Forum: Is There A Solution For Censorship Of Views On The Right By Social Media?

Tags

banning Conservatives, First Amendment, Oppression, Progressives war on Conservatives, silencing dissent, social media censorship, war of free speech

Every Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher’s Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week’s question: Is There A Solution for Censorship Of Views On The Right By Social Media?

The Razor: Yes my solution is to stop using them completely. I deleted my Facebook page years ago and don’t regret it. Twitter is moronic and masturbatory. All the others have limited utility.

If conservatives publicly left these platforms they would turn into boring echo chambers for the Left – and that’s pretty much what they are today.

So why even bother?

I’ve been playing around with technology since I was a kid. I once thought there wasn’t such a thing as too much technology, but then I tried buying a book on my Kindle and was told that I had already purchased it. Not only had I bought it, I had evidently read it – and I had almost no recall of it whatsoever. That’s when I switched back to buying books. I learned that we have reached a point where technology is like everything else: 95% of anything is crap. We now have to make some conscious choices how we use it, not just stare at our phones and walk blindly into traffic.

At heart I am still a technophile – but there are clear limits. I’ve learned that social media is neither: it’s anti-social and it’s not really media either.

I just got back from Costa Rica, a family vacation at an all-inclusive resort (not the way I usually travel).

The restaurants were filled with people taking pictures of their food and posting them on their FB pages or Instagram feeds.

People were also posting pictures of themselves on the beach or at the pool – likely to their friends and families back home with tags like “Wish you were here.”

It’s a form of bragging – some call it “humble-bragging” – and like all bragging ill mannered.

As a kid growing up in the 1970s I remember how painful it was sitting through the slide shows and 8mm movies taken by friends of the parents.

It was painful then – and it’s still painful now.

We need to stop living in an alternate reality where we are the center of the universe and we think people care what we ate on vacation.

They don’t and we need to stop thinking they do. What this superficial liking and thumbing-up or what-have-you is doing is superficializing our relationships. Instead of meeting our friends face to face and having them ask us about our vacation, we send them pics on Facebook which they “like” for politeness or in the hope that you will do the same to their vacation stills on their next vacation. It’s eroding our communication – and fundamentally our trust, the very foundations of our human relationships.

So there are better reasons to bail on the social media than left-wing bias. If we value our relationships it’s time we put down the damn phones and meet our friends for dinner, or visit the sister we haven’t seen in a few years. That physical interaction is priceless whereas what we have today with social media is about as worth as much as a million likes: absolutely nothing.

Rob Miller: I’ve never used social media for much more than building my traffic and always gave sites like Twitter and Facebook the bare minimum of info they required. I’ve never been the sort of person who wants my entire life online. Lately of course, those particular channels are far less effective, and I spent a bit of time messaging my followers on both channels advising them to directly follow my site, which many of them were doing anyway.

While I’ve discovered other channels and methods to boost traffic, the fact remains that there are very popular web portals that lean Left and promote those views while censoring views on the Right. Even Spotify linked up with the infamous Southern Policy Law Center to target artists with conservative views and vet content for political correctness, although they later reversed themselves, it seems, after serious backlash from subscribers.

Andrew Breitbart (Z”L) famously said that politics is downstream from the culture. As with many other things, he was completely right. While we can boycott platforms that censor views on the Right and who promote Leftist ones, that’s only half the battle. Like it or not social media is an important part of the culture, and one that can’t just be ignored in the battle of ideas. The real trick is to go on offense and beat the Left at their own game. That’s exactly how Breitbart,FOX News and talk radio carved out niches for themselves. There’s no reason the same thing can’t be done with social media, where victory means building better more interesting platforms where free speech is encouraged to compete. One site that is doing exactly that is Gab, a Twitter competitor that allows 140 characters and freedom of speech. They’re relatively new but growing by leaps and bounds as Twitter fades slowly but surely. There’s no reason the Right can’t create their own social media. Gab is doing it.

Dave Schuler: I suppose making assault or battery perpetrated against Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin misdemeanors punishable by a $5 fine is out of the question?

Not using Facebook, Google, etc. is the obvious answer but, sadly, it’s insufficient. It wouldn’t be effective. Starting their own Facebook, Google, etc. is another obvious but inadequate response.

The only thing I can come up with is to make their business model unworkable. “Personally identifiable information” means data that could be used to identify an individual. Make PII the property of the individual whom it’s about. Make it illegal for someone other than the PII’s owner to sell it without the explicit, personalized assent of the owner on a per-incident basis.

