Tag: free speech

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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Canada’s Heritage Minister says internet censorship bill is imminent

Canada’s Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault, a Liberal Party member, said a new internet censorship bill will be tabled within two weeks. To Liberals, the bill will protect Canadians from online abuse – but to those concerned about freedom and civil liberties, it is a law that will have a chilling effect on free speech.

We previously reported details about its inception here.

“My job is to ensure the safety and security of the Canadian population. That’s what I am here for,” said Guilbeault.

He reiterated his previous remarks that the bill would help limit hurtful content online, beyond the current hate speech laws outlined in the Criminal Code. However, he did not provide examples of the hurtful content to be outlawed in the new bill, Blacklock’s Reporter stated.

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Democrats Want Feds To Block Miami Latinos From Hearing Conservative Radio

After Republicans increased their share of the Hispanic vote in 2020, Congressional Democrats are clamoring to use the force of government to prevent Latinos from hearing conservative ideas.

Multiple members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC), including Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), the chair of its political arm, want the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to block the sale of a Miami Spanish-language radio station to a company they believe will move its programming from a left-wing to a right-wing slant.

America CV, a Spanish-language media company, announced that it was buying Caracol 1260 AM this month. Soon after, it said it would change the station’s name to America Radio and replaced Raul Martinez, a liberal talk show host and former government official, Newsweek reported.

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Ironic: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki receives Free Expression Award from pro-First Amendment group

After an unprecedented year of YouTube censorship, the Freedom Forum Institute, a group which states that its mission is “to foster First Amendment freedoms for all,” has given YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki a Free Expression Award.

The homepage for the 2021 Free Expression Awards and Festival states that it recognizes individuals “for their courageous acts of free and fearless expression” and lists YouTube as a “signature sponsor” of the event.

In a video promoting the award, Wojcicki proposed that removing content only becomes censorship when you go “too far”:

“We’re removing content that violates our policies. You can go too far and that can become censorship, and so we have been working really hard to figure out what’s the right way to balance responsibility with freedom of speech.”

During an interview, she then discussed how censorship impacted her personally when her grandfather stayed in Poland after World War Two and was behind the Iron Curtain – a political boundary that divided Europe for more than 45 years and was infamous for the way open contact with those inside the Iron Curtain was heavily censored.

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The Forgotten Legacy of Free Speech on the ‘Left’

Aside from Bill Maher’s audience – who, as the late Christopher Hitchens once noted before giving them the finger, will “clap at apparently anything” – the “liberals” (heavy on the quotes) in Huffington Post’s social media comments sections represent the single dumbest group of people ever assembled.

In a giant corporate circle jerk, The Huffington Post (HuffPo), previously owned by multinational corporation Verizon Media, is now owned by a combination of Verizon Media and “news” conglomerate Buzzfeed which shamelessly markets itself as “independent media.” The HuffPo/Verizon/Buzzfeed Empire donates heavily to DC Swamp politicians on both sides of the aisle.

It is, in short, Ivy League incest — a very Brooklyn, very upper-middle-class-cosmopolitan white, very woke affair. None of these people’s parents farm corn in Nebraska.

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The ‘Dangerous Speech Project’: The Swamp’s Newest Censorship Project

You’ve heard of “hate speech.” Now introducing a new way to demonize free speech: The Dangerous Speech Project.

Birthed from the bloated bowels of US academia is a cottage industry of speech suppression on behalf of the corporate state.

It rolls out new pseudo-woke virtue-signaling campaigns whenever it gets the chance — the bread and butter of overpaid academics. Mortgages don’t pay themselves.

Enter the Dangerous Speech Project, which ostensibly claims to want to make speech “safer.” It is the brainchild of Susan Benesch, faculty associate at Harvard’s “Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society” and an esteemed Ivy League “Scholar of Speech.”

The project defines “dangerous speech” as “any form of expression (speech, text, or images) that can increase the risk that its audience will condone or participate in violence against members of another group.” Yet, Benesch and comrades offer no way to objectively measure that increased risk of violence.

