In the U.S., we have cowardly authoritarians. They pervert language in order to corrupt our ability to communicate with and disagree with each other. They use gilded, ruthless and insidious power to create the false consensus, making people with sincere objections disappear, trampling on free speech and, often, on our First Amendment.
"Without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; public discussion is a political duty." Justice Louis Brandeis, Concurrence in Whitney v California
"A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true." -Martin Luther King Jr.
“You can't be neutral on a moving train.” Howard Zinn
I’m worried about the people who censor us. Who protects THEM from dangerous information? Who keeps THEM safe from words? They are constantly subjected to misinformation. We need censors for the censors!
My above attempt to mock the censors carries an important point: Censors think of themselves as immune from the danger of bad words and ideas. How could that possibly be? I'm sure they believe that they are intellectual superior or else they wouldn't risk their mental health and their LIVES to protect us. I suspect they don't worry at all about workplace self-contamination. It's much more likely that they laugh at what what they are paid to do: pretending to protect the rest of us. They think of us as rubes, as the hoi polloi. Just keep those paychecks coming! As Matt Taibbi recently stated in his Congressional testimony, they are part of the Censorship-Industrial Complex. They think they are super-smart, certainly smarter than the rest of us because they are being paid to be full of shit and anti-American.
The belief of censors that they are immune to the dangerous ideas they filter for us is a classic case of myopic, one-level reasoning. It is as bad as the traditional theologian "tennis without a net that many people have tried to jam down my throat my entire life. It goes like this:
Everything must have a cause.The universe must have had a cause.
God caused the universe!
[At this point they are finished and they stare are you smugly]
Normal people should then speak up: "Hey, I thought your first premise is that EVERYTHING must have a cause, right? Who caused "God"?"
That's when they claim that "God" doesn't need to have a cause or some similar BS. Or they change the topic.
Censors who claim to be immune to the effects of dangerous words and cause-less causers are classic cases of motivated reasoning, social intuitionism, emotional security blankets dressed up in fancy words.
FIRE's Position on government attempts to ban the teaching of divisive concepts in schools:
FIRE has been tracking and engaging with legislation that would regulate how race and sex is discussed on college and university campuses.
In the past few years, this typically came in the form of bans on training or teaching so-called “divisive” concepts. This legislative season appears no different as several states in the past three months have either issued executive orders or introduced legislation on this topic.
These states include Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
While FIRE takes no position on bill provisions that apply to the K-12 context, in which states generally have broader authority to set curricula, it’s worth noting that even with such broad authority, K-12 legislation could face vagueness challenges if it does not clearly set forth what it prohibits.
We also do not oppose provisions that would regulate or prohibit mandatory non-credit-earning training at institutions of higher education. Restrictions on the content and views expressed during non-credit-earning training doesn’t infringe on the First Amendment or principles of academic freedom because the content of those trainings constitute the government’s own speech. The government is allowed to regulate its own speech and that of government agencies under its control. We also acknowledge that the government can prohibit institutions from compelling students or faculty to communicate personal agreement with views they do not hold.
FIRE, however, does oppose legislation that would institute curricular bans on particular concepts or ideologies at institutions of higher education. These curricular bans threaten academic freedom — which protects the rights of faculty to teach and assert positions as they see fit — and disregards decades of judicial precedent confirming the critical importance of academic freedom in higher education.
FIRE will fight any legislation that crosses the bright line that prohibits the government from banning ideas in college classrooms. Indeed, FIRE is currently fighting Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act” in federal court, a law passed last year that restricts instruction on eight concepts related to “race, color, national origin, or sex” in college classrooms. After we filed suit, the court halted enforcement of the law, recognizing that it violates the First Amendment rights of students and faculty."
Note about proposed Missouri legislation:
"Missouri’s HB 75 would prohibit an employee of an institution of higher education from requiring or making “part of a course,” eight concepts related to race or sex stereotyping. Like Florida’s Stop WOKE Act, this provision threatens free speech and academic freedom by regulating what faculty members are allowed to say in their classrooms.
Michael Shellenberger testified before Congress on March 9, 2023. This is the Executive Summary of his presentation:
In his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower warned of “the acquisition of unwarranted influence… by the military-industrial complex.” Eisenhower feared that the size and power of the “complex,” or cluster, of government contractors and the Department of Defense would “endanger our liberties or democratic processes.” How? Through “domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money.” He feared public policy would “become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
Eisenhower’s fears were well-founded. Today, American taxpayers are unwittingly financing the growth and power of a censorship-industrial complex run by America’s scientific and technological elite, which endangers our liberties and democracy. I am grateful for the opportunity to offer this testimony and sound the alarm over the shocking and disturbing emergence of state-sponsored censorship in the United States of America.
The Twitter Files, state attorneys general lawsuits, and investigative reporters have revealed a large and growing network of government agencies, academic institutions, and nongovernmental organizations that are actively censoring American citizens, often without their knowledge, on a range of issues, including on the origins of COVID2 , COVID vaccines3 , emails relating to Hunter Biden’s business dealings4 , climate change5 , renewable energy6 , fossil fuels7 , and many other issues.
I offer some cautions. I do not know how much of the censorship is coordinated beyond what we have been able to document, and I will not speculate. I recognize that the law allows Facebook, Twitter, and other private companies to moderate content on their platforms. And I support the right of governments to communicate with the public, including to dispute inaccurate and misleading information.
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