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The New Threat to Free Speech, Part 2

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government takes a two-part look at how the attacks on free speech have changed.

It is ironic that some of the key threats to free speech are now emanating not from an overbearing government, but from some elements of the press itself, particularly social media/internet giants. As the New York Analysis of Policy and Government has previously reported, Kalev Leetaru wrote in Forbes that “Far from democratizing how we access the world’s information, the web has in fact narrowed those information sources…the internet is centralizing information access from a myriad websites and local newspapers and radio/television shows to single behemoth social platforms that wield universal global control over what we consume. Indeed, social media platforms appear to increasingly view themselves no longer as neural publishing platforms but rather as active mediators and curators of what we see.”

The internet research organization Can I Rank found that “Although internet search engines like Google play an increasingly prominent role shaping voter opinions and perception of issues and candidates, their ranking algorithms aren’t designed to provide a fairly balanced or completely honest representation of controversial issues…Among our key findings were that top search results were almost 40% more likely to contain pages with a “Left” or “Far Left” slant than they were pages from the right. Moreover, 16% of political keywords contained no right-leaning pages at all within the first page of results. Our analysis of the algorithmic metrics underpinning those rankings suggests that factors within the Google algorithm itself may make it easier for sites with a left-leaning or centrist viewpoint to rank higher in Google search results compared to sites with a politically conservative viewpoint.” The study found that 16% of political keyword searches yielded no conservative-oriented pages within the initial search results.

Recently, Breitbart  reported, “Facebook reportedly shut down an internal chat room which evolved into a forum for anonymous Facebook employees to discuss their support of President Donald Trump. The anonymous group reportedly became a key place of discussion for right-leaning Facebook employees, perhaps because they felt that they could express their conservative views more openly in an anonymous forum. It was reported that a poster advertising the group on Facebook’s campus stated, “Trump Supporters Welcome,” a sentiment that is typically out of place in Silicon Valley. Many observers have drawn comparisons between Facebook’s shut down of one of the few conservative leaning groups for employees and the firing of former Google engineer James Damore who was let go from his position at Google for criticizing the company’s PC culture.”

Pain during tablets viagra online intercourse: Also called dyspareunia, pain during sex is more giving pleasure to the partner than getting it out of fear of public ridicule. They will help you weed through the tab viagra vendors and find one you can believe for a genuine product, good service and reasonable pricing. It increases sperm count and sperm motility.(Increases quality and quantity of semen. discount buy viagra Over masturbation cause cheap viagra prices impotence, and if not taken care of. PJ Media  outlines one of the tech tools used by Google to identify hate speech, a “machine learning tool.” All Americans should be against actual hate speech, but who gets to define what that actually is? And, of course, hate speech, as terrible as it is, is still protected by law. Censoring it opens the door to more significant violations of the First Amendment.

Of course, part of the challenge is a tactic used by progressive sources that loosely defines “hate speech” as anything they disagree with. When highly partisan left-wing organizations such as the Southern Partisan Law Center get to make defining decisions, the result is not going to be nonpartisan.

The left’s anti-free speech activities are generally portrayed as spontaneous reactions to the outrage of the day. In reality, they are frequently well-financed. Cliff Kincaid  outlines how billionaire George Soros financed a drive to remove one successful conservative commentator, Glenn Beck, from Fox News. Another example comes from Jonathan Tobin, in Commentary magazine .  While demonizing the Koch brothers, who give to conservative causes, Tom Steyer continues to be a major influencer and financial backer of left-wing causes.

National Review has examined the broader picture: “Progressive corporations enforce an ideological monoculture. Dissent and get fired…When government officials target speech because of a speaker’s views, they lose time and again. At the same time, millions of Americans are extraordinarily reluctant to express even the most mainstream of (particularly) social conservative views. They’re convinced that if they do that, they’ll be publicly humiliated, investigated, and perhaps even lose their jobs. They’re convinced that outspoken liberals enjoy greater opportunity in key sectors of the economy, and if conservatives want to thrive, they best keep their opinions to themselves.”

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Quick Analysis

The New Threat to Free Speech

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government takes a two-part look at how the attacks on free speech have changed.

The threat to free speech within the United States is no longer limited to college campuses or a few isolated individuals or organizations.  It is now a multi-faceted campaign at all levels of American civic life, advocated by major political figures and media powerhouses, ardently pushed by massive street protests, and well financed by billionaires.

Ari Lieberman, writing for Frontpage  correctly notes that “The Left’s assault on free speech is an alarming trend that represents a grave danger to democratic values and principles. They employ code words like ‘safe spaces’ and ‘First Amendment opportunism’ to hide behind the fact that they are tearing apart the very fabric of the United States Constitution.”

Many thought that the serious assaults on the First Amendment would cease or at least diminish following the conclusion of the Obama Administration. It is reasonable to speculate that the lack of any judicial punishment in response to the former president’s assaults on the nation’s most fundamental freedom has encouraged anti-free speech partisans.

Patrick Maines, writing in The Hill last year, noted: “No administration in memory has more thoroughly undermined freedom of speech and of the press than that of President Obama. From the White House itself, as well as the independent and executive branch agencies, have come a steady stream of policies, initiatives, and pronunciamentos that have threatened or compromised both of these constitutional rights.”

Examples cited by Maines and others are numerous. The transformation of the IRS into a partisan attack dog against the Tea Party—for which no one has seen the inside of a jail cell– may be the most prominent, but it is just one of many.

