Category: Freedom

Free Speech and the Banning of Paul Joseph Watson from Facebook and Instagram

It really shouldn’t matter what your political persuasion is, if you’re an American who appreciates the 1st Amendment right of free speech, you should be outraged by the banning of Paul Joseph Watson (along with a few others).

Social Media companies, Facebook and Instagram, essentially un-personed him yesterday by removing him from their platforms. Ostensibly under the guise of “hate speech”, he was thrown into the category of “dangerous individuals and organizations”, a category that includes people and organizations, presumably, advocating for terrorism and such, and removed. Poof. This is absolutely ridiculous. Paul Joseph Watson is not a “dangerous individual”, even by FB standards, or a terrorist, nor is he an advocate for violence. Paul is “dangerous” because he is an influential Internet figure, with a large following, who effectively argues against certain popular leftist philosophies.

Seemingly the only real issue is that Paul Joseph Watson is associated with Alex Jones and Infowars. The egregious thing about all of this is that you and I can being banned, censored, suspended, or have content removed that doesn’t comport with Facebook’s policy.

From The Atlantic:
“Infowars is subject to the strictest ban. Facebook and Instagram will remove any content containing Infowars videos, radio segments, or articles (unless the post is explicitly condemning the content), and Facebook will also remove any groups set up to share Infowars content and events promoting any of the banned extremist figures, according to a company spokesperson. (Twitter, YouTube, and Apple have also banned Jones and Infowars.)”

Now, I can make a whole other post about the “Facebook is a company and they can do whatever they want.” Yes, that’s true, but the real problem is who gets to decide what is and isn’t acceptable? Facebook, Instagram, et al want to have their cake and eat it too. Advertising their platforms as “open”, yet retaining extensive editorial control over content. You and I will be disciplined if we share anything the company doesn’t like. Sounds rather authoritarian to me and creates a needless adversarial relationship with the user base.

When a company exercises it’s editorial control over it’s “open platform” to the point of deplatforming, down ranking, hiding, shadow banning, so that only what’s acceptable to the company remains, the platform is no longer open. The Social Media companies have now claimed moral authority over content and that seems to make them publishers rather than platforms. When will your content become subject to editorializing? When will your content become “dangerous”? When will you become persona non grata on the platform?

The sad thing is while companies do have the freedom to do what they want (unless it’s baking a cake or taking wedding pictures), the social media platforms should be jealously guarding 1st amendment principles for speech on their platform, much like Gab. If it’s covered by the 1st amendment, they should let it go. Is Alex Jones an outrageous conspiracy theorist? Sure, but who really cares? Let him publish his stuff, keep advertisers off his page that don’t want to be associated with him, and let others publish debunking and counter factual information in refutation. Is Louis Farrakahn an anti-semite? Yes, and most of us have known this for longer than Facebook has even been a company. Let him publish his vile opinions as long as it comports with the 1st amendment. Let other people publish counter speech that denounces him and other’s like him.

The world is full of “dangerous” ideas and ideologies and the only good way to combat them is to develop and maintain a robust platform of free speech where these ideas and ideologies are analyzed, dissected and debated. Social Media companies need to quit playing the role of Thought Police and Feelings Protector, and let adults fight the war of ideas online within the bounds of the 1st amendment without corporate overlord interference.

Big Internet’s War on Free Speech

https://youtu.be/PWoEvslf7Tg

Take a few minutes to watch and understand this is a huge problem and doesn’t bode well for any person, business or organization that expresses a viewpoint that differs from the Corporate enforced Social Orthodox Religion.

“China on Top” Documentary

China on Top
China on Top: How China is Using America’s Playbook to Take Over the World

I ran across this documentary a while back and a had been holding the page open in a browser tab until I could get a chance to watch it. Finally had a bit of time to do so. This brief documentary is a bit of an eye opener. I think we can all recognize that China is major player on the global stage both economically and politically. But I don’t think we, the People and many in government office in the United States, are fully grasping the aspirations and consequences of China’s rising prominence; nor are we in a good place economically, politically or socially to deal effectively with the changing geopolitical landscape of a rising China.

What prompted me to get back to this was this tweet:


Do you notice anything about this map?  Maybe how often the Chinese flag appears across the globe, including the United States. Maybe how often the Chinese flag appears in countries that the United States might want to have the most economic and political influence.

This documentary is a glimpse of a preventable near future, but we need to wake up.  Like, now.

