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As Facebook, Twitter Censor Biden Stories, New York Times Magazine Argues Against Free Speech, First Amendment
MenRec ^ | 10/17/20 | Staff

Posted on 10/17/2020 6:23:39 AM PDT by rustyweiss74

New York Times Magazine has run a column which argues that free speech and the First Amendment are outdated in an “age of disinformation.”

The extensive column, written by journalist Emily Bazelon, argues that “scholars of constitutional law” and “social scientists” are calling into question “the way we have come to think about the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech.”

Bazelon uses a series of debatable topics and loosely links them to unlinked events to suggest “disinformation” is dangerous – perhaps even more dangerous than “authoritarian regimes.”

...

The more obvious problem with arguing in favor of squashing ‘disinformation’ is who, exactly, determines what is and isn’t false?

(Excerpt) Read more at menrec.com ...


TOPICS: Politics
KEYWORDS: clickbait; pimpmyblog; postandleave
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1 posted on 10/17/2020 6:23:39 AM PDT by rustyweiss74
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To: rustyweiss74

Burn the commie witch.


2 posted on 10/17/2020 6:26:50 AM PDT by BuffaloJack (Neither safety nor security exists in nature. Everything is dangerous and has risk.)
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To: BuffaloJack

Tell us what you really think of her.... LOL


3 posted on 10/17/2020 6:30:49 AM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings)
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To: rustyweiss74

A people who outsources to others the determination of what’s true and what’s relevant is surely soon doomed.


4 posted on 10/17/2020 6:31:39 AM PDT by tinyowl (A is A)
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To: rustyweiss74

The New York Times is in possession of the Hunter Biden harddrive. The Sulzberger family knows that failure to publish a definitive article with shred any remnants of integrity left at the Times and destroy the family’s legagy. Suspect there is a monumental struggle between some the publisher family and the rabid leftist editors and staff who refuse to write anything that will help Trump or injure Biden.


5 posted on 10/17/2020 6:32:43 AM PDT by allendale
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To: rustyweiss74

Free speech is only for professional propagandists. Don’t try it at home. Right.


6 posted on 10/17/2020 6:33:34 AM PDT by virgil (The evil that men do lives after them)
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To: rustyweiss74

When LEFTists have insufficient control (read lack of TOTAL CONTROL) of the “marketplace of ideas”, it is a danger to their vision of THEIR utopia! Yet another reason for ‘originalist justices’, as a bulwark against the pernicious concept of a “living US Constitution”!


7 posted on 10/17/2020 6:33:34 AM PDT by SES1066 (2020, VOTE your principles, VOTE your history, VOTE FOR ALL AMERICANS, VOTE colorblind!)
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To: rustyweiss74
So that we may see the author;

Emily Bazelon (b: 03/04/71), senior research fellow at Yale Law School (no name change yet), staff writer at "The New York Times Magazine", cohost SLATE Podcast "Political Gabfest", former senior editor at Slate Magazine.

8 posted on 10/17/2020 6:42:23 AM PDT by SES1066 (2020, VOTE your principles, VOTE your history, VOTE FOR ALL AMERICANS, VOTE colorblind!)
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To: rustyweiss74
Bazelon...suggest[s] “disinformation” is dangerous – perhaps even more dangerous than “authoritarian regimes.” The more obvious problem... is who, exactly, determines what is and isn’t false?

That would be "authoritarian regimes."

9 posted on 10/17/2020 6:46:58 AM PDT by Albion Wilde ("When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice." --Donald Trump)
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To: rustyweiss74

Fascism=Marriage of Corporations and one political party=Democrats. So why are the Democrats calling everyone else Fascists???? They are the Fascists


10 posted on 10/17/2020 6:50:07 AM PDT by realcleanguy
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To: SES1066

Note prominent liberal chin and crooked fake smile


11 posted on 10/17/2020 6:56:21 AM PDT by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now its your turn)
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To: rustyweiss74

What’s false?

Here’s a clue - if it’s in the New York Times it’s false.


12 posted on 10/17/2020 6:57:13 AM PDT by Fido969
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To: Albion Wilde
Ms Bazelon would do well to consider the quotes of Jefferson, who lived with "false" free speech and thus was in a better position to see the Founders' views of lying as protected speech:

"The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe." --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816. ME 14:384

"The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers... [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper." --Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785. (*) ME 5:181, Papers 8:632

"It is so difficult to draw a clear line of separation between the abuse and the wholesome use of the press, that as yet we have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood. And hitherto the public judgment has performed that office with wonderful correctness." --Thomas Jefferson to M. Pictet, 1803. ME 10:356

"[This is] a country which is afraid to read nothing, and which may be trusted with anything, so long as its reason remains unfettered by law." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Milligan, 1816. ME 14:463

"[If a book were] very innocent, and one which might be confided to the reason of any man; not likely to be much read if let alone, but if persecuted, it will be generally read. Every man in the United States will think it a duty to buy a copy, in vindication of his right to buy and to read what he pleases." --Thomas Jefferson to N. G. Dufief, 1814. ME 14:128

"A declaration that the Federal Government will never restrain the presses from printing anything they please will not take away the liability of the printers for false facts printed." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788. ME 7:98

"Printing presses shall be free except as to false facts published maliciously either to injure the reputation of another (whether followed by pecuniary damages or not) or to expose him to the punishment of the law." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes for a Constitution, 1794.

