https://t.co/k770FhDgoE — Paul Epps (@paulepps) March 24, 2024 What Justice Jackson said to raise eyebrows was “Your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the federal government in significant ways in the most important time periods.” Correct! One clear goal of the First Amendment is to hamstring the federal government from doing what it would like to do: control our speech. I would have expected a Supreme Court justice to have learned this in law school, not in on-the-job training. Justice Jackson went on to say, “The government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country . . . by encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information,” she said. There’s always a euphemism handy for “information the government doesn’t want you to know,” e.g., “misinformation” “disinformation,” “harmful information,” etc. We can’t have freedom of speech! It’s too dangerous! As a thought experiment,… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Freedom of Speech
A Mystery of the Digital Censorship Era
A mystery of the digital censorship era is the ease with which its core ideas have been sold to people who were its fiercest initial opponents. The closer you look at mechanisms now used to isolate, remove, disrupt, and spy on everyone from environmentalists to antiwar activists to anti-mandate or anti-lockdown protesters, the more easily you’ll see a direct line to high-profile civil liberties controversies of two decades ago. The modern Internet surveillance state was born in programs bitterly opposed then by left-leaning intellectuals, of the type who subscribed to The Nation and carried NO BLOOD FOR OIL signs while protesting war in Iraq. — Matt Taibbi Read more →
Missouri v. Biden
Here’s how federal judge Terry Doughty yesterday described the digital censorship controversy at which pundits a half-year now have repeatedly rolled eyes, dismissed, and mocked as a nothingburger: “If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” — Matt Taibbi Read more →
When Empires Start to Collapse
Yeah, I think if you look at history, it’s really interesting when empires start to collapse, when you start to get such a breach between how the elite lives and how the rest of the country lives. There are usually two options: you can either start to placate and appease the vast majority of the country who are living in deprivation — some symbolic gestures of social programs just enough to keep them mollified so they don’t go out into the streets — or you can decide, “You know what, we don’t really care how angry the citizenry gets. What we’re going to do instead is ‘paramilitarize’ the country, we’ll put them under a massive surveillance system. “We’ll keep a really close eye on everything they’re doing, we’ll listen to their communications and we’ll crush, first by demonizing and then, criminalizing and, then, censoring any form of dissent so that… Read more →
We Cannot Remain Silent, Except When We Can
We cannot remain silent about Elon Musk’s reckless decision to suspend numerous journalists’ Twitter accounts. — Center for American Progress, AFT and other progressives The New York Post responds: “Journalism is the cornerstone of free speech,” 14 progressive groups fume. “An attack on journalism” is an “assault on one of our fundamental pillars.” No, progressives can’t “remain silent” when that happens — unless, of course, it’s The Post reporting a story that’s unfavorable to a Democratic nominee for prez, as with the paper’s 2020 scoop on Hunter Biden’s laptop. When Twitter banned The Post for that, you could’ve heard a pin drop from the supposedly high-minded defenders of “journalism” and “free speech.” Read more →
It’s Great to Be an American
Stanford University has released a guide to eliminate “harmful language.” I haven’t read it. It must be pretty extensive as it has 10 “harmful language” sections: ableist, ageism, colonialism, culturally appropriative, gender-based, imprecise language, institutionalized racism, person-first, violent and additional considerations. Among the words the university urges people to avoid is “American.” People are instead urged to use “U.S. Citizen” because “American” typically refers to “people from the United States only, thereby insinuating that the US is the most important country in the Americas.” The Americas, the index notes, comprises 42 countries. Well . . . the United States is the most important country in the Americas. Or if it isn’t, what is? Anyway, this guide reminds me of a couple of things. George Orwell used to say “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” And Salman… Read more →
Thomas Jefferson on the Midterm Results
My fellow Americans – I thought Republicans would fare better than they did in the recent midterm elections. My reasoning was that Joe Biden and his administration have taken so much away from us that Americans would never vote to continue down the same path. Some of my readers may be financially well-to-do. If you fall into that group, I ask that you consider some of what I’m about to say from the perspective of the majority of your countrymen who live near, at or below the median level of income. Biden has taken away the ability to buy a tank of gas at an affordable price. the ability to buy groceries without gasping in shock at the total cost. the ability to retire comfortably. Retirement accounts have been drained due to the performance of the investment markets and inflation rates have gone through the roof. The ability to retire… Read more →
What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist. — Salman Rushdie
Julian Assange and the Farce of US Press Freedoms
The eleven-year persecution of Julian Assange was extended and escalated on Friday morning. The British Home Secretary, Priti Patel, approved the U.S.’s extradition request to send Julian Assange to Virginia to stand trial on eighteen felony charges under the 1917 Espionage Act and other statutes in connection with the 2010 publication by WikiLeaks of thousands of documents showing widespread corruption, deceit, and war crimes by American and British authorities along with their close dictatorial allies in the Middle East. This decision is unsurprising — it has been obvious for years that the U.S. and UK are determined to destroy Assange as punishment for his journalism exposing their crimes — yet it nonetheless further highlights the utter sham of American and British sermons about freedom, democracy and a free press. . . . But putting oneself in Assange’s position, it is easy to see why he is so eager to avoid… Read more →
The Jack Del Rio Dust-Up
Washington Commanders fine defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio $100,000 for his comments about Jan. 6 — usatoday.com Del Rio referred to Jan. 6, 2021, as a “dust-up” rather than the preferred-by-many term “insurrection.” In a statement released by the team, coach Ron Rivera said, among other things: pic.twitter.com/86bJREVDsq — Washington Commanders (@Commanders) June 10, 2022 “This morning I met with coach Del Rio to express how disappointed I am in his comments on Wednesday. His comments do not reflect the organization’s views and are extremely hurtful to our great community here . . .” What a great place to work! You’re not allowed to have a thought and say it out loud without having it pre-approved by “the organization.” I’m also surprised that even the most dysfunctional crybabies find the use of the term “dust-up” hurtful, let alone “extremely hurtful.” Maybe it’s just me . . . I don’t think… Read more →
Who is to Blame for Buffalo?
