Category Archives: Individual Rights

MSNBC Celebrates Deep-Tech Speech Crackdowns. Republicans Did/Do Nothing About Deplatforming

Business, Free Speech, Individual Rights, Media, Republicans, Technology

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On June 4, 2021, one of MSNBC’s egos in an anchor’s chair said this:

“Social media giant is cracking down on politicians and speech. But is it too little too late?”

I transcribed the statement verbatim but it is not easily found as a URL hyperlink.

This is how illiberal mainstream liberalism has become. And it raises no eyebrows. How dare the US pose as a free society?

My point here, however, is contrarian. Again and again you will hear conservatives, politicians and pundits, complain on Fox News about the calamitous censorship by Deep Tech, as if it’s a problem that began with the Biden Administration.

De-platforming (of a president, no less), banning of legions of powerless dissidents, including detrimental financial de platforming, “occurred in a country with a Republican President, a Republican-controlled Senate, a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees, and a majority of whose state legislatures and governors are Republican.”

Republican solutions—anti-trust busting or the repealing of Section 230, which they refused to do when they were in control of both houses, and the presidency, all bandied about shallowly on Fox News—do not begin to address de-platforming, cancellation of dissidents, including the infringement of the right to make a living. (See sub-section, “Flouting The Spirit Of Civil Rights.”)

 I’ve done some theoretical rethinking. More to come.

*Image courtesy here.

DeSantis Law Doesn’t Give Private Citizens Deserving, Unfettered Access To The Social Media Super Highway

Free Speech, Individual Rights, Law, libertarianism, Natural Law, Regulation, Republicans, Technology

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From the fact that Ron DeSantis is the only Republican to have proceeded against Deep Tech in any meaningful way—it doesn’t follow that his bill, the “Big Tech” bill, is useful or fair to the Little Guy or Gal. Not unless he or she is prepared to and can afford to launch law suits.

All you and I really want, as innocent, law-abiding individuals, is to have unfettered access to the social-media public square.

Politicians, of course, get protections, no problems. DeSantis has made “it illegal for large technology companies to remove candidates for office from their platforms in the run-up to an election.”

Close to useless tokenism in solving Deep Tech tyranny.

Yes, the Section 230 grant-of-government privilege should be done away with, but this more conventional solution is insufficient for the reasons DeSantis’ law is insufficent.

The only two best solutions are, my own: 1. Civil rights based litigation and the setting of a Supreme Court precedent, a direction I first floated in “Deep Tech: Locked Down And Locked Out, First By The State, Then By Silicon Valley,” and have motivated for repeatedly.

2. Declare social media platforms to be free speech, censorship-free spheres, a Richard Spencer idea. Republicans will have to contend with speech they don’t like.

*Image credit

Go From ‘Bitch Mode’ To ‘Beast Mode’: Quit Toxic Conservatism And Become Dangerously Good!

Conservatism, Constitution, Critique, GUNS, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Morality, Political Philosophy, Politics, Republicans

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IMPORTANT READING comes from Jack Kerwick on American Greatness.

If you have settled back into those asinine, conservative talking points—“the Left this; the Left that; socialism this; socialism that; we are not racists; they are racists; ‘systemic anti-whiteness’ is the Democrats’ fault”—you need an intervention, S.O.S; you need to pull yourself together, and stop it!

Right away!

Read the antidote: “Good People Must Be Dangerous People: Fear is the only language the violent comprehend” by Jack Kerwick.

Quickly.

An excerpt:

“…Conservatism, Inc.’s leaders are looking out for themselves. Their standard operating procedure is the stuff of wusses and whiners—but certainly not winners. Decent people, and decent men specifically, know that in the last analysis, it is they and they alone—and not, as those in Big Conservatism would have us think, state agents—who are the last line of defense protecting innocents from predators. This being the case, the decent know that they must become ruthless.

… If they were alive today, the founders would insist that decent folks who want to live good lives and protect themselves, their loved ones, and other law-abiding citizens in their communities from danger most definitely not follow the example of “conservative leaders,” whether in government or anywhere else, who are only interested in adjusting their bowties, wagging their fingers, and shrieking and crying over the Left’s ‘double standards’ while conning their constituents into thinking that they are ‘fighting the Left.’””

… A must read:

“Good People Must Be Dangerous People: Fear is the only language the violent comprehend” by Jack Kerwick.

*Image courtesy of American Greatness

UPDATE III (5/7/021): NEW COLUMN: Killing Liberty: Could Vaccine Resisters Be WACO’d?

