Tag: free speech

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies

Just Sue Already

Eric Schmitt, Jeff Landry, Missouri, Louisiana

Two state attorneys general, Eric Schmitt and Jeff Landry (of Missouri and Louisiana, respectively), are suing the federal government for colluding with Big Tech to suppress speech in violation of First Amendment rights.

Their recent filing quotes a ruling which argues that it“violates the First Amendment ‘if the government coerces or induces [a private entity] to take action the government itself would not be permitted to do, such as censor expression of a lawful viewpoint.’”

The plaintiffs observe that this has been happening for years, “culminating in . . . open and explicit censorship programs,” and they ask the court to permanently enjoin such unlawful conduct.

Separately, twenty attorneys general (including Schmitt and Landry) have sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about the agency’s new board instituted to counter unapproved speech.

The AGs threaten to “consider judicial action” if Mayorkas doesn’t “disband this Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board immediately.”

According to the letter, the board “will inevitably have a chilling effect on free speech.”

It is, I suppose, conceivable that if a suit were filed the Biden administration would recognize that it can’t win and would dissolve the board immediately. So far, though, the administration has just been barreling ahead with bad policies unless and until legally thwarted.

So why are the AGs even bothering with a letter that must have even less effect than a filing?

Now the letter has been submitted. Fine. Give Mayorkas ten minutes to shut down the board. Has he shut it down? No.

Sue!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights free trade & free markets

Elon Musk Is Serious

Elon Musk, Twitter

Billionaire Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur Elon Musk is showing the world how capitalism reforms wayward companies — like Twitter. 

It is done from within the system.

By stock ownership.

Becoming Twitter’s top stockholder — right after Musk told the Babylon Bee he just might have to buy Twitter to reform it — surely demonstrates serious intent.

But Twitter honchos have stressed that the mere advent of Elon Musk portends no major changes, a hint of things not to come. 

Moreover, a restriction on how many shares board members may purchase meant that had Musk joined Twitter’s board, he’d have been unable to ramp up the pressure for reform by becoming an even bigger stockholder.

So Musk chucked his original plan to join the board and decided, what the heck: If I do need to buy Twitter to fix its anti-​speech policies, I better outright buy it. He has reportedly offered $43 billion.

He says: “I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe.” But he now realizes that the company in its current form will never be that platform. 

“Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”

A week ago we asked, “Will Elon Liberate Tweeting?”

We’re still asking. Maybe the current owners love banning disagreement with themselves too much to give it up. 

Someone should tell them that are worse things to sell out for than open discourse and freedom of speech.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture

Our Uncivil War

speech, 1st Amendment, freedom, censorship

The New York Times admits it: “America Has a Free Speech Problem.” But the March 18 editorial, while trying carefully to distinguish one kind of speech issue from another, fails to acknowledge the full extent of the problem. 

The trouble, you guessed it, is partly a left versus right issue: “Many on the left refuse to acknowledge that cancel culture exists at all, believing that those who complain about it are offering cover for bigots to peddle hate speech,” which strikes me as a fairly accurate account. But the Times cannot help itself — the right must be made to seem worse. “Many on the right,” the editorial goes on, “for all their braying about cancel culture, have embraced an even more extreme version of censoriousness as a bulwark against a rapidly changing society, with laws that would ban books, stifle teachers and discourage open discussion in classrooms.”

Sans persuasive examples — the Times provides none — I reject this claim as a grave misunderstanding of current trends. What has been happening is not the banning of books, but the mere removal of them from public school libraries and/​or curricula. 

“Stifling teachers” is not a thing, really. Taxpayer-​funded teachers have no more right to teach anything they want than taxpayer-​funded police have the right to enforce whatever laws they want.

The multi-​racial backlash against the left, most recently in Virginia, was a movement of parents upset over cultural Marxist indoctrination on racial issues … taking the place of quality education. 

Something else the Times missed: the extent to which cancel culture has worked hand-​in-​hand with social media companies under the influence of partisans in Congress and the Deep State.

That being said, the Times does get something right: “When speech is stifled or when dissenters are shut out of public discourse, a society also loses its ability to resolve conflict, and it faces the risk of political violence.”

Yes, it’s a problem.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism social media

Tom Paine Sues Facebook

Thomas Paine, truth, offense, censorship

The ghost of Thomas Paine is suing Instagram and Facebook.

Mr. Paine, the eloquent champion of the American Revolution who penned such zeitgeist-​capturing volumes as Common Sense, The American Crisis, and The Rights of Man, is going to court to protest the indignity that these social-​media forums recently inflicted upon his spirit by censoring his statement that “He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”

The statement comes from an op-​ed Paine published in the April 24, 1776 issue of the Pennsylvania Journal: “Cato’s partizans may call me furious; I regard it not. There are men too, who, have not virtue enough to be angry, and that crime perhaps is Cato’s. He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”

Mr. Paine seems to be saying that persons of craven mettle often eschew the challenge of being standard-​bearers of truth, especially when controversial matters are involved. Articulating such views forthrightly tends to offend — somebody.

