Tag Archives: #FreedomOfSpeech

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Today’s #woke left sure do hate Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, and democracy . . . when those things go against leftist values

I will admit it up front: when I saw the article on the front page of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website main page, and cited below, I expected one dripping with liberal bias, but it was actually mostly balanced reporting.

Why Moms for Liberty was designated an ‘extremist’ group by the Southern Poverty Law Center

Born out of opposition to COVID-19 mandates in schools, Moms of Liberty pivoted to targeting diversity education and how LGBTQ issues are handled by schools.

by Maddie Hanna | Wednesday, June 28, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

Moms for Liberty calls itself a parent empowerment group. But as the polarizing organization arrives in Philadelphia this week for its annual summit, it’s being identified as something else: an “antigovernment extremist group.”

That’s according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the veteran civil rights organization that tracks domestic extremism. This year, the group added a number of “parental rights” groups — the Southern Poverty Law Center refers to them as “anti-student-inclusion” — to its tally of hate and antigovernment extremist groups.

Robert Stacy McCain has done a lot of reporting on the Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC, and pointed out, in an article asking “What counts as hate?“, writing:

by continually expanding the definition of “hate” and “extremism,” and by encouraging censorship and suppression of anyone who dissents from their liberal agenda, the SPLC compels people with more or less mainstream beliefs to engage in the kind of activism practiced by Moms for Liberty. Furthermore  (and, again, I think SPLC staff are too stupid to grasp this), by denoting mainstream groups as proponents of “hate,” the SPLC undermines its own credibility and causes people who are not remotely “extremist” to question the whole rationale of this type of “hate”-hunting enterprise. Like, why should we even care if someone is prejudiced against gay people or black people or Jews or whatever? So long as they are not engaged in any actual criminal behavior, or advocating violence against others, people are free to form their own opinions. This whole business of “exposing” people as holding allegedly dangerous beliefs — which is to say, acting as Thought Police — is antithetical to liberty. And I think more Americans are beginning to reject the type of Thought Police agenda that SPLC pursues.

Of course, in heavily Democratic Philadelphia, where so many seem to despise freedom of speech for the people they oppose, the staff at the American Revolution Museum in Philadelphia, a revolution against the British government spread by freedom of speech and of the press, don’t support allowing the Moms being allowed to speak.

Back to the Inquirer:

Moms for Liberty has accused the Southern Poverty Law Center of espousing “hate” toward its members. Here’s why the organization says Moms for Liberty warrants the designation:

What makes Moms for Liberty an antigovernment group?

Founded in Florida in 2021, Moms for Liberty was born out of opposition to COVID-19 mandates in schools and now claims 285 chapters across 45 states. It pivoted to targeting diversity education and how LGBTQ issues are handled by schools, as part of a broader conservative movement that has accused schools of indoctrinating students around race, gender, and sexuality.

Heaven forfend! Some parents are opposed to the public schools, which have, due to the compulsory education laws in every state, what is, in effect, a captive audience, been teaching, been indoctrinating, beliefs which are opposed to some people’s religious beliefs, and opposed to simple, common sense. It wasn’t so very long ago that girls who like rough-and-tumble, who would go out and get dirty and sweaty playing ball with the boys were called, sometimes admiringly and sometimes not, tomboys, but everyone knew that they were still girls. There was a time in which boys who liked to play with dolls or do somewhat ‘girly’ things were called, never admiringly, sissies, but everyone knew that they were still boys. Now? Now, they’re not what they were born, but one of 1 × 10n new ‘genders,’ you’ve got to call them that, and it’s time to reach for the puberty blockers and surgical scalpel. No one would ever say that public school libraries should have materials showing girls fellating boys, but today’s left — which includes a lot of public school teachers and administrators — are aghast that some people are opposed to having materials in public school libraries which depict boys fellating boys. Many concerned parents do not want this kind of stuff normalized, but if you are a parent who doesn’t want that, the SPLC says that you are a hater and an anti-government extremist.

That messaging is what landed Moms for Liberty on the SPLC’s list, said Maya Henson Carey, a research analyst with SPLC’s Intelligence Project.

“It’s really looking at their overall narrative: that public educators and public schools are attempting to indoctrinate and sexualize children through this radical Marxist agenda,” Carey said.

The SPLC notes statements from Moms for Liberty leaders, including the group’s slogan that “we do not co-parent with the government,” comments referring to “government schools,” support for abolishing the federal Department of Education, and accusations that teachers unions are responsible for indoctrination.

In one example flagged by the SPLC, Moms for Liberty said last year that “the K-12 cartel — also known as the national teachers union (NEA) — met and drafted a proposal to replace the word ‘mother’ with ‘birthing person.’” Describing the proposal as “insane,” Moms for Liberty said that “as the teachers union pushes an agenda focused on everything but educating our children, American parents are rising up, taking back our school districts and putting the focus back on educating our children.”

We have previously reported how The Washington Post kowtowed to the #woke by headlining an article with “pregnant people” in both the title and body, and a site search of the Inquirer’s website returned 2,905 references to “pregnant people,” 1,062 references to “pregnant person,” 1,643 references to “birthing person,” and 4,669 references to “birthing people.” Is that what the Inky’s stylebook now requires? Is it surprising that sensible people would note these assaults on language and attempts to normalize transgenderism and the notion that men can get pregnant and have babies?

Well, perhaps the SPLC were not surprised at that, but Maya Henson Carey said that the SPLC cited such objections as part of the reason Moms for Liberty was declared to be an “anti-government extremist” group.

After several paragraphs in which Dr Carey claimed that the Moms must be raaaaacist, comparing their objections to critical race theory, the education of which has a strong political component, she went on:

Moms for Liberty has also opposed policies accommodating transgender students and has referred to gender dysphoria as being “normalized by predators.” And while Moms for Liberty has said it’s focused on removing inappropriate sexual content, efforts to ban books from libraries have disproportionately targeted stories about LGBTQ people or people of color, Carey said.

It’s certainly true that the Moms are fighting the normalization of homosexuality and transgenderism in the public schools, but that’s what they should be doing. It’s an obvious question: why on earth would the public schools be pushing normalization of homosexuality and transgenderism in the first place? Why would the public schools be pushing something which is opposed by many religions, why would they be pushing something that is directly contrary to the religious faiths of many parents?

