If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
GEORGE ORWELL
Censorship has always been one of the primary tools of tyranny. Now, as a Catholic, I do not believe in an absolute freedom of speech or freedom of the press. Various forms of pornography should not be permitted especially those forms involving minors and revenge porn. In addition, libel, slander, and calumny should not be permitted either. I am also not a fan of doxxing which is the publication or revelation of private information of individuals to make them the target of violence. That particular practice is what made me do away with the combox on the C-Blog many years ago.
The First Amendment gives people a virtually unfettered right to free expression in the United States. It is so ingrained in the American psyche that people believe that it is a Divine Right. But this is not precise. Every person has the right from God by virtue of natural law to speak and express that which is true. We are forbidden to misrepresent the truth. We know this from the eighth commandment which forbids the bearing of false witness.
Liberty is the freedom to express the truth. Tyranny is when the freedom to express the truth is forbidden or punished. This relationship to the truth must always be emphasized. This is why we do not permit things like libel, slander, and perjury. Anyone who pushes the libertarian viewpoint on freedom of expression is in error. This would be virtually all libertarians and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union. But this leads us to Pilate's pointed question to Jesus. What is truth?
We do not always know the truth on a matter. For instance, did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone or were there others involved? Did people within our government have prior knowledge of what was going to happen on 9/11? Did Donald Trump collude with the Russians to win the 2016 presidential election? All of these things belong to the realm of conspiracy theories. These things occupy a middle ground between truth and lies. Because they are theories, they are subject to investigation to either find support for them or facts that dismiss them.
Should conspiracy theories be protected speech? I think they should. This doesn't mean that people should publish false information. It does mean that people should be free to ask questions. What really happened? Who was involved? Is this true?
Tinfoil hat conspiracy theories are those that are so ludicrous that sane people basically ignore them. This would be things like the flat earth or time travelers or the Loch Ness Monster. We don't put disclaimers before a Stars Wars movie telling people that the movie is fiction. Likewise, tinfoil hat conspiracy theories need no disclaimer either. This is why you can listen to some really outlandish stuff each night on Coast to Coast AM which causes less controversy than what you will hear during the day on the same stations from the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity, and Levin. It is enough for people to dismiss these things by labeling them as conspiracy theories.
I enjoy these fringe programs in much the same way that people enjoy watching The Twilight Zone or Star Trek. I take these things with a grain of salt in much the same way that I know a Hollywood biopic will take liberties with the source material for the sake of entertainment or that pious legends about various saints in the Catholic Church may not have happened. For something to be a lie, it must be something the liar knows to be absolutely false but is presented to others as absolutely true. For nutty people, they may not know a thing is false even if we do. They may truly believe the earth is flat, and I am tolerant of these delusions.
Heresy is another matter. Because of the Protestant Revolution, Western societies have become tolerant of heresies. But there is no Divine Right to heresy in much the same way that people are not allowed to advertise rat poison as a health tonic. Rat poison kills the body. Heresy kills the soul. When Thomas Aquinas called for the death penalty for heretics, he was correct in this. We consider it tyranny today because we no longer believe in God or the soul or the authority of the Roman Catholic Church in matters of faith and morals. Basically, Aquinas believed that you do not have the right to lead souls to Hell.
The Founders being influenced by thinkers of the Enlightenment were heretics. Thomas Jefferson was a heretic. But so was Pontius Pilate and Nero. Yet, these men were ordained by God to rule over us. And they were not wrong on everything. They were right on some things and wrong on others. This is why Catholic monks could preserve pagan literature and philosophy like Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, and Homer. So, when Jefferson talked about being endowed by the Creator with inalienable rights, He was correct. When he denied the Trinity or the miracles and incarnation of Christ, he was wrong.
We know instinctively and by natural law that none of us has an unfettered right to free expression. The Supreme Court already acknowledges this. This is the famous screaming fire in a crowded theater argument. Likewise, divulging true information for the sake of harm like telling the location of a protected witness to the Mafia is also not permitted. We can conceal the truth when it is necessary, prudent, and moral to do so. We just can't misrepresent the truth by telling lies.
It is vitally important to have this proper concept of liberty in mind. This is a conservative view of liberty based in Christianity and natural law and not the libertarian view of liberty based upon abstract Enlightenment principles. Abstraction leads to error. A classic example of this error would be the case of Julian Assange and Wikileaks.
