LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

U

Search

Many Voices, One Freedom: United in the 1st Amendment

March 28, 2024

M

Menu

!

Menu

Your Source for Free Speech, Talk Radio, Podcasts, and News.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

The suspense was palpable for days as Elon Musk publicly tangled with Twitter about changing its censorship policies, ultimately threatening and then making an offer to buy the company. Then on Monday, the company accepted Musk’s $44 billion offer, which is a 38% premium on Twitter’s closing stock on April 1st, 2022.1 Musk wants to take the company private and promises to re-establish free speech.

“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” said Mr. Musk. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spambots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”2

An amazing day: a day to celebrate for anyone who has ever been singled out for censure by any of the Big Tech platforms. So many of us have bravely spoken out, documenting the truth, footnotes, and all,3,4 only to receive a suspension notice from the powers that be of the platform. And others, who have followed someone who is ultimately censored, be it a politician, a physician, a cartoonist, or your high school friend from 20 years ago, then finding them either censored or writing with more self-constraint.  

We start being protective against possible censorship…. minding our words, crossing out various phrases that could possibly offend, deciding not to post that comment or retweet that meme. 

Oh, my gosh, we have been groomed. A commonly used definition of the idiom ‘groom’ is “To prepare or ready someone for a particular role or job.”5 Over two-plus years since COVID arrived, and for many years before that, we have all witnessed words being censored, accounts being suspended, videos being canceled, and many of us have been censored ourselves. Since the beginning of political correctness, we have accumulated a growing list of words, names, labels, comments, jokes, behaviors, and other forms of communication that should not be uttered, usually because they may hurt someone’s feelings. At least, that is how political correctness started. Recently, political correctness on steroids has resulted in people losing jobs or acceptance at a university because they said the wrong thing, sometimes years earlier.6,7,8,9,10,11

If this is unrestricted warfare of ideas, we are in retreat, having been driven off the public square. We have been locked down and locked out of public discourse. Many of us have lost tens or hundreds of thousands of followers when suspended from one platform or another. Slowly over time, to be able to participate, we have curbed our voices, muted our comments, and withheld our opinions. To protect our job, preserve our membership in a community, or just because we want to be “good,” we have learned to self-censor.

What does this mean for me? For you?  

Now, the hard work begins. I have to remind myself to relish the witty retort that comes to mind when reading a substack and sharing it. I am deliberately going back on Twitter and Facebook, which I had mostly abandoned, and posting truthful comments about the day’s most important issues. Am I rushing it? No, we must start reclaiming our freedom of speech now. 

Listen, we are grownups here. I think it is important to be truthful, serious, and as kind as possible in a debate of issues. We should abhor violence and urge peace always. It is also time to reembrace our freedom of speech as Americans and free citizens.12 To cry “No more!” No more silence. No more biting my tongue. No more deciding not to post that idea. Share that study. Criticize that wrong-headed unscientific public policy. Post that snarky meme. Retweet that thought-provoking column.  

We need to be like the birds in spring, returning from their winter grounds. Full of song, sass, and feistiness. Letting our presence be known and our positions are clearly expressed.

To everyone who has ever been de-platformed, censored, deleted, disappeared, expurgated, purged, excised, silenced, chilled, shut out, denounced, suppressed, vetted, or red-penciled…. Be silent no more. Let liberty and freedom ring!  

Primary author: Ginger Ross Breggin. She is co-author with her husband Peter R. Breggin MD of COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We are the Prey and has spent the last two years researching COVID-19, the pandemic, public health responses, the driving forces behind the public health measures, impacts on society and civilization and the globalist cabal who want to capture the world.

References:

1 Twitter accepts Musk’s $44 billion deal | Fox Business
2 (19) Elon Musk (@elonmusk) / Twitter
3 kitten corner: Twitter – by gatito bueno – bad cattitude (substack.com)
4 Doctors for Covid Ethics Censored on Twitter – Again – as Lawsuits Mount – Doctors for COVID Ethics (doctors4covidethics.org)
5 Groom (someone) for (something) – Idioms by The Free Dictionary
6 UCLA Conservative Professor May Be Fired From Job For Refusing to Cave In to Political Correctness – Heat Street | Prometheism Transhumanism Post Humanism (euvolution.com)
7 20 Outrageous Examples That Show How Political Correctness Is Taking Over America – The Truth (thetruthwins.com)
8 Fired conservative professor wins in court — but college’s appeals block his return to classroom | The College Fix
9 Three Arguments Against Political Correctness | Welcome to Arhyalon (ljagilamplighter.com)
10 Ohio university to pay professor in lawsuit over student’s pronouns (usatoday.com)
11 Omar says ‘original snowflakes’ had ‘complete and glorious meltdown’ over tweet (yahoo.com)
12 WALTER WILLIAMS: Free speech is absolute | Biloxi Sun Herald

MANY VOICES, ONE FREEDOM: UNITED IN THE 1ST AMENDMENT

Join our community: Your insights matter. Contribute to the diversity of thoughts and ideas.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
1 Comment
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
VeedonFleece
VeedonFleece
1 year ago

Good that you are going to start speaking your mind again, because you never should have stopped!

Sitewide Newsfeed

More Stories
.pp-sub-widget {display:none;} .walk-through-history {display:none;} .powerpress_links {display:none;} .powerpress_embed_box {display:none;}
Share via
Copy link