Is not the state pushing a particular issue which violates a lot of people’s religious faith in itself a state establishment of religion?

Carey said the education groups represent a trend of “a shift to public spaces” by extremist groups, that “comes with them showing up for school board meetings and running for public office. A lot of these antigovernment and hate groups are really infiltrating the lives of everyday Americans.”

And there you have it: an SPLC spokeswoman is complaining that conservatives are exercising their freedom of speech, and, in what must surely be a horrific attack on democracy, are doing something really radical like running for office in democratic elections!

 

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The left really despise Freedom of Speech

The American Revolution was slowly being brewed by the resentments our colonial forebears felt for the really not that oppressive rule by King George III across the wide Atlantic Ocean, and Parliament’s desire that the colonists pay for the costs of their own defense in the French and Indian War. It was our freedom of speech and of the press, things His Majesty might not have liked all that much, but wasn’t in any real position to do much about them, which enabled disaffected colonists to come together in their opposition to rule by Great Britain.

Thus, you’d think that the staffers at the American Revolution Museum would have a great respect for freedom of speech. Well, if you thought that, you’d be wrong!

American Revolution Museum staffers are fighting to cancel a Moms for Liberty event

The Museum has sought to diversify the stories it tells about American history and staffers said that allowing such a group to rent its space undermines the progress the museum has made.

by Juliana Feliciano Reyes | Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Nearly 40 staffers at the Museum of the American Revolution are demanding that museum leadership cancel a scheduled event hosted by Moms for Liberty, a “parents’ rights” group recently classified as an “antigovernment extremist organization” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Can we tell the truth here? The SPLC sees every conservative organization as ‘extremist,’ and would undoubtedly list the American Free News Network as extremist if AFNN appeared on their radar. “Parents’ rights” would certainly qualify as “extremists” to them, because the apparently wholly radical idea that parents, whose children are subject to compulsory education laws, ought to have control of what public education teaches their children is just so, so, so wrong!

You can tell how Moms for Liberty work, from their statements on their website.

The Museum, located in Old City, has sought to diversify the stories it tells about American history — its current special exhibition, “Black Founders,” is a first-of-its-kind spotlight on James Forten, a prominent Black Revolutionary War-era abolitionist — and staffers said allowing such a group to rent its space undermines the progress the museum has made.

“We do not feel that any dollar amount is worth endangering the safety of the museum staff members in the building on the day of the event, serving as a host to a group that does not stand with our values, and damaging the museum’s reputation that we have all worked so hard to build,” a petition signed by 39 staffers reads. The museum employs 75 people full time and 37 part time.

“(E)ndangering the safety of the museum staff members”? Are they accusing the Moms of coming in armed, ready to shoot the staffers, or perhaps beat them with Louisville Slugger baseball bats?

They do hold some truly radical views, claiming that they do not ‘co-parent’ with the government, and they were early in on resistance to the forced masking of children due to the COVID panicdemic.

And horror of horrors, they fought against the long-term closures of the public schools, forcing students into the disastrous remote education policies. The public schools in Philadelphia stayed closed longer than many systems due to the resistance of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers union resistance to reopening fir in-person classes.

Moms for Liberty, an organization that sought control over public education by banning books and removing curriculum related to race, gender, and sexuality, is hosting its national summit in Philadelphia at the end of this month. Featured speakers are to include GOP presidential candidates Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. The site of the summit — the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown — has already been protested by queer and trans-led groups.

Heaven forfend! The Moms wanted to stop the politicization of race in the public schools and the indoctrination of children into acceptance of homosexuality and ‘transgenderism.’ As William Teach noted, there has been a significant upsurge in younger people identifying as homosexual, bisexual, and/or ‘transgendered’ in the past few years, something that could only be caused by ‘grooming,’ by making those things seem acceptable. If individual parents wish to teach their children that such things are acceptable, that’s on them, but what the left and the teachers’ unions want to do is to indoctrinate everyone’s kids to accept that s(tuff).

Naturally, Juliana Feliciano Reyes, the Philadelphia Inquirer reporter who wrote the cited article, said that the Moms were “banning books”, without the qualification that they wanted those books out of public school libraries, period, and not trying to, or able to, prevent private libraries, bookstores, or Amazon.com from having and selling them.

(CEO R. Scott Stephenson) said no employees were required to work that night if they didn’t feel safe.

But for some employees, the damage has already been done.

“I don’t feel appreciated nor safe anymore,” said assistant curator Trish Norman, who is nonbinary. “I don’t feel the museum necessarily has my back.”

Miss Norman doesn’t feel safe anymore? Unless she is alleging that the Moms and their guests are going to assault her in some fashion, she is telling us that her precious little feelings might get hurt.

In a photo published in the article, one protester is carrying a sign saying “Free to Learn.” That’s absolutely right: she is free to teach her kids whatever she wishes. But what she apparently doesn’t want is other parents not wanting their children taught the same things the protester wants.

Well, in the American Revolution that the museum is supposed to celebrate, some American men fought and died to gain our freedom to say and believe whatever we wished, fought and died to give all Americans, even the Moms for Liberty, the right to say and advocate whatever they wished.

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The left want to control your thoughts by controlling your language

To the surprise of exactly no one among The Philadelphia Inquirer’s dwindling readership, the Inky has gone all-in on the so-called Pride Month, with three out of five articles in the opinion section relating to homosexual and transgender activism.

Philadelphia Inquirer screen capture, 6-3-23 at 10:00 AM EDT.

At Central Bucks, transphobic slurs are common and adults are unwilling to intervene

Many faculty members refuse to defend LGBTQ students from the words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill-intent that other students throw their way.

by Leo Burchell and Ben Busick, For The Inquirer | Updated Thursday, June 1, 2023 | 11:00 AM EDT

We are two trans students in the Central Bucks School District, which the American Civil Liberties Union has alleged is a “toxic environment” for LGBTQ students. In our time at Central Bucks, both of us have endured homophobic or transphobic bullying from our peers.

This bullying and discrimination has impacted our ability to learn, and Central Bucks does nothing about it.

One of us — Leo — came out as transgender and changed his name at the beginning of his senior year at Central Bucks West last September. He emailed all of his teachers about his pronouns and name. However, throughout the entire school year, one teacher consistently misgendered him, while only occasionally correcting themself.

