Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to President Obama, there should be more government censorship of social media and internet search, to prevent the spread of “toxic information”, like climate skeptics and the opinions of people who don’t trust Dr. Fauci. But expressing the opinion that Russia rigged the 2016 election is completely fine.
APRIL 21, 2022
‘Regulation has to be part of the answer’ to combating online disinformation, Barack Obama said at Stanford event
Former U.S. President Barack Obama delivered a keynote address about how information is created and consumed, and the threat that disinformation poses to democracy.
BY MELISSA DE WITTE, TAYLOR KUBOTA, AND KER THAN
This story was updated on Thursday, April 21, at 6:51 p.m. PT
During a speech at Stanford University on Thursday, former U.S. President Barack Obama presented his audience with a stark choice: “Do we allow our democracy to wither, or do we make it better?”
Former U.S. President Barack Obama delivered a keynote address about how information is created and consumed, and the threat that disinformation poses to democracy.
Over the course of an hour-long address, Obama outlined the threats that disinformation online, including deepfake technology powered by AI, poses to democracy as well as ways he thought the problems might be addressed in the United States and abroad.
“This is an opportunity, it’s a chance that we should welcome for governments to take on a big important problem and prove that democracy and innovation can coexist,” Obama said.
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Read more: https://news.stanford.edu/2022/04/21/disinformation-weakening-democracy-barack-obama-said/
The full video – Obama’s speech starts at around 9:13.
From the video;
“One of the biggest reasons for democracies weakening, is the profound change in how we communicate”
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“20 years ago, the pillars of web search were comprehensiveness, relevance, speed. But with the rise of social media, and the need to better understand people’s online behaviour, in order to sell more advertising, companies wanted to collect more data, more companies optimised for personalisation, engagement and speed. And unfortunately it turns out that inflammatory polarising content attracts and engages. Other features of these platforms have compounded the problem, for example the way content looks on your phone, as well as the veil of anonymity that platforms provide their users, a lot of times can make it impossible to tell the difference between say a peer reviewed article by Dr. Anthony Fauci, and a miracle cure being pitched by a huckster. And meanwhile sophisticated actors, from political consultants to commercial interests to intelligence arms of foreign powers, can game platform algorithms, or artificially boost the reach of deception, or harmful messages.
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Now, its true, tech companies and social media platforms are not the only distributors of toxic information, promise me, ah I promise, I’ve spent a lot of time in Washington, right? In fact, some of the most outrageous content on the web, originates from traditional media.
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Take Covid. The fact that scientists developed safe, effective vaccines in record time is an unbelievable achievement. And yet, despite the fact we’ve now essentially clinically tested the vaccine on billions of people worldwide, around one in five Americans is still willing to put themselves at risk, and put their families at risk, rather than get vaccinated. People are dying, because of misinformation.
I already mentioned the 2020 Presidential Election. President Trump’s own attorney general has said the justice department uncovered no evidence of widespread evidence. A review of the ballots in Arizona’s largest county, the results of which were endorsed by some pretty courageous Republicans, because many of them harassed, and received death threats, actually found more votes for President Biden and fewer votes for President Trump. And yet, today, as we speak, a majority of Republicans still insist that President Biden’s victory was not legitimate. That’s a lot of people.
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People like Putin, and Steve Bannon for that matter, understand its not necessary for people to believe disinformation in order to weaken democratic institutions. You just have to flood a country’s public square with enough raw sewage, you just have to raise enough questions, spread enough dirt, plant enough conspiracy theorising, that citizens no longer know what to believe.
Once they lose trust in their leaders, in mainstream media, in political institutions, in each other, in the possibility of truth, the game’s won. And as Putin discovered leading up to the 2016 election, our own social media platforms are well designed to support such a mission, such a project.”
— lots of nonsense about Russia meddling in the 2016 election —No-one in my administration was surprised that Russia was attempting to meddle in our election, they’ve been doing that for years, or that it was using social media in their efforts. Before the election I directed to intelligence officials to expose those efforts to the press and to the public. What does still nag at me though, was my failure to fully appreciate at the time, just how susceptible we had become, to lies and conspiracy theories. Despite having spent years being a target of disinformation myself.
Putin didn’t do that. He didn’t have to. We did it to ourselves.
So where do we go from here? If we do nothing, I’m convinced the trends we’ve that we’re seeing will get worse. New technology is already challenging how we regulate the currency, how we keep consumers safe from fraud, and with the emergence of AI, disinformation will grow more sophisticated. I’ve already seen demonstrations of deep fake technology, which shows what looks like me, on a screen, saying stuff I didn’t say.
Fortunately I am convinced it is possible to preserve the transformative power and promise of the open internet, while at least mitigating the worst of its harms. And I believe those of you in the tech community, soon to be in the tech community, not just its corporate leaders, but employees at every level, have to be part of the solution.
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The essence of this place, what put Silicon Valley on the map, is a spirit of innovation. Its what led to the globally integrated internet, all its remarkable applications. What we’ve now learned is, the product has some design flaws. There are some bugs in the software.
We don’t have to just leave it like that. Through the same spirit of innovation, we can make it better.
So I want to make some general suggestions, for what that work might look like.
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We aren’t going to get rid of all offensive or inflammatory content on the web. We’d be wrong to try. Freedom of speech is at the heart of every Democratic society. In America those protections are enshrined in the first amendment in our constitution. There’s a reason it came first. I’m pretty close to a first amendment absolutist. I’m pretty sure that in most instances, the answer to bad speech is good speech. I believe that the free, robust, sometimes antagonistic exchange of ideas produces better outcomes and a healthier society. No democratic government can or should do what China for example is doing, simply telling people what they can or cannot say or publish, while trying to control what others say about their country abroad. And I don’t have a lot of confidence that any single individual or organisation, private or public, should be charged or do a good job determining who gets to hear what.
That said, the first amendment is a check on the power of the state. It doesn’t apply to private companies, like Facebook or Twitter, any more than it applies to editorial decisions made by the New York Times or Fox News. Never has. Social media companies already make choices about what is or is not allowed on their platforms, and how that content appears, both explicitly through content moderations, or implicitly through algorithms.
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When I’m going to evaluate any proposal touching on social media and the internet, is whether it strengthens or weakens the prospects for a healthy inclusive democracy. Whether it encourages robust debate, and respect for our differences. Whether it reinforces rule of law, and self governance. Whether it helps us make collective decisions based on the best available information. And whether it recognises the rights, the freedoms and dignity of all of our citizens. Whatever changes contribute to that vision, I’m for. Whatever erodes that vision, I’m against.
Just so you know.
Alright, with that as my starting point I believe we have to address, not just the supply of toxic information, but also the demand for it. On the supply side, tech platforms need to accept that they play a unique role in how we as a people and people around the world are consuming information, and that their decisions have an impact on every aspect of society.
With that power comes accountability. And in democracies like ours at least, the need for some democratic oversight.
For years social media companies have resisted that kind of accountability. They’re not unique in that regard, every private corporation wants to do anything it wants. So the social media platforms call themselves neutral platforms, with no editorial role in what their users saw. They insisted that the content people see on social media has no impact on their beliefs or behaviour, even though their business models and their profits are based on telling advertisers the exact opposite.