While we’re busy with endless foreign wars wasting blood and money on people groups who don’t know how or want to be free, China is rising. While we bicker and complain about budgets in Congress, we continue our fiscal irresponsibility. While the President talks about creating jobs, he’s too busy using government mandates to businesses to initiate and prop up failing social programs, rather than institute real pro-business, pro-growth, job creating policies, China rises. While our corporations are busy chasing the quarterly growth numbers and looking out for “the best interests of share holders”, China uses our own dollars to slowly buy our businesses, media, farms, lands and real estate. China rises. While our educational institutions continue to brainwash our children about how much America sucks, China rises.

Before you simply dismiss this as some anti-China rant, hear me: this isn’t about China, this is about America. A little nationalism is good. Patriotism is good. “E pluribus unum” is good; holding fast to and practicing the Constitutional ideals that make America unique among nations is good.

Our feckless political, educational and business leaders have sold out our country culturally, socially, and financially, and it’s past time to wake up. It’s almost too late.

What has happened to the “shining city on a hill”?

Watch the full version of Reagan’s Farewell Address if you have the time.

Corruption: Representative Chaffetz Serves the FBI

I haven’t watched all the hearing videos, but I’ve seen portions over the last couple of days. These hearings are some of the most amazing examples of Executive branch obstruction I have ever seen.  If you do not think that the entire current Obama administration is working a full court defense of Hillary Clinton, you are either deaf, blind, insane, an idiot or quite possibly all of the above.  When the FBI is unwilling to lawfully turn over information requested by Congress for the purposes of oversight, we have problems.  When the FBI (or any agency really) selectively chooses the information to turn over to Congress, we have problems. When it appears that you are protecting people being named in documents by redaction and then preventing, or at least forestalling, revelation to Congress, we have problems.  I’m just glad that Rep. Chaffetz and a few other members of Congress are finally getting a backbone and standing up to the Obama administration’s unlawful, unconstitutional and inexcusable actions.  Oh, that they would have used this power starting, oh, let’s see, about 6 years ago.

 

Corruption: Something Stinks in DC

There are things that just ain’t right. One of them is giving the run around to Congress. Here’s just a brief introduction to Executive obstruction with respect to Congressional oversight, starring the FBI’s acting legislative affairs chief, Jason Herring, and Representative Trey Gowdy.


 

The Day the Republic Died

After having celebrated 240 years of Independence and existence as a constitutional republic on the Fourth of July, the republic of the United States of America died today, July 5th, at 11:00 AM Eastern Time. The cause of death was determined to be the abandonment of the Rule of  Law governing the republic of the United States. The death was broadcast live on TV and streamed across the Internet.  Many witnessed the death across the United States and around the world as FBI Director James Comey presented damning evidence of felonious activity by the presumptive Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, that was punctuated, after 16 minutes of castigation, by the revelation that, despite all the evidence, the FBI will not recommend Hillary Clinton be prosecuted by the Department of Justice.

The United States has suffered for some time with abandoning the Rule of Law, but today it became clear that all pretense has been officially abandoned. It is clear that laws have no meaning and that enforcement of laws is comepletely arbitrary. It is now absolutely clear that some people are treated with special deference with respect to those laws, or, in the case of Hillary Clinton today, they do not apply at all. If Hillary Clinton manages to be elected in the fall, We The People will have elected our first felon as the Leader of the Free World. Where once we impeached or prosecuted politicians that have broken the law, we now set about electing them to office. Oh, from what heights we’ve fallen!

Justice is a bedrock principle for any society that desires to be free to pursue liberty. If the Government can not or will not enforce laws, then what confidence does the Common Citizen have in that government? If the political class gets preferential or selective enforcement of those laws, then what confidence does the Common Citizen have in the political class and its government? If justice is no longer blind, then what hope can a Common Citizen have in a court of law? What becomes of the principle of “equality under the law”?

Consider the case of Bryan Nishimura, a Naval reservist that downloaded classified information to his personal devices, and plead guilty and sentenced for mishandling classified information.

How does this compare to what Hillary Clinton did? After all, she “retained” and/or “downloaded” (emailed) classified information to “personal devices” (a privately owned server and miscellaneous electronic devices). Also, like Nishimura, she had no nefarious intent with respect to the classified material.

Mr. Nishimura was fined $7,500, placed on probation for 2 years, had his security credentials revoked, and is barred from ever seeking a security clearance again.  What does Hillary Clinton get for doing the same thing? Basically, a stern tongue lashing from Director Comey calling her “extremely careless”.

Folks, Lady Justice is now officially a whore of the political establishment.

