It’s insane. If anyone should be concerned about the erosion of free speech, it should be the media. And what happens when the bad guys that are driving these calls for banning and censorship get in power and can exploit the very censorship laws that were meant to stop them?
It’s of a piece with the war-footing that all of our politics is on these days. If you gain power, it doesn’t matter what advantage the opposition might take of your changes if they take power, because the most vital thing is to make sure that they can never take power again.
There is a transient nature to what Democrats claim as rights and responsibilities. Should Democrats lose power, they will just go back to saying journalists as a broad category are a sacred class that can’t be questioned or impeded in any way. The narrative will change in an instant, just like Democrats views on Russia, and recent history will be forgottened.
Right now, they want sacred status for a narrow category of journalists. Asking questions about things other than Biden’s favorite ice cream or how awful the Republicans are is forbidden. Fact checkers don’t examine what Biden says but rather how his critics are wrong in claiming he lied about banning fracking when really, Biden was just misstating his policies to cause confusion. Anyone who strays will be met by a joint punishment from the White House and the White House Correspondent’s Association.
All you have to do is squelch the speech of one of those
alleged “journalists” and you’ll be able to watch the outrage tsumani.
Journolistists want a closed shop where they get to decide who gets a union card and where they can force anyone out of work if that person doesn’t have a union membership. And the easiest way to do that is to get the gov’t to legislate it all for you.
“In recent years the United States has seen more severe acts of political violence and deadlier riots than the events at the Capitol—but American guarantees of free speech apparently should not survive the shocking image of Nancy Pelosi’s office being ransacked.”
True but no one knows. The media wont report on it in any detail or at any length. A single article with weasel words to downplay what took place and who organized it is soon drowned out in the daily tsunami of Democrat party propaganda.
There are many intelligent people who consider themselves well informed because they read the news all day on Twitter or their news feeds on Apple and Google who don’t even know Democrats were executing people, burning down the businesses of people who spoke out against Democrats, decapitating animals and leaving the remains at people’s houses and government buildings, sending mobs to attack journalists in their houses, sending mobs to attack civilians in their houses, sending mobs to attack politicians in their houses, shooting at people who stopped their cars because the mob made them, regularly using explosives to attack law enforcement, or that Democrats were pulling civilians from their cars and beating them.
The people doing this were the sons and daughters of elected Democrats, the staff of elected Democrats, elected Democrats themselves, teachers, tech workers, and a host of drug addled communists. They did it with the full support of the Democrat party power structure with monetary, organizational, medical, and legal help. Legal not just in providing lawyers but also by elected Democrats wielding police agencies and District Attorneys.
How do you reach the intelligent but usefully idiotic people out there who wont read a Taibbi or a Greenwald much less watch some rando on YouTube?
I found this related article also on Tablet and a very interesting read.
His prescriptions seem spot on to me. But what I found esp. chilling was the compelling parallel drawn between today’s tech economy and the fictional yet very real four family county of 1950. Something right out of Playhouse 90.
The late great Mortimer Adler wrote in the ending of his great tomb “We Hold These Truths…” that the work of the founding fathers in the late 18th century remained unfinished. And the lack of craft of statesmanship became painfully apparent in both the late 19th century and now post-mortem early 21st. The theme that Adler left an as exercise for the reader was the idea that the first 10 amendments and their key critical common law ideas behind them are insufficient to securing the ideals of inalienable rights as expressed in the Preamble, the reason-d’être of the US Constitution. That without a set of corresponding legal principles that expressly put forward a framework of economic rights, the political rights established in the Bill Of Rights are unachievable. The caution of Adler applies today. That in order to secure these economic rights requires a degree of critical thinking that rises beyond one’s own self-interest for the greater common good. A method of thought that has woefully fallen out of fashion today to our mutual detriment. We had the beginnings of it in the anti-trust laws of the early 20th Century. But as a guiding framework it is insufficient and woefully out of date. We of course could apply some of the remedies Lind mentioned and that will patch the problem of the e-Titans of the early 21sr Century just as the Sherman Anti-Trust Act solved the problem of Standard Oil in the early 20th Century. But without a framework the abuse will arise yet again in some new as yet unknown form.
Cut and paste from a previous post to this one which is more germane…
We got an example of this in this exchange between George Stephanopolus and Rand Paul. George seems hung up on the fact that no courts ruled in favor of fraud, hence no fraud occurred. Where fraud by his definition means anything that could have changed the results of the election. Rand points out that at least some is of the courts did not rule based on the evidence presented but dismissed the cases on procedural matters. Rand hammers away at the fact that in Blue States the Secretaries of State changed the election laws w/o prior approval of their state legislatures, a clear violation of the rules as established in the Constitution and hence illegal. That this issue hasn’t been brought to trial and adjudicated in the courts does not change the fact of what happened. This is the point Rand is trying to make, not whether or not it would have changed the results of this election, but that it is far more important to restore confidence in our election system to the 75 million Americans that have lost confidence because of stories of these shenanigans. And these things are provable facts, not propaganda. Geo. S I guess thinks this is all a matter of “de-programming”. Rand is also right to point out that the objective “journalist” would present two people to argue the case and not inject themselves into the story by taking sides and claiming a monopoly on the facts. You may not have thought much of David Brinkley, but I believe this exchange had him rolling in his grave….