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An interesting study came out recently, and this is just one study, so take it with a grain of salt, but the researchers paid a large group of regular Fox News watchers to watch CNN for a month. And these were not swing voters, these were hard core hand on knee Carlson fans, right there. And the researchers found, that at the end of the month, peoples views on certain issues, like whether voting by mail should be allowed, or whether electing Joe Biden would lead to more violence against police, on some of these issues, their views had changed by 5, 8, 10 points. These people didn’t suddenly turn into liberals. I’m sure they still don’t like me. But at the margins, they had reshaped their perspectives in meaningful ways. Studies like this show our opinions aren’t fixed, and that means our divisions aren’t fixed either, if we can agree on some common baseline of facts, and can agree on some common baseline of how we sort out our disagreements.
The divisions which exist in this country aren’t going away anytime soon, but the information we get, the stories we tell ourselves, as Lincoln said, can encourage the better angels of our nature. They can also encourage the worst. And a healthy democracy depends on our better angels being encouraged.
So, as citizens, we have to take it upon ourselves, to become better consumers of news, looking at sources, thinking before we share, and teaching our kids to become critical thinkers who know how to evaluate sources, and separate opinion from fact. In fact a number of school districts are working to train kids in this kind of online media literacy, not around any particular idealogical perspective, but just, how to check a source. Does this person who is typing in his mother’s basement in his underwear, seem a credible authority on climate change? That is something we should all want to support. Part of this project is also going to include finding creative ways to reinvigorate quality journalism, including local journalism.
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Source: The Youtube Video Above
Obama spent the first part of his speech lamenting the old days, when everyone got their “facts” from the same small set of networks.
The most fascinating part of Obama’s speech for me, is how he seems to believe people should blindly defer to authority. Trust Fauci’s words because he is an authority, not because his words make sense. Don’t listen to the guy in his mother’s basement in his underwear, because he’s not someone like Fauci. Give your faith to President Biden, because he is the President.
In fact the entire speech in my opinion was a lament about how the hold of old authorities has been weakened, and how new authorities must be established – like his plan for ensuring school kids are trained in rigidly conformist methods of news evaluation, which would likely lead to them all reaching very similar conclusions.
I never blindly accept the words of someone just because I think they are an authority. I expect their words to make sense. My trust in their words has to be earned, and once that trust is broken, good luck getting it back.
As the Royal Society used to believe, nullius in verba. Take nobody’s word for it. In God we Trust, everyone else has to provide evidence.
The society Obama describes would still pay lip service to freedom of speech – all those opinions would still be out there somewhere. But the goal appears to be to rigidly exclude and isolate people with non mainstream views, to prevent them from linking with others who think like them, to hide them away, by actively censoring non mainstream views from the town square of social media and internet search. Climate skeptics would be free to write their opinions on web pages – but nobody would ever find their website through a web search, and people who tried to share climate skeptic articles would be censored by social media.
We have already had a taste of this kind of anti-freedom censorship – Facebook’s backflip on whether it would allow Covid lab leak theories to be discussed by users. One minute the theory was banned from the social media town square, the next minute Fauci softened his viewpoint, and Facebook took this as a cue to allow users to discuss the lab leak theory.
Imagine Facebook’s Covid lab leak censorship absurdity extended to every facet of your online life, and you get an idea of how horrible Obama’s locked down information society would be.
I don’t know if Covid leaked from a lab, maybe we will never know – but it is outrageous that people were restricted from discussing such an obvious possibility, until Fauci signalled discussion of the lab leak theory was now acceptable.
Science, more than any other field, would be damaged by such censorship. Science experiences its most rapid advances when an upstart challenges and overturns the beliefs of the many – when a newcomer proves someone like Fauci is wrong. But that upstart has to be heard, before they can challenge the beliefs of the powerful.
I’m not suggesting every upstart or challenge to established scientific theory should succeed. There are many more ways to be wrong than right, most crackpots are just crackpots.
But my heart goes out to people like Barry Marshall, the hero doctor who overturned an entire field of medicine, by putting his own life at risk to prove they were wrong. Barry endured years of exclusion and dismissal from medical authorities and his peers, until his desperate act finally drew attention, and overcame the medical community’s reluctance to review his evidence based challenge to their beliefs.
Medical authorities thought Barry Marshall was a crackpot, until he up and won a Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work. A policy which excludes crackpots on the word of establishment leaders would also exclude people like Barry Marshall. To exclude such people from the town square because their opinion contradicts establishment viewpoints would be to exclude the possibility of a better tomorrow.
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Democracy and censorship ?? Or the one, or the other, but booth ?
No way at all.
The democratic/dictatorial duality and censorship go hand in hand.
Atlas is about to Shrug
I wish he would hurry up and do it.
If you can print all it needs to buy/corrupt the system.
In the last few years, those on the Left clearly assume that “democracy” refers to the endurance of the Democrat Party specifically, and its socialist aims in general.
Anything that is counter to their interests (insuring voting integrity for example) is “Destroying Democracy”.
Mollie Ball’s TIME article in Jan 2021 described the “cabal” (her word) of politicians, union leaders, MSM, far left radical activists et al whose purpose was the defeat of Donald Trump as “saving democracy”.
So true, and it is alarming how many people are pushing the idea of censorship of all but the official version of “truth” and explain it as defending democracy. George Orwell wrote an alarming book about these people.
It seems many think that was a how-to book.
No martin Saul Alinski’s Rules For Radicals is their paybook.
Playbook—old age. Come to think of it— it is their paybook as Jason Mattera penned in his NYT’s Bestseller “CRAPITALISM” Liberals Who Make Millions Swiping Your Tax Dollars—–building Eco-Trinkets and laundering money to their campaign coffers.
Yes, as to how a democrat becomes a socialist and destroys society for his/her own benefit.
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” – William J. Casey, CIA Director (1981)
No this is how democracy works it corrupts the system. It makes theft by those in power legal. If theft is legal there can be no free society. Direct Taxation = Slavery.
Leftists have never believed that you have a right to disagree with them.
Real leftists have no idea what real democracy is, so simple
Leftists know exactly how real democracy works.
Obama has been the most-damaging President to the US, and US society, and US culture, because he was an early proponent of wokeness, when few people knew what it meant, and its damaging implications.
Trump being President interrupted their woke plans for four years, so he had to be removed, by hook and by crook, including a stolen election
Biden tried to rekindle Obama’s wokeness, such as with the disaster of Open Borders to change US demographics, and with a $2.2 TRILLION BBB, to have the federal government in dominant hands of Dem/Progs forever, but was stymied by two Democrats.
Obama was more successful because his administration did everything more subtly. The current Biden one has tried to throw everything down the America’s throat at once and the damage is too obvious to everyone
The subtlety of a very clever seller of snake oil in lambs clothing, led to the present wokeness, CRT, etc.
All that was hatched by Obama, interrupted for four years by Trump, then “implemented” by grossly inept people, such as the snakes, led by the Schumer and Pelosi cliques.