It is hard to learn in a classroom when your teacher misgenders you to all the students present.

The authors have written this as though “Leo” Burchell is actually male, and the teachers and students must accept her as being male. It’s clear from their first paragraph, in which they stated that “both of us have endured homophobic or transphobic bullying from our peers,” that many of their fellow students have not accepted such as reality.

When entering one of the very few gender-neutral bathrooms for students to use, Leo was called a “tranny” by a student passing by. That gender-neutral bathroom also frequently lacks toilet paper, paper towels, or both. Another student hurled a homophobic slur at Leo as he handed out flyers about a protest before school one morning.

It is a legitimate complaint if the school, which has gone to the effort to establish ‘gender-neutral’ bathrooms, is not servicing them adequately. But that’s about the only legitimate complaint the authors made.

Central Bucks South, for Ben, has unfortunately not been much better. Homophobic and transphobic phrases are commonplace, and often targeted at Ben. They came out as nonbinary in their sophomore year of high school in 2021. Fortunately, many of their teachers have made a real effort to get their pronouns right and use them correctly. Their lovely AP Spanish teacher even taught Ben’s class (with Ben’s permission) about the Spanish word for nonbinary and the gender-neutral pronouns and conjugations of gendered words. She will probably never realize what an impact that simple gesture had.

“They” is, of course, a plural pronoun, making the short sentence, “They came out as nonbinary in their sophomore year of high school in 2021”, grammatically incorrect and jarring to the ears of an English-speaking person.

However, some faculty members do not try to integrate their pronouns into everyday language. These faculty often use strategies like, “I am just going to use your name so I don’t have to get your pronouns wrong,” which seems like an attempt to be inclusive at first glance but is really just a cop-out. Most transgender and nonbinary people would much rather someone make a mistake, correct themselves, and move on. (If someone with good, inclusive intentions makes a mistake, no big deal.)

Some faculty and most students at Central Bucks South, however, do not appear to have good intentions and rarely use Ben’s pronouns correctly. Even worse, many teachers witness students using the incorrect names and pronouns for transgender and nonbinary students — and do nothing about it.

If “some faculty and most students . . . do not appear to have good intentions” in this, as Miss Burchell and Mr Busick wrote, that is a clear indication that those faculty and students do not accept the claim that Miss Burchell is now a guy and Mr Busick is something other than a male. The authors have an absolute right to claim to be what they are, and to say so publicly, but just as their freedom of speech allows them to do that, the freedom of speech of other people allows other people to not only disagree with the authors’ claims, but say so publicly.

Many faculty members refuse to defend their LGBTQ students from the words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill-intent that other students throw their way. As such, we know many LGBTQ students who often dread going to school.

Sticks and stones, we were once told, could break our bones, but names would never hurt us. However, for Miss Burchell and Mr Busick, “words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill intent” do hurt, and they are demanding protection from those words. One wonders: if the homosexual, bisexual, and transgendered are to be protected from “words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill intent” aimed at their sexual orientation and identity, from what other “words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill intent” should other students, normal students, be protected, because “words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill intent” occur all the time in schools, for a myriad of reasons and just general dislike.

Perhaps they could submit a Hurt Feelings Report Form?

This is, to me, serious, because there are all sorts of attempts to legislate, censor, or otherwise ‘do something’ about ‘hate speech,’ and while the OpEd piece I selected is by high school seniors, there are (supposedly) serious adults who want the government to somehow take action against speech the left don’t like. The attempt to regulate and control speech is an attempt to regulate and control thought: if the government can somehow compel people to use language that agrees with the claims of the ‘transgendered,’ it becomes an effort to legitimize transgenderism, to push the thoughts of people who have a perfect right to reject the cockamamie claim that people can change their sex into avenues which accept that claim. Not just no, but Hell no!

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The left really do hate Freedom of Speech and of The Press

As we have previously reported, the professional media can get very, very upset when other professional media members report things that do not fit Teh Narrative.

Admittedly, I was using the professional media in Philadelphia as my focus, as I frequently express my interest in our nation’s sixth-largest city. But it isn’t just Philly, as CNN is a national source.

Opinion: Why is ‘60 Minutes’ amplifying the views of Marjorie Taylor Greene?

Opinion by Dean Obeidallah | Updated Monday, April 3, 2323 | 8:26 AM EDT

Last year, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia spoke at a white nationalist event organized by Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes that caused Republican leaders to denounce her.

Last week, Greene’s Twitter account was temporarily suspended by the Elon Musk-headed platform over a tweet with a graphic referring to a “Trans Day of Vengeance,” as she denounced a planned transgender rights rally.

And come Tuesday, Greene has announced plans to protest in New York City when former President Donald Trump is expected to be arraigned on an indictment of more than 30 counts, calling the proceedings against him an “unconstitutional WITCH HUNT!”

I’m beginning to get the impression that Mr Obeidallah doesn’t like Mrs Greene very much!

So, who is Dean Obeidallah? The CNN article describes him as: “a former attorney, (and) is the host of SiriusXM radio’s daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show.” Follow him @DeanObeidallah@masto.ai. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.” So, he, too, is a member of the professional media.

But on Sunday, Greene was featured on CBS’ “60 Minutes” in an interview the long-running show promoted on Twitter with the tease: “Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, nicknamed MTG, isn’t afraid to share her opinions, no matter how intense and in-your-face they are. She sits down with Lesley Stahl this Sunday on 60 Minutes.” The images attached to this tweet by “60 Minutes” include Greene and Stahl walking through the US Capitol, taking a stroll outside and Greene showing Stahl something on her phone.

In the segment that aired Sunday night, Stahl noted the congresswoman had moved from the fringe to the GOP’s front row in two years despite a “sharp tongue” and “some pretty radical views” as well as “over the top” comments such as “the Democrats are a party of pedophiles.” Stahl also referred to video of Greene chasing a Parkland, Florida, school shooting survivor, still maintaining that the 2020 election was stolen and failing to criticize Trump over spending. (The interview was conducted before news of his indictment.)

But Stahl didn’t mention Greene spoke at a white nationalist event a year ago while a member of Congress or her extreme anti-Muslim views and her defense of January 6 rioters.

