Is Free Speech In Your Shopping Cart?

It can be argued that the first volley in the attack on Free Speech took place quietly in the fledgling days of the Wilson Administration, when the federal government purposely moved from direct representation of the people to empowering “experts” within the Executive Branch with codifying the minutiae of legislation through regulatory power.

But one thing that can’t be argued to the contrary is this. The attack on Free Speech – and, in fact, the total of the Bill of Rights – was kicked into high gear with the Obama administration and continues – unabashedly – under the Biden administration.

The Evidence Is Clear

There are too many examples of Free Speech rights being trampled by an overreaching Executive Branch to count, including canceling people for citing peer-reviewed studies and medical expert opinion that didn’t take a knee to the Bill Gates-Big Pharma preferred narrative during COVID, and persecuting people for protesting what they believed was a flawed election at the US Capitol on January 6th.

We can continue to list subjects that are verboten – and which illicit unconstitutional action from the authoritative state – until the sun comes up, but they all center on dividing our country into demographics related to Woke identity politics.

Critical Race Theory “education” (read: indoctrination) splits us up by race and pits all races against Caucasians who are, according to race-baiting heretics like Ibram X. Kendi (born Ibram Henry Rogers) and the racially self-loathing Robin DiAngelo, the root of all evil in today’s world; born of the original sin of being racist in the womb. If you stand up for yourself (as I do) to say that when forced to judge another you judge them on the content of their character and not the color of their skin you are – per the redefined definition of “racism” – a racist.

The gender identity vendors of the LGBTQ+ movement (did I miss any letters added this week?) not only pit one gender against each other but have now taken to inventing genders to pit against – you guessed it, the evil white male and the heterosexual woman – to the extent of snuffing out any true biological science in the matter of gender in deference to “feelings.” 

Their attack on free speech and society comes in condemning as “domestic terrorists” those parents and individuals who object to the sexualization of minor children down to the ages of pre-school. If you attend a school board meeting and object to your third grader taking a “field trip” to see cross-dressing pole dancers you are the “terrorist”; you are the one who isn’t enlightened.

Then we have the blind lemmings of the Climate Change movement who believe the Human Race should be killed off for the good of the planet. These non-critical thinkers are being used as cannon fodder by the global elite to facilitate a transition from a world of sovereign nations – our freedom is guaranteed (or at least it used to be) by way of our sovereignty – to a New World Order where governments are controlled by an unelected elite, i.e. the World Economic Forum, through their toady organizations at the United Nations.

And if you dare to question the existence of man-made Climate Change you are not only a “climate denier” (harkening images of Holocaust deniers which, well, they are just lunatics, right?) but you are also a white supremist nationalist and, thus, a domestic terrorist.

The Macro Movement’s Micro Aggressions

The entirety of the Woke movement is riddled with micro movements that condemn and extinguish, that cancel Free Speech and the free exchange of ideas, a process that has, throughout history, been required for the innovations we currently enjoy progressing from the Stone Age.

In California, the almost-recalled presidential aspirant, Gavin Newsom, recently signed into law a measure that would penalize – by fine and decertification – any individual in that state’s medical community that a government panel determined was advancing “misinformation.” The fact that no one in the California legislature threw a wrench into the codification of that legislation is stunning for the obvious elephant in the room.

Who will be the arbiter of what disinformation is and what it is not? Do they not see that politicizing and polluting the medical sphere with caustic ideology not only subjects definitions to radical change depending on the outcomes of elections, but grotesquely stifles the medical community’s ability to faithfully execute medical research?

Science, in and of itself, is the confluence of opposing and diverse opinions to “rule things out” so as to come to a fluid consensus on any matter. There is no settled science, only consensus science that begs to be continually questioned; continuously challenged if medicine (and science as a whole) is to continue toward truth; towards cures.

So, as Newsom so proudly crows and thumps his chest about “combating misinformation” with the stifling power of government (how is this not state sponsored censorship?), his action along with the votes of the California legislators who supported the measure, actually hobbled medical and scientific advancement.

Stupid is as stupid does.

Private-Sector Fascism: Doing Woke Dirty Work

Which leads me to another issue, the private-sector, corporate complicity in the anti-Free Speech movement. It’s here, but there is a way to push back.

Recently, we have been forced to bear witness to many private-sector corporations instituting Woke policies that grotesquely deny Free Speech rights, not to mention engage in aggressive social engineering, a freedom-killer in and of itself.