Krishna:
We live in a Representative Constitutional Republic not a Democracy.
That’s what the founders decided, a representative democracy.
Remember the line “and to the Republic for which it stands”? I must have said that line thousands of times and it was only relatively recently that I truly understood what it meant. A Republic isn’t a democracy and the founders feared what would happen if we had a democracy. Of the long lasting governments, a Republic lasts longer than a democracy. Look up the Roman Republic. That is what our government is modeled after.
As is well known, democracy allows 51 wolves asking 49 sheep ‘what’s for dinner’? ‘Our democracy’ is a misused concept by academia/media and ignorant politician. Citizens only follow the baited hook
One must understand that a democrat defines democracy not as ‘everyone votes’, ‘majority rules’, or anything our founding fathers would recognize as a form of democracy. To a democrat today, democracy means ‘total authoritarian rule by democrats’. Trump wasn’t destroying ‘democracy’, he was destroying ‘total authoritarian democrat rule’.
What nonsense . The civil war happened because the slave states wouldn’t accept a national democracy they wanted it tilted so that blacks were counted for representation purposes but then denied that vote
The US way in policies, democrates and republ., is a different one then here in Germany that can’t be compared.
Democracy = mob rule. That’s why the US was not created as a Democracy. The Founding Fathers know how toxic it is for a free society.In a centrally controlled economy (Central Banks printing machine) it is deadly because there can only be one truth. Democracy = censorship.
We the People.
Ooops, USA not a democracy.!!! How fascinating!
The very foundation of Liberty and democracy in modern times.
No wonder that USA Constitution these days is treated as a mob-rule, init!
No wonder why the First and Second and Third Amendment of the USA Constitution so much under attack these days.
In any kinda of Constitutional Republic, as a main rule, a Legislature’s verdict, or a Legislature’s given stand by verdict, can be nullified, void or fully permanently dismissed only and solely by a verdict (another, second one) of/by the same Legislature. (regardless of any one considering a Constitutional Republic as democratic or not)
The USA Constitution, like no any other before or after, clearly provides via rights and obligation, the power of the People to remove from power and authority any governing and ruling institution that clearly infringes and brakes (such) foundational holding principles of their Constitutional Republic…
even as by means of a direct move.
cheers
TV is the dark side. Intentionally?
Democracy and censorship? I believe it’s called a “mob”.
(NPR) Suggestions for managing climate grief and anxiety this Earth Day
By Nell Clark
https://www.npr.org/live-updates/earth-day-sustainability-04-22-2022#suggestions-for-managing-climate-grief-and-anxiety-this-earth-day
________________________________________________________
My reply:
You have an anxiety disorder.
It can be treated by a resort to an examination of the woefully weak evidence purporting to underlie the “Catastrophic/dangerous, CO2-driven anthropogenic global warming/climate change” CONJECTURE.
Failing that, since you are likely innumerate and scientifically illiterate, there are drugs that can be prescribed that may help to alleviate the anxiety disorder that has led you to confuse pseudoscience with actual science.
Above all— don’t pay the slightest bit of attention to anything NPR has to say about climate. NPR is dedicated to misinforming its audience and the public. It is propaganda.
I’m gonna CHANNEL my anxieties… right to my favorite bottle of scotch. As soon as 9:00 P.M. gets here. Meanwhile, I’ll survive. Yawn.
Why wait until 9:00 pm. It’s always 5 o’clock somewhere.
Besides, you can’t drink all day if you don’t start first thing in the morning.
Any recommendations? Im always looking to try a new scotch
Macallen 12
My suggestion for them is, stop scaring people with climate doom lies.
Is “Climate Change” science or pseudoscience?
“Popper’s examples of pseudoscience included Marx’s theory of history. He observed on page 35 of his famous book, that “A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page, confirming evidence” for the theory. Freud’s theories were the same; every clinical case confirmed his ideas. A hypothesis that is not refutable by any conceivable event is not scientific.”
It is saddening that even Obama doesn’t get what freedom of speech really means.
He knows, else he couldn’t spread his BS
It’s just precious that Obama, winner of the 2013 Lie of the Year Award, is lecturing us on disinformation.
OBUMMER does understand that is why he wants to stop it !
[annnnnnd that’s an automatic ban-cr]
He is a typical socialist – they want to control the message.
Whatever he accuses his enemies of is exactly what he has in mind for the rest of us. He’s still accusing the Trump campaign of conspiring with the Russians to steal the election in 2016 while it was his FBI and DOJ that were conspiring with Russian operatives and Hillary’s campaign to trip Trump up. Russian hookers peeing on a bed Obama slept in. Really! That’s the best you can do?
That’s the origin of Yellow Stream Media. It combines the Pee-pee Papers with Yellow Journalism. It wasn’t long after that someone came up with ‘urinalists’** of the YSM.
Steve from Colorado, over on The Conservative Treehouse came up with YSM. I can’t recall who came up with urinalists, but it’s a natural follow on.
–
–
**Also spelled jurinalists when pronounced with a Swedish accent.
Obama is a tool. Power lies within intelligence agencies. If you get out of line they will show you some disinformation.
If he did, he’s be Trump. And we wouldn’t be discussing climate change as though it was a thing.
Hey Obamao. The 80s are calling. They want their foreign policy back.
Arguably, Facebook, Twitter, and Google are acting in fear of, or solidarity with, elected Democrats in setting their “moderation” policies. Outsourced or vigilante censorship is still censorship.
That is not getting into their status under Section 230, which does not give them the responsibility of ordinary publishers.
That Obama feller is almost as smart as Josef Stalin was about bamboozling the public into uncritical beliefs of political blather by Great Leaders. But they’re like broken radios, which transmit but can’t receive. Obama wants, and Stalin wanted, a Public which only receives its information from Authorized Sources.
Washington, Jefferson, Madison were unafraid of a fully endowed Public which could both transmit and receive. By comparison with them, the wannabe Glorious Leader Obama shrinks to the size of a microbe.
Perhaps he should be reminded of the great revolutionary lawyer Maximilien Robespierre who lost his head along the way. France has never been the same since.
To paraphrase Mencken, they just want to scare the public to death and then tell them they alone have the solution to their problems and the means to save them (with the means paid for by the same frightened public).
This is really cheeky given that just about everything Biden and the democrats have said about climate change is a lie.
Par for the course – when you think what they did for democracy in the stolen election.
Why be so restrictive?
Just about everything Biden and the Democrats have said about anything is a lie.
This ^
Obama never was the sharpest knife in the drawer. This speech full of contradictions is just more evidence of his dullness.
Looks like Musk now has the wherewithal to go fix Twitter based on his newest SEC filing. And in other breaking news today, Trump’s Truth Social is migrating to Rumble’s existing cloud platform, which immediately solves Nunes backmoffice scale up problem. Poor Obumer. He loses his desired ability to censor what he doesn’t like.
“A demagogue is one who knowingly tells untruths to those he believes to be morons.”
-H. L. Mencken
An amusing thought occurred to me. Were it ever proven that Obama wasn’t born in the US, would that then make Elon Musk a potential Presidential candidate?