From Kevin D. Williamson: Before the blood was even dry in Buffalo, Democrats were asking the most important question: “How can we well-heeled white progressives most effectively use the murders of all these black people to our personal and political advantage?” The murderer in Buffalo didn’t kill anybody you’ve ever heard of, and so the first thing to do if you want to exploit the deaths of all these people — and that is what Democrats intend to do — is to connect the crime to some famous name or prominent institution. It doesn’t matter if there isn’t any actual connection: Just assert it, and that’s good enough for the newspapers and the cable-news cretins and the impotent rage-monkeys on Twitter. The usual suspects: social-media platforms, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump, the Republican Party, Fox News, the National Rifle Association, etc. The shooter was actually well known in advance as a… Read more →
Never Retract, Never Apologize
I know you’ve never heard of Ilya Shapiro so first let me tell you that he is on administrative leave from Georgetown University Law Center while the school decides whether to retain him as executive director and senior lecturer for the school’s Center for the Constitution. The rest you can glean from this excerpt from a recent essay by Bari Weiss: I’ve been thinking a lot over the past few days about a tweet by a Georgetown professor. Look at this chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement. All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes. That tweet was written in 2018 by Georgetown professor Carol Christine Fair about Republican senators who supported Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Fair also writes a blog called Tenacious Hellpussy,… Read more →
I’m Actually Old Enough to Remember Freedom of Speech
Poland Proposes $13.5 Million Fines for Tech Giants Engaging in Ideological Censorship — The Epoch Times I’m actually old enough to remember when the USA, not Poland, carried the torch for freedom of speech. We took it for granted I suppose, but Poland has much more recent experience with being told what they are not allowed to think, say or write, and they don’t like it. Na Zdrowie, Polska! Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki wrote the following: I was born and raised among people for whom freedom was the most precious of values. In Poland we are so attached to freedom because we know what it is like when someone tries to limit it. For close to 50 years we lived in a country in which censorship was practiced, in which Big Brother told us how we are meant to live and what we are meant to feel, and what… Read more →
Woke White Boy: Giving Tuesday
I wanted to remind you that today is “Giving Tuesday,” a day set aside every year to interrupt the Christmas shopping blitz so that Americans like you can give to non-profit causes like attacking free enterprise, capitalism, freedom of expression, religious values, and everything that makes America remarkable. Please fight back. — WWB Read more →
If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. — George Orwell, Animal Farm
I Love Freedom More Than Most People and Now I Know Why
This is from a new survey of American adults by the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Also: 37 percent couldn’t name a single right protected by the First Amendment. While 48 percent of those surveyed were able to name freedom of speech, far fewer could identify other rights accorded, including freedom of religion (15 percent), freedom of the press (14 percent), right of peaceful assembly (10 percent), and right to petition the government (3 percent). I’m a freedom-loving guy. I find that my love of freedom exceeds that of most of my countrymen and now I know why . . . because cherishing the rights guaranteed to us by the Constitution presupposes that we know what they are, and most people don’t know what they are. P.S. I learned to remember the First Amendment rights with the GRASP acronym: freedom to petition the Government, freedom of Religion, freedom of Assembly, freedom… Read more →
When You Lose the Mayor of Berkeley, You’ve Lost America
In the aftermath of a right-wing rally Sunday that ended with anarchists chasing attendees from a downtown park, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin urged UC Berkeley on Monday to cancel conservatives’ plans for a Free Speech Week next month to avoid making the city the center of more violent unrest. “I’m very concerned about Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter and some of these other right-wing speakers coming to the Berkeley campus, because it’s just a target for black bloc to come out and commit mayhem on the Berkeley campus and have that potentially spill out on the street,” Arreguin said, referring to militants who have also been called anti-fascists or antifa. — San Francisco Chronicle Read more →
No Political Violence on the Left?
I’m still shaking my head on this one: Even left-wing stalwarts like The Atlantic know that the Post’s “no violence on the left” premise is bogus: Look how peaceful and non-violent everyone is in the Post photo. Contrast that with, for example, these protesters at Berkeley earlier this year: I’m drawn to Berkeley examples because our son went to Berkeley and still lives in the area, because I know some current Berkeley students, and because Berkeley, ironically, used to be synonymous with the Free Speech Movement. The photos above show the protesters who showed up to violently shut down a scheduled talk by Milo Yiannopoulos, but the same thing seems to happen whenever any university schedules a conservative speaker. Here are a couple more left-wing protests, in Chicago and Charlottesville: We could go on and on with this . . . we’ve all seen this before so I don’t know… Read more →
It’s Hard to Tell the Violent, Intolerant Fascists Without a Scorecard
Sometimes it’s hard to remember which side the violent, intolerant fascists are on. 🙂 Mario Savio is spinning in his grave (I hope) . . . Read more →