That little related article reference above? I screen captured it, and put it in exactly the same place, and same size, it was on the CNN original. It references another opinion piece, this time by Jill Filipovic McCormick, another hard-left columnist, who wants Mrs Greene kicked out of Congress.

Mrs Greene, however, very well represents the views of her district, the 14th congressional district in Georgia. She won her primary elections easily, and the general election in 2020 by a massive landslide over Democrat Kevin Van Ausdal, 229,827 (74.7%) to 77,798 (25.3%). In 2022, she defeated Democrat Marcus Flowers 170,162 (65.86%) to 88,189 (34.14%). Mrs McCormick’s article was written a month after Mrs Greene’s re-election victory.

Criticism of CBS for amplifying Greene has been swift and well-deserved even before the program aired. Former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois tweeted beforehand: “Wow. Insane that 60 min would do this.” (Kinzinger is a CNN senior political commentator.)

Journalist Molly Jong-Fast also slammed “60 Minutes” with the tweet: “Attention is currency and 60 minutes is spending its currency on the Jewish space lasers woman.” (Jong-Fast was apparently referring to Greene’s past claim that a massive California wildfire was started by “a laser” beamed from space controlled by a prominent Jewish banking family.)

David Hogg, who survived the 2018 horrific school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland and has since become an activist against gun violence, responded, “I look forward to your questions about why she thinks school shootings are fake and why she’s supported QAnon.”

So, Mr Obeidallah listed a #NeverTrump Republican who has become a “CNN senior political commentator”, a liberal journolist[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading, and a left activist. Quite the sample size there!

The distinguished Mr Obeidallah is, as you would guess, a hard-left hater of Donald Trump, as the screen capture from his Mastodon to the right shows. It’s just natural that he would despise everything for which Mrs Greene stands. But there’s something which pegs the irony meter that someone who is purporting to be a journalist and opinion commentator, someone who exercises his Freedom of Speech and of the Press, attacking someone else being allowed to exercise her Freedom of Speech, and CNN’s Freedom of the Press for broadcasting her. Mrs Greene’s constituents knew what she is like, and they still gave her an almost two-to-one margin over her Democratic opponent in the last election, so perhaps, if Mr Obeidallah believes she is so utterly, utterly horrible, so many people in her district supported her.

Mr Obeidallah did note that CBS had previously broadcast interviews with Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in a not-so-veiled attempt to lump Mrs Greene in with those thugs, but with Mrs Greene being a growing national figure, is covering her not actual news? But, as I’ve said before, journolists don’t really think the media should cover the news that they don’t like.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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The Philadelphia Inquirer has now come out against Freedom of Speech and of the Press No one who reads the newspaper regularly can really be surprised.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon sought a restraining order to prevent The New York Times and The Washington Post from printing more of the so-called “Pentagon Papers,” technically the Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, a classified history and assessment of American policy and operations in the Vietnam war. The Times and the Post fought the injunctions in court, the Times winning in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971). The Times was all about the First Amendment and Freedom of the Press.

Of course, the American left were aghast that Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter has meant that conservatives would be able to actually speak freely. As we have previously noted, Twitter added rules banning “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.” “Misgendering” means referring to ‘transgendered’ individuals by their biological sex, either directly or through the use of the appropriate pronouns, while “deadnaming” means referring to such people by their birth names rather than the ones they have adopted which are more consistent with their imagined ‘gender.'[1]The First Street Journal’s Stylebook is exactly the opposite: while we do not change the direct quotes of others, in original material we always refer to people by their normal, biological sex … Continue reading The New York Times gave OpEd space to Chad Malloy[2]Chad Malloy is a man male who claims to be a woman, and goes by the faux name “Parker Malloy.” to claim that such restrictions actually promoted freedom of speech.

And now come the Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer, who are also very much opposed to the freedom of speech and of the press . . . for other people!

Social media companies must curtail the spread of misinformation | Editorial

It may be up to policymakers to strike the balance between upholding the First Amendment and regulating speech on sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

by The Editorial Board | Sunday, February 19, 2023 | 5:00 AM EST

About 500 hours of video gets uploaded to YouTube every minute. The online video-sharing platform houses more than 800 million videos and is the second most visited site in the world, with 2.5 billion active monthly users.

Given the deluge of content flooding the site every day, one would surmise that YouTube must have an army of people guarding against the spread of misinformation — especially in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that was fueled by lies on social media.

Whenever I see something by the Editorial Board which has a plethora of hyperlinks, I always suspect it was written by columnist Will Bunch; that’s just his style. And when I see yet another reference to the Capitol kerfuffle, I’m even more persuaded, because former President Trump has been living, rent-free, in Mr Bunch’s head.

Well, not actually.

Following recent cutbacks, there is just one person in charge of misinformation policy worldwide, according to a recent report in the New York Times. This is alarming, since fact-checking organizations have said YouTube is a major pipeline in the spread of disinformation and misinformation.

The hand-written copy of the proposed articles of amendment passed by Congress in 1789, cropped to show just the text in the third article that would later be ratified as the First Amendment.

The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was very simply written: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” But it seems that the Editorial Board very much want Freedom of Speech and of the Press limited.

Not limited for the Inquirer, of course, but to all of those riff-raff not part of the old-line credentialed media.

Mr Bunch, oh, sorry, the Editorial Board continued for several paragraphs, telling us how Google and Meta and Twitter lave laid off thousands of staff, including people who were, supposedly, staff who were supposed to stifle “misinformation,” and “hate speech,” before we get to this:

But Musk says he is a free speech absolutist — except when it impacts him. The billionaire temporarily suspended the accounts of several journalists and blocked others who rebuked him on Twitter. He also fired employees at SpaceX, one of his other companies, who criticized him.

More to the point, Musk fails to understand that freedom of speech is not absolute. As much as this board supports and cherishes the First Amendment, there are rules and regulations surrounding what can be said.

For example, you can’t harass or violate the rights of others. Just ask Alex Jones. The conspiracy theorist and Infowars founder was ordered to pay nearly $1 billion in damages to the families of eight victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting for his repeated lies that the massacre was a hoax.

