Oh, wait, wait, no, sorry, they just want Other People punished for daring to use their Constitutional Republic protected Free Speech right
Free Speech Is Killing Us
Noxious language online is causing real-world violence. What can we do about it?
There has never been a bright line between word and deed. Yet for years, the founders of Facebook and Twitter and 4chan and Reddit — along with the consumers obsessed with these products, and the investors who stood to profit from them — tried to pretend that the noxious speech prevalent on those platforms wouldn’t metastasize into physical violence. In the early years of this decade, back when people associated social media with Barack Obama or the Arab Spring, Twitter executives referred to their company as “the free-speech wing of the free-speech party.†Sticks and stones and assault rifles could hurt us, but the internet was surely only a force for progress.
No one believes that anymore. Not after the social-media-fueled campaigns of Narendra Modi and Rodrigo Duterte and Donald Trump; not after the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Va.; not after the massacres in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and a Walmart in a majority-Hispanic part of El Paso. The Christchurch gunman, like so many of his ilk, had spent years on social media trying to advance the cause of white power. But these posts, he eventually decided, were not enough; now it was “time to make a real life effort post.†He murdered 52 people.
Having spent the past few years embedding as a reporter with the trolls and bigots and propagandists who are experts at converting fanatical memes into national policy, I no longer have any doubt that the brutality that germinates on the internet can leap into the world of flesh and blood.
The question is where this leaves us. Noxious speech is causing tangible harm. Yet this fact implies a question so uncomfortable that many of us go to great lengths to avoid asking it. Namely, what should we — the government, private companies or individual citizens — be doing about it?
Funny, nothing about Antifa or other hardcore lefties. Or that the Walmart killer held some radical leftist views, as well.
Using “free speech†as a cop-out is just as intellectually dishonest and just as morally bankrupt. For one thing, the First Amendment doesn’t apply to private companies. Even the most creative reader of the Constitution will not find a provision guaranteeing Richard Spencer a Twitter account. But even if you see social media platforms as something more akin to a public utility, not all speech is protected under the First Amendment anyway. Libel, incitement of violence and child pornography are all forms of speech. Yet we censor all of them, and no one calls it the death knell of the Enlightenment.
Except, the way the 1st Amendment is written is explicitly designed to keep the Congress from passing laws that abridge the freedom of speech. That means on the citizens and private entities.
One has to wonder if the NY Times, and writer Andrew Marantz, would be cool if this was about Free Press killing us with their noxious language? The same case could be made. (neither should be limited)
The screed goes on and on and on, and you have to wonder if any editor at the Times sat back and said “you know, this is a Really Bad Idea.” Or do they just want troll material? Unhinged conversation material? Controversial material for the sake of ginning up controversy? As the First Street Journal notes
The author’s bias is apparent in so many ways. The speech he decries is all from the right side of the political spectrum. Not a word was published against the speech of Antifa, which has led to violence from the far left in this country. There was no criticism of speech by those supporting the socialist regime in Nicaragua or advocating the same socialism which led to totalitarianism and as many as 100 million deaths in the old Soviet Union, in Communist China, in Pol Pot’s Cambodia and North Korea. No, he was concerned that a social media campaign helped elect Donald Trump!
Mr Marantz, while exercising his First Amendment rights, clearly does not like the unregulated speech of others:
Read both articles.
More information emerging on Ukraine.
Mr. Hines, the partner of Hunter Bide and ….. You know John Kerry’s billionaire stepson of the Heinz ketchup foundation type richness. He called his dad John Kerry the day after Hunter Biden was appointed to the board of Barisma and said don’t worry dad I’m not part of this or getting involved.
Emails emerge of Joe Biden’s OWN inner circle of advisers cautioning the VP of how bad this looks and the appearance of conflicts of interest. They caution the VP that this will escalate badly if its ever exposed. DID THE VP DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT? Yeah he went to the Ukraine and shook down the PM when his son’s firm came under fire KNOWING if this got out he and his son would have to be doing some explaining.
POO>>>HA>>>HAA>……….really JOE….with the MARXIST MEDIA on your side did you think you would have to explain anything?????
