It has become depressingly common to read unrelenting attacks on free speech in the Washington Post and other newspapers.
The anti-free speech movement has been embraced by Democratic leaders, including President Joe Biden, as well as academics who now claim “China was right” on censorship. However, a Time magazine column by national correspondent Charlotte Alter was still shocking in how mainstream anti-free speech views have become.
What is most striking about the column is Alter’s apparent confusion over why anyone like Musk would even care about the free speech of others. She suggests that Musk is actually immoral for spending money to restore free speech rather than on social welfare or justice issues.
She suggests that supporting free speech is some disgusting extravagance like buying Fabergé eggs.
“Why does Musk care so much about this? Why would a guy who has pushed the boundaries of electric-vehicle manufacturing and plumbed the limits of commercial space flight care about who can say what on Twitter?”
The answer, not surprisingly, is about race and privilege. Alter cites Jason Goldman, who was an early figure shaping the Twitter censorship policies before he joined the Obama administration. Goldman declared, “free speech has become an obsession of the mostly white, male members of the tech elite” who “would rather go back to the way things were.”
Alter also cites professor of communication at Stanford University Fred Turner who explains that free speech is just “a dominant obsession with the most elite… [and] seems to be much more of an obsession among men.”
In arguing in favor of censorship, Alter engages in a heavy use of historical revisionism, claiming that
“‘free speech’ in the 21st century means something very different than it did in the 18th, when the Founders enshrined it in the Constitution. The right to say what you want without being imprisoned is not the same as the right to broadcast disinformation to millions of people on a corporate platform. This nuance seems to be lost on some techno-wizards who see any restriction as the enemy of innovation.”
It is also lost on me.
What they DO NOT want anyone to think about is this —
“Free speech” is ONLY THE BEGINNING for these “we know what’s best for you, you lowly uneducated serfs” wanna-be Hitler’s.
Somehow, somewhere in their pitiful lives, they began to believe that only THEY knew the “truth” and that you needed PROTECTION from any other ideas.
They were ALWAYS right and any deviation from THEIR truth was nothing but lies and “disinformation”.
Next on their list of “bad things” will be freedom of religion (dictators don’t like anyone who thinks there is a higher power than themselves), then freedom of assembly (Putin’s secret police now investigate their enemies who dare (and it’s quite the dare) to congregate in groups of three or more ….are they conspiring??).
In fact, ANY freedom is a threat to them. To democrats, the ENTIRE Constitution and Bill of Rights are “disinformation”
There is but ONE SOLUTION here.
It’s not voting. It’s not mean letters to the editor.
It’s revolution. And it is inevitable.
More and more Americans are starting to see the TRUTH in THAT.
You are in the WHITE MAN’s country , if you don’t like it LEAVE !!!!
We fought & Died in ALL the Wars to Save OUR country while Freeloaders stayed Home !! FACT
We fought for FREEDOM speach & the rest !!! You cry babies of today need to go to WAR !!!!
Go tell it on the Mountian or in the Town Square. Why people think Social Media platforms should be Free Speach Platforms is beyond comprehension. They are revenue-based businesses, not the free air that you breathe that’s likely to be commodified soon too. Nothing about it is Censorship. Bakers don’t have to bake GAY cakes and Twitter does not have to tolerate idiots. Go back to CB radios. If you follow both Conservative and Liberal ” Alternative News ” sources and Facebook and Twitter and read between the lines we all knew Jan. 6 was coming and what would happen. It wasn’t hard to decipher as are similar events on the Horizon. You have not seen anything yet and you won’t on Social Media.