It’s insane. If anyone should be concerned about the erosion of free speech, it should be the media. And what happens when the bad guys that are driving these calls for banning and censorship get in power and can exploit the very censorship laws that were meant to stop them?
It’s of a piece with the war-footing that all of our politics is on these days. If you gain power, it doesn’t matter what advantage the opposition might take of your changes if they take power, because the most vital thing is to make sure that they can never take power again.
There is a transient nature to what Democrats claim as rights and responsibilities. Should Democrats lose power, they will just go back to saying journalists as a broad category are a sacred class that can’t be questioned or impeded in any way. The narrative will change in an instant, just like Democrats views on Russia, and recent history will be forgottened.
Right now, they want sacred status for a narrow category of journalists. Asking questions about things other than Biden’s favorite ice cream or how awful the Republicans are is forbidden. Fact checkers don’t examine what Biden says but rather how his critics are wrong in claiming he lied about banning fracking when really, Biden was just misstating his policies to cause confusion. Anyone who strays will be met by a joint punishment from the White House and the White House Correspondent’s Association.
All you have to do is squelch the speech of one of those
alleged “journalists” and you’ll be able to watch the outrage tsumani.
Journolistists want a closed shop where they get to decide who gets a union card and where they can force anyone out of work if that person doesn’t have a union membership. And the easiest way to do that is to get the gov’t to legislate it all for you.
“In recent years the United States has seen more severe acts of political violence and deadlier riots than the events at the Capitol—but American guarantees of free speech apparently should not survive the shocking image of Nancy Pelosi’s office being ransacked.”
True but no one knows. The media wont report on it in any detail or at any length. A single article with weasel words to downplay what took place and who organized it is soon drowned out in the daily tsunami of Democrat party propaganda.
There are many intelligent people who consider themselves well informed because they read the news all day on Twitter or their news feeds on Apple and Google who don’t even know Democrats were executing people, burning down the businesses of people who spoke out against Democrats, decapitating animals and leaving the remains at people’s houses and government buildings, sending mobs to attack journalists in their houses, sending mobs to attack civilians in their houses, sending mobs to attack politicians in their houses, shooting at people who stopped their cars because the mob made them, regularly using explosives to attack law enforcement, or that Democrats were pulling civilians from their cars and beating them.
The people doing this were the sons and daughters of elected Democrats, the staff of elected Democrats, elected Democrats themselves, teachers, tech workers, and a host of drug addled communists. They did it with the full support of the Democrat party power structure with monetary, organizational, medical, and legal help. Legal not just in providing lawyers but also by elected Democrats wielding police agencies and District Attorneys.
How do you reach the intelligent but usefully idiotic people out there who wont read a Taibbi or a Greenwald much less watch some rando on YouTube?
I found this related article also on Tablet and a very interesting read.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/americas-new-corporate-tyranny
His prescriptions seem spot on to me. But what I found esp. chilling was the compelling parallel drawn between today’s tech economy and the fictional yet very real four family county of 1950. Something right out of Playhouse 90.
The late great Mortimer Adler wrote in the ending of his great tomb “We Hold These Truths…” that the work of the founding fathers in the late 18th century remained unfinished. And the lack of craft of statesmanship became painfully apparent in both the late 19th century and now post-mortem early 21st. The theme that Adler left an as exercise for the reader was the idea that the first 10 amendments and their key critical common law ideas behind them are insufficient to securing the ideals of inalienable rights as expressed in the Preamble, the reason-d’être of the US Constitution. That without a set of corresponding legal principles that expressly put forward a framework of economic rights, the political rights established in the Bill Of Rights are unachievable. The caution of Adler applies today. That in order to secure these economic rights requires a degree of critical thinking that rises beyond one’s own self-interest for the greater common good. A method of thought that has woefully fallen out of fashion today to our mutual detriment. We had the beginnings of it in the anti-trust laws of the early 20th Century. But as a guiding framework it is insufficient and woefully out of date. We of course could apply some of the remedies Lind mentioned and that will patch the problem of the e-Titans of the early 21sr Century just as the Sherman Anti-Trust Act solved the problem of Standard Oil in the early 20th Century. But without a framework the abuse will arise yet again in some new as yet unknown form.
Cut and paste from a previous post to this one which is more germane…
We got an example of this in this exchange between George Stephanopolus and Rand Paul. George seems hung up on the fact that no courts ruled in favor of fraud, hence no fraud occurred. Where fraud by his definition means anything that could have changed the results of the election. Rand points out that at least some is of the courts did not rule based on the evidence presented but dismissed the cases on procedural matters. Rand hammers away at the fact that in Blue States the Secretaries of State changed the election laws w/o prior approval of their state legislatures, a clear violation of the rules as established in the Constitution and hence illegal. That this issue hasn’t been brought to trial and adjudicated in the courts does not change the fact of what happened. This is the point Rand is trying to make, not whether or not it would have changed the results of this election, but that it is far more important to restore confidence in our election system to the 75 million Americans that have lost confidence because of stories of these shenanigans. And these things are provable facts, not propaganda. Geo. S I guess thinks this is all a matter of “de-programming”. Rand is also right to point out that the objective “journalist” would present two people to argue the case and not inject themselves into the story by taking sides and claiming a monopoly on the facts. You may not have thought much of David Brinkley, but I believe this exchange had him rolling in his grave….
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/01/24/stephanopoulos_vs_paul_on_2020_you_immediately_assume_were_all_liars_there_are_two_sides_to_every_story.html#!