Posted on 06/15/2016 11:34:51 AM PDT by Kaslin
Someone needs to tell Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, YouTube and the European Union that the only way to stop a bad guy's speech is to counter it with a good guy's speech, not censor it. Recently, the internet giants took on the role of internet speech police when they agreed to monitor and combat so-called "hate speech" for the EU. No word on how they define hate speech. I suspect the whole EU hate speech argument is less about preventing terrorist attacks, as they propose, and more about culling criticism of their immigration and refugee policies. Oh, the hypocrisy of those who brag about their "open-mindedness" in one breath and cry about censorship in the next. The only acceptable speech is that which is pleasing to their ears or palatable to their particular ideology, while supporting the prosecution of people for their personal opinions or religious beliefs, especially if those opinions and beliefs do not fall in line with theirs. It sure sounds an awful lot like totalitarianism to me. It takes you back to a quote from George Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four." There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But any rate, they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.
Here in the U.S., the First Amendment covers all speech. Yes, folks, even hate speech. Speakers shouldn't be banned from universities unless a university's intention is to ban free thought. The same goes for talking about climate change, Californians. And what the Bible says about marriage, liberals. It's pretty telling that you rarely find conservatives, known for their deep respect for free speech, charging liberals with "Constitutionphobia" or "Christianphobia" or "babyphobia" or whatever phobia might be applied to those with whom they disagree. The way I see it, the dangers of censorship far outweigh the dangers of hate speech. Even still, we march closer to it every time we bend a knee to political correctness. You don't have to live in a totalitarian state to be controlled by totalitarianism. We're not there yet, but we're sure headed in that direction. If we believe in the right to free speech, we also must believe in the right to offend. That means that building a wall isn't xenophobia. Believing in traditional marriage is not homophobia. And fundamentally disagreeing with President Obama's policies is by no means racism. By the way, the Bible is pro-free speech too. But, it's also about accountability. Jesus said in Matthew 12:36 that "every careless word" we speak we will "give an accounting for it in the day of judgment." So maybe we should occupy our time considering our own words rather than censoring others.
And it’s already going on here “voluntarily.”
Just the other day I had a post removed from the ABC comments in a story on the controversy over gay men wanting the ban on them donating blood lifted. There was nothing “hateful” about it. It was simply facts. And a great many other comments on that story were removed as well. You could tell they weren’t merely offensive comments, either, because the replies were often left, and they indicated the posts were eliminated due to the posters’ opinions in many cases.
I’ve also encountered web sites that simply make your posts invisible. Salon is one. In a story on this practice, they claim they monitor comments, and ones that don’t seem “helpful” to having a “good discussion” are removed.
http://digiday.com/publishers/salon-tamed-trolls-saved-online-comments/
Many other web sites are also discontinuing comments. CNN is a major one.
Much of what the Left insists is hate speech, is actually rational dissent from the totalitarian agenda that the Left wants to impose on the peoples of the earth. Think about it!
Free Speech will always be considered “hate speech” to some.
The Founding Fathers in their genius understood this.
Liberals never will since everything offends these snowflakes.
Hypocrites take pause before posting.
Mark Steyn made this point in testimony, IIRC, to a Canadian speech police organization. He asked what the commission thought should have been done in Germany to shut up Hitler.Then Steyn explained to the committee that exactly what they thought should have been done, was in fact done. With the result we know.
Susan Stamper Brown is right...
Farcebook allows the weight of complainers to prompt post removal. That’s how I came to be banned - leftists objecting to my defense of a private businessman ganged up on me.
No great loss since freedom of speech isn’t on their menu anyway..
I’ve always said to let the whackos and loony’s speak all they want. That way we will know who to watch.
I charge them with Christophobia. Not burddening their free speech, but exercising my own. I tell it like it is. Usuaally.
And Facebook and Twitter are one of the main reasons why CNN says it discontinued its comments. The discussion can just happen on Facebook and Twitter, it says. And a lot more speech ends up censored that way.