“Dangerous speech” as a social science concept conveniently lacks any way to objectively measure its applicability in any given real-world situation. This leaves the interpreting to the whims of the censor – perfect for Silicon Valley technocrats (more on that later).

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‘F*cking Blasphemy’ — Ricky Gervais Blasts Protests over Teacher Showing Mohammed Cartoon

Comedian Ricky Gervais has joined the chorus of condemnation against the suspension of a British teacher for showing a caricature of the Islamic prophet Mohammed, questioning whether people will be “punished for insulting unicorns” next.

The creator of The Office and famed atheist took to social media on Friday to rail against the Islamic protesters who are calling for the firing of a Batley Grammar School teacher.

“Blasphemy? Fucking Blasphemy? It’s 2021 for fuck’s sake. What next? People being punished for insulting unicorns?” Gervais wrote.

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Utah Passes Law Requiring Porn to Be Blocked on All Cellphones, Tablets in the State

The free thinking argument, that blows away the notion of illegal prostitution, is that of pornography. Pornography, or porn, is nothing more than prostitution that has been state-sanctioned, taxed, filmed, and distributed. However, because it is taxed — politicians have generally left it alone — until now. Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed a bill Tuesday that calls for all smartphones and tablets sold in the Beehive State to have adult content filters.

If one is truly for freedom, outlawing consensual acts between adults should be resisted — even if these acts involve the swapping of bodily fluids. And, although the state claims the right to kidnap and cage people for engaging in these consensual acts, it does not mean they are somehow immoral.

The Free Thought Project has long objected to the prohibition of sex work as it creates crime, sends sex workers into dangerous situations, and outlaws one of the oldest professions in the world. While the prohibition of sex work is bad enough, the governor of Utah passing a law that will filter out legal pornography on all tablets and smartphones sold in the state is outright tyrannical.

If someone wishes to access porn on their device, they must first get permission from their cellphone provider and they will be put on a list of people allowed to view porn.

According to House Bill 72, the so-called filter would “prevent the user of the device from accessing material that is harmful to minors on the device; enable certain users to deactivate the filter for the device or for specific content; and notify the user when content is filtered.”

Cox said the move would send an “important message” about preventing children from accessing explicit content on the Web.

“We really want to empower parents,” Cox said. “If nothing else it sends an important message.”

But blocking pornography on 100 percent of devices in the state does absolutely nothing to “empower parents.” There are already programs and filters available to empower parents to block porn on devices and they are free. All this law does, as the ACLU of Utah put it “infringes upon the general public’s First Amendment rights to freely access the internet.”

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UK: Govt Islamophobia Advisor Says Images of Muhammad Should Be as Unacceptable as the N-Word

The UK Government’s Islamophobia advisor has suggested that showing images of Muhammad should be made as socially unacceptable as saying the n-word.

Batley Grammar School in Yorkshire in the north of England faced protests this week from Muslim parents, after one teacher dared to show images of Muhammad during class. The school, which was about to break up for the Easter holidays, had had to switch to remote-learning as a result of the protests. The headteacher “unequivocally apologised” for the actions of the teacher in question, and suspended him, despite the fact that he had received a number of serious death threats from angry Muslims.

However, rather than criticising the actions of the protestors for attacking the free speech of the teacher, Imam Qari Asim MBE, chair of the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board (MINAB), and the Government’s adviser on Islamophobia, called for a “change in social attitudes” as a result of the protests, and suggested that sharing images of Muhammad should be as socially unacceptable as saying the n-word:

I guess when we talk of a potential curb or limitation on free speech, I think that sets alarm bells ringing, leaving some people [wrongly] thinking that Muslims are asking for restrictions on free speech. But I think what we should try and emphasise is that there’s already a phenomenon in place in that actually there are boundaries to free speech. Like, for instance, people cannot use the ‘n-word’ – and quite rightly so – because this is derogatory and causes deep pain and hurt. I’m not in favour of restriction and curbing or free speech, but I think we already have boundaries based on social norms.

Asim, despite his relations to the government, also is a trustee for the hardcore leftist organisation, Hope not Hate, who regularly engage in attacks on anyone on the right of politics, describing organisations such as Turning Point as being “extreme.”

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