An Inert People is “the Greatest Menace” to our Republic

Voting is obviously important. But as citizens of these United States, one of our most sacred obligations is to work hard between the elections.  We need to talk with each other or else we will not be a united community, but only an ugly place were "factions" fight each other. For the Founders factions were one of their biggest fears.  Here are Madison's words from "The Federalist No. 10":

Among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments, never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail therefore to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice and confusion introduced into the public councils, have in truth been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have every where perished . . .

By a faction 1 understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community. ...

There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects....

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them every where brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning Government and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have in turn divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other, than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions, and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions, has been the various and unequal distribution of property.

Madison viewed "pure democracy" as a dangerous thing.

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Pathologizing Dissent

This is the next step in the evolution of censorship: declaring that those with dissenting opinions are not well, that they are mentally ill. And then threatening to yank their professional licenses. That this approach has been embraced by an organization of psychologists is especially noteworthy. The article by Neeraja Deshpande is titled Will Jordan Peterson Lose His License for Wrongthink? The Canadian psychologist is right to resist re-education. Here's an excerpt:

The College of Psychologists of Ontario has told [psychologist Jordan] Peterson that if he doesn’t go to therapy—sorry, a board-mandated “Coaching Program” with a board-issued therapist—it may revoke his license to practice psychology. What warranted this ultimatum? A few tweets and a podcast.

According to Peterson, about “a dozen people” from around the world complained to the college about comments he had made on Twitter and on Joe Rogan’s podcast, claiming that those statements had caused “harm.”

In March, the college began investigating these complaints. Then, in November, the college informed Peterson: “The comments at issue appear to undermine the public trust in the profession as a whole, and raise questions about your ability to carry out your responsibilities as a psychologist.”

. . . .

Institutions whose mission is to facilitate open discourse have become shells of their former selves, living off their rapidly decaying legacies to conform to the whims of the mob.

But there is something about the Peterson story that is more chilling. It was not enough for the College to declare his comments offensive. It had to go one step further and imply that there was something about him that was unwell. By referring Peterson to a therapist for daring to speak his mind, the College of Psychologists of Ontario has pathologized dissent. It has made political disagreement into an illness.

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The Twitter File Disclosures, So Far . . .

Matt Taibbi recently published a summary of the Twitter File disclosures so far.

One of the big take-aways with the Twitter Files so far: There has been substantial ongoing Deep State (FBI, CIA, DHS, CENTCOM) interference with how citizen attempts to discuss important important issues on Twitter. Our own government encouraged the shadow-banning and cancellation of thousands the authors of true or controversial postings. The net result was to secretly muzzle many people (including highly-credentialed medical doctors and researchers on COVID issues) in order to make it look like there was a false consensus on many highly disputed issues. The independent journalists further uncovered evidence that the FBI was paying Twitter multi-millions of $ so that Twitter would do the FBI's dirty-work for it. In sum, we appear to have actionable cases of a private third-party acting under color of state law (Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan (1963)).

This is chilling stuff right out of Orwell's 1984. There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution suggesting that this government censorship is authorized and, in fact, this government action appears to clash head-on with the First Amendment. According to Matt Taibbi, there are a lot more disclosures yet to come.

The official reaction of the legacy media so far (NYT, MSNBC, NPR, WaPo and MSNBC: almost total silence. No better evidence that they think of their readers as infantile.

I have been following the Twitter Files closely. To express my outrage about what has been going on I redesigned the FBI Official Seal, which I hereby offer to the FBI free of charge.

Continue ReadingThe Twitter File Disclosures, So Far . . .

Twitter Files Result in Conspiracy of Silence by Legacy Media Outlets

I just finished reading "The Most Terrifying Conclusion From the Twitter Files That Everyone's Ignoring," by J.D. Rucker.  He makes these observations, with which I agree.

Government and their proxies have been censoring American citizens by ordering Big Tech companies to do it for them. This is a clear betrayal of the spirit of the 1st Amendment at the very least and is likely worthy of legal action. . . .

But while conservative media is busy discussing the ramifications of censorship and the near certainty that both the last two elections as well as the Covid "vaccine" rollout were dramatically impacted by illegal actions taken by members of our government, there's actually a far more troubling takeaway from all of this. For the various misinformation operations to have gone unreported by anyone in or out of government and media, that means an unfathomable number of people have been aware at the least. Many have been directly involved and we're just getting confirmation of it now.

Halfway through Rucker's article I did a search for the word "Twitter" at the websites of the NYT, Washington Post, MSNBC and NPR.  There is almost zero coverage of the Twitter Files at any of these outlets, with the exception of one article by the NYT. It's as if the Twitter Files were never released. This non-coverage is predictable based on the "news" covered by these outlets over the past several years, during which they have been selectively embellishing and stuffing stories mostly in unison, to push their Woke agenda and to elect democrats. These outlets want to claim that nothing interesting is going on because the Twitter Files revelations reflect so poorly on the "journalism" being produced by these media corporations. They want to act as though nothing is happening, but Rucker's article accurately describes that these things have been going on--there is enough here to convince any legitimate journalist with even low-level curiosity to write hundreds of articles:

  1. The FBI set up a command center in San Francisco in fall 2020 that forwarded censorship requests from bureau headquarters to social media platforms.

  2. The FBI succeeded frequently with social media firms when it forwarded censorship requests, including content posted by Americans.

  3. Federal agencies also partnered with contractors to ensure certain content was policed and censorship, creating a degree of separation.

  4. Homeland Security officials took part in weekly meetings with Twitter executives as the 2020 election approached.

  5. Homeland Security knew Twitter had second thoughts about censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story.

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FIRE Comments on the Forbidden Words of Stanford University

Excerpt from an Article by FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression):

By now, much has been written about the words and phrases Stanford removed from its website for their potential to cause harm. “That was insane!” isn’t palatable, because “This term trivializes the experiences of people living with mental health conditions.” What to do when referring to a whitelisted or blacklisted IP address? Try “allowlist/denylist,” because the former terms “[a]ssign value connotations based on color (white = good and black = bad), an act which is subconsciously racialized.” You get the idea. “American,” “dumb,” and “lame” are out, too . . . .

Last week, after the list became public and backlash mounted, Stanford announced it would conduct a review of the guide. The statement from Chief Information Officer Steve Gallagher clarified the website does not represent Stanford University policy. “It also does not represent mandates or requirements,” Gallagher wrote. The list simply provides “suggested alternatives.” “But, we clearly missed the mark,” Gallagher concedes. “We value the input we have been hearing, from a variety of perspectives, and will be reviewing it thoroughly and making adjustments to the guide.”

While FIRE is, of course, relieved to hear these alternatives are not required, the inherent infantilization of steering adults away from words and phrases like “tone deaf” and “mailman” is troubling. By prematurely wading into conversations and deeming words and phrases offensive on behalf of its adult students, Stanford deprives its community members the chance to build resilience and talk through the issues of the day without having to constantly worry about stepping on rakes.

We think institutions of higher education better serve students by not inserting themselves in language debates that are almost certain to produce a “Streisand effect,” occurring when more attention is brought to forbidden words and phrases in the effort to silence them. FIRE recommends a culture of trust, not coddling....

In 2016, Nick Haslam coined the term “concept creep” to describe the tendency for the semantic range of harm-related concepts to expand over time. In other words, the meaning of concepts such as “trauma,” “bullying,” and “violence” has broadened to include ever milder, subtler phenomena.

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