fundamentally diversify its own original content?

In any case, good for Netflix for resisting the mob, for now. Until further notice, it’s two full thumbs up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies

Homeland Censorship Board

Elon Musk, Twitter, free speech, censorship, First Amendment

We’re in a twilight zone beyond mere “mission creep” now. 

Two months ago, creeps at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) created a new censorship board, secret until its existence was revealed in congressional testimony.

This disinformatively named Disinformation Governance Board is headed by an open critic of the First Amendment, Nina Jankowicz. The purpose of the amendment being to protect freedom of speech and other rights from governmental assault, the new board and its director are especially alarming.

The DHS was formed after 9/​11 to protect national security and combat terrorism, a form of politically motivated violence. And whatever the exact definition of “terrorism” should be, we can at least agree that arguing about the origins and issues of elections, pandemics, or Russian invasions doesn’t qualify. The bitterest clashing over facts is just speech, unless part and parcel of criminal acts.

But the purpose of the Disinformation Board is to combat and “address this threat” of election disinformation.

Merriam-​Webster defines “disinformation” as “false information deliberately and often covertly spread” to “influence public opinion or obscure the truth.”

The First Amendment protects dishonest and mistaken honest speech, not just infallible honest speech. But by “disinformation,” foes of freedom of speech often mean “any speech we dispute.”

If the government can repress any speech that it chooses to label “disinformation,” that portends the end of freedom of speech. 

The very existence of the Disinformation Board warrants a lawsuit on First Amendment grounds.

And since disinformation was coined to designate, specifically, government-​concocted and distributed misinformation — a term of art in the “intelligence” and propaganda biz, called dezinformatsiya by Stalin  — it is especially rich to see the current administration apply it directly against the people.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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