The remedy for false speech is more speech.
Censorship has never protected anyone.
These are obvious truths.
People who claim otherwise are not your friends.
Also, speech is literally thought manifested into a form others can perceive. In fact, most thoughts are inner dialogs – speech basically. To control speech is to control thought. So the next time someone says they want to regulate (control) speech (thought), ask yourself why.
True, Doonman, and this is why decades of dumbing down in schools is practiced. Fortunately a smart minority have brains too strong for this procedure (USSR collapsed in large part because of a tiny minority of dissidents). Indeed, the chief weakness of this totalitarian strategy is you selectively and progressively dumb down those who want to be teachers.
Completely agree. That is why one of the “tools” they use most prolifically is not engage the dissenting party on the alleged grounds that they are not worth engaging. This kills the debate and opens the way to the censorship imposed by those who can censor. They can’t refute the arguments of the “dissenters” so they act as if those arguments don’t exist…
Joe Biden can’t stop talking. It sure hasn’t done anyone any good.
Internet has for most people become a de facto, default, library. Imagine a library in which government exercised a right to censor books, where politicians and bureaucrats–and students–decided what books you could or could not read. Did a country ever try this?–if so, where did it lead?–what could go wrong? It is always worth noting just who proposes these ideas. And–don’t blame me if the following quote is uncomfortable, I didn’t make any of this up; simply studying history in an effort to not have to repeat it. Doesn’t seem to be working, does it.
“Eighty-five years ago, fires fueled with literature labeled “un-German” by the Nazi regime burned across the country. Many students enthusiastically joined in the act at the time.
“This was a prelude only. Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.” The words that German poet Heinrich Heine wrote in his tragedy Almansor some 100 years earlier, would, under the Nazis, become a tragic reality.”
https://www.dw.com/en/when-books-were-burned-in-germany/a-43725960
It’s somewhat like the way Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984” have become recipe books for the totalitarians.
Just how many maths books has the Florida government banned recently? And how many other books have republicans banned from being taught to students? It seems like the republicans in the USA are fully on board with censorship and book banning.
Izaak,
you can send your kids to stay with me for a few weeks. it would be good for them … expose them to new ideas and such.
what do you think?
Not banning books Izaak.
Just removing age-inappropriate materials from government operated classrooms.
(e.g. content that explains / depicts to 8 year old children how to masturbate. Parents weren’t consulted on the introduction of these materials. Teachers are in no way qualified to educate / guide such young children in sexual activities. “Hey, teachers – leave them kids alone”)
And the maths books being banned? Care to explain those? Or multiple other books banned because of fears about “critical race theory” despite the books having nothing to do with the same and the people involved not being able to explain what CRT actually is? Again it is the republicans across the country who are actively banning books and restricting what can be taught at schools and universities while complaining loudly about censorship.
Examples?
Notice how Izaak totally ignores your point about the inappropriate content?
CRT? Anti white, racist beliefs. Can you explain it otherwise?
The prominent hand of Black Power rather says it all.
Obviously, Izaak want the youngsters to be groomed in gender malpractice.. !
He also wants to bring the kids up to be racists.
That is what CRT is all about….. defining peoples actions by race.
What children should be taught is that the colour and race are irrelevant to basically everything.. That is just shouldn’t matter.
ie the very opposite of critical race theory, which seeks to demonise certain races for one aspect or another.
I made nor intended no partisan statement Izaak; I’m not even American. But to me there is a major difference between removing books from inappropriate-age classroom-children exposure and outright banning. I don’t believe that any books you refer to are outright banned; outside of the classroom they are still available to anyone. There is a difference between that and banning everyone from reading them.
What Barack Obama is proposing, in all it’s flowery language, is too similar to events in history to leave me comfortable. Do you embrace partisanship to the extent that you would accept Obama’s concept because it is ‘on the right side of politics’?
My response is that I completed my 10 years of university on 3 degrees many years ago; Obama (and Trudeau, I’m Canadian) can leave everything up to me to decide whether it is truth or not. I do not respect his authority, or anyone else’s, to decide for me and neither should you. And that for anyone to do so is a dangerous road to go down; such a concept was on the right side of politics (at least) once, but it ended up very much on the wrong side of history.
Len,
What exactly do you think President Obama is proposing? Your comment about deciding what to believe sounds like Obama’s plan:
“So, as citizens, we have to take it upon ourselves, to become better consumers of news, looking at sources, thinking before we share, and teaching our kids to become critical thinkers who know how to evaluate sources, and separate opinion from fact. In fact a number of school districts are working to train kids in this kind of online media literacy, not around any particular idealogical perspective, but just, how to check a source”
and that plan for better educated kids appears to be the only concrete proposal in his speech. Elsewhere he states that he is pretty much a free
speech absolutist and says that he doesn’t want government censorship. He also states correctly that the first amendment only applies to the government and not private corporations.
Obama also points out that already social media companies make decisions about what material they allow on their platform and which posts to promote via their algorithms. Suggesting that they should be more open about what they are doing seems sensible now matter what side of the fence you are on.
You shouldn’t be downvoted for that post Izaak, it is correct and perfectly reasonable and I appreciate your reasoned comments. What Obama says however, and what he does (like keeping your medical plan for example) often end up being two different things. The statement of needing to prepare young people to be critical thinkers and what state-controlled education is turning out seem opposite.
He is making a point about lending government support to a private social platform that controls what you and I see; others have discussed the factors around the liabilities of being a publisher or not. I don’t want to see that happen; all the information should be free to everyone whether they like it or not, and any time I see an entity used for presentation of information applying a form of censorship I ignore them and go elsewhere. The analogy would be encountering a sign on the door of a library stating that ‘only publications approved by our self-appointed library board for you to see are available here’.
In any event this should not have descended into a partisan argument, which was what I was objecting to; it has, or should have, nothing to do with political partisanship. The discussion should all be about censorship of information. My original point was that having the state get involved with deciding what information is truth and what is fiction has been tried before, and the mindset of those being allowed to make such decisions has a burden of human nature that comes with it, as described by Heinrich Heine and enacted by the Nazi regime in Germany–not to mention the Catholic Church during the Inquisition period, and witch-burners in Medieval Europe and the KKK in the US. No state or private platform of information should make any steps toward going down that path, and Obama’s discussion had a lot to do with control of information.
An excellent example of state control of information by the way is demonstrated by the Pfizer documents. The state (CDC) keeping this information from citizens, then once being forced to release it said it would take over 75 years, then wanting to only release it with redactions–I do not get the implication, especially after reading the documents after they were released, that government is remotely close to being honest enough to be given any right over control of information. The private corporation, once involved with the public as Pfizer is, should not have that right of control either.
The only one who should make any decision of whether information is ‘toxic’ or not is the free and informed citizen, and we just have to accept we are not a uni-opinion species and that each of us has the responsibility to become informed. The change from listening to everyone’s opinion, and the present displays of intolerance determined by individual of group-collective disagreement, has all happened in my lifetime, despite the path it leads to seeming so obvious in history.