Oops, sorry, wrong answer. That was not the government regulating speech, but a civil action in which Mr Jones was found liable for damages (supposedly) inflicted on eight families. Just like the old maxim that you can’t yell, “Fire!” in a crowded theater, while doing so can make you liable for both civil damages and criminal law violations if someone is injured by your actions, that does not give the government the right to prevent you from entering the theater because you might yell, “Fire!”

To be sure, the First Amendment makes it difficult to regulate social media companies. But doing nothing is not the answer. The rise of artificial intelligence to create sophisticated chatbots such as ChatGPT and deepfake technology will worsen the spread of fake news, further threatening democracy. Policymakers must soon strike a balance between the First Amendment and regulating social media.

“Strike a balance”? What part of “Congress shall make no law” don’t the Editorial Board understand?

Texas and Florida have already muddied the regulation debate by passing laws that will upend the already limited content moderation efforts by social media companies and make the internet an even bigger free-for-all. The U.S. Supreme Court put off whether to take up the cases, leaving the state laws in limbo for now.

Meanwhile, the European Union is pushing forward with its own landmark regulations called the Digital Services Act. The measure takes effect next year and aims to place substantial content moderation requirements on social media companies to limit false information, hate speech, and extremism.

And there you have it: the admiration of the Board to limit not what they are calling “false information,” but also “hate speech and extremism.” The Board want to limit what people can read, if it doesn’t meet with their approval of what should be said. We reported on the Inky ending reader comments on all stories other than sports, and then, when a sports story on Will Thomas, the male University of Pennsylvania who claimed to be a woman named “Lia,” with open comments, drew many which held that no, Mr Thomas was not a woman, the newspaper removed them. To the Inky, which has all of its articles on Mr Thomas, on all ‘transgendered’ persons, phrased to agree with the claims that they are the gender they claim to be, rather than the sex they really are, questioning that in any way is ‘misinformation’, ‘hate speech,’ and ‘extremism.’

“As much as this board supports and cherishes the First Amendment,” they claimed, but let’s tell the truth here: the Editorial Board do not support and cherish the First Amendment when those First Amendment rights are exercised by people of whom they disapprove, expressing opinions with which they disagree.

References

References
↑1 The First Street Journal’s Stylebook is exactly the opposite: while we do not change the direct quotes of others, in original material we always refer to people by their normal, biological sex and their original names. But we do say that explicitly.
↑2 Chad Malloy is a man male who claims to be a woman, and goes by the faux name “Parker Malloy.”
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The credentialed media really, really, really hate being held to account Taylor Lorenz is just hopping mad that not everything in the world revolves around her

Taylor Lorenz is a Washington Post journolist[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading about whom we’ve reported several times. Miss Lorenz first came to my attention when she doxed Chaya Raichik, a Brooklyn-based real estate salesperson who was the creator of the Twitter site Libs of TikTok. My good friend Amanda Marcotte of Salon loved that LoTT was doxed, doubtlessly hoping that Chaya Raichik, a Brooklyn-based real estate salesperson and LoTT creator would lose her job, and posted a hope that Mr Musk’s buyout of Twitter results in the whole thing being killed.

Then, a month later, we noted that Miss Lorenz, who found it so necessary to expose Miss Raichik, was simply appalled that the political resistance to President Biden’s attempt to create a Ministry of Truth Disinformation Governance Board within the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security forced the proposal to be ended. The proposed Minister of Truth board administrator, Nina Jankowicz, worked in the press room at Volodymyr Zelensky’s campaign headquarters, which calls into question just how impartial she could have been in fighting ‘disinformation’ concerning the Russo-Ukrainian War.

She later complained about someone else being doxed, a journalism student who had written a critical article about her subject: Continue reading →

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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Would you believe that reading the ‘wrong’ book can get you in trouble at Stanford?

My copy of Mein Kampf.

Have you ever read Mein Kampf? I have, and I even own a copy. I also own copies of The Communist Manifesto, several of Vladlimr Il’ich Lenin’s pre-revolutionary works, the Q’ran, the Book of Mormon, and the old Lancer Books twelve paperback volume set of Conan stories. The fact that I own and have read some wildly contradictory books does not mean that I accept any or some of them as gospel; it means that I have read books.

My copy of Mein Kampf is an English translation by Ralph Manheim, copyrighted in 1943 by the Houghton Mifflin Company.

Adolf Hitler did not actually write the book. Rather, he paced around his cell in Landsberg am Lech prison, more making speeches, as oratory was his particular skill, than dictating it, to Rudolf Hess and Emil Maurice. As a result of this, Herr Hitler’s relatively uneducated German, and the difficulties in really translating German into English, it’s a hard slog of a read.

Nevertheless, it was a work of dynamic historical importance. But, history or not, it appears that some on the left are highly, highly! offended that someone would read it.

Report: Stanford student may need to ‘take accountability,’ ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’

It looks to be a case study in how bias reporting systems chill speech. We’re seeking information and accountability from Stanford.

by Graham Piro and Alex Morey Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Reading a book on a college campus should not prompt formal administrative intervention. But that’s what’s reportedly happening at Stanford University this week, after a photo of a student reading Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, “Mein Kampf,” circulated on campus last Friday.

The Stanford Daily said over the weekend that administrators were working “swiftly” with the students involved to “address” the incident. Two campus rabbis emailed Jewish students saying administrators “are in ongoing conversation with the individuals involved, who are committed to and actively engaged in a process of reckoning and sincere repair.”

Stanford was reportedly alerted to the book-reading via its Protected Identity Harm reporting system. Effectively a bias response system, Stanford says PIH reports help the university “address incidents where a community member experiences harm because of who they are and how they show up in the world.”

In other words, a Special Snowflake™ say another student reading a copy of Mein Kampf and reported it to the University! His precious little feelings were hurted.

The PIH is “not a judicial or investigative process,” the Office of Student Affairs carefully notes in bold, before (properly) carving out exceptions for hate crimes and unlawful discrimination or harassment. “We hope to provide a path to resolution for the affected individuals or communities who need to heal” by having the students participate in one of a “menu” of exercises like “mediated conversations, restorative justice sessions, or Indigenous circle practices,” to “help move towards resolution.”

Because college students should not have to report to university authorities for merely reading a book — one, by the way, that has been required reading in at least one recent Stanford humanities class and is available to borrow from the university library — FIRE asked Stanford today to provide additional clarity about the way it handles these kinds of “harm” reports on campus.

