Tag: first amendment

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media and media people

A Babylon Bee in Facebook’s Bonnet

H.L. Mencken, satire, free speech

Would the likes of H.L. Mencken and Jonathan Swift be free to say much on the “open” platforms of modern social media — that is, before being suspended, blocked, demonetized, stomped?

Depends.

Imagine: 1920s-​vintage tweets by Mencken lambasting literary Puritanism and “chiropractic” or 1720s-​vintage tweets by Swift pummeling prejudice against poor people — neither would likely inspire high-​tech gendarmes to swoop in swinging their truncheons very immediately.

President Trump would also be an acceptable target.

But let HLM or JS skewer Democratic Party panjandrums, and the skill of the skewering would constitute the first bill of indictment. Especially during the last days of a presidential election.

As the often funny and spot-​on Babylon Bee has learned, plenty of faux-high-​minded rationalizations would be spouted from Twitter, Facebook, and Google mouthpieces as the social media behemoths go about suppressing the satiric discourse … as if scripted by satirists!

Thus, Facebook has just demonetized the Bee for “inciting violence.” And how was this violence incited? By spoofing the silliness of a senator.

Are such suppressors of satire somehow led by — say — an invisible hand to … self-satirize?

Apparently, yes.

But what is the answer to invidious discrimination by “neutral” platforms?

Andrew McCarthy of National Review is not alone in wondering whether the giant tech firms are abiding by the terms of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects them from prosecution for the speech of others on their “open” platforms. But maybe the bottom line is … we should just outlaw punch lines. 

They’re pretty painful if you’re the one getting punched. I mean, c’mon, man. “Punch” line? Pretty violent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights Second Amendment rights

Students Fight Back

Austin Tong, David Dorn, Hong Kong

Everywhere, assaults on freedom and free speech are going full blast. Violent True Believers are on the march as others, even if less overtly barbaric, provide cover, an excuse.

For example, the State University of New York at Binghamton has cooperated with left-​wing thugs to suppress conservatives.

The mob stole or destroyed posters and the table students were using to promote an appearance by Arthur Laffer, the noted supply-​side economist. The same mob also disrupted the lecture itself. A lawsuit brought by the victimized students accuses officials of failing “to take action to defend College Republicans’ constitutional rights” and supporting the “physically abusive actions of the College Progressives.”

Another student under attack is Austin Tong. Recently, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has been going to bat for Tong, a Fordham University student suspended for social media posts.

One is a picture of Tong holding (not pointing) a legally owned rifle, intended to draw attention to the Tiananmen Square massacre. The other shows black police captain David Dorn, who was murdered by looters. Its caption chastises members of the Black Lives Matter movement for apparent indifference to Dorn’s fate.

Before suspending him for “bias” and “threats,” university personnel showed up at Tong’s house to interrogate him about the posts.

Tong is unapologetic, and FIRE says that Fordham has “acted more like the Chinese government than an American university, placing severe sanctions on a student solely because of off-​campus political speech.”

Far from isolated cases, unfortunately.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Protest Hits the Pavement

Black Lives Matter, Washington D.C.

Social justice activists and Washington D.C. city officials have collaborated to paint the slogan “Black Lives Matter” on 16th Street near the White House. 

The city has also allowed the words “Defund the Police” to be painted on the street.

Does this mean that the roadways of our nation’s capital city are now a public forum accessible to anyone who files the proper forms?

So far, doesn’t look like it. 

So Judicial Watch (JW) is suing for the right to paint its own motto, “Because No One is Above the Law,” on a DC street. JW went to court because its applications to perform a similar paint job have fallen on deaf ears.

It contends that its First Amendment right of freedom of speech is being violated.

“We have been patient,” Judicial Watch says. “We also have been flexible. We have stated our willingness to paint our motto at a different location if street closure is necessary and the city is unwilling to close our chosen location. All we ask is that we be afforded the same opportunity to paint our message on a DC street that has been afforded the painters on 16th Street.”

I can’t wait until all this gets cleared up. I suppose it’ll be one or two paint jobs per applicant. 

“ThisisCommonSense​.org” has a nice ring to it, eh? 

Something about “unalienable rights [to] Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” would also be a great message, assuming it’s still legal to quote the Founders whose legacy we celebrated over the weekend.

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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general freedom ideological culture media and media people Snowden

The Whistleblower Who Shall Not Be Named

Rand Paul

“YouTube — Google, one of the largest, most powerful companies on the planet — has just censored political discourse from a U.S. senator on the Senate floor,” reports independent, online journalist Tim Pool. 

The case refers to the alleged “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella, around whom hangs a sort of hush-​hush infamy regarding the Ukraine phone call that became the centerpiece of the Democrat’s impeachment of Donald Trump. YouTube, under a self-​imposed/​tribe-​imposed gag order not to mention the man’s name, takes down all videos that dare breach this rule. YouTube just took down a C‑Span video featuring Senator Rand Paul discussing Mr. Ciaramella on the Senate floor — in which he defended whistleblower protections, but notes that they do not enforce anonymity.*

“Think about how dangerous that will be.”

“It is a chilling and disturbing day in America when giant web companies such as YouTube decide to censure [sic] speech,” the senator was quoted in The Washington Examiner after YouTube removed the clip. “Now, even protected speech, such as that of a senator on the Senate floor, can be blocked from getting to the American people.”

Rand Paul has been demanding full disclosure of possible conspiracy on the part of Ciaramella — working with Representative Adam Schiff, who led the impeachment push — but has not been getting very far. During the Senate impeachment trial, presiding officer Chief Justice Roberts declined to read a question (“as written”) by the senator that had specified the Unnamable Name without identifying him as the “whistleblower.”

Google is free to play censor, of course, but who wants an information age without the information?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The senator also expressed some incredulity about the near-​universal proclamations in support of whistleblower laws, calling Edward Snowden “the greatest whistleblower of all-​time” but noting that half the Senate wanted Snowden put to death and the other half to plunk him “in jail forever. So it depends on what you blow the whistle on whether or not they’re for the whistleblower statute.”

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Rand Paul

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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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