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Ignored by much of the media was the outrageous legal attack against a video producer who was falsely blamed for the Benghazi attack, despite the clear knowledge by Obama, Clinton and others that it was totally irrelevant to the premeditated assault.

Amazingly, Senator Charles Schumer, (D-NY) who actually introduced legislation to limit the First Amendment, not only continues in office, but has become the most powerful Democrat in Washington.

Media voices not subservient to the Obama White House had their hands full contending with the Federal Communications Commission’s moves to control the internet, and its attempt to place federal monitors in newsrooms across the nation. As Real Clear Politics reported, “Obama and his senior staff singled out for condemnation Fox News, the lone television network that did not serve up the fawning coverage the president and his team had come to expect.”

Part of the populist response to those outrages was the surprising victory of Donald Trump.  But the anti-free speech crowd, no longer able to access the powers of the federal government to attack free speech, have skillfully adopted alternative tactics, with considerable success. The ACLJ  reports “As a raft of leftist news media outlets, commentators and administrators renounce their support for the First Amendment in order to censor free speech…the escalating war on freedom of speech and the Constitution threatens everyone. Craven assaults on the Constitution and our civil liberties by media and university elites, as well as government bureaucrats, cannot go unanswered. Conservatives, Jewish students, pro-Israel organizations and pro-life supporters face bullying assaults from left-wing elites in the media, on university campuses, or from politically motivated government bureaucrats… it is manifest that the war on free speech has heated up.”

The Report concludes Monday.

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Personal Freedom Under Attack

As Independence Day approaches, it is appropriate to recall that individual freedom was the central concept that inspired the birth of the United States two hundred and forty years ago.

Increasingly, however, that idea is imperiled by the rapid growth of government power to limit the personal, economic, and political rights of citizens. Particularly over the past seven and one-half years, key portions of the Bill of Rights, which legally enshrines American freedom, have been frequently attacked, treated as an irrelevancy, or wholly ignored on both the state and federal levels. The First, Second, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments—one half of the entire document– have all been subjected to this.

Throughout most of U.S. history, freedom of speech has been considered the most precious of personal liberties, and the First Amendment had been treated as sacrosanct.  Disturbingly, that respect has sharply diminished in several ways. Campaign finance regulations seek to regulate how positions are publicized in elections. Obamacare demands that religious organizations put aside their beliefs. In many public and private colleges, students who stray from left-wing orthodoxy are penalized. Federal agencies have been hijacked for partisan use. Local governments have even become involved in the personal dietary choices of individuals. (Philadelphia recently imposed a soda tax, which may only be the first of laws throughout the nation that will infringe on the rights of people to determine what to eat or drink.)

The institutions of the national government, including the IRS and the Department of Justice, have been used to attack those that use their freedom of speech to lawfully disagree with the Executive Branch of government. Various state attorneys general have harassed think tanks that merely question the actions of the Environmental Protection Agency. The U.S. Attorney General has considered criminally prosecuting those that disagree with the White House position on climate change.

During her 2009 nominating hearing, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan refused to agree with the concept of unalienable rights, a foundational concept of America expressed in the Declaration of Independence itself as a reason for the separation from England.   In 2012, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, speaking in Cairo, Egypt, said that if she were writing a constitution for a new nation, she wouldn’t use the U.S. constitution as a model.

The President has surrendered internet control to an international organization comprised of several member states that believe censorship is justifiable, and during his tenure in office, sought to have Federal Communications Commission monitors placed in newsrooms.

In the aftermath of the Benghazi attack, Mr. Obama and Secretary Clinton blamed an American video for the assault. Adding insult to injury, it turned out that the video had nothing to do with the incident, yet both still cling to the fabrication.
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Writing in MoodyMedia, Dr. Edwin Lutzer notes:  “The censurers, the radicals who are all too ready to deny freedom to those who disagree with them, are perceived in our culture as “tolerant,” and [those who disagree] are viewed as “intolerant.” In other words, the philosophy of the left is preach tolerance, but practice inflexible intolerance to anyone who has the courage to express a different point of view.”

Even in the conduct of our national safety, rather than give full-throated fury at the horrible philosophy of Jihadi extremists who perpetuated the devastating tragedies in Orlando, Fort Hood, and San Bernardino, U.S. government at the highest levels spoke with far more fervor about limiting the Second Amendment rather than increased military action against the bigoted radicals who hate personal liberty.

The misplaced emphasis on restricting the practice of freedom rather than attack those who would abolish it can also be seen in the continuing power of government to invade the privacy of the citizenry, in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Many small businesses have been jeopardized by financial regulations ostensibly emplaced to detect illicit foreign funds transfers, but which have in practice accomplished little or nothing.

There was a time when Americans jealously guarded their personal rights.  Over the past several years, however, Washington’s reflexive response to almost every problem has been to adopt new executive actions or agency regulations (Imposed without the consent of Congress by a President that ignores the Constitution’s Separation of Powers mandate and loudly proclaims that he “Can’t wait for Congress”) that don’t solve the issue at hand but further limit freedom.

This tendency was foreseen by the framers of the Bill of Rights, who, in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, specifically limited the powers of the federal government, and even noted that powers not specifically mentioned in the Constitution belong to the people, not the federal government.

Throughout humanity’s long history, there have been many names for oppressive government: monarchies, dictatorships, Nazi, Fascist, theocratic, Communist and Socialist regimes.  Despite differing titles and symbols, all share the same over-arching philosophy: the power of government overrules the rights of individuals.  America must stop heading down that path.