Constitution, COVID-19, Ethics, Individual Rights, Science

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NEW COLUMN is “Killing Liberty: Could Vaccine Resisters Be WACO’d?” It is currently on WND.COM, The Unz Review, (slightly abridged) on Townhall.com, CNSNew.com, and American Greatness.

Excerpt:

Because of the natural mutation the clever little RNA strand undergoes—it is clear to anyone with a critical mind that the Covid vaccines will go the way of the flu vaccines: An annual affair if one chooses to make it so.

Choice, alas, is quickly becoming a quaint concept in Covid-compliant America.

Vaccine Passports

The possibility of a vaccine passport, a “certification of vaccination that reduces public-health restrictions for their carriers,” has been floated. Unfinessed, it amounts to, “Your Papers, bitte!”

While Fox’s Tucker Carlson did term the idea an Orwellian one—it took civil libertarian Glenn Greenwald, the odd-man-out among the authoritarian Left, to place the concept of a vaccine passport in proper perspective.

The popular TV host (and perhaps the only good thing on Fox News) had asked Greenwald if he felt a vaccine passport “would work to convince more Americans to get vaccinated.”

Judging a policy by its positive outcomes for the collective, rather than by whether it violates individual rights is utilitarianism. It is the rule among politicians and pundits.

“It doesn’t work”: How often have you heard those words used to describe grave rights violations? As if using coercion to decrease “vaccine hesitancy”—is ever a good reason for coercing vaccination! As if employing coercion to decrease “vaccine hesitancy” is ever an appropriate use of State or corporate power!

The Benthamite utilitarian calculus is thus rightly associated with a collectivist, central-planner’s impetus.

The Founding Fathers, conversely, held a Blackstonian view of the law as a bulwark against government abuses. Their take has since been supplanted by the notion of the law as an implement of government, to be utilized by all-knowing rulers for the “greater good.”
To his great credit, Sean Hannity did advance a rights-based argument against the vaccine-passport outrage: the individual right to privacy.

It fell, however, to Mr. Greenwald to take note of the three different ways in which the passports constitute a draconian invasion:

…Number one, coercing citizens to put a substance into their body that they don’t want in their body, a pretty grave invasion of bodily autonomy, one of the most fundamental rights we have. Secondly, gathering a new database that can track people in terms of their health, that can easily be expanded as government programs often do into a whole variety of other uses, and then thirdly, … restricting people’s movement. Freedom of movement is one of the most fundamental rights we have. It’s actually guaranteed in the Constitution.  …

Herd immunity will be arrived at eventually, stressed Greenwald. So, “why is it necessary to stigmatize [those choosing not to vaccinate] and create a caste system?”

Enter U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican with a highly-contrived Southern act and overwrought cracks.

The visibly disappointed Mr. Hannity was expecting an erudite, rights-based objection from the senator representing Louisiana. On the matter of vaccine compliance through coercion, Kennedy only dimmed the debate. To the question about vaccine passports, Kennedy answered with a non sequitur:

A vaccine passport would be “terribly unethical,” Kennedy croaked, and not because it would threaten an individual’s dominion over his body, but because, “Everybody does not yet have access to the vaccine.” …

… READ ON. NEW COLUMN is “Killing Liberty: Could Vaccine Resisters Be WACO’d?” It is currently on WND.COM, The Unz Review, (slightly abridged) on Townhall.com,  CNSNew.com, and American Greatness.

UPDATED I (4/9):

Related, via David Vance: The Media (British and American) has become a “real and present menace” for refusing to critically and honestly report on Covid vaccines.

AND:

“22-year-old Israeli girl dies after 2nd shot of vaccine.”

UPDATE II (4/12):

Jake • 2 days ago:

“It’s all about the money. Huge profits for the vaccine companies and with no liability of those companies. What a business model! Meanwhile no one tells people what they can do either to prevent Covid-19 or to treat it effectively if you do get it. Why the secrecy?

This is what works:… along with vitamin D and zinc; and if you are not obese, are fit and have no heart or lung issues, you will be fine.

The hysteria by the media and medical bureaucrats is criminal.

I’m actually a real doctor, graduated in 1973. You obviously are ignorant about virology and transmissibility. I practice overseas, not in America. The American system is so wedded to these unproven, experimental injections. You have no idea about enhanced autoimmune response or anaphylaxis that is occurring at the moment.”

UPDATE III (5/7/021): Masks outdoors?