The particular mentalities of censorious Facebook flunkies and algorithms are new to Mr. Paine, of course. But he is ready to fight.

“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered,” he declares when asked to assess his prospects, “yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. . . . [I]t would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

If that be hate speech, Mr. Paine seems to suggest, make the most of it.

This is Common Sense. Happy New Year! I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom judiciary Regulating Protest

No Longer Compelled?

Adam Germain

In October, Pastor Artur Pawlowski, who had been jailed during the pandemic for holding church services in Calgary, Alberta, was ordered as one condition of his probation to always append a statement of official government doctrine to his own public uttering of opinions about pandemic policy.

According to the October 15 ruling by Alberta Justice Adam Germain, when “exercising [their] right of free speech” to speak against lockdowns and vaccines, Artur Pawlowski, his brother Dawid, and Whistle Stop Café owner Chris Scott must also recite a disclaimer.

It reads, in part: “I am obliged to inform you that the majority of medical experts favour social distancing, mask wearing, and avoiding large crowds to reduce the spread of COVID-​19. Most medical experts also support participation in a vaccination program.”

Pastor Pawlowski told Fox News that he would “not obey this court order” to self-​denounce, and he likened the issuing court’s proceedings to the judicial proceedings of the Soviet Union.

“This crooked judge wants to turn me into a CBC reporter or CNN reporter, that every time that I am in public, every time I’m opening my mouth, I am to pray their mantra to the government.”

On November 25, Justice Jo’Anne Strekaf of Alberta’s Court of Appeal lifted this order compelling specific speech, which Justice Germain pretends is compatible with freedom of speech. Whether this latest ruling is permanent depends on what happens at a June 14, 2022 hearing.

Until then, at least, the creepy order has been suspended.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies

The Senatorial Suppressor

Elizabeth Warren, censorship, 1st Amendment, free speech

The brazenness of governmental assaults on freedom of speech continues apace.

In addition to “aggressive IRS scrutiny” of conservative groups, using campaign finance regulations to suppress speech, and FBI raids on homes of perpetrators of journalism, we are seeing government officials openly demand that private firms suppress speech.

In September, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote a letter to Amazon chastising it for promoting books that contradict the government line about matters pandemical.

One target of Warren’s finger-​wagging is The Truth About COVID-​19: Exposing the Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports, and the New Normal by Joseph Mercola and Ronnie Cummins.

I don’t know how cogent it is. I’m willing to let the authors make their case.

Not Senator Warren.

In her public letter, she rebukes Amazon for being “unwilling or unable to modify its business practices to prevent the sale of falsehoods . . . .” That’s a lot of book-​warehouse-​burning implicitly rationalized. How many classics of Western civilization contain falsehoods? Not to mention the I Ching.

Now the authors and publisher of The Truth About COVID-​19 have sued Warren for acting to violate the First Amendment by proxy. Their filing cites a 1963 Supreme Court ruling that politicians violate the First Amendment when telling booksellers that selling certain books may be “unlawful.” Exactly what Warren does in her letter.

As that Court put it, “people do not lightly disregard public officers’ veiled threats.” 

Let’s hope that today’s Supreme Court recognizes the same reality.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights

Combatting Campus Cancel Culture

education, wisdom, cancel culture

We keep hearing how students and professors are being targeted for saying stuff they’re not supposed to say — from the perspective of the hard-​left students, professors, and off-​campus third parties who launch most of the attacks, that is.

Which seem to be happening more and more often.

The numbers confirm it. New research by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) indicates that attacks on professors for impolitic speech have increased since 2015. Most of the attacks — 74 percent — have resulted in sanctions against the accused.

According to FIRE, “calls for sanction” of a professor rose from 24 in 2015 to 113 in 2020.

Three fourths of the tallied incidents, 314 out of 426, have led to punishments like suspension or termination.

The attacks tend to occur on university campuses with “severely speech-​restrictive” policies. Like many Ivy League schools.

One of the researchers, Komi German, says that university administrators and presidents must “explicitly state that the protection of free speech and academic inquiry supersedes protection from words that are perceived as offensive.”

Good idea. Let them do that.

Why aren’t the censorious administrators doing it already, though? 

Probably because they lack allegiance to the value of freedom of speech on campus.