Len,
you write that “The analogy would be encountering a sign on the door of a library stating that ‘only publications approved by our self-appointed library board for you to see are available here’.”
yet that is what every library (other than copyright libraries) do. No library has enough space for every book and so the librarians decide which books to stock and which ones not to buy. My local library is constantly selling old books to make room for new ones. So whether you like it or not the “self-appointed library board” is deciding what books you can read at your local library.
The same is true of Twitter and other social media sites. The only thing that makes them worthwhile is their censorship and moderation policies. Imagine if you will that the only way of accessing Twitter was via the raw feed and you got every single tweet posted in real time (6000 per second) whether or not it was in your language, posted by someone you knew etc. Pretty soon you would stop using it as would almost everyone else and it would be useless.
There has to be some censorship of tweets to make the platform useful. The same is true of sites like Facebook. Even google has to have an algorithm for ranking webpages in order for people to use it. Imagine a search engine that simply returned sites in alphabetical order? Or one in date order? Would anybody use it? So given the overwhelming about of stuff available online there has to censorship and editorial decisions made by someone to render the whole thing manageable. The question is then who should we empower to do that? I for one wouldn’t trust TikTok not to censor anti-China posts and am very suspicious about the editorial decisions it makes.
Again those are valid points Izaak. But there is a big difference between a library removing old books that nobody has read for years (and in my defence I had university libraries in mind, not village public libraries) due to limited space, and government encouraging Facebook and Twitter to deplatform Dr. Robert Malone because they don’t happen to like his opinions on mRNA vaccines. That action I think we’d both agree borders on criminal; it certainly is detestable and unjustified.
Also, relative to a public library, the capacity for digital information storage is practically infinite and will apparently stay so due to regular advances in technology and dropping cost of storage media.
“So, as citizens, we have to take it upon ourselves, to become better consumers of news, looking at sources, thinking before we share, and teaching our kids to become critical thinkers who know how to evaluate sources, and separate opinion from fact. In fact a number of school districts are working to train kids in this kind of online media literacy, not around any particular idealogical[sic] perspective, but just, how to check a source”
Why is that a schools job?
A bit like sex education. The left are utterly obsessed about the subject, which hasn’t done a damn thing for the poorest members of our societies because they continue to breed like rabbits, mixing and matching parents.
We send kids to school to learn the 3 R’s. Secondary school should offer sciences, languages and the classics, history and geography, all designed as a foundation for further education.
They are tough to learn, but they sort the wheat from the chaff even before approaching the grounds of a university.
So what does CRT and sex education offer our children facing a lifetime of hard graft to achieve what many of us have achieved?
Laughably, whilst the left believe these subjects are critical to our children’s futures, most kids leave school not knowing what a savings or current (checking) account is, how a credit card works, or what a mortgage is.
Obama mentions “critical thinking” as though this is something new and a response to the media. In reality it’s a product of studying the classics. Just learning the English language instils in one the ability to discern contradictions and forces one to ask questions of context.
And were ‘checking a source’ as easy as he maintains, WUWT wouldn’t be populated by people with different, informed opinions.
And you don’t recognise the contradictions between these two statements?
That’s a joke and we know it, with children being taught about climate change as though it’s settled science.
How can this Bozo lecture others on critical thinking when it’s literally eliminated from the curriculum?
Barry’s time is coming. And husband Big Mike.
Masks save lives 😉
I can’t stomach reading or hearing anything by BO. But if this hypocrite wants to effectively trash any semblance of ‘accommodation’ from the sphere of public discourse in favor of a consistent defense of individual property rights, I’m with him.
In what way did you come to a conclusion that he offers a defense of individual property rights?
‘That said, the first amendment is a check on the power of the state. It doesn’t apply to private companies, like Facebook or Twitter,’
Just calling him out on his hypocrisy. Per the quotation, he’s A-OK with property rights when a large firm decides not to accommodate (censors) individuals with whom he disagrees. Compare and contrast with his many violations of property rights during his administration.
The First Amendment is a non discriminatory check and enforcement, and it applies to any person and entity operating within the USA… regardless of authority, sex, gender, race, or any other special status.
A public space, either privately owned or not, is full subject to the First Amendment.
Government or Private ownership and ruling, or whatever else in between, as far as in clear public at large interest, happen to be indiscriminately fully subject to the First Amendment.
Is no any where in that First Amendment, (or any where else in the USA Constitution) either implied or hinted that some happen to be more equal than others… by the virtue of their wealth or political or intellectual power,
What applies to Joe, equally applies to Moe, regardless.
cheers
Re-read Andy
The Great Obomba has spoken…let it be written…let it be done. Does the Great Obomba admire the control Putin and Xi Jinping have over speech?
Like a fine steak rotting over time, and a slice of quality bread molding away, our constitutional republic is disintegrating because of the multiplication of corrosive bits resident within.
Can not stand this man! Apparently it was so much better when news was easier to control with just tv and print media. A free internet is such a challenge for tyrants like Obama
Hell is full of good meanings, but heaven is full of good works. This is not a good work,
What happened to
I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.
Evelyn Beatrice Hall
“What happened to…”
Evelyn got Censored, then Canceled.
Evelyn wasn’t woke. Woke people recognize the danger bad thoughts have and want to suppress them for your safety. There is no other reason as hurt feelings are fatal as we all know.
I would love to get rid of the worst toxic material that is coming from politicians and their activist supporters. Please let me know where I can sign up for this. I will even work for free on the censor board that decides what is toxic and what is not.
The problem is if you don’t give them a chance to speak, you have less opportunity to learn what a bunch of idiots most of them are.
Speaking of Barry Soetoro (a.k.a. Barack Hussein Obama) otherwise known as The Kenyan, Happy 152nd Birthday Vladimir Lenin, April 22. Also known as ‘Earth Day’ in worship of Vladimir Lenin and the Marxist/Leninist global warming/climate change propaganda.
Obama is the classic Marxist that wormed his way into Western civilization. Too bad he hadn’t been a patriotic American, and never will be truly patriotic when he set back America light years with his socialist apology for America.
Hitler’s birthday is April 20. Those who think fascism is right wing won’t understand.
This in spades ^
1962 First year of lessor learning, a fill class – academia/gov’ment requirement, man instructor claimed Fascism was a radical right concept of the United States Constitution. Looking left and right in this lecture hall, open mouths catching flies. Well, except those 3 students sitting in the front row.
A “platform” does not censor. A “publisher” can be sued. You are either one or the other.
I wonder how Obama thinks the censorship could possibly ever be fair or factual? Another really deep thinker brough to you by Harvard, school of wokism.
Jonathan Haidt has written an excellent article for The Atlantic.
The social media are a pox on society. They hand outsized power to the most aggressive brain dead juvenile delinquents who intimidate anyone with nuanced and thoughtful ideas into silence.
The net result is that society is getting really stupid.
Haidt makes some interesting suggestions. My favorite is this: Instead of letting someone retweet something a zillion times with the click of a button, force them to copy and paste. That little bit of friction would prevent a huge amount of crap from going viral, and nobody’s speech rights are impinged.