"Printing presses shall be subject to no other restraint than liableness to legal prosecution for false facts printed and published." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft of Virginia Constitution, 1783. ME 2:298, Papers 6:304

13 posted on 10/17/2020 7:03:07 AM PDT by DoodleBob (Gravity's waiting period is about 9.8 m/s^2)
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To: rustyweiss74
Bazelon uses a series of debatable topics and loosely links them to unlinked events to suggest “disinformation” is dangerous
Oh, I quite agree. “The media” is a tidal wave of “disinformation” - and most especially it is a very selective dispenser of truth.

Freedom of speech and press predated the adoption of the First Amendment, which is why it makes perfect sense when 1A refers to “the” freedom of speech and press. But “the” freedom of speech was not unlimited - the states had laws against libel and slander, and against pornography.

A quick reference to the Ninth Commandment: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor,” suffices to explain why abolition of libel laws would have been fiercely resisted in the founding era. And the Federalists who passed the Bill of Rights were not about pushing the envelope on rights which the Constitution did not explicitly alter. To the contrary they were about suppressing the controversy over rights which the Antifederalists had aroused. That controversy alone stood between the Federalists and their fondest wish: universal acceptance of the Constitution as the fundamental law of America.

So why was the Bill of Rights ratified, if 1A modified libel law? Quite simply, no one at the time thought that it did. It took the Warren Court to conjure up an apparent rationale for holding to the contrary. But, in 1964 with the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision, it did - and unanimously, at that.

ACB won’t like Sullivan any better than Scalia did, Thomas does, or (after he was mugged by the press in his confirmation hearing) Kavanaugh must. The only question is whether two of Justices Gorsuch, Roberts, and Alito would make common cause with the court’s lefties to retain Sullivan. Obviously Roberts can’t be trusted, but . . .

Trump and Levin were on the tube last Saturday, and they agreed among themselves that Sullivan was bad law. Please God, Trump wins and has a friendly Congress - if so, he’ll get a federal libel law. And, please God, SCOTUS will uphold it.

– perhaps even more dangerous than “authoritarian regimes.”
Snort!

14 posted on 10/17/2020 7:05:04 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (Socialism is cynicism directed towards society and - correspondingly - naivete towards government.)
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To: rustyweiss74

We’ve come to believe this devious operation seen before us has been a plot by the MFM in order to squelch free speech completely. THEY own free speech. It was given to them by our Constitution. Citizens have been accustomed to take their comments at face value. In the world in which we now live, the majority of the MFM (all outlets) have no clue as to how to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. They instigated this theft by confusing readers, listeners, viewers to the point we believe nothing/anything they attempt to peddle. Freedom of the press is nothing but an attempt to silence citizens from speaking. The deterioration of ‘news outlets’ brings about the horrifying authoritarian regimes, if not home grown, possibly foreign.

It could come to pass, we’ll he required to speak Chinese only in the near future.


15 posted on 10/17/2020 7:10:27 AM PDT by V K Lee ("VICTORY FOR THE RIGHTEOUS IS JUDGMENT FOR THE WICKED")
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To: rustyweiss74

What happened at those Secret meetings with the Chinese at the White House ?


16 posted on 10/17/2020 7:12:14 AM PDT by butlerweave
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To: rustyweiss74

“Free speech” is already an illusion. If dems get into power, the persecution of unapproved thoughts will increase 1000 times.


17 posted on 10/17/2020 7:19:27 AM PDT by I want the USA back (Social media are the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. Wholly owned subsidiaries.)
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To: rustyweiss74

DEFINITION: “Disinformation” is information that we don’t want you to have.


18 posted on 10/17/2020 7:33:30 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum ("Elections have consequences. We won, you lost. Get over it." --Barack Hussein Obama)
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To: rustyweiss74

Media + Facebook + Twitter + Biden Democrat Party = 1984


19 posted on 10/17/2020 10:48:52 AM PDT by Vaduz (women and children to be impacIQ of chimpsted the most.)
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To: rustyweiss74

She belongs in some other country; one that believes what she is writing.


20 posted on 10/17/2020 11:24:59 AM PDT by oldtech
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