Laura Rambeau Lee: The Left considers any conservative viewpoint to be hate speech that must be silenced. They have managed to shut down discussion of any opposing views on our college and university campuses. Students become hysterical and protest anyone who attempts to speak about conservative beliefs and principles. Those working at companies such as Facebook have come out of this collegial environment and fervently believe in the right of free speech – unless they disagree with what the speaker has to say. Progressives have been working for decades within our education system indoctrinating our youth and it is not going to be easy to turn it around. They have all but destroyed our Western cultural traditions and beliefs. They mock family, faith and patriotism. Those of us who are students of history are seeing a repeat of what has happened over and over again, particularly in the last century, as this evil ideology takes hold in our own country. Is there even a possibility for a middle ground where we can work together? I would like to believe so, but the left seems to have taken hold of the Democratic Party and platform. It also appears to have infiltrated the Republican Party as there are very few true fiscal and social conservatives in the party. In addition the unelected bureaucratic elites in government are extremely progressive in their beliefs for the most part and are working towards a more socialist government and egalitarian society. The fact that a majority of our youth today believe socialism is a good thing should scare us all. We are on the verge of losing this battle to the left.

For one thing, we must get involved in our public education system and insist our school curriculum presents unbiased materials. We must insist on teaching civics and classes such as Americanism vs. Communism that many of us were taught in high school. Many public schools today teach American history only from the Civil War forward. We should be teaching our history from the very beginning of our founding, particularly the concepts outlined in the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.

As far as social media, it will require a lot of pressure from conservatives to change their policies. There does seem to be a growing backlash against political correctness from more people every day as the left is more out in the open and outrageous in their hysteria (which I believe comes from fear of hearing the truth) against opposing viewpoints. We should not tolerate the bullying going on in the name of free speech and expose it when we see it. We must keep talking and writing and sharing our values and viewpoints so that others will hear and hopefully come to understand the dangers of the left as much as we do. We have to utilize these social media sites to our advantage as much and as best as we can. It is up to us to expose evil whenever and wherever we see it.

Well, there it is!

Make sure to drop by every Monday for the WoW! Magazine Forum. And enjoy WoW! Magazine 24-7 with some of the best stuff written in the ‘net. Take from me, you won’t want to miss it.

Five Clichés Used to Attack Free Speech (video)

Tags

Assault on Free speech, First Amendment, free speech

 

Published on Jun 16, 2017 by ReasonTV

We live in perilous times when it comes to free speech, and the threats are coming from both the left and right. The president has threatened legal action against the media, and progressive activists have used violence to shut down campus speakers they don’t like.

In The Los Angeles Times, former federal prosecutor Ken White has some sharp insights on how to fight back against the would-be censors by shredding the most-popular clichés used by people trying to make the rest of us shut the hell up.

If today’s calls for suppressing speech teaches us anything, it’s that we can never take the First Amendment for granted. Even if the Supreme Court is on our side, free expression will only continue to exists if we’re brave enough to make it ourselves.

Forum: Are There Limits On Free Speech? Should There be?

Tags

First Amendment, Freedom of Speech

Every week on Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher’s Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week’s question : Are There Limits On Free Speech? Should There be?

Michael McDaniel: There are, of course, limits on free speech, the classic “shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater,” being the most obvious example. Theoretically, obscenity may be criminalized, though in practice, it seldom is. After all, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously noted in an obscenity case (Jacobellis v. Ohio, 1964) he couldn’t describe it, but he knew it when he saw it. The Supreme Court has also decided exotic dancing, because it is a form of artistic expression, deserves the protection of the First Amendment. Apparently they’ve seen it, and that wasn’t it.

Therein lies much of the difficulty in proscribing speech. For any law to be constitutional, the reasonable man must be able to read it, and understand what is and is not unlawful. If one cannot gaze upon a given nude body, or a given sexual act without confusion about whether it is obscene, and therefore unlawful, or merely an expression of free speech, life becomes even more confusing than ever.

Clearly child pornography is beyond the pale, yet before the advent of digital photography, parents sending negatives of their children playing in a bathtub to the developer sometimes found themselves accused of child porn. Now, one must worry about the intrusion of cyber cops into their electronic devices. Will they think similar digital photos evidence of child porn? Will they seize my computers, throw me in prison, force me to deplete my bank accounts and retirement to defend myself against unwarranted and false charges?

I do not defend, for a moment, what is clearly the sexual exploitation of children. I merely point out the difficulty in applying a single, often politicized, standard to that which is hardly black and white.

Political speech deserves the greatest protection under the Constitution, yet it is precisely that which Democrats–and some Republicans–wish to restrict. They wanted to make criticizing Hillary Clinton unlawful. They wished to make criticizing any politician during election season a crime. Many still wish it.

