Tag: freedom of speech

Repeal the Patriot Act – LewRockwell

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This article by Judge Napolitano is eye-opening and well worth the read.

I have been writing for years about the dangers to human freedom that come from government mass surveillance. The United States was born in a defiant reaction to government surveillance. In the decade preceding the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the villains were the Stamp Act and the Writs of Assistance Act. Today, the villain is the Patriot Act. Here is the backstory. In 1765, when the British government was looking for creative ways to tax the colonists, Parliament enacted the Stamp Act. That law required all persons in the colonies to purchase stamps from a British government vendor and to affix them to all documents in one’s possession. These were not stamps as we use today, rather they bore the seal of the British government. The vendor would apply ink to the seal and for a fee — a tax — impress an image of the seal onto documents. All documents in one’s possession — financial, legal, letters, books, newspapers, pamphlets, even posters destined to be nailed to trees — required the government stamps. How did the British government, 3,000 miles away, know if one had its stamps on one’s documents? Answer: The Writs of Assistance Act. A writ of assistance was a general warrant issued by a secret court in London. A general warrant does not specifically describe the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized. It merely authorized the bearer — a civilian or military government official — to search where he wished and seize whatever he found.

Repeal the Patriot Act – LewRockwell

Blacklist 2.0: Hollywood Cancels Trump Supporter Sabato – Hollywood in Toto

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Joe McCarthy is long dead, but Hollywood is working hard to keep his legacy alive. This is just another example of how the Left is anti-freedom, anti-free speech, and anti-diversity. Much like ANTIFA uses Black Shirt fascist tactics to oppose fascism supposedly, the Left uses repression, censorship, and ostracism to espouse an openly tolerant society fraudulently.

Antonio Sabato, Jr. took the biggest risk of his career four years ago. He didn’t gain 50 lbs. for a role or hide his handsome visage under layers of makeup. He threw his support behind real estate mogul Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. Sabato even praised Trump from the Republican National Convention stage. The former “Melrose Place” star’s career cratered soon after. Here’s what he told Variety this week: “I had to sell everything,” Sabato reveals in a phone interview with Variety from his new home in Florida. “I had to pay all my debts. I was blacklisted. All my representatives left me, from agents to managers to commercial agents. I literally had to move, find a new job to survive and take care of my kids. It’s been terrible. It’s mind-blowing. It’s a disgrace. It’s tough, because if you’re in that environment in Hollywood and you have something to say that they don’t like, they’re going to let you know.” Sound familiar? It should. Right-leaning stars routinely hide their political leanings for fear of retribution. For years conservative artists gathered under the “Friends of Abe” banner. The once-secretive group let stars who didn’t pledge allegiance to the progressive flag share war stories, bond and network.

Blacklist 2.0: Hollywood Cancels Trump Supporter Sabato – Hollywood in Toto

Alarming Christian persecution in Europe – 3000 attacks in 2019. | Times of Sweden | Your home for #RealNews

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Christian persecution has increased worldwide in recent years. Now a new report by the Gatestone Institute shows that the number of anti-Christian attacks in Europe have reached alarming, record high levels in 2019. Anti-Christian hate crimes which has previously been happening mostly only in Middle Eastern and Communist countries, have now started to increase more …

Source: Alarming Christian persecution in Europe – 3000 attacks in 2019. | Times of Sweden | Your home for #RealNews

Lowering The Bar On Censorship

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Elizabeth Warren has decided to lower the bar on censorship. No longer do we need to find some keyword or “dog whistle” to characterize something as worthy of being purged from the public discourse. Now, this paragon of truthfulness has decided that even this vague standard is not a fuzzy enough criterion to determine who should be silenced. Misinformation is to be the new touchstone. 

Of course, all this comes from someone who would not be where she is today if she was not a habitual liar. I won’t bother to recount them here because they are so well known. Suffice it to say that she is not guilty of “misinformation” but outright fraud. Even those who tend to agree with what she proposes are beginning to see her for what she is as her tanking poll numbers indicate. Her petty and vicious attack on Bernie Sanders at the debate over a private conversation the two had is an indicator of just how desperate she is. 

But this issue is much bigger than Elizabeth Warren. She will be little more than a trivia question that no one will be able to answer on Jeopardy in a year. But this constant drive to proscribe speech that one disagrees with by assigning it to a category that everyone agrees is pernicious is dangerous. It threatens every person’s right to express themselves in a free and open exchange of ideas. 

There are a lot of ugly words tossed about in this increasingly divisive political climate, but the most vicious and most dangerous are the ones that seek to limit other’s freedom to speak those words. No matter what side of the political aisle you are on our common enemy in an era when communication has become so easy is anyone who wants to limit that discourse when their real aim is to silence disagreement.

To Deprive a Free People of Their Rights Part I

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If you want to take away such fundamental rights as speech, the press, religion, and political association, the formula is quite simple. You don’t need to force new draconian laws on the populace and send out the military to enforce them. You don’t need to change the Constitution or elect a totalitarian government headed by a dictator. That would be inefficient, difficult, and in a country like the United States, probably unsuccessful. No, all you have to do is scare the hell out of people, and they will cheerfully and voluntarily give up their rights in the name of security. As a case in point, it is happening right now, here in our own country, and in many areas, we are not even offering token resistance. 

There has always been a struggle between the government and the private sector for dominance in society. And that is a healthy tension, one acting as a check on the other, neither becoming strong enough to impose its will entirely on the other. For many years this tug of war functioned as it should, but then came 9/11/2001. 

There was a lot of blame thrown around at the time, particularly of the intelligence agencies, wanting to know how they missed what in 20/20 hindsight seemed to be apparent clues as to what was coming. How could this happen? Why wasn’t it stopped? Lower Manhattan had seen this before with the previous WTC bombing, so it would seem that any chatter regarding this target would raise red flags. How come information was not made available to local authorities to stop these monsters? The response to these questions naturally led to demands that we prevent this from ever happening again. The freedom we have enjoyed in this country for over 200 years was about to take a hit. This attack would not come from our enemies, but ourselves.

I can still remember the announcement by President George W. Bush that we would be creating a new security agency to coordinate the activities of existing organizations on the Federal and local levels. There was something not right about this. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, but I had a gut feeling that this was not going to bode well for us in the long term. Everything wasn’t laid out for the public, of course, but just enough for me to wonder if giving this much power to an already too powerful State was the best answer to this threat. 

There were some concerns at the time pointed out by some that this was all just an excuse for a massive power grab, the chance to monitor and control citizens in ways that were Constitutionally suspect. These voices were dismissed as alarmists, conspiracy theorists, and crackpots. We were so sure our government would never be a totalitarian state, that ee had sufficient checks and balances to prevent even a despotic President from overtly abolish our freedoms, keep tabs on us or repress political opposition. Despite my misgivings, I was among the critics of those voices raised in alarm. They indeed did have some crackpot theories, but given developments in the past few years, some of those pots are beginning to look a little less cracked.  

More to come on this.