Tuesday, January 12, 2021

The End of the American Bill of Rights - The Freedom of Speech is Dying

 In the early hours of the dawn of Liberal Fascism, the first empirical casualty is the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.  The assassins are twofold - a public education system that has imprinted the idea that speech is violence and a social media war that rewards on a first come first serve basis the solicitation of censorship.

The society of the United States has normalized a global social practice which is the idea that free speech is only practiced between trusted cohorts.  In repressive and unstable countries, the individual is no less capable of Free Speech but it carries a heavy risk.  What separated the United States conceptually was the idea the the free exchange of ideas was precisely what liberated society and the country to greater art, science, and political stability.  After all, if only tolerated speech was common, free speech that differed was not only risky but psychologically retarding.

In recent years, the main stream media (major networks and streaming services large and small) have vocally advocated the kind of Freedom of Speech that repressive societies practice.

It is usually expressed in one way or another this way - "Say whatever you want but there are consequences!"  And it isn't expressed in a way that implies that Freedom of Speech is a healthy exchange of ideas, a reasoned civil disagreement, or simply a temporal opinion or belief based on recent thinking.

No, Freedom of Speech today is a chilling subliminal warning that saying anything that isn't believed or tolerated by the urban liberal majority WILL be subject to immediate consequence.  That could mean loss of job, loss of access to one of the many 21st century communications platforms, physical harm, exposure of family to social retribution, and so on.

This xkcd website political cartoon puts a smiley face on the obvious ominous warning;




The door being illustrated is to a gas chamber,  a person cancellation that is publicly humiliating and that carries draconian punishment that far outweighs any harm that the speech might contain. It invites and encourages "people listening" to imagine and fashion a door of their own choosing that somehow teaches the speaker of an unacceptable narrative a punishing lesson.

The new theater lesson isn't the fear that someone will yell 'fire' in the crowded theater, it is the fear that the crowed theater will all yell 'kill' should anyone dare speak something unwelcome.