Tag Archives: free speech

So Much for a Free Press

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The editors of The Wall Street Journal call it simply a milestone in the march of identity politics and cancel culture. It’s much worse than that. It marks the beginning of the end of a free press in our nation.

The long-time editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer…was pushed out over a headline, Buildings Matter, Too. … Staff members deemed the headline an offense to Black Lives Matter.

And

At the New York Times, editorial page editor James Bennet resigned Sunday after a staff uproar over an op-ed by a US Senator [and his deputy, James Dao, reassigned]. … A staff revolt deemed the piece fascist, unconstitutional, and too offensive for adults to read and decide for themselves.

There is only one correct viewpoint, and that’s all that’s fit to publish. There are not two sides to every issue; some have only one, and that one is the only one that’s fit to allow into the public square.

Who’s Insulting Whom?

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As most of you are aware, the government men of Hong Kong, on instruction from their masters in the People’s Republic of China government, has imposed on the people of Hong Kong a law criminalizing “disrespect” for the PRC national anthem.

Holden Chow, Vice-Chairman of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, a staunchly pro-PRC member of Hong Kong’s “legislature,” strongly supports this law.

This is simply about protecting the dignity of the national anthem and deterring people from insulting it[.]

Far from it. A national anthem symbolizes its nation. A government that is so terrified of dissent that it outlaws that dissent, that makes speaking against an anthem that symbolizes that fear a crime, isn’t the one being insulted, and such an anthem has no dignity.

Making such dissent criminal is the insult, and this government has gravely insulted both the good people of Hong Kong and the good people of the PRC.

Censorship

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Twitter has made itself an open, enthusiastic censor of political speech.

Twitter applied…fact-checking notices late Tuesday to two tweets from the president about the potential for fraud involving mail-in ballots. With a small label—”Get the facts about mail-in ballots”—and a link to more information, Twitter alerted its users that those claims were unsubstantiated.
The tweets “contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide additional context around mail-in ballots,” a Twitter spokesman said.

Never mind that Twitter’s “fact” checking is done by the likes of CNN and The Washington Post.

Pay no attention to the man behind the Twitter curtain either, Twitter’s Head of Site Integrity, Yoel Roth, whose job entails “election security and misinformation,” is virulently anti-Republican and anti-Trump, and he’s quite crude about it:

Today on Meet The Press, we’re speaking with Joseph Goebbels about the first 100 days…—What I hear whenever Kellyanne [Conway] is on a news show.

And

I’m just saying, we fly over those states that voted for a racist tangerine for a reason.

And

Yes, that person in the pink hat is clearly a bigger threat to your brand of feminism than ACTUAL NAZIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE.

And

How does a personality-free bag of farts like Mitch McConnell actually win elections?

From all of that, it’s clear: if @Jack thinks a tweet is…inaccurate…especially since he’s relying so heavily on CNN and WaPo and a person like Roth for his “checking,” than the tweet likely isn’t that far off.

Those tweeting who get one of those Get the facts labels should wear those labels like the badges of honor they are, and they should put those labels on their cars under their driver’s side window. Accumulate five, and they’re Twitter Aces.

A First Amendment Case

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Oral argument on a 1st Amendment case was heard by the Supreme Court last Wednesday. The case centers on

whether or not a 1991 law that protects people from receiving unwarranted telemarketer calls is a violation of the First Amendment when applied to political organizations.

This strikes me as a no-brainer that never should have gotten out of any District court. The 1st Amendment bars the abridgment of political speech in the public square. It does not take away the right of private citizens to decide for themselves what speech they will hear from within their own, private property.

That private property is entered by telephone as surely as it is by the speaker’s physical presence, and those resident on the property have no more obligation to allow the speaker’s telephonic entry than they do the speaker’s physical entry.

Nor does the 1st Amendment create a right of a political speaker—or any other speaker, or any person in any guise—to use another person’s private property to speak, nor does it create an obligation of the property owner to allow that use.  This applies to land lines terminating in a home or private business, and it applies to a wireless telephone, or a cell phone, or any other communications device wherever its owner might happen to be at the time of the political speech effort.

The Supreme Court should so rule, and it shouldn’t take long or very many pages at all to convey the ruling.

Making the Case

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Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL) decried journalists’ touting America’s Wuhan Virus death rates as being greater than the People’s Republic of China’s.  “Grotesque,” he tweeted about it.  And he’s being generous, I say.

Naturally, journalists’ feelings were hurt by that, and they bellyached loudly.  Michelle Goldberg, for instance:

Journalists are concentrated in cities that are being ravaged by a plague that could have been better contained with a competent president. They’re lonely and scared and reporting while homeschooling their kids. No one feels glee or delight. Some of us feel white hot rage[.]

Taking advantage of the Wuhan Virus situation to attack the President, while carefully ignoring her fellows’ attacks of racism and xenophobia for the steps he did take early on. Sure.

Laura Bassett:

This tweet [Rubio’s “grotesque” tweet] is grotesque. Delete it.

There’s that censorship sewage so favored of journalists who can’t abide others disagreeing with them or their pre-established narrative. That so many other venues also favor this implementation of censorship in no way excuses these guys—who have a grotesque way of acting as our filters, our gateways, to information.

Sam Stein:

Senator, either you have no clue what you’re talking about or you’re being a jerk. I have friends in this industry who have the virus. We have to make exceptionally challenging calls about sending reporters into hot spots or places where they could get it. Do better[.]

Crocodile tears about friends whom he’s now fashioning into weapons for another attack on the President. Some friend. And his “exceptionally challenging calls” on what to cover? It’s his and his editor’s “challenging calls” to wholly ignore areas that aren’t hotspots; to wholly ignore recovery rates; and to choose to focus, ghoulishly, on body counts.

These wonders—every single one of them—make Rubio’s case, pretty dramatically.