How do you really know something goes “viral” or isn’t orchestrated?
“… a lot of times can make it impossible to tell the difference between say a peer reviewed article by Dr. Anthony Fauci, and a miracle cure being pitched by a huckster.”
I just had someone admit that his multi-authored paper (not climate) introduction was boilerplate. This needs to be part of peer-review questions right next to ‘event attribution.’ Peer reviewed verbosity is on a rampage. I would add some websites like one I just searched unsuccessfully.
Verbose–“…containing more words than necessary.”
Rampage–“…to rush wildly about.”
So, in other words, Fauci is no different from the huckster?
Fauci IS the huckster. !
No one tries to shut up people who are lying.
It is the opposite.
Liars desperately need to shut up people who are telling the truth and thus exposing the lairs for what they are.
The pattern is always the same regarding something else: The left always accuses those who oppose them of doing exactly what they are doing themselves.
It is at times obvious, but when it is not, just reverse every word they say, and you will know the truth.
People do lie viciously and others can be hurt by this. Actions are brought in court against such conduct every day.
Biden is give him a run for his money as worst President
Biden is definitely worse than Obama.
If a person were intent on destroying the United States, he would do what Biden is doing now.
Biden needs to be impeached and removed from Office as soon as possible, for the sake of the nation.
If Biden is impeached, Harris becomes president.
She couldn’t be any worse than Biden. A Biden impeachment might keep her subdued and a majority Republican Congress, one necessary to impeach Biden, would be able to stifle anything Harris proposed to do. And if Harris is derelict in her duty, like Biden is in his, and no doubt she will be, then she should be impeached, too. Then the Republican Speaker of the House will become president.
It’s time to play a little political hardball on the part of the Republcians. The Democrats have been doing it for years and are about to destroy our country as a result, and it’s time Republican fought back hard enough to win the ideological battle, legally, and they can do it if they have enough of the majority in Congress, and if they do, they should use their political power to save this nation from the radical Democrat socialists.
For the Nation’s sake. For the sake of our personal freedoms which the radical Democrats want to take away from us.
The Republicans should take the legitimate legal political steps necessary to preserve our Republic, if they have a majority big enough. Then the only question will be do the Republicans have the will to go against the Leftwing Media, which will be howling with fury at the attack on socialism, and go ahead and do what needs to be done: Oust the radical Democrats from power as soon as possible?
Whilst he can do a lot of harm, Biden won’t destroy America in four years.
What he has done, however, is horrify much of his core voters. We had something similar in 2019 in the UK when the raging communist Jeremy Corbyn did so much harm to the Labour party the Conservatives led by Boris Johnson consigned them to a backwater for the next 20 years. Even labour politicians were publicly lamenting this.
How times can change though. Boris is as hell bent on his environmental path as Biden is and is similarly damaging the country. His fall in polling numbers is almost as catastrophic as Biden’s.
That twenty years has now been whittled down to a matter of months as Conservative MP’s are now calling for his resignation.
Biden is damaging the Democrat party, make no mistake. If he continues on his current path, come 2024 he may as well just hand over his Presidency to the Republican candidate and save the public the agony of an election.
Shall we listen to Barack Husein Obama’s version of disinformation? Should it be censored?
We should not censor Obama’s disinformation. We have the freedom to ignore his remarks. Let him spout all the disinformation he wants. If we stopped him from doing so, he would never say another word because everything Obama says is disinformation.
“no evidence of widespread evidence”
???
A problem for the Leftists is they never got around to actually repealing the Fourth Amendment (4A). It is still available, though currently dormant. Thankfully, by ignoring it, the Left hasn’t ruined it (yet). They’ve tried to pretend it is moot, a dead letter. But, unlike the 3rd amendment, 4A has not become obsolete and irrelevant. The opposite is true – 4A has never been more vital. We just haven’t called anybody on it, yet. It’s brimming with potential energy that needs to go kinetic.
4A is quite different than 1A. It is written in the affirmative, not merely as a prohibition of what government cannot do. “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated” is so clear even an obtuse Leftist should be able to understand it.
Yes, 4A gets around to prohibiting some governmental activities, but those are just the logical consequence of the opening salvo. Big Tech may not be violating our 1A rights, but they are trampling all over our 4A rights. If someone broke into my home and rifled through my diary and checkbook, they would be violating my 4A rights – whether they were an agent of the government, or not. Just because local ordinances would most likely be employed against that person does not mean 4A couldn’t be applied.
In modern parlance, 4A makes the United States a safe place for privacy. It is grossly “unreasonable” to suggest we have to join a monastery or become Amish to escape from the clear glass fishbowl we’ve been tossed into without our consent.
It is grossly “unreasonable” that massive multinational corporations suck up every last scrap of data about me, run that purloined info through sophisticated algorithms on super computers, and then sell the info and analysis to total strangers. We are not RFID’d packets whisking about inside a massive GovCorp warehouse! At least, we ought not to be.
4A is the axe to lay to the root of the redwood tree of pervasive surveillance and deep pondering that assaults us 24/7/365. It simply doesn’t matter that relentless invasion is so pervasive or profitable. It is unconstitutional.
4A ought to be the basis of the biggest class action lawsuit in history and/or the most consequential Cease and Desist Order ever issued.
Copied and pasted with credit to Mathew Schilling
Thanks!
I think it’s important to consider, like Elon Musk says it’s important to carefully consider how to regulate digital super AI before it’s omniscient. That’s the rub: before, which is now.
If we consider the moment AI becomes omniscient as midnight, then it is now maybe only ten minutes prior to the when the three hands on our clock will be raised together in surrender.
While I markedly disapprove, and fear, the great loss of privacy, it isn’t quite so clear cut. They don’t go into you home and riffle through your checkbook. You use your personal information to ends you believe beneficial to you. They refuse to do business with you unless you consent that they take ownership of the information you impart.
It doesn’t have to be that way but that is the arrangement that greatly benefits them so, unless you can get a very sizeable majority to engage in a campaign of refusing to do business with them under those conditions, they will continue to set the terms of the interaction.
Our God-given rights are inalienable. Part of the purpose of government is to superintend and intervene when silly people work against their own rights. “I see they tried to sell themselves into slavery, but that’s not allowed. Sorry. Contract null and void!”
But it has always been legitimate to sell yourself into slavery under the US constitution and the law thereof. The courts have explicitly observed that it is so. It happens every day. Generally one can revoke the contract for going forward but the debt already obtained still applies
This reminds me of a discussion where I worked when the Federal regulations to require a common bumper height on all automobiles and light trucks was being proposed. This was a proposal brought forth from and for the benefit if insurance companies. At that time different bumper heights and types went with many different automobile styles and truck utilization designs.
One fellow was adamantly in favor of that regulation, and possibly many others.
“When I go to buy a car, all I can see is whether or not I like the styling. It is the governments duty to make sure I don’t buy a car that will end up costing me a lot of extra money.”
No, an American cannot sell themselves into slavery. There’s this thing called the 13th Amendment. It was written awhile back, right after a little kerfuffle occurred between some of the states. You might want to look it up.