Stanford defines a PIH Incident as “conduct or an incident that adversely and unfairly targets an individual or group” on the basis of actual or perceived characteristics like race, religion, or marital status. Yet, it acknowledges such conduct does not necessarily violate its harassment or discrimination policies that, quite rightly, already prohibit such unlawful conduct. What purpose does this separate process serve, then?

There’s more at the original.

There is at least a possibility that this was some sort of set-up, to expose the idiocy of Stanford’s system. That two “campus rabbis” were participating in this seems suspect to me, because such a system, if it can punish or intimidate students from reading Mein Kampf, could also be used, on a campus where so many students support the Palestinians, to report a student reading Theodor Herzl’s The Jewish State.

But set-up or not, the fact that it has worked to expose the idiocy of the University’s system demonstrates that idiocy.

From The Stanford Daily:

University spokesperson Dee Mostofi confirmed that the Office of Student Affairs and the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life (ORL) became aware of this incident on Saturday. Mostofi added that the two offices, along with Stanford’s Hillel chapter, are working with the leaders of the residence that the students belong to address the social media post and its impact on the community.

“Swift action was taken by the leadership in the residential community where both the individuals who posted and the one pictured are members,” (Rabbi Jessica) Kirschner and (Rabbi Laurie) Hahn Tapper wrote. Student Affairs and ORL are actively working with students involved to address the issue and mend relationships in the community.

“It can be upsetting to hear about incidents like this,” Kirschner and Hahn Tapper wrote. “Jewish people belong at Stanford, and deserve to be respected by our peers.”

At some point, the students who got their precious little feelings hurt are going to have to leave the University and enter the working world, and won’t that be a shock for them!

Yeah, this still has the hallmarks of a set-up, but if it is, it’s a set-up that revealed real problems.

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Kara Alaimo exercised her #FreedomOfSpeech and CNN’s #FreedomOfThePress to decry conservatives’ Freedom of Speech and of the Press

In an episode of Blue Bloods, fictitious New York City Police Commissioner Frank Reagan said, “Freedom of the press only applies to people who own one,” and, in a lot of ways, he’s right.  The New York Times and The Washington Post went to court in 1971 to fight President Richard Nixon’s attempts to prevent publication of the so-called Pentagon Papers, winning their case  in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971).

Many people regard the issue of Twitter having been bought by Elon Musk as a matter of freedom of speech; I view it more as a matter of freedom of the press. You can say anything you want, but no one else is somehow obligated to repeat it, or publish it. For umpteen years people have submitted articles and other things to the Times and National Review and Simon & Schuster, and had their articles or books not accepted for publication. The editors at those companies were exercising a ‘gatekeeping’ function, and using their presses to print what they decided they wished to print, even if the authors of the rejected pieces thought differently.

And yes, I have — at least in memory; I didn’t keep them — a small collection of rejection letters myself. But my late best friend and I knew, in advance, that we were entrusting our submissions to the judgement of those who owned the presses in which we sought to get published.

This internet thingy that Al Gore invented changed all of that. Rush Limbaugh made the first crack, when he got his radio show syndicated, to the absolute horror of many on the left. Internet chat rooms on America Online widened things a bit, but the real break came when independent people could start their own websites, and Powerline and Little Green Footballs[1]Did you notice what I did there? I approve of Powerline, and included the hyperlink to it. Little Green Footballs went way, way, way in the wrong direction, and I do not want to give them more … Continue reading exposed CBS News use of forged documents to try to defeat the younger President Bush’s re-election in 2004.

And in the end, Twitter, and the other social media sites, are publishers, able to choose what, and what not, to publish.

Now comes Kara Alaimo, an associate professor in the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University, who writes about issues affecting women and social media. Dr Alaimo, it seems, does not much like it when the wrong people who own presses get to decide what does, and does not get published.

Elon Musk is running Twitter like dictators run their states

Opinion by Kara Alaimo | Friday, December 16, 2022 | 7:20 PM EST

Kara Alaimo, from her website.

CNN – On Thursday, Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter entered a terrifying new phase when he began wielding his power to censor the press. The Twitter accounts of several journalists who have covered Musk critically recently — in other words, done their jobs — were suspended.In tweets, Musk accused the journalists of violating the platform’s policy against doxing — or posting private information online — by sharing his “exact real-time” location. But none of the banished reporters — including CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan and The Washington Post’s Drew Harwell — appeared to have done so. Musk and Twitter didn’t respond to CNN’s requests for comment.

Well, we already knew that Dr Alaimo had no problem at all with Taylor Lorenz’s doxxing of Chaya Raichik, the creator of Libs of TikTok, calling it accountability even while she stated that “Doxxing can be dangerous — or even deadly. There are many people who should be able to share information anonymously online.” It’s almost as though the professor believes that the acceptability of doxxing is determined by the political views of the victim.

It was yesterday’s news that Twitter had suspended the journolists[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading in question; by the next day, Twitter announced the restoration of those accounts.

Now I don’t know: was this all part of Mr Musk’s master plan to teach those journolists a lesson, that what they celebrated when Donald Trump and some prominent conservatives were suspended by the previous Twitter management could happen to them as well, or was Twitter responding to the negative publicity for having done so?

If it weren’t obvious before, the latest moves make clear that Musk tends to run this company the way dictators run their states: by making decisions that serve his personal interests rather than those of the public, and capriciously getting rid of people who stand in his way. That’s why tech workers and journalists who have lost their jobs in the past few weeks should come together to create non-profit social networks designed to serve the public interest.

“The way dictators run their states”? Dr Alaimo didn’t quite go full Godwin’s Law and proclaim that Mr Musk is “literally Hitler,” but she was certainly hovering around that button. Twitter, as a publisher, was exercising its freedom of the press to not grant publication to a few reporters. Her OpEd, published on cnn.com, was certainly taking advantage of CNN’s freedom of the press!

