Why A Free People Cannot Exist Without Free Speech

Free speech is perhaps the most important liberty Americans enjoy. People exercise it every day without even thinking about it, and for good reason it is mentioned in the very first amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But free speech is more than just the words in the Bill of Rights. Before there was a law, there was the idea of free speech. The law limits the government to protect the right, but does not define the right.

More than simply a legal issue, free speech is a part of American culture—an important distinction. If free speech meant only the words in the Constitution, if all it guaranteed were that the government could not jail us for our words, it would be a dead letter. Governments across the world guarantee rights in their laws yet violate them daily.

Indeed, free speech was not invented in 1791. The law only codifies what the Founders and their contemporaries already believed: that a free people must be allowed to openly express themselves, and that the cure for bad ideas is good ideas, not censorship.

The First Amendment is essential, but the American people believe in the principle of free speech. That includes more than just being free of government punishment. It includes the idea that no power — be it government, corporation, or mob — should be able to suppress the free exchange of ideas.

We often speak of the “marketplace of ideas,” and just as with markets for goods, the concept came first, and laws to protect it followed. Now, the concept is under threat. Should it fail, and should deplatforming, monopoly pressures, and “heckler’s vetoes” become accepted practices, then no matter what the law says, free speech as a concept will die.

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The End of Basic Education: Biden Issues Public School Critical Race Theory Order

The Biden Department of Education has quietly proposed a new rule prioritizing the use of federal tax dollars for K-12 schools that replace traditional education with “culturally responsive teaching and learning” – more commonly referred to as critical race theory. This is the most significant move by the federal government to redefine the nature of state-funded public schools in U.S. history.

Although the current effort to push public schools receiving federal funding to adopt a detailed indoctrination agenda may feel new and overwhelming for parents, the truth is that the Biden attempt is simply the last phase in a decades-long effort to control local schools and press the progressive agenda on our children. With the power of taxpayer-funded purse strings, the federal government sends a message to public schools that if they want financial aid they must “teach” critical race theory and prioritize its ideologically anti-American, anti-traditional agenda over traditional education.

Under Obama, public schools were thrust into the controversial world of Common Core, a series of federal mandates that included “awareness education” involving a progressive view of race, gender, and so-called “equity” (not to be confused with “equality”).

Under Biden, a far more aggressive level of federal control over our nation’s K-12 classrooms will replace history (and objective truth) with identity politics and a warped view of American civics and institutions. In many cases, teachers are told to hide the racially divisive curriculum from parents. In others, students are encouraged to report the words and views of their parents and caretakers as examples of institutional racism. The initial goal is the indoctrination of young minds, but the long view is to aggregate power behind an alien political worldview that fed the dehumanizing machines of the Soviet Union and communist China.

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Facebook deletes 120,000-member group where people posted stories of alleged adverse vaccine reactions

Facebook has removed a popular, rapidly growing group where members would post stories about alleged negative COVID-19 vaccine side effects.

The group, “COVID19 VACCINE VICTIMS AND FAMILIES,” had over 120,000 followers when it was shut down and had been gaining more than 10,000 followers per week.

The shutdown of the page follows Facebook introducing a ban on a wide range of claims about the coronavirus vaccine in February. The list of prohibited claims includes claims that the vaccines cause blood clots and claims that the coronavirus vaccine change people’s DNA (something that even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Facebook staff during a July 2020 internal meeting).

Not only is Facebook restricting a wide range of vaccine-related claims but it’s also adding labels to all posts about coronavirus vaccines. These labels state that vaccines are safe and direct users to sources that Facebook has deemed “authoritative” such as the World Health Organization (WHO).

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Dept. Covered For and Protected Police Union President as He Raped Kids for Decades

On Tuesday, documents were released detailing the abuse and cover-up of said abuse carried out by Patrick M. Rose Sr., the former president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association and Boston PD detective. Rose has been charged with molesting children, and the documents prove the department knew, and allowed him to continue to serve in their ranks and even engage with children.

The documents are redacted copies of internal affairs investigations into Rose. Boston Mayor Kim Janey’s office said the information was to be released to shed light on the baffling case of how Boston’s top cop was allowed to go on abusing children for decades.

“It is appalling that there was a documented history of alleged child sexual abuse, yet this individual was able to serve out his career as an officer and eventually become the head of the patrolmen’s union for several years,” she said. “Under no circumstance will crimes of this nature be tolerated under my administration, and we will not turn a blind eye to injustices as they arise.”

The evidence surfaced in 1995 when the Boston police department filed a criminal complaint against Rose for sexual assault on a 12-year-old boy. Despite the evidence, Rose managed to get the case against him dropped. An internal affairs investigation would later conclude that Rose indeed committed the crime, however, he kept his badge and remained a cop for the next years — continuing to abuse children over the course of the following two decades.

As MassLive reports, even after Boston Police Department investigators informed then-Commissioner Paul F. Evans in 1996 that there was credible evidence supporting allegations that one of the department’s officers had sexually assaulted a child, that officer was allowed to keep his job, according to the documents.

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