"That form [of self-government] which we have substituted [for that which bound men under the chains of monkish ignorance and superstition] restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion." --Thomas Jefferson to Roger C. Weightman, 1826. ME 16:182
"A right to take the side which every man's conscience approves in a civil contest is too precious a right, and too favorable to the preservation of liberty, not to be protected by all its well-informed friends." --Thomas Jefferson to Katherine Sprowle Douglas, 1785. FE 4:66, Papers 8:260
"Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men, governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity? But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XVII, 1782. ME 2:223
"The freedom of opinion and the reasonable maintenance of it is not a crime and ought not to occasion injury." --Thomas Jefferson to Gideon Granger, 1801.
"The legitimate powers of government reach actions only and not opinions." --Thomas Jefferson to Danbury Baptists, 1802.
"This country, which has given to the world the example of physical liberty, owes to it that of moral emancipation also. For as yet, it is but nominal with us. The inquisition of public opinion overwhelms in practice the freedom asserted by the laws in theory." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1821. ME 15:308
"It is inconsistent with the spirit of our laws and Constitution to force tender consciences." --Thomas Jefferson: Proclamation Concerning Paroles, 1781. FE 2:430, Papers 4:404
"The error seems not sufficiently eradicated that the operations of the mind as well as the acts of the body are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XVII, 1782. ME 2:221
"[The] liberty of speaking and writing... guards our other liberties." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Philadelphia Democratic Republicans, 1808. ME 16:304
"We are bound, you, I, and every one to make common cause, even with error itself, to maintain the common right of freedom of conscience." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Dowse, 1803. ME 10:378
"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own. It behooves him, too, in his own case, to give no example of concession, betraying the common right of independent opinion, by answering questions of faith, which the laws have left between God and himself." --Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, 1803. ME 10:381
What is permitted to be posted is pretty much up to the owner of the Web Site. It’s the government that’s not supposed to censor speech. What is scary is putting the UN in charge of the Internet as they are not hesitant to censor.
“What is permitted to be posted is pretty much up to the owner of the Web Site. It’s the government that’s not supposed to censor speech. What is scary is putting the UN in charge of the Internet as they are not hesitant to censor.”
Yes, I agree, and I understand. And there are justifiable reasons to limit commentary in some cases, just like certain groups do the same.
Christian groups on college campuses shouldn’t be forced to have non-Christian members, much less leaders. A Christian college shouldn’t be forced to keep faculty or students who reject the basics of Christianity in any way.
I also used to post some at the Christianity.com forums years ago, and they limited the comments in certain sections depending on the posters’ beliefs.
Here, too, some limits make sense. I don’t have a problem with similar leftist sites, atheistic, ex-Christian, or whatever the case may be, limiting who can post and what can be said.
The problem, though, is with sites, especially major news and social media sites, that say they do allow for a range of opinions, but then only target posts that are Christian and conservative, and not because the posts make hateful comments, but because the site owners merely feel it’s all right for them to censor views they consider “wrong.”
When the major “mainstream” media and social media already do that themselves, rather than protecting free speech, even if they don’t agree with it, then it is that much easier for the government to “force” censorship on them.
In that case, the “government” isn’t forcing anything. It’s just providing the laws to back up what these news organizations and web sites want to do anyway.
Twitter, for one, says that they somehow need such help to combat Islamic extremists, who use Twitter a lot. But no doubt ISIS will keep using it just as much while those comments that are critical of Islam will instantly disappear.
Exactly.
Remember all the love and tolerance towards Christians from the LGBTQ community before they destroyed traditional marriage?
Me either.
Once again, Kaslin knocks it out the park.
Note. I recognize that you are merely adopting their parlance. My point is not intended in anyway as a criticism of the point you validly make.
Susan Stamper Brown is right...
She is right in her conclusion; she is wrong in her introduction:
These leftist organizations do not want to stop a bad guy’s speech; they are bad guys (read: totalitarians) themselves and thus agree with them.
Oh man I didn’t even realize what I was typing. Glad you pointed it out.
The problem the Left faces, is that they are UNABLE to counter conservative speech, particularly conservative speech which backs up its position with facts and references to authoritative sources.
Leftist speech depends on the ability to utter false statements without contradiction. When shown to be wrong, they have nothing left to say. That's why they always want to suppress non-Left speech wherever they can.
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