And Dr Alaimo really, really doesn’t like freedom of the press when the wrong people own those presses, or are the one’s taking decisions about whose words they will publish:

The chilling problem with Kanye West’s definition of ‘free speech’

Opinion by Kara Alaimo | Tuesday, October 18, 2022 | Updated 8:12 AM EDT

CNN — The conservative social media company Parler announced on Monday that it is being purchased by Kanye West, who was temporarily suspended from Twitter this month for an antisemitic tweet. A statement from Parler’s parent company announcing the deal described West, who has legally changed his name to Ye, as having taken “a groundbreaking move into the free speech media space” where “he will never have to fear being removed from social media again.”

In a release by Parler, West said that “in a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves.”

This development means several social media companies could soon be left in the hands of mercurial, mega-rich men who have pledged to promote “free speech,” including the kind of extreme views that got West temporarily booted from Twitter. Elon Musk is currently in the process of buying Twitter, though Twitter said in a recent court filing that federal authorities (it was not clear which ones) are investigating Musk (while Musk’s attorney said this filing was designed to distract from Twitter’s own legal issues).

For his part, Musk has said Twitter should be “an inclusive arena for free speech.” And former President Donald Trump, who was thrown off Twitter and Facebook in January 2021, founded the company that created Truth Social, which describes itself as a “free speech haven.”

If West and Musk go through with their deals, these three social media platforms are likely to serve as ecosystems for conservative thought. This will likely make the views of those who remain on them more extreme — which could have a radical effect on our politics. That’s because when people who think similarly come together, they reaffirm and heighten one another’s initial beliefs.

Also read: William Teach: FBI Was Super Excited To Censor Conservatives On Twitter

So, if that’s what Dr Alaimo believes — and I certainly take her at her word — “ecosystems for conservative thought” are bad, bad things. On Twitter, at the time under the previous ownership, would have been an ‘ecosystem for liberal thought,’ with conservatives allowed, as long as they followed the left’s rules. I have already noted that I have had to be careful in tweets, especially when it came to my reporting about Will Thomas, a male swimmer who claimed to be a woman named “Lia,” including calling him ‘Lia’ Thomas in a couple of article titles to get past Twitter’s rules, even though I do not accept the cockamamie notion that anyone can change his sex.

While men such as West, Musk and Trump claim to promote free speech by not favoring the moderation of problematic content, here’s what lack of moderation really does: It drives away the people victimized by abusive content such as West’s tweet.

“Victimized,” huh? Apparently to Dr Alaimo, it’s not just sticks and stones which can break people’s bones, but names most certainly can hurt them!

As much as I’d like to quote all of Dr Alaimo’s OpEd piece, I’ll summarize much of the rest. She stated that Twitter really is a digital “town square,” and that while slightly less than a quarter of Americans have Twitter accounts, it does have an “outsize influence” on what reporters write and talk about, and thus is very, very important, and journolists journalists must be able to hold people in power accountable. Social media, Dr Alaimo stated, must be a place where the public can find “reliable information,” decrying what she saw as hate speech and misinformation.

It’s clear that we can’t rely on Musk’s Twitter to provide a safe, open forum. We need new, non-profit social networks run by boards responsible for considering the public’s interest when making critical decisions about things like content moderation and community standards. And many of the people who have these skills have just been laid off from their jobs. In addition to the mass exodus from Twitter since Musk’s takeover, there have been layoffs at a number of tech and journalism companies lately, including Facebook and CNN, with more coming at The Washington Post. Some of these professionals should work together to create new social platforms designed to provide the truly open town hall we so desperately need.

So, a “truly open town hall” must be one in which conservatives are censored, but not liberals, in which conservatives can be doxxed, but not leftists.

Musk’s latest power moves are nothing short of dangerous. Recently unemployed tech and journalism workers should take them as a rallying call to unite to create new, healthier online spaces. We have nothing to lose except our dependence on a mercurial, egotistical czar to set the terms of our public debates.

The creation of Parler and Truth Social were mocked by the left, and none of the alternate sites gained anywhere near the size and influence of Twitter. Governments ar all levels use Twitter to convey information to the public, but if any government has a Parler account, I’ve not heard of it.

Now Twitter has been taken over by a man whose ideas of what should and should not be published are different from the left, and the libs are aghast. Really, Dr Alaimo, names really cannot hurt you . . . unless you are weak-willed enough to let them.

References

References
↑1 Did you notice what I did there? I approve of Powerline, and included the hyperlink to it. Little Green Footballs went way, way, way in the wrong direction, and I do not want to give them more publicity, so I did not link that site. Owning the site The First Street Journal, I am able to take that decision as to which things I wish, and wish not, to publicize, and exercised my discretion.
↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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Those who want to regulate speech aren’t really afraid of lies or misinformation; what they are afraid of is the truth.

The American left are aghast that Elon Musk’s somewhat delayed purchase of Twitter has meant that conservatives would be able to actually speak freely. As we have previously noted, Twitter added rules banning “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.” “Misgendering” means referring to ‘transgendered’ individuals by their biological sex, either directly or through the use of the appropriate pronouns, while “deadnaming” means referring to such people by their birth names rather than the ones they have adopted which are more consistent with their imagined ‘gender.'[1]The First Street Journal’s Stylebook is exactly the opposite: while we do not change the direct quotes of others, in original material we always refer to people by their normal, biological sex … Continue reading The New York Times gave OpEd space to Chad Malloy[2]Chad Malloy is a man male who claims to be a woman, and goes by the faux name “Parker.” to claim that such restrictions actually promoted freedom of speech.

To trans people, it represented a recognition that our identity is an accepted fact and that to suggest otherwise is a slur.

That their ‘identity’ might not be “an accepted fact” is not something Mr Malloy wanted to concede, but Twitter’s policy also meant that those who did not accept such claims still had to be careful with their language, or be suspended or permanently banned.

And yes, I have had to be careful in tweets, especially when it came to my reporting about Will Thomas, a male swimmer who claimed to be a woman named “Lia,” including calling him ‘Lia’ Thomas in a couple of article titles to get past Twitter’s rules.