We are in the throws of a (so far) relatively bloodless coup as the communists embedded in the now defunct Democrat Party flex their muscles to unite the Deep State, Fake News Media, Academia, Hollywood and Law to “Fundamentally change” America into the Shining Red Star the Fredo’s have been dreaming of since they murdered their last American president, Kennedy and began the internment of blacks in inner city ghettos and generational welfare, crime, drugs and single parenthood. This is why we’ve endured a non-stop deluge of anti-Trump, anti-white, anti American “News” for three fukin’ years. They have no plan for America. Their only plan is for their own power, wealth and to rule America. Right now out of complete desperation they are pushing the coup toward impeachment with complete disregard for how it can harm the economy, the society and the future of America. Fact is if they can’t control America they’d rather destroy it than let the white, Christian conservatives run it.
That’s what all this big push is for right now. They want to create as much a mess as possible before the election to confuse as many people as they can. They want to keep the conservatives and Trump busy defending their positions so when Ginsberg croaks they get to fill her seat, not Trump. This impeachment crap is all smoke and mirrors because all the Fido’s out there know they can’t beat Trump in the election and they are terrified over losing Ginsberg’s seat. They created a Supreme Court with the intention of creating irrational anti-Constitutional laws and having them supported by an activist court and now are facing the fact that if Real Patriots get the majority all their criminal laws will be overturned.
Trump 2020 Make the Supreme Court Great Again.
The Fascist tRumpBot is repeating fukin’ Rapin’ Don’s lie about there being a “coup”.
Mr. Mueller’s investigation was by the book – legal and Constitutional.
Same for the impeachment inquiry. All legal and Constitutional.
Does The Fascist tRumpBot also believe that the GOP attempted a coup of President Clinton?
And does tRumpBot believe President Nixon was a victim of a coup? If not, why not”
The First Street Journal is a great blog, ain’t it?
The credentialed media have never gotten over losing their ‘gatekeeping’ function, being the arbiters of what gets published, and what does not. The first real crack in their armor was the success of Rush Limbaugh, and his ability to reach millions of people with a message of which the vast majority of the Democrats with bylines disapproved. But, in radio, ratings are everything, and it was the public who listened, and kept increasing his audience size . . . to the great chagrin of the editors of the Times.
Then that internet thingy that Al Gore invented started giving other people the ability to self-publish in a way which allowed them to be read by any. It was Little Green Footballs and Powerline which demolished CBS News’ attempt to throw the 2004 election to John Kerry by using obviously forged documents that was the first big step in destroying the power of the media to hide the truth. Now, to Mr Marantz’s and the editor’s horror, wicked, wicked people like Donald Trump were able to get out information about the odious Hillary Clinton, information which defeat Her Inevitableness, to the great advantage of our country.
Populism refers to a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of “the people” and often juxtapose this group against “the elite”. The editors of The New York Times see themselves as the elite, the patricians who simply should rule over the plebeians, and thus, to them, populism is anathema.
Yet what is populism? Behind it all is the conviction that the voters should decide the direction of the government, which is something absolutely fine with the elites . . . as long as the plebeians vote the way the elite believe they should. Donald Trump was definitely not how the elite believed the plebeians should vote, but he was hardly the only case: Brexit in the UK, Viktor Orban in Hungary and Matteo Salvini in Italy.
Jeff Zucker of CNN, Dean Baquet of the New York Times, and Martin Baron of the Washington Post are all killed in a tragic accident at a gathering of leading news executives.
They find themselves standing together before shining heavenly gates and a pleasant young man at a desk greets them. “Hello, I am the senior assistant to the admissions committee, and I am here to guide you through the process. Here is your life record which will be the basis upon which you will be evaluated. Please look it over carefully.†He hands each of them an enormous bound stack of hundreds of pages.
Baron reacts angrily: “The first pages are nothing but false horrible accusations!â€
Baquet and Zucker also complain that their records also open with terrible falsehoods.
The young man smiles and says, “No problem.†He takes a fresh stack of paper and an ornate feathered quill pen and writes “Retraction†in large letters on the top of each page, copies and edits each offensive item to a retraction page and then carefully adds the pages to the bottom of each man’s record and rebinds each record with an enormous heavenly stapler.
“You can go in and present your life résumés to the committee now.â€
Dean Baquet objects. “But the false horrible stuff is still on the top pages. No one is going to read down to the bottom where you put the retractions.â€
“Exactly,†said the assistant. “Best of luck in there.â€
— Misanthropic Humanitarian —
Lol.
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