Julian Assange clearly subscribes to the abstract version of liberty instead of the Christian notion. The man has indicated no religious beliefs at all, and I suspect that he is an atheist. His organization, Wikileaks, publishes information that is essentially unredacted. Some of this information has exposed crimes, atrocities, and human rights abuses. This is laudable. Unfortunately, Wikileaks has also exposed the identities of people that has put them in danger. This is criminal. This publishing of raw information without regard to the consequences is what led Edward Snowden to eschew Wikileaks and to take his information to Glenn Greenwald, a reputable journalist who does not publish his facts in the same irresponsible manner as Wikileaks.
Is Julian Assange a hero? Unfortunately, I have to say that he is not. He is clearly a man devoted to his principles, but those principles are not Christian. If you expose the killing of innocents, that is a good thing. If you enable the killing of innocents, this is an evil thing. It is essentially the same thing as giving the name and address of a protected informant to organized crime knowing that he will probably end up dead. Because Assange believes in his abstract principles, publishing the truth is always right regardless of the consequences.
Opinions are another matter. It would be a lie to say someone is a criminal if I know they are not a criminal. But I can say honestly that I think someone is a criminal in much the same way that I can say what I think about a particular food or a bad movie or whatever. The expression of an opinion is not the same as a lie. This is why we treat the front page of a newspaper differently than the editorial page. People are not entitled to their own facts, but they are entitled to their own opinions. It is in the realm of opinion that issues of censorship really matter.
An opinion is not so much an expression of a truth as it is an evaluation of that truth. What weight and importance should we give to the facts? For instance, a politician may be an open homosexual in a declared relationship with a fellow sodomite. I think this is disgusting where other people think this is awesome. They express their opinions. I express mine. You make your own decisions on these things. Should these opinions be allowed? Absolutely.
Tyranny is opposed to liberty. Tyranny uses two primary tools to advance its cause. The first is the suppression of contrary truths and opinions. The second is the promulgation of lies through propaganda. The left wing in the United States of America employ both of these tools of tyranny as they publish and broadcast propaganda and lies and censor all opposing voices. Their oppression on these things has permeated work places, college campuses, social media, and even government with criminalization of various forms of hate speech and even pronouns. Let it be known that the left wingers do not believe in either a conservative or a libertarian form of freedom of speech. The only freedom of expression they permit are those expressions that gain their approval.
Left wingers must always resort to force and tyranny when it comes to their views on things. This is because they are fundamentally untrue, wrong, and evil. Free people are repulsed by these tyrants and their hatred of liberty. The only way they can win arguments is with guns in their hands. This is why the hands of tyrants are always covered in the blood of patriots and martyrs.
The argument that progressives make is that so-called "hate speech" should not be permitted mainly because they offend certain groups and may inspire violence against them. The basis for this argument comes from the mistreatment of blacks and Jews during awful times in history. Clearly, the political oppression of these minorities for simply belonging to a different race is a crime against humanity. People have a right to be secure in their lives, their liberty, and their property from evil and tyranny. But do they have a right to not be offended? We have to be careful how we answer this one because this leads to the suppression of virtually all opinions as all opinions are bound to offend someone somewhere at some time.
You can't take away someone's opinions. You can't make someone like something they don't like. You can't compel someone to believe what they do not believe. Not even God Himself does this. We should love God and our fellow man, but this is a matter of our own free wills. There is no compulsion on these things. Yet, progressives abrogate to themselves a power that not even God in His omnipotence exercises.
It is beyond our power to make a Nazi love a Jew or a Klan member to love a black man. Similarly, no one can make another love God. Not even the Roman Catholic Church attempts this leaving conversion to the free will decisions of people. Likewise, I can't make these commies love capitalism or vote for Donald Trump.
Progressives attempt to force others to think or believe things against their will. This is why all communists throughout history have resorted to assassinations, intimidation, imprisonment, torture, and re-education to force the conformity of human will to their sick ideologies. This is also why they find common cause with Islamic fanatics who believe totally different things but use the same tactics. In these things, they wish to force the good to submit to evil. They belong to the Devil, and they do his bidding.
Christians and conservatives are accused of the same things, but these accusations are lies. Where progressives force conformity to evil, Christians and conservatives promote conformity to the good and the restraint of evil. You can't force someone to be good, but you can prevent them from doing evil to others. Imprisoning a murderer is not tyranny. It is tyranny to put a murderer in charge of a nation which is what progressives seek in their deluded idiocy.
