A win for the First Amendment.
On July 4, a federal district court in Louisiana issued a 155-page injunction in the case of Missouri v. Biden, a case brought by the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri.
At issue is Biden administration skirting of the free speech clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution via the pressuring of social media companies like Twitter and Facebook to take down posts with which the administration disagrees.
Under the Constitution’s First Amendment, the government cannot suppress free speech. But because Facebook and Twitter command such a huge proportion of the national discussion forum, the administration has been pressuring these platforms to suppress free speech by proxy.
Vigorous debate has been the hallmark of good government since at least the establishment of the Roman senate. Debate is anathema, however, to totalitarian statists. And the pandemic unleashed the very worst instincts of the statists in our American ruling class.
The pandemic triggered the “lockdowns” of 2020. Weddings and funerals were outlawed by fiat. Churches were told not to hold services. Local officials – many of them unelected – decided which businesses were essential and which were not. Non-essential businesses were ordered to close. Livelihoods were lost.
Kids were kept out of school. Clinical depression, suicides, drug use and domestic violence spiked. Basic liberties were curtailed in ways no one thought possible.
When Dr. Scott Atlas of Stanford University and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Harvard presented credible data to support the ending of lockdowns and mask mandates, rather than be invited to engage in debate aimed at finding the truth, at the behest of unelected bureaucrats in the federal government, these highly qualified experts were silenced on social media. Government did by proxy what it cannot do directly: abridge free speech.
Such is not democracy. It’s totalitarian.
With the COVID template in place, when the 2020 election around and the New York Post’s story of Hunter Biden’s laptop took on the potential to affect the outcome, it was easy for the FBI to lean on Twitter and Facebook to suspend the Post’s accounts.
Polls have since revealed that had that story not been suppressed, the 2020 election would have turned out differently.
And thus, the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri were moved to file suit. And thus, the court’s injunction to stop the Biden administration while the suit is pending.
Attempts by Democrats to suppress free speech reveal a breathtaking level of condescension. What they are in effect saying is that average working, tax-paying Americans, lacking as they are in sophistication, high level connections and degrees from Harvard, Yale or Princeton, cannot be trusted to choose who will be president or how best to handle crisis. Such matters can only be trusted in the hands of an inner circle of mostly coastal, mostly Ivy League and mostly white, liberal elites. Any attempt to question or circumvent this presumed authority must be silenced by any means available, the legal niceties be damned.
It’s all a clear and present signal that our republic is in very serious trouble.
You are right on all accounts. Thanks
I do not believe that the 2020 election would have turned out differently had hunter’s laptop been exposed. You can bet your last cent that no matter how bad things looked for Biden he would have been installed anyway. That is what was wanted and no matter what, he would be installed…and he was. We all know by reason that he did not win. I said it many times before and will say it again that the left should be held accountable for taking biden out when necessary to “campaign” or give a speech. We have seen in real time what dementia is and anyone who has dealt with a person with dementia knows that things do not get better, only worse. We have seen it first hand and biden’s handlers know exactly what I am talking about! The left should be held accountable for treating biden like a commodity. The left didn’t care that biden has clearly shown he is not all there and that it has only gotten worse with time. The only thing the left was concerned with was getting President Trump out of office no matter what so their agenda could go as planned and they didn’t care who they used to do it. In biden’s condition, he probably isn’t aware enough to see he is only a laughing stock…falling upstairs, stopping his bike and falling over, shaking hands with nonexistent people, scaring little kids by sniffing their hair, falling on stage…shall I go on? Is this how YOU would want your
grandfather, uncle, father treated. I don’t find it amusing…it is pitiful! AND they want to put him out there AGAIN? They should be CHARGED with ELDER ABUSE! AND I take offense to their condescension toward people they don’t agree with!
Linda, your observations are on target, but I would like to add a further thought with regard to why Biden will run for a second term assuming the choices is left to him and his family. He understands that with reelection, and especially if the Democrats can regain both houses, the Biden crime family will remain insulated to the greatest degree possible from his own high crimes and misdemeanors, and the whole family from their pay to play shakedown conspiracies with the Chinese government, among others.
You have been right on the mark with your comments lately, Paul. I couldn’t agree more. I believe 2024 may be the last free election this country will have if the Republican can’t figure out how to stop the coup.
Darrell, 2024 may indeed be our last free election, but I’m concerned that even it may not be free and honest. Virtually all the people I know believe the last presidential election was stolen. That, too, is my belief. The establishment, both left and right, fell all over themselves immediately following the election, declaring Biden the winner, a conclusion that came so swiftly in time that it was impossible for anyone to actually know just how honest election had been.
The left didn’t care if the election had been stolen. Stolen or not, their man had won. It should come as no surprise, that people who advocate for no ID voting are not the kind of people who are much concerned about a fair election process.
For their part, the establishment Republicans, smelling a stolen election, held their noses and ignored the crime, preferring instead to accept a stolen election in exchange for being rid of Donald Trump, a man they didn’t own and could not control and thus a man who had to go.
There will be a single factor that will reveal whether the 2024 election is a coup or not. If the Republican candidate is leading by hundreds of thousands of votes in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Georgia at the so called “close” of vote counting in the wee hours of election day; you go to sleep, wake up and magically the Democrat candidate is ahead and wins. Can you say, Vote Navigators, Ballot Harvesting, and outright cheating?
While the progressive left pays lip service to the First Amendment, their idea of free speech is a thing terribly twisted. Burning the American flag, dancing naked in the streets, burning and looting, showing pornography to children, these are all forms of free speech imagined by the left as protected by the First Amendment.
But views they don’t like are characterized as hate speech, misinformation, or otherwise tagged as not deserving First Amendment protection.
The progressive left’s stance on free speech and the First Amendment is just one of many things that reveal them for who and what they are.
The red blood running in the veins of progressives is not the blood of patriots. It is the red of communism.
You forgot racist, Buddy. Views they don’t like are racist.
Thanks, Paul, for pointing out that BIG one. These days, everything is racist, even the English language and math to cite just a couple of absurd examples. But when everything is deemed racist–literally everything–the term become so universal that it surrenders all meaning.