Until these academics all have Damascus-​level conversions, parents and students must do what they can themselves to discourage these censorious policies. This means, abstaining from attending and paying tuition at schools that penalize professors and others for wrongspeech.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Our Non-​Know-​It-​All Censors

Dave Ruben, Mr. Obvious

The censors don’t know everything.

That a censor declares Conclusion X to be the case, i.e. the truth, allegedly a good reason to prevent anyone from claiming the contrary on a forum, doesn’t actually mean that Conclusion X is true.

Consider recent predictions by Dave Rubin and Mr. Obvious that the Biden administration would impose a federal vaccine mandate. Big tech responded by censoring both men.

In July, Twitter shut down Rubin’s Twitter account until he removed a tweet about the desire of some for “a federal vaccine mandate for vaccines which are clearly not working as promised just weeks ago.”

Then Google removed a video from the Mr. Obvious YouTube channel predicting a federal vaccine mandate that would be announced only a week later.

“Maybe they thought that I was simply jumping the gun saying that Biden was going to do these federal mandates,” Mr. Obvious now comments. “Mr. Obvious was in fact right.”

These predictions did not promote criminality or terrorism. 

They were based on savvy political assessments.

Those assessments are now vindicated. 

Such vindication in a particular case is not required to establish the value of open discourse. But that the censors were so manifestly wrong here does dramatize a big whopping problem with censorship.

What now? 

Surely, the policymakers at Twitter, Google, Facebook, et al., can see once again that their censorship is misguided; hanging their heads in shame, they will henceforth ensure that discussion on their forums is open and untrammeled.

Don’t prove me wrong, guys.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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You Kill Me!

Biden, Covid, Facebook, censorship

“Facebook isn’t killing people,” President Joe Biden informed us yesterday. 

At least, “That’s what I meant,” he clarified ever-so-confusingly. 

Meant last Friday, after a reporter mentioned “COVID misinformation” and asked Joe: “What’s your message to social media platforms like Facebook?”

“They’re killing people,” replied the president. “I mean, it really, look — the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they’re killing people.”

CNBC noted that Facebook “reacted defensively” to Biden’s friendly murder accusations, failing to hit LIKE on the administration’s characterization of its pandemic performance. 

“The facts show that Facebook is helping save lives,” a company spokesperson countered. 

“My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally that somehow I’m saying Facebook is killing people,” Mr. Biden chided the social media giant, “that they would do something about the misinformation, the outrageous misinformation about the vaccine.” 

After all, the Biden Administration has certainly rolled up its sleeves, as White House press secretary Jen Psaki put it: “We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.”

Yes, behind the scenes, this administration works with these behemoth social media corporations to help determine what hundreds millions of Americans will be permitted to say and share and discuss — on matters such as medicine, theories of disease origins, etc. 

Didn’t we just ride this pony? Remember the supposedly baseless, debunked, conspiracy-​nut-​fueled Wuhan lab-​leak theory? 

That idea was blocked from us by Facebook (and Google and YouTube) at the behest of Big Government Science … until just weeks ago.

It’s hard to keep up. 

Perhaps we are not supposed to.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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partisanship social media

Another Comedian Breaks Free

Sarah Silverman

Comedian Sarah Silverman, who has famously lent no small part of her cachet to the progressive cause, supporting Senator Bernie Sanders in both of his Democratic presidential runs, is now ditching the Democratic Party.

Her complaint isn’t that the party stiffed her candidate twice, first when the Democratic National Committee stabbed Bernie in the back for Hillary and next when it orchestrated ingenious maneuvers to gain the nomination (and then the presidency) for the tepid (and tepidly supported) Joe Biden.

I have argued before that Democrat insiders’ treatment of Sanders was deeply anti-​democratic. But no, Ms. Silverman directs her ire against “the absolutist-​ness of the party,” as she put it the other day on Instagram. “It’s so … elitist. You know, for something called ‘progressive,’ it allows for zero progress.”* Telling, perhaps, that Ms. Silverman emphasizes “progressive” and not “democratic,” as if it were named “The Progressive Party.”

Silverman specifically called attention not only to progressives’ unwillingness to compromise, but also to the it-​takes-​two-​to-​tango divide: “You know, Republicans might hear an idea that they would totally agree with, but, if it comes from AOC then they hate it.” She admitted that the same thing applied to her.

No wonder, then, that she does not “want to be associated with any party anymore,” complaining about “too much baggage.”

But she’s objecting to her fellow progressives’ anti-​free speech agenda, too, characterizing it as “righteousness porn.”

Silverman, who has a special named Jesus Is Magic and is famous for her rape jokes, has herself felt the sting of cancel culture and would be a natural proponent of principled free speech.

But that is not a progressive cause, it is a very old-​fashioned liberal one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* An f‑bomb has been elided in the quotation from Ms. Silverman.

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