And one cannot forget Academia, where the idea that unpopular speakers may not only be preemptively shut up, if they dare try to exercise their First Amendment rights, they may be–must be–physically attacked. This is not only the stance of lunatic special snowflakes, but the spineless administrators, and state politicians that aid and abet such insanity. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never harm me,” is an axiom lost on such people, who believe the mere existence of words with which they disagree harmful, and they’ll be delighted to use the sticks and stones on anyone they don’t like.

The First Amendment like the Second, is the backbone of our society. Both establish and uphold the rule of law, where everyone can reasonably understand the limits of discourse and behavior. But civilization is a matter of informed consent and willing participation. Those seeking to limit the First Amendment, if they move beyond mere words, force us toward the exercise of the Second.

Any limitation on fundamental rights must be narrowly drawn and so simple as to be understood by the proverbial reasonable man. The antidote for “bad” speech, is good speech, and plenty of it. To do otherwise is to abandon civilized persuasion and reason in favor of brute force.

That’s precisely what the many–and growing in number–enemies of liberty, of America and Americans, seek. Many of them are too stupid, too unschooled in history and human nature, to understand the danger of the precipice to which they push us. Their leaders, however, understand precisely what they’re doing. They may well force us to abandon words, and rely instead on the Second Amendment. The pen is mightier than the sword only in a society wherein liberty and civilized discourse–free speech–reign. God help us all when that is no longer true in America.

Fausta Rodriquez Wertz: No limits.

Don Surber: Answer: No.

Rob Miller: I have to honestly confess myself perplexed on this one. In the America I grew up in, what was considered free speech was pretty well defined and the standard was relatively universal, based on the old Supreme Court ‘fire in a crowded theater’ definition.Neither is true anymore and in my opinion it is mostly the Left that has deliberately bastardized the concept.

What we have now is a situation where what constitutes free speech basically depends on whose talking and where. If you’re on most of America’s campuses, speech that is openly racist, disparages males, talks about assassinating the president or in some cases borderline incites violence against ‘Republicans’ or other select groups is considered free speech, while having someone like Milo Yiannopoulos, Ann Coulter, Ben Shapiro, Charles Murray et al speak by invitation on a college campus is not considered free speech at all, but something to be suppressed by any means necessary.

The same thing occurs almost daily in our public media and discourse. Someone like Bill Maher can gleefully accuse the president of the United States of incest with his own daughter, or a Stephen Corbet can lunch an obscene hateful rant from the safety of the CBS studios. Someone like Hasan Minhaj can attack the president viciously far beyond any pretense of a roast and call Steve Bannon a Nazi and it passes for protected speech and ‘comedy.’ Mention that Minhaj avidly supports Islamist Muslim Brotherhood front groups like CAIR and the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC) is apparently ‘racist’ beyond the pale and in need of suppression, at least according to the Left. And in fact, the Left does it’s very best to suppress any realistic discussion of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist fascism on the channels of communication it controls.

In 1942, the U.S. Supreme Court established the doctrine by a 9–0 decision in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire. It held that “insulting or ‘fighting words,’ those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace” are among the “well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech the prevention and punishment of [which] … have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem.”

In that case, the fighting words were ‘fascist’ and ‘racketeer.’ What would happen if Steve Bannon (who is definitely not a Nazi) were to sue Minhaj for libel? Based on our current libel laws, it’s an open question. What if Bannon were to confront Minhaj and demand a public apology and when he didn’t receive one, knock Mihaj to the pavement? Again, an open question. And in Bannon’s case, the position he holds in the Trump Administration pretty much precludes himfrom taking any action at all, something Minhaj in certainly aware of.

The First Amendment obviously only applies to certain people. And I don’t think that’s what our Founders intended.

I’m not really sure how we fix this. We could loosen up and redefine the libel laws, but we run the risk of the cure being worse than the disease, as much as I’d like to see certain people get the pants sued off them. or we could wait for a case to amble its way to the Supreme Court (assuming they even agree to hear it) and hope for new guidelines that enforce the same tolerance on everyone. But given that there are now plenty of people wearing judicial robes out there whom are perfectly happy with the abuse of our First Amendment (including on our Supreme Court) depending on the politics and who the plaintiff is, that’s essentially a coin toss.

Doug Hagin: Outside of libel? No.