All of this is a prelude to the case of Alex Jones and the various ways he is being censored across various internet platforms. The one thing we can establish beyond any reasonable doubt is that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube do not allow freedom of expression on their platforms. Moreover, the only opinions they allow without restraint are left wing opinions. Now, this is perfectly fine except they have advertised and promoted themselves as something other than what they are. In short, they are guilty of fraud. It would be like a landlord who agrees to rent an apartment to a couple and collects that rent but locks the door to their apartment one day for no good reason whatsoever. Likewise, these platforms offer space to users to express themselves freely within the constraints of the law but then rescinds that offer for no good reason just like the evil landlord I used in my example. Essentially, these platforms are in breach of their contracts with users.
No sane person would choose to live in an apartment complex that locked out its tenants on an arbitrary or random basis or for unknown reasons. But this is exactly what social media platforms are doing now. We know the real reason. They hate conservatives. They should say at the outset that conservative opinions and viewpoints are not allowed on their platforms. But this would be a level of honesty these liars cannot muster. They want the lie of allowing freedom of expression while denying it. This amounts to collecting rent on a property that doesn't actually exist. This is fraud.
I am confident that these platforms would lose a class action lawsuit against them for breach of contract. It is not a matter of constitutional law so much as it is a matter of civil law. I agree that demonetizing and deplatforming individuals who have violated no terms of service is an injustice. The remedy is to either declare their bias against conservatives or abide by their agreements with users.
When things become a criminal matter is when these platforms collude to deny service across all platforms and services. This would be a platform like Facebook convincing Uber and Lyft to not allow ride sharing with conservatives. This rises to the level of organized crime as it becomes a matter of extortion and intimidation. The KKK used such tactics against black civil rights workers, and they are against the law.
This brings us to the issue of Alex Jones. Alex is guilty of one political crime--helping to elect Donald J. Trump to the presidency of the United States. For this crime, Jones and others have been deplatformed and are now being subject to increased levels of criminal intimidation from organized leftists conspiring to deprive the man of not only his liberties but even his ability to live. These are crimes and nothing short of pure evil. I can't stand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but I would never seek to ban her from social media or deny her the ability to get a ride with Uber or fly on airplane. If anyone did this to her, I would oppose it with the same vigor that I oppose what is now happening to Alex Jones.
Individuals have the right to deny service to people they don't like. If a Jewish deli wants to ban Neo-Nazis from eating there, I am cool with that. This is the same reason why I support Christian bakers refusing to bake gay wedding cakes or even some left wing commie cafe refusing to serve me a cup of espresso because I might be wearing a MAGA hat. But when they all conspire to do this thing, it becomes a criminal matter then. On such a basis, you could literally starve people to death as you deny them access to food, clothing, shelter, and the like. This is known as racketeering.
The Chinese government already does this with their social credit system. If your social credit score drops too low because of various offenses against the tyranny there, you can be denied basic human services like loans, employment, transportation, and even food. And take a wild guess who has helped the Chinese tyrants in this endeavor. This would be Google and Facebook. For this alone, the upper management of those companies should be arrested and sent to an international court for human rights violations.
The left wing is without conscience or restraint. They are pure evil. Facebook, Google, and Twitter are overrun by these left wing tyrants who have found power to abuse within their gigantic enterprises. In short, they have colluded with tyranny and evil. Should the government do something about this? Absolutely.
Social media platforms make the absurd claim that they are not publishers. They are not able to control what gets posted on their platforms, so they should not be held legally responsible for the content that ends up on their services. So, if ISIS and other terrorists post threats on social media, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are not responsible. Yet, when they censor conservatives, they show that they can control what goes on their sites. Consequently, they should be held legally liable and even criminally responsible for what gets published on their sites. Or, they can return to being free speech zones.
The bottom line is that these platforms have colluded to make sure Donald Trump is not elected to a second term. Because they can't win the argument, they are attempting to shut down the argument. Leftists have always done this and always will do this. It is their nature much like the tale of the frog and the scorpion. Instead of fighting to get back on these social media plantations, conservatives need to establish alternative media, and this includes social media. Because of left wing efforts at censorship, this is why we have AM talk radio, Fox News, OANN, and websites like Breitbart. We just need to go one step further and establish our own social media and video platforms. Stop whining and start working. Our liberty is not lost yet. We just need to exercise it.
