Jul 6, 2020 | Liberty Articles
Harold Pease, Ph.D.
Most Americans and virtually all Christians, were taught not to mistreat others, that God is the father of all and we demonstrate our love for God by how we treat and serve others. The vast majority of whites, including police, are not unkind to blacks or racist. So don’t tell us that all whites, and only whites, have some kind of systemic racism because of the color of their skin. That belief is very racist and a lie.
I, like most Americans, have never participated in any activity harmful to blacks. In fact, most Americans have ancestors who fought in the Civil War to help rid this nation of slavery—360,222 northerners dying for that cause. And it was largely whites that gave America their first black president. If whites were systemic racists that would have never happened. In America race baiting to perpetuate racism is a vastly bigger problem than actual racism.
So Antifa, Black Lives Matter and other groups, media outlets included, looking to incite blacks to riot and blame all whites, cease the fake narrative. Today blacks have the same rights as any other race, no less, nor more. If whites are systemically racist then Barack Obama’s white mother would be racist and Barack himself, half white, thus half racist. Nonsense!
Americans who have never contributed to racism should have no white guilt. But, for the sake of argument, let us assume that my ancestors were slave owners and / or racists. Should I then have guilt or owe reparations to them? Certainly not to the living, and the dead are dead. Then, to their posterity generations later? Of course not! How would it be quantified? Most blacks are mixed black and many without slave history—like Obama in both respects. Racism that existed in the past must be left in the past. A just God will judge between the offender and the offended. Otherwise the offense, given new life, passes to the next generation.
Since, in America, nobody came through the birth canal a slave since 1865—155 years ago—no one now living is responsible. So if you force me to pay reparations for harm an ancestor may have done to someone dead generations ago, why should I not expect the same from their posterity for the damages done to me by making me pay for offenses I never did? And thus it passes to the third, fourth or tenth generation each alternately offending the other over justices that can never be resolved without continual offense. Somebody has to let it go, whether they ever forgive or not.
For many years I taught this philosophy as the only remedy possible to end the offense of slavery with only one dissenter; a male black student from an inner city back east who had so much hatred for alleged white behavior long before that he almost could not express himself. I asked him if he had been personally offended. He could not identify a single personal offense, but still hated. The thought of letting it go, or not hating because of it, he could not breach. Generational hatred was just too strong.
Critics may argue, “Whites have never felt racism as we have. It is easy for them. They have never been beat up for their skin color.” Perhaps, but some whites do know what it is like to be unmercifully beat up for no other reason than the color of their skin.
Forty-four years ago I knew a white California college professor that experienced just that. While grading final exam papers at the end of his first semester in California, he was subjected to loud and offensive language just outside his office bordering an open quad. It looked as if two fights were going on outside and, being the nearest authority on campus, he asked them to stop. When they didn’t he reached down to pull one of the combatants off another. He was the black leader of a gang of more than a dozen fellow Mexican gang members. They all attacked him. The two whites being beaten took the moment to run.
He had never seen any of these assailants before; one standing in front kicking him unmercifully with full force to the head every time he lifted it, his friends hitting and kicking him from every direction. His mind, very blurred from the blows, silently uttered to God his dangerous situation, “I will shortly be with Thee if you do not intervene in my behalf.” Almost immediately another white male faculty member entered the quad. The gang immediately attacked him also allowing the professor to get to his feet. They encircled both then pulled off their belts with large belt buckles, for which this gang was known, whipping them from all sides. In time they were able to ease to the door of the building and slip inside to safety.
Police later arrived and, mauled as he was, the professor was escorted to a police car with the restrained black gang leader inside, as he approached, snarling oaths of hatred and threats to kill him if identified. The gang leader was incarcerated for six months for the assault and soon after serving and release, killed a child and was reincarcerated, ending the immediate threat to the professor. Eventually the professor moved and never heard from, or of, the assailant again, Fear does not dissipate easily. He carried a can of maze with him the next many years. No one was going to beat him like that again.
The victim professor was me.
Have I forgotten this injustice to me. No, nor do I blame all blacks and/or Mexicans for the scum of a few. Nor did I teach my children to do so. But isn’t that what race baiters want blacks to do to the whites?
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Jun 29, 2020 | Constitution, Liberty Articles
Harold Pease, Ph.D.
In the first American Revolution Americans roughly divided in three equal groups, Loyalists favored England, Patriots the Colonists, and another third too apathetic to help either side. The Patriots won because the apathetic third would not stand with the Loyalist but also would not support them. In that revolution the enemy, England, was largely overseas.
As a young man I wondered which side I’d have supported as a colonist in 1776. Would I have been at Valley Forge with George Washington during the devastatingly cold winter of 1777? Would I have have left my plow, grabbed my rifle and raced to the front without command to stop Johnny Burgoyne in the Battle of Saratoga? Would I have supported the Declaration of Independence and eventually the Constitution and Bill of Rights that followed? And still later, would I have risked my life to end slavery for my black brother in the American Civil War? Yes! I know because as an adult I now stand for the same things as they. With which group would you have stood? Is it still so today?