You are simply wrong. Did you miss the “involuntary” part? Even under that there are limitations. Don’t forget about chain gangs and any other type of prison labor. These days your ‘contract’ can often be sold to a private company that might pay you 13 cents an hour if you are lucky. You don’t get to choose under those circumstances.
You are free to join any cult, commune, or other organization that puts strict limitations on you and your (frequently forfeited) property. You can agree to work the cotton fields 12 hours a day, to forgo any outside communication, and any other restrictions the organization may impose, all for enrollment in the organizational culture and minimal room and board. You can then engender greater debt to the organization for every violation of rules and their culture that you make. In those cases you can legally end the contract but you can’t just walk away from any debt or obligations that you agreed to if the organization can cogently argue that they fulfilled their part of the bargain.
It is possible to describe many other types of bondage that are essentially slavery of varying degrees. These can include bondage to government agencies.
You are literally the only person who thinks joining a cult is the same as selling yourself into slavery. It is literally impossible to communicate with someone who has his own personal “definitions” for words.
You can’t even understand the plain meaning of the 13th Amendment yet you’re going to hold forth on the 4th? Now that right there is funny, I don’t care who you are!
Please keep digging, Andy. Just because you don’t mean to be a comedian doesn’t mean you aren’t very funny!
They absolutely DO come into our homes and rifle through everything! One or two smartphones, AKA “NSA Listening Devices”; a couple laptops; a couple “smart” TV’s; a Ring doorbell; home security system; an Alexa. We couldn’t be more thoroughly stalked if we lived in an ant farm on NSA property.
How many of those options do you choose to participate in? You might not like all parts of the bargain but virtually none of it would exist in your life if you didn’t choose to invite it in.
What good is it to not have a smart phone when standing in the midst of multiple people with smartphones? Virtually no place that involves society (as opposed to being alone deep in a forest) is free of several cameras. As for homes, every transmitter is a receiver. Every. single. one. That would include a “smart” TV – doubly so if it doesn’t merely employ rabbit ears antenna.
It is unreasonable, therefore unconstitutional, to require individuals to join a monastery or move to an Amish community to regain their 4A rights. It is unreasonable, and therefore unconstitutional, to require people to travel back in time to the 19th century to get back under the protection of 4A. It is unreasonable, and therefore unconstitutional, to assert 4A expired halfway through the 20th century, so forget about it!
A vital Fourth Amendment and Surveillance Capitalism are mutually exclusive. Therefore, surveillance capitalism is unconstitutional, whatever the fallout is for Facebook’s stock price. Because surveillance capitalism is unconstitutional, Google must be shorn of its search engine, with its algorithms laid bare and placed in the public domain. Further, the unholy, fascistic marriage of Big Tech and the Deep State is grossly unconstitutional. Jail time is required. Former heads of three-lettered government agencies who have walked down a short hall to sit in front of MSM cameras need to be dragged out and locked up.
Americans are being held hostage in a massive GovCorp warehouse, all darted and tagged for monitoring purposes. This crime against humanity dwarfs what the Communist Chinese have done to the Uighurs. The hostages must be set free – all of them, even obtuse tools who don’t realize they’re in a warehouse. The tags must be tossed into barrels of acid. Then the warehouse must be burned to the ground.
The Constitution is an agreement between the People and their Government. Originally, only the Federal Government. With the 14th amendment, the first 10 started to be applied to the States as well. Except as provided for in various civil rights acts, Constitutional guarantees do not apply between private actors. So, if someone were to break into your home and rifle through your private papers and copy/abscond with them, you can lodge a complaint of burglary against them with your local police, but you cannot lodge a 4A complaint against them.
I completely disagree. The Constitution is NOT an agreement with the Federal government, since it gives birth to that government. It is an agreement among ourselves and among the states.
I believe it is obtuse to not see the right to privacy is explicitly declared, then applied in the context of the Constitution. Since the rights are God-given, they are not discovered by the Bill of Rights, just enumerated and applied to our relationship with government.
I say part of the problem with 4A atrophying is because we don’t use 4A against a non-government jerk who breaks in.
Going back to the early days after the ratification of the Constitution, people were trying to apply the Constitutional guarantees and the Bill of Rights to contractual matters.
“Well yes, I did get that benefit out of the deal but my having to … violates my Constitutional rights.”
The courts were quite explicit in pointing out that natural or Constitutional rights are completely different things from contractual obligations. I suppose that is a major reason attorneys are so often consulted before signing on some dotted line.
Government is considered to have some legitimate powers over individuals; most certainly governments have overwhelming force powers over individuals. Inalienable and/or Constitutional rights are presumed to protect individuals against those powers in various specific ways by declaring limits to that government power. Some things are also declared illegal in contracts but those stem from legislative enactments, not Constitutional limitations.
It is certainly true that the creep (sometimes rush) of additional control over people has been going on for most of this country’s history but so has the extension of contracts between government and individuals, overriding individual rights. Today most people are born, live, and die under contractual obligations they never understand and are often unaware that anything else is possible.
It is likely that the courts will not let you.
“How a Constitutional Rights Violation Case Works
Elements for Establishing a Claim
United States law allows an individual who believes that his or her constitutional rights have been violated to bring a civil action against the government to recover the damages sustained as a result of that violation. Specifically, 42 USC §1983 “provides a cause of action for the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws by any person acting under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory.” Gomez v Toledo, 446 US 635, 638 (1980)(internal quotations omitted).
In Gomez, the United States Supreme Court determined that only two elements must be pled to properly assert a cause of action under 42 USC §1983. First, the Plaintiff must specifically identify the constitutional right of which he or she was deprived. Id. at 640. Second, the Plaintiff must assert that “the person who deprived him of that federal right acted under color of state or territorial law.” Id.
In other words, the individual who deprived the Plaintiff of the right must have been acting for or on behalf of a governmental entity at the time the right was denied. However, an agent of the government who is abusing his position or the power conferred upon him is still acting under the “color of law” and is thus subject to §1983 actions.
Monroe v Pape, 365 US 167, 172 (1960). There is no constitutional violation if the individual who denied the Plaintiff’s right as a private citizen unless that individual was working in conjunction with a governmental entity.”
So we will need SCOTUS to rule properly, that the Bill of Rights lists… rights. What a revolutionary thought! After all, It’s not the Bill of Government Proscriptions.
Or, we need we the People assembled in Congress to declare the rights as innate to people. They limit government but emanate from us, just as a lamp shines on items in a room – the light is a property of the lamp, not of the items it illuminates.
It’s problematic that the courts assume ownership of the constitution. It was a travesty a couple years ago when SCOTUS sat in judgment of the second amendment! They came within a couple votes of gutting it. I said at the time that would a trigger to activate it.
Bad SCOTUS decisions don’t make good precedent, e.g., Dred Scott v Sanford.
Disagree all you like, but you completely misunderstand the purpose of the Constitution. The Constitution regulates the relationship between the people and the Federal (and sometimes, State) government, and enumerates responsibilities and powers. It is most definitely NOT a document regulating the relationships between and among private individuals.