BlackRock is pushing ESG scoring which, in the end will force you to accept the twisted ideology of “equity,” a Woke ideologically-based tool that literally replaces the class struggle concept of Marxism with a clash centered on identity politics.

We witnessed the Coca-Cola Company successfully bullying Major League Baseball into doing its best Colin Kaepernick impersonation by forcing them to move the All-Star game out of Georgia because of the false narrative that the State disenfranchises minority voters (more minority voters voted in the last election in Georgia than at any time in history).

Coca-Cola saw a dramatic backlash at the corporate level in people dumping the company’s stock and refusing to buy Coca-Cola products. In fact, the backlash was so powerful that a few of the executives who thought dancing the Woke fandango was a good thing are no longer Coca-Cola employees.

Who’s Your Pal?

And then there’s PayPal and its brief decision to penalize the platform’s users up to $2,500 for disseminating “disinformation.” This “penalty” was to be extracted involuntarily from a user’s linked bank account.

Social Media erupted last week when PayPal issued an updated Acceptable Use Policy, which states in item number five under the heading “Prohibited Activities”:

“...involve the sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials that, in PayPal’s sole discretion..., (a) are harmful, obscene, harassing, or objectionable, (b) depict or appear to depict nudity, sexual or other intimate activities, (c) depict or promote illegal drug use, (d) depict or promote violence, criminal activity, cruelty, or self-harm (e) depict, promote, or incite hatred or discrimination of protected groups or of individuals or groups based on protected characteristics (e.g. race, religion, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.) (f) present a risk to user safety or wellbeing, (g) are fraudulent, promote misinformation, or are unlawful, (h) infringe the privacy, intellectual property rights, or other proprietary rights of any party, or (i) are otherwise unfit for publication...”

The backlash online was instantaneous and pointed. People started posting that they were dropping PayPal; condemning their audacity for not only trying to manipulate their constitutionally guaranteed Free Speech rights, but thieving from the bank accounts of its users in an attempt to manipulate society; to socially coerce people toward Wokeism. Lawsuits were threatened and rightfully so.

But just like Coca-Cola, public outrage forced PayPal executives to embrace a suspicious narrative that the posting of that updated verbiage was a “mistake.”

Late on October 8, 2022, PayPal issued this statement to the National Review at their query:

“An AUP notice recently went out in error that included incorrect information. PayPal is not fining people for misinformation and this language was never intended to be inserted in our policy," the firm said in the statement...Our teams are working to correct our policy pages. We’re sorry for the confusion this has caused...”

A current examination of PayPal’s Prohibited Activities Statement displays verbiage posted on September 20, 2021. There is no mention of “disinformation.” That “mistake” verbiage was packaged and available should give us all some insight into what the Woke contingent at PayPal has been discussing behind closed doors.

The Anti-Racists Are Correct About One Thing

When you read the caustic clap-trap from the Critical Race Theory race-baiters, you will recognize one common theme: If you aren’t actively engaged in promoting anti-racism then you are a racist; if you remain silent then you are a racist. It’s pathetically and opportunistically coercive to the benefit of the racist faction of the Woke movement.

But just like the lesson the average American failed to grasp when we were abused by the Marxist (read: fascist) Progressive movement, we cannot fail to utilize the tools that worked so well for the oppressors; we must benefit from those same tools, when applicable, to fight the oppressors.

In our fight against the Progressive fascism, we should have employed Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals in combating that poisonous ideology. That we did not; that we trusted our political class to do the right thing, is a “shame on us” moment that we need to learn from.

The race-baiters of the Woke movement insist that if you are not actively anti-racist you are racist. I put it to you that if you are not aggressively pushing back on the Woke movement’s attacks on Free Speech – on every avenue and in every way – that you are complicit in the elimination of Free Speech. If we are not engaged in this battle then we must accept that we are friends of the enemy of Free Speech.

There is an incredibly good reason why the Framers listed Free Speech rights as item number one in the Bill of Rights. Without Free Speech none of the other enumerated rights matter; it becomes impossible to redress government; impossible to assemble, to share ideas and concerns, to organize, any of it. So, once Free Speech is gone, freedom is gone. Right now we are on our way to losing it all. So, silence is not an option.

German pastor Martin Niemöller issued a famous quote in the aftermath of Nazi fascism, which facilitated the slaughter of not only millions of Jews, but Christians, Gypsies, and homosexuals, as well as any other perceived threats to the “Reich”:

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist.

“Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist.

“Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.

“Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Tell me, what happens when the right to Free Speech is expunged and no one can speak?