Laura Rambeau Lee :Over the past several decades we have seen our First Amendment right to free speech become more restricted through a progressive campaign of political correctness. The left has deemed certain words and expressing certain beliefs as “offensive” and those who speak the truth are often attacked verbally and called racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, etc. Progressives know very well how destructive these labels can be and use them effectively to silence their opposition.

Today we are seeing the Antifa movement seeking to curtail the free speech of those with whom they disagree. These self-labeled anti-fascists are actually anti-First Amendment groups who are growing more violent and disruptive across the country. Their only purpose is to create chaos and widen the chasm of divisiveness the left has created in our country. Incitement to violence is not free speech, just as rioting and destroying private property or blocking traffic and businesses cannot be considered peaceably assembling or justifiably expressing grievances.

Speech itself should remain unlimited except for the common sense “don’t yell fire in a crowded theater” type of speech. While we may disagree with what someone says or even find it offensive, we must respect a person’s right to say it. But as with so many of our inherent rights we have to accept responsibility for our words and actions. Violent protesters and those who destroy property must be held accountable and punished for these crimes. This cannot be permitted and protected as free speech. The rule of law must be upheld and applied equally to all individuals.

The left must understand what free speech truly is and what it means to speak freely in a free society. We cannot allow them to dictate what viewpoints can or cannot be expressed. Tolerance goes both ways. Individuals in our society must be able to speak freely without fear of personal attack or injury by those who disagree with them. It is up to our elected officials and our law enforcement officers to assure that all of our rights are protected.

Well, there it is!

Make sure to drop by every Monday for the WoW! Magazine Forum. And enjoy WoW! Magazine 24-7 with some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere. Take from me, you won’t want to miss it.

State official tries to block Trump from speaking in Calif.

Tags

California, California primary, Communism, Donald Trump, First Amendment, government tyranny, war on free speech and expression

Absolutely incredible that California state officials attempted to block Donald Trump from speaking in California.

Clearly, such actions was a clarion call for their Marxist puppets to riot.

H/t @wdednh – You Decide.

 

Donald Trump and the Heckler’s Veto

Tags

Arthur Terminiello, Donald Trump, First Amendment, Freedom of Speech, the heckler's veto

“…protest of political speech is itself protected speech, but protest cannot be so forceful or dominant that it vetoes the speaker….”

Reason.com by Judge Andrew Napolitano

On Feb. 7, 1946, Arthur Terminiello, a Roman Catholic priest who was a fierce opponent of communism and believed that President Harry Truman was too comfortable with it, gave an incendiary speech in a Chicago hall that his sponsors had rented.

The hall held about 800 people, but nearly 2,400 showed up. Father Terminiello’s opponents outnumbered his supporters by a two-to-one ratio. The atmosphere in the hall was electric, with almost everyone present taking sides for or against this priest, all under the watchful eyes of Chicago police.

The speech delighted the priest’s supporters and enraged his detractors. When it became apparent that violence might break out, the Chicago police approached Terminiello while he was speaking and asked him to stop and leave the building.

He refused to leave and resumed his speech. The police prediction soon came to pass. The fiery priest ignited the hatred of his adversaries, many of whom seemed to have come to that venue to silence him.

The police safely escorted Terminiello out of the hall and then, in the presence of the many rioters who by now had spilled out onto a public street, arrested him for inciting a riot. The charge was defined in Illinois in the mid-1940s so as to criminalize any behavior that intentionally arouses the public to anger or brings about public unrest.

The police did not arrest any of the rioters who smashed windows, destroyed the stage and assaulted the priest. They saw him arrested for his words that they hated.

Terminiello was tried and convicted. After his conviction had been upheld by the Illinois Supreme Court, he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reversed his conviction. In so doing, the high court saved the First Amendment from authoritarian impulses that sought to narrow its scope, and ushered in the modern judicial understanding that has informed the present-day parameters of the freedom of speech….

Continue

When the government can tell you what you can and cannot say, your freedom is all but gone!

Tags

Barack Obama, blasphemy laws, First Amendment, Islam, United Nations, war on free speech and expression

Lines by Liming

Let me re-state the headline here another way: ” … When the government can tell you what to say, and what not to say, all hope for lasting freedom is gone. . .”

Why am I talking about this right now on the first day of 2016?

I am talking this way because I have read that the Obama Administration is considering a United Nations resolution that would criminalize speech considered to be blasphemous or hateful by members of certain religions and would have the effect of putting the First Amendment of The Constitution of The United States “Under Review” by The UN and I think that situation would be total […]

Click Here To Read The Rest of: When the government can tell you what you can and cannot say your freedom is all but gone!

For those who would continue to say, “don’t sweat it, it could never happen here,” I beg to differ.