D. J. Hawkins
How about that any one in the territory of USA, regardless of creed or status, is subject to be sued and be hold libel for slander and defamation against that document, in a court of law!
How about it?
What do you think?
I can find no evidence for such a law or regulation. Searching for “defame”, “defamation”, “libel”, or “slander” in the Constitution and its amendments returns no results. Can you provide references?
Your condescension must make you a big hit at parties! So, I COMPLETELY misunderstand the purpose of the Constitution?!?
The Fourth Amendment declares in plain English that the people have a right to be secure in their person, papers and effects from unreasonable searches. It does NOT say “BUT ONLY FROM GOVERNMENT! This right only applies to government. Do NOT try to use this amendment at home!”
As I wrote earlier, the first 10 amendments are called the Bill of RIGHTS, not the Bill of Government Restrictions.
While people often make the specious “argument” that 1A doesn’t apply to powerful agents of GovCorp, they at least have an excuse for that foolishness – 1A is written as a prohibition against Congress passing laws of certain types. Yet, if Congress can’t pass a law in certain areas, it follows the rest of government can’t throw elbows around in those areas either. So, the reach of the amendment was very quickly extended beyond the only branch of government mentioned in it. In fact, it is an historical fact that the text of 1A has been extended to other entities not specifically mentioned by it.
Why, even groomer bullies in state-sponsored madrassas (public school teachers) are held to be limited by the text of 1A! The Fed gov’t, and its courts in particular, have spent a couple centuries inexorably expanding the reach of the amendments to the Constitution. Still not so clever people immediately snap into action whenever anyone dares to say the first amendment ought to ensure the free speech of American citizens in America. “Of course, you can ride in the front of the bus. Just don’t say anything!”
One could almost say I’m trying to swim in the same general flow of the last two and a half centuries, by expanding the reach of the Fourth Amendment. Not really. I’m asserting the plain text means what it says. It has been formally enshrined in our founding, governing document that the people have a right to be secure in their persons, papers and effects from unreasonable searches. Not from government searches; not from unreasonable government searches, but from unreasonable searches.
It is patently, painfully obvious that powerful agents of GovCorp relentlessly and thoroughly – and therefore unreasonably, render our persons, papers, and effects utterly insecure – open to full exposure to complete strangers. Ants in clear plastic ant farms have more privacy than we do! Such ants spend vast portions of each and every day free from even a single gaze, yet we are pinned down by a continuous, unblinking stare. As I mentioned above, we are no better than RFID’d packets in a massive GovCorp warehouse – where the lights never go out and the security shifts never go unfilled.
If only it had been recorded somewhere or suggested by someone with authority to back up the suggestion that we ought not to be treated in such a nightmarish manner! Oh, that’s right! It has been. And it wasn’t a suggestion.
The problem for people lacking in understanding is, 4A eventually gets around to prohibiting specific government actions. That’s where they often develop legal vertigo. But the second half of the amendment’s text is merely a corollary to the actual proposition made by the amendment. (In case you don’t recognize that word, a corollary is a follow-on clause, arising from and dependent on the primary text that precedes it.)
There isn’t even a hint of limitation on the primary clause of 4A. The concluding clause is merely a logical application of the opening, governing clause, written in the context of the overarching document.
You’ll likely completely misunderstand this reply. But others are bound to get it. So, I’m going to go ahead and post it here.
If it isn’t an agent of government, it is trespass, breaking and entering, burglary, and other such crimes and misdemeanors, not a Constitutional matter. If you install Alexa, or an internet connection to a smart TV, you voluntarily give up privacy rights.
You may be too ignorant to realize the ramifications of what you are doing but then, did you read all 50,000 (500,000?) pages of the Social Security regulations before requesting a number and thereby pledging your labor (your most and possibly only real possession) as collateral for the public debt? It doesn’t matter if you understood or not, only if the information was potentially available to you. You made the agreement, you suffer the results.
Aww.
If you want condescension, here you go: My comment was meant as an outright smackdown on your ignorance. There, is that better? Nothing in your reply alters your display of ignorance.
Here is the full text of the Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Notice the reference to “warrants” and “oaths”? Where would one private person go to get a warrant to be served on another private person to search or seize their property, as a private citizen and not the result of a court proceeding? They couldn’t. Again, if someone grabs your stuff, it’s robbery or burglary it’s a police matter, and you don’t get any 4th amendment relief.
Poor thing, you failed to notice the word “and”, as in “AND no warrants shall arise…” “And”, as “in addition to”, and “also”. It doesn’t mean “by which we mean” or “We said all that only because”.
You also failed to notice there is an enumeration of related, yet independent concepts here, just as there is in the First Amendment. Now, even you probably understand 1A doesn’t diminish the protection of religion by mentioning the press. The potency of 1A wasn’t diluted by listing several areas in which it applies. Its potency is the same in each area. Similarly, making reference to warrants and oaths does not cancel or limit the right of the people to be secure in their persons, house, papers, and effects. Rather, BECAUSE the people have an innate right to privacy, gubmint must be darn ready to explain precisely what they need and why they need it. (Poor thing, please feel free to take a break if you’re getting a headache.)
Also, O Obtuse One, I didn’t list people GRABBING my stuff, but rifling through it – taking notes, writing down personal info, etc. (And then comparing those notes with other stalking strangers) A person doing that can cause much more harm to me than the guy who TAKES my wallet, shoves the cash from it into his pocket, and then throws the wallet away. A wallet and the cash can be replaced, but privacy lost is privacy ruined, ended.
Again, I’m not replying for you in particular. I’d rather rake in the wind. I’d rather explain brain surgery to someone who’s already had a frontal lobotomy. But this a public forum (almost like a place where free speech ought to be encouraged. Almost) Others will think on what I’m saying and realize the Founders intended privacy to be of paramount importance, because it is a foundation stone to individual liberty. And we’ve proven them right by letting contemptible people excise that right so that the natural consequences could play out.
It’s not just because of our lack of a southern border that America has devolved from a walled garden into a trampled field. It is also because both the spirit and letter of the Fourth Amendment has been gutted and razed. But none of this has come upon us because we were stupid, suicidal children who willed it so. These evils were slipped on us while we slept.
The most consequential things that have happened in America for an entire generation occurred without a vote of the people or a referendum from them. Almost all of it was directly opposed to the clear will of the people! A cabal of grifters, haters, and criminally insane idiots have systemically destroyed American society – simply because we paid no attention to them as they thrashed about. The bulls wreaked havoc in our china shop while we were away.
But another irritant of modernity is the gaggle of obtuse tools who make grandiose statements like, “The first amendment doesn’t apply to Twitter because the Founders never intended for people to have free speech in a public forum”. It’s the same dearth of intellect and logic that lets its victim opine the 2nd Amendment really only applies to muskets. Now we see it here: “Just because 4A says people have a right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects doesn’t mean people have a right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects! It only means warrants and stuff! That flowery opening clause was just to get the word count up; it was never meant to convey anything useful”.
With your permission I would like to email this to a few people, Mr. Schilling.
Feel free and thank you!