Posted on 05/01/2022 1:06:43 PM PDT by blam
It has become depressingly common to read unrelenting attacks on free speech in the Washington Post and other newspapers.
The anti-free speech movement has been embraced by Democratic leaders, including President Joe Biden, as well as academics who now claim “China was right” on censorship. However, a Time magazine column by national correspondent Charlotte Alter was still shocking in how mainstream anti-free speech views have become.
Alter denounces free speech as basically a white man’s “obsession.”
What is most striking about the column is Alter’s apparent confusion over why anyone like Musk would even care about the free speech of others. She suggests that Musk is actually immoral for spending money to restore free speech rather than on social welfare or justice issues.
She suggests that supporting free speech is some disgusting extravagance like buying Fabergé eggs.
“Why does Musk care so much about this? Why would a guy who has pushed the boundaries of electric-vehicle manufacturing and plumbed the limits of commercial space flight care about who can say what on Twitter?”
The answer, not surprisingly, is about race and privilege. Alter cites Jason Goldman, who was an early figure shaping the Twitter censorship policies before he joined the Obama administration. Goldman declared, “free speech has become an obsession of the mostly white, male members of the tech elite” who “would rather go back to the way things were.”
Alter also cites professor of communication at Stanford University Fred Turner who explains that free speech is just “a dominant obsession with the most elite… [and] seems to be much more of an obsession among men.”
In arguing in favor of censorship, Alter engages in a heavy use of historical revisionism, claiming that
“‘free speech’ in the 21st century means something very different than it did in the 18th, when the Founders enshrined it in the Constitution. The right to say what you want without being imprisoned is not the same as the right to broadcast disinformation to millions of people on a corporate platform. This nuance seems to be lost on some techno-wizards who see any restriction as the enemy of innovation.”
It is also lost on me.
Censorship has always been based on the notion that the underlying speech was false or harmful. Calling it “disinformation” does not materially change the motivation or the impact. What Alter calls a “Tech Bro obsession” was the obsession of the Framers.
Alter is confusing free speech values with the rationale for the First Amendment. For years, anti-free-speech figures have dismissed free speech objections to social media censorship by stressing that the First Amendment applies only to the government, not private companies. The distinction was always a dishonest effort to evade the implications of speech controls, whether implemented by the government or corporations.
The First Amendment was never the exclusive definition of free speech. Free speech is viewed by many of us as a human right; the First Amendment only deals with one source for limiting it. Free speech can be undermined by private corporations as well as government agencies. This threat is even greater when politicians openly use corporations to achieve indirectly what they cannot achieve directly.
Key free speech figures practiced what they preached in challenged friends and foes alike. After playing a critical role with our independence, Thomas Paine did nothing but irritate the Framers with his words, including John Adams, who called him a “crapulous mass.”
Yet, free speech was a defining value for the framers (despite Adams’ later attacks on the right). It was viewed as the very growth plate of democracy. As Benjamin Franklin stated in a letter on July 9, 1722: “Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such thing as Wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without Freedom of Speech.”
The same anti-free speech voices were heard back then as citizens were told to fear free speech. It viewed as a Siren’s call for tyranny. Franklin stated:
“In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech; a thing terrible to publick traytors.”
Yet, Alter assures readers that this is just due to a lack of knowledge by Musk and a misunderstanding of why censorship is a natural and good thing:
“Tech titans often have a different understanding of speech than the rest of the world because most trained as engineers, not as writers or readers, and a lack of a humanities education might make them less attuned to the social and political nuances of speech.”
It appears that Alter’s humanities education in college allows her to see “nuances” that escape the rest of us, including some of us who are not “trained as engineers.”
Indeed, James Madison warned us to be more on guard against such nuanced arguments:
“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
As Time, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other media outlets align themselves with the anti-free speech movement, it is more important than ever for citizens fight for this essential right. There is nothing nuanced in either this movement or its implications for this country.
Alter denounces free speech as basically a white man’s “obsession.”
What must these POS think of whitey that they feel they can dismiss him this way. Go ahead, stupid, make my day.
Oh, give me a break.
The left is always willing to say how it really thinks: it wants to suppress thoughts and words that it doesn’t approve of and eliminate Whitey.
Yep, we white males “obsess” about freedom of speech the same way we obsess about obeying the law, getting a real education, and behaving in a manner that promotes prosperity. Not wanting rampant crime, academic failure, and a population entirely dependent upon the government is “racist.” So of course free speech is “racist”, too.
They’re allowed to scream from their balconies at 7:00 P.M.!