Please listen to Ben Shapiro address point by point specifics of Director Comey’s statement.  It’s worth listening to.

This Week’s Trifecta: God, Guns and Government

You have a bright idea in the early morning at the start of the Thanksgiving weekend, and then go off the grid for rest and relaxation.  Then, Boom! (literally and figuratively). Stuff happens. By the way, if you click on that link, be sure and listen to the full clip.  When I say “stuff happens”, I mean it in the Jeb Bush sense that lots of things happen in life, good and bad, and the government is not always the source of or solution to those things.  Especially when the bad things are simply a consequence of living in a free society with the freedom to choose how we live, act, think and speak.

So we had the Colorado shooting involving an extremely troubled man, and predictably the media and Twitter went into full hysterics around the typical progressive causes of gun control and abortion.  The most bizarre claims being that somehow the highly suppressed and maligned anti-abortion videos released by the Center for Medical Progress were somehow responsible for stirring up “violent rhetoric” that leads to crimes against providers and clinics. Now, I don’t know about you but most of the rhetoric I read about from the right centered around the heinous act of harvesting baby body parts for money and how it was sickening, callous and should be stopped and Planned Parenthood investigated. And really, if you’re not at least a little agitated or angered by the abortion industry harvesting aborted babies’ body parts, you have a serious problem of conscience. Oh, and I guess there was rhetoric about defunding Planned Parenthood, which finally has some congressional action.

Clearly, there is an unstable man who is responsible for his actions, but that would be too easy. Declaring this a mental health issue or simply the actions of free moral agent, a person who makes and is responsible for their own choices doesn’t fit the progressive narrative. You see, when bad things happen the media must maintain the progressive narrative about the goodness of gun control and the blessings of abortion.  How else will the agenda be pushed to the masses?

Then not a few days later, we have the Islamic terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, CA. Gasp! Yes, I called it Islamic Terrorism. Again, the leftist media and Twitterverse went ballistic. Prayer-shaming, as pointed out by Emma Green in The Atlantic, is now apparently the new thing thanks to many on the Left. There were immediate calls for more government intervention with gun control legislation, it’s a Pavlovian response really.  The cry for more legislation, more controls, more rules is basically the secular left’s prayer to the higher power of Government as Mollie Hemingway writes about at The Federalist.

But for all the appeals and all the proposals on the table, none, nada, zip, zilch, zero, absolutely not a one of the laws or regulations would have stopped anything. Not “Common-sense gun safety laws“. It is a phrase you hear frequently, but is left vaguely undefined; so until there is a definition and a proposal the phrase won’t stop a thing (it’s sort of like hashtags). Not (stricter) background checks, since the female San Bernardino shooter apparently passed the DHS Counter Terrorism Background Check as part of her visa process. Which, by the way, is one of the screenings that will be used for those refugees the President wants to invite to our country. Not the addition of the unconstitutional and civil rights violating “no-fly list”, as both the man and woman were free to fly to and/or from Saudi Arabia without issue.

But getting back to the beginning. Freedom. We live in a free country.  We have the Constitution and the 1st and 2nd Amendments enshrine certain rights. And I’d rather live more free, than less free. In the public arena, I or others might disagree with you, hurt your feelings or challenge your thinking with the words we write or speak, that is the price of freedom and the exercise of it.

Sadly and very unfortunately, and I’m really not trying to be callous or insensitive, people will die because we have the freedom to own firearms in this country. People will pay the ultimate price for this particular right. The issue is not the 2nd Amendment or gun ownership or even the types of guns people own. The ultimate problem is the condition of a person’s heart, which is not easily fixed.

Free people are free to make choices, for good or ill. People choose to act on anger, malice, jealousy, bitterness, ideology or with outright evil intent in heinous, cruel and sometimes inexplicable ways including murdering other human beings. It has happened since the beginning of time, since before guns were invented, since Cain murdered his brother Abel. Even if there were no weapons left on the planet, people would still use their hands to murder each other. “Gun control” is simply a modern band-aid covering an ancient issue, and to ignore the deceitful wickedness that lies in a person’s heart, is to ignore the real issue entirely.

TL;DR

People murder other people in senseless violent acts. Left calls for more gun control, supports abortion. Right stands ground on 2nd Amendment, prays. Left name calls and smears the Right. Left thinks government is the answer to all of life’s problems. Right thinks that God should top that list along with the Constitution. In the end do you want to be more or less free? The heart of man is deceitfully wicked, and that is the real problem.