Now comes Robert Stacy McCain, who had his own @rsmccain Twitter account, with “tens of thousands” of followers, permanently suspended noting that Twitter, under the previous regime also suspended credentialed media sites which did something really radical like tell the truth:

‘Blood On Your Hands’? Is Anyone Really Endangered by Twitter ‘Amnesty’?

by Robert Stacy McCain | Sunday, November 27, 2022

Hopewell Chin’ono is an award-winning journalist who has relentlessly exposed the evils of the lawless and corrupt regime in Zimbabwe:

In 2020, Hopewell reported on alleged Covid-19 procurement fraud within the health ministry, which led to the arrest and sacking of Health Minister Obadiah Moyo. It was President Emmerson Mnangagwa who fired Obadiah in July for “inappropriate conduct” over the $60 million medicines supply scandal. On July 20, 2020, Hopewell was arrested and charged with inciting public violence. The US embassy called Hopewell’s arrest “deeply concerning”, while his lawyer called it “an abduction” and Amnesty accused Zimbabwean authorities of “misusing the criminal justice system to persecute journalists and activists”. He was freed in September on bail, then he was arrested again in November 2020 and was charged with obstructing justice and contempt of court for a tweet about the court outcome of a gold smuggling scandal.

Hopewell Chin’ono was released on bail on January 27, 2021 after spending three weeks in prison. Chin’ono expressed concern about the COVID-19 pandemic in the overcrowded Chikurubi Prison and accuses the government of harassment for arresting him three times in five months.

Given such credentials, Chin’ono must be taken seriously when he warns of the risks of a general “amnesty” for banned accounts on Twitter. And certainly we should hope that Elon Musk will have his staff exercise caution when it comes to such cases as these, where repressive regimes are using “ghost accounts” to harass their critics. But the problem in the United States is almost the diametrical opposite situation, i.e., critics of the regime have been banned, because Twitter staff were working with the Democratic Party to effectively prohibit dissent.

The New York Post, America’s oldest continuously published newspaper,[3]There’s some dispute, but I believe that the Hartford Courant, founded in 1764, is the oldest, followed by the Post, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton, as second, and The Philadelphia … Continue reading had its Twitter account suspended at the behest of intelligence officials who falsely declared the Hunter Biden laptop story to be “Russian disinformation.” (For the record, I do not think the Biden family is less corrupt than the rulers of Zimbabwe.) Comparing the problems in America to the problems in Zimbabwe is apples and oranges, of course, but that’s the point: If we don’t want to descend into a Third World nightmare, the voices of opponents of the Democratic Party must be heard. Maybe you think Zimbabwe can’t happen here, but you’re wrong. I mean, look what Democrats have done to Chicago and Philadelphia . . .

Of course, as it turned out, the Hunter Biden laptop story turned out to be true, but it was far, far, far more important to the #woke[4]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading nerds who ran Twitter previously that the story be stifled on October 14, 2020, three weeks before the presidential election, because Joe Biden just had to be protected so that he could win the election.

Twitter’s then-CEO Jack Dorsey was able to say that yeah, it had been a ‘total mistake’ to block the Post’s story . . . on March 25, 2021, after the election.

I’m old enough to remember when the left were free speech absolutists .  .  . when they weren’t really in control of much, when they were trying to get their messages out to the public in general. Now that they have power, not only in government but largely in the professional media, they really aren’t so enamored of freedom of speech, not for those with whom they disagree. To them, Twitter was great, when Twitter was suspending Mr McCain, when the platform was censoring the Post, when views contrary to theirs were stifled.

In one episode of Blue Bloods, fictitious New York City Police Commissioner Frank Reagan said that freedom of the press applies only to those who own a press, but that time has elapsed: with internet service (sort of) inexpensive, and the cost to have your own website cheap — heck, even I can afford it, and some platforms are free — almost anyone can own a ‘press.’

Well, social media like Facebook and Twitter and less popular sites like Parler are, in effect, publishers, and publishers do get to choose what they will and will not publish. But once Elon Musk bought Twitter leftists like The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch, whose newspaper rarely publishes any opinions which aren’t #woke, decided that Twitter “should exist more as a semi-public utility than as an entity that a man with a spare $44 billion can just light on fire,”[5]As we have previously noted, Mr Bunch’s newspaper has been begging for donations to help keep it afloat. while Salon’s Amanda Marcotte wants Twitter to be ‘socialized’:

Of course, there is one way Twitter could be saved: By actually making it the “digital town square” Musk says he wants it to be. Which is to say the government should buy and run Twitter, just as government owns and operates actual town squares. Yes, I’m talking about a “socialist” takeover of Twitter, just like we have “socialist” libraries, schools and museums.

I don’t think that they understand what they’ve advocated, because a public utility cannot deny service to anyone who will pay the bill! It doesn’t matter how odious someone might think my opinions to be: Jackson Energy Cooperative cannot deny me the electricity service I use to power my too-old computer as long as I pay my sparktricity bill. Verizon cannot deny me the cell phone service for which I’ve contracted as long as the bill is paid, even if they’re worried that I might say something unsavory over the phone. Mr Bunch and Miss Marcotte somehow seem to think that if Twitter were a public utility, the utility’s directors could ban people they don’t like. Perhaps they just don’t understand what a public utility actually is?

Well, I actually (kind of) agree: Twitter should be considered a public utility, not only because of the size of its reach, but because governments at all levels use Twitter and Facebook — but not Parler or Truth Social — to communicate with the public. Virtually every government in the United States, federal, state, and local, have a Twitter account that they use. Being a public utility does not mean that it cannot be privately owned, as most of our electric, water, telephone , and natural gas companies are.

As a private publisher, Twitter was able to censor information it didn’t want disseminated, information which turned out to be the truth, and the left liked that. Now that Twitter is owned by someone who actually favors freedom of speech, the left don’t like it, don’t like it at all. It wasn’t just the Hunter Biden laptop story; Twitter routinely throttled down messages that exposed the fact that the COVID-19 vaccines did not actually keep a person from contracting the SARS-CoV-2, something we now also know to be true, because the left just can’t handle the truth.

References

References
↑1 The First Street Journal’s Stylebook is exactly the opposite: while we do not change the direct quotes of others, in original material we always refer to people by their normal, biological sex and their original names.
↑2 Chad Malloy is a man male who claims to be a woman, and goes by the faux name “Parker.”
↑3 There’s some dispute, but I believe that the Hartford Courant, founded in 1764, is the oldest, followed by the Post, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton, as second, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, founded in 1829, third.
↑4 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑5 As we have previously noted, Mr Bunch’s newspaper has been begging for donations to help keep it afloat.