Charlotte Alter
“‘free speech’ in the 21st century means something very different than it did in the 18th, when the Founders enshrined it in the Constitution. The right to say what you want without being imprisoned is not the same as the right to broadcast disinformation to millions of people on a corporate platform. This nuance seems to be lost on some techno-wizards who see any restriction as the enemy of innovation.”Somebody's been behind the Ivy Wall a little too long...
I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It. Evelyn Beatrice Hall
That was before they had completed their plan to control every American institution, private as well as public. It was before they created and used “social media” to gain total control over speech. And it was also before they decided it was time to try to brainwash the public to believe total insanity, such as “transgenderism.”
They rode the “free speech” crusade when it benefitted them, permitting them to inject their leftist ideology into every institution, company, and communication medium. Once that was achieved, it was beneficial to their cause for them to do a 180 and clamp down on free speech in order to stifle dissent. They used free speech as a battering ram to breech the walls protecting normal American culture, and once inside they used it as a wall to lock the normal, sane people out.
It was all carefully planned.
I'm sure he didn't intend it to be, but that's an argument in favor of white supremacy.
Yep, back then it was about dividing us and corrupting our country. They used free speech to denigrate our religion, culture, race, founding, values, you name it. We tolerated it because you know, free speech.
Now all that work is done so free speech is no longer needed by them. Now they need to make sure the same is not done to them. So they are going to shut it off.
We’re dealing with some real dangerous humans here, the population at large needs to figure this out very soon.
They are getting all their pieces in place. Soon it will be too late to do anything about this... if it’s not already.
What the Nazis did to the Jews, Democrats will do to us.
We should be on the cusp of a shooting civil war. The question is, will anyone actually defend the Constitution?
Alter denounces free speech as basically a white man’s “obsession.”
__________________________________________________________
So a black man is against free speech.....
Free speech for them.
Against the law for those who disagree with their “ free “ speech
So she wrote a book on that ubiquitous “transformation” of America.
Go to Hell, you commie traitors.
Sick of all this.
This blogger actually has a good perspective on. It, speaking of the hippie devil.
https://pushingrubberdownhill.com/2018/08/06/i-no-longer-believe-in-free-speech/
It’s taken full advantage of, by commies to wean their way into power. As soon as they get it, no longer. Lips service first, then disposed.
I agree
Ben Franklin never failed to chime in when he had something to say.
A snarky troll was he.
From Wikipedia:
________
As a young boy, Franklin worked as an apprentice in his older brother’s printing shop in Boston, where The New-England Courant was published and printed.
Franklin never got anything he wrote published, so, at age 16, he created the persona of a middle-aged widow named Silence Dogood.[1] Once every two weeks, he would leave a letter under the door of his brother’s printing shop. A total of 14 letters were sent. The first letter began:
Sir,
It may not be possible in the first Place to inform your Readers, that I intend once a Fortnight to present them, by the Help of this Paper, with a short Epistle, which I presume will add somewhat to their Entertainment.
And since it is observed, that the Generality of People, nowadays, are unwilling either to commend or dispraise what they read, until they are in some measure informed who or what the Author of it is, whether he be poor or rich, old or young, a Schollar or a Leather Apron Man, &c. and give their Opinion of the Performance, according to the Knowledge which they have of the Author’s Circumstances, it may not be amiss to begin with a short Account of my past Life and present Condition, that the Reader may not be at a Loss to judge whether or no my Lucubrations are worth his reading.[2]
The letters poked fun at various aspects of life in colonial America, such as this quote about hoop petticoats:
These monstrous topsy-turvy Mortar-Pieces, are neither fit for the Church, the Hall, or the Kitchen; and if a Number of them were well mounted on Noddles-Island, they would look more like Engines of War for bombarding the Town, than Ornaments of the Fair Sex. An honest Neighbour of mine, happening to be in Town some time since on a publick Day, inform’d me, that he saw four Gentlewomen with their Hoops half mounted in a Balcony, as they withdrew to the Wall, to the great Terror of the Militia, who (he thinks) might attribute their irregular Volleys to the formidable Appearance of the Ladies Petticoats.[1]
The letters were published in The New-England Courant fortnightly, and amused readers. Some men wrote in offering to marry Ms. Dogood, upon learning she was widowed.[1]
Eventually, James found out that all fourteen of the letters had been written by his younger brother, which angered him. Benjamin left his apprenticeship without permission and escaped to Philadelphia.
“The 14 Mrs. Silence Dogood letters were first printed in 1722.”
Ben Franklin secretly identifying as a middle-aged woman, fully 300 years ago.
What a country.
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