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First Amendment rights Internet controversy social media

The Defi(l)ers of the First Amendment

Early on, we carefully phrased our objections to the suppressions of dissident opinion on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube. 

We knew (because we had been making the distinction for years) that when companies and private parties engaged in discrimination on the basis of opinion, including “de-​platforming” of opinion-​mongers, these weren’t, at least on the face of it, First Amendment violations. The First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech apply to the federal government and, by the stretch of the 14th Amendment, to state and local governments.

These were corporations.

Sure, corporations thriving under government liability rules, and with sometimes-​cushy contracts with government.

And social media companies’ actions were clearly partisan, obviously opposing Donald Trump. The dreaded Orange Man had used social media to get elected in 2016, running rings around the gatekeepers of Accepted Opinion; the ultra-​partisan censorship a reaction.

Only with the release of the Twitter Files, after Elon Musk bought Twitter, did we get the crucial facts in the case: Agents of the U.S. government (many of them eerily in the Deep State nexus) pushed the censorship.

Now, with Mark Zuckerberg’s very recent and very public pulling back from the excesses of DEI as well as government-​coerced content moderation, we’ve learned more of the manner of the duress in which his companies caved to censorship demands. Government agents called up Facebook managers and content moderators and screamed at them to suppress certain stories and “memes.”

The sharing of visual memes really, really bugged the Deep State, which was hell bent on delivering to everybody a jab in the muscle with gene therapeutics allegedly to “vaccinate” us against a disease that … well, their buddies in the Deep State helped China, it just so happened, create

Worldwide, millions died in a pandemic whose origin was actively covered up through violations of the First Amendment in America

Defend free speech to defend life itself. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Categories
Accountability government transparency ideological culture insider corruption meme moral hazard national politics & policies

Corporate influence…

Corporations can buy unfair favors from government…because government has unfair favors to sell.

Big Government is the problem.


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Categories
crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom meme moral hazard national politics & policies too much government

Which is more dangerous?

Corporations cannot and do not tax, conscript, and kill under claim of legal authority to do so.
Only governments do that. 

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corporations, government, power, danger, government vs. corporation, which is more dangerous, law, corruption, meme, illustration, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense
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meme

Progressives — Useful Enablers of Corporate Power

Outraged progressives…writing regulations…that only rich corporations can afford to follow!

Progressives: useful enablers of corporate power for over 100 years!

Don’t believe it? Check out the writings of the esteemed leftist historian Gabriel Kolko…


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Progressive Enablers

 

Categories
folly general freedom ideological culture meme moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Mega-​state vs. Corporate Power

Building a mega-​state to fight corporate power…

…is like giving yourself AIDS to fight the flu.


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Categories
folly general freedom too much government

Under the Law, Not Beneath It

Celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta Libertatum this week, I noted how a document intended to serve the very upper classes, by limiting each others’ powers, led to liberty for all.

The Nation, on the other hand, used it to excoriate the Citizens United ruling.

“Magna Carta reminds us that no man is above the law,” wrote John Nichols on Monday. “But it should not be imagined that Magna Carta established democracy, or anything akin to it.”

Of course the Magna Carta did not establish democracy. No one said it did. And neither Britain nor America has pure democracy, if you define it … in Nichols fashion. What is he driving at?

If we respect the notion that the rule of law must apply to all … then surely it must apply to corporations.

And, surely, the best celebration of those premises in the United States must be the extension of the movement to amend the US Constitution to declare that corporations are not people, money is not speech, and citizens and their elected representatives have the authority to organize elections — and systems of governance — where our votes matter more than their dollars.

Sure, Mr. Nichols, corporations shouldn’t be above the law. But they shouldn’t be below it, either. And in America we have rights to free speech and press. Those rights “surely … must apply to corporations.”

Let’s increase the liberating powers of democracy: open up ballot access, de-​privilege incumbents, count votes in a non-​mere-​plurality-​wins fashion.

But let’s not throw out equal rights under the law, even in the name of democracy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Magna Carta Nation