In the current American Revolution the enemy is inside the United States. Basically they are the hate America, the Constitution, the Founders, tradition, statues, religion, law and order, and the police, crowd. Many are anarchists, socialists, and gang thugs like Antifa. They achieve their purposes by intimidation, fear, looting, burning buildings in primarily black neighborhoods they pretend to uplift, and killing policemen. Most probably do not vote, they have a more effective way to destroy America—anarchy; nevertheless, they decidedly favor the Democrat Party.
Amazingly Democrat Party icons: Jimmy Carter, Bill or Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden do not publicly condemn their positions or violence. Together they could stop anarchists in their tracts but do not. Because there exists no pushback from Democratic Party leadership—not even when the flag is burned—an intelligent person must conclude that this is now the Democrat Party—a party that would have been rejected by John F. Kennedy and all pre-Kennedy Democrat Presidents.
This 4th of July is very different from all preceding it. America is poised to openly reject everything the Founder’s stood for. Portland recently toppled a statue of even George Washington, the father of this country, placing the flag around his neck before setting it afire. The Abraham Lincoln statue, representing the man who, with 360,222 northerners, gave his life ending slavery, was torn down while leaving untouched the statue of Steven A. Douglas who ran as the Democrat Presidential nominee for president supporting continued slavery. Logic is upside down and inside out.
Democrats have historically been the party of slavery and the Ku Klux Klan. Today they run America’s 20 largest cities, most wanting to defund their police leaving poor blacks unprotected, but blacks still vote for the party that historically betrayed them. In this they remain under slavery. Today it encourages the slaughter of their young through abortion.
There exists a division in this country unlike any since the Civil War. And a threat to individual liberty unlike any since the first American Revolution. As then, only one side can win. The choice is freedom or tyranny, the Constitution or socialist enslavement. But today Internet platforms and the vast majority of media outlets, college professors, and elected officials favor one side of this equation. These are formable opponents every bit equal to England in 1776. But stand we must, everyones’ liberty is at stake.
Imagine a country where its enemies seek to disarm its citizens (2nd Amendment), remove its border protection (ICE), defund its protectors (police), and threaten religious assembly and free speech. Today the biggest enemy to our liberty is from within. I believe the day will come, when our eyes are opened to the designs of the would be tyrants around us, when no one will admit having been a member of the Democrat Party.
The vast majority of our opponents in the present revolution show bias towards Christianity. They ruled church meetings non-essential in the coronavirus scare. They set St. John ’s Episcopal Church, across from the Whitehouse, afire. BLM leader Shaun King wants Christ statues torn down. Are Bibles next to be burned?
A relationship with deity is mentioned five times in the Declaration of Independence. This document brought on war against the then greatest power on earth, and no European strategist gave the Patriots’ winning a ghost of a chance—yet they stood and won. They could count on no one but God and themselves. We must resurrect the war cry in that document again. “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
President John Quincy Adams said it best. “Posterity—You will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.” Let us never forget that liberty is not free. It was purchased and maintained by the blood of those before us and may have to be once again.
Let this be a warning to those who would take freedom from us now. We too are standing “with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence,” mutually pledging “to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” Again, which side are you standing with?
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Jun 22, 2020 | Globalism, Liberty Articles
Harold Pease, Ph.D.
“If you have nothing to hide. You have nothing to fear!” This is the message governments have told their people from time immemorial, especially tyrants of socialist countries: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Ze Dong and Pol Pot. All designed to paralyze freedom buffs of every nation.
Today Communist China watches her people more than any other country on earth reportedly from high tech surveillance technology often obtained in part from Google. Cameras are everywhere recording everything that happens in many big cities, as for example the city of Guiyang, which boast that they can find anyone in seven minutes in their vast population of 3.4 million residents ((YouTube video “In Your Face: China’s All-Seeing State”). If you fear big government, such surveillance, thus far less implemented in America, but coming, will terrify you.
This video begins with a camera in the sky scanning Guiyang, China. The script embedded in the scan says: “China is building the world’s largest and most sophisticated camera surveillance system.” The camera zooms to a central control building.
In the city of Guiyang, the police demonstrate how their surveillance works. Now inside police headquarters, a camera scans a giant room seating many people surrounded by intelligence gathering technology. The targeted individual’s data is displayed on the walls in front.
Their vast digital catalogue contains the image of every Guiyang resident. A photo of a fake criminal testing the system, John Sudworth, BBC Corespondent, is taken and entered into the computer.
Sudworth says, “Well let us see how long it takes you to find me. Thank you very much. Let’s go.” Correspondent, now as a criminal, leaves the police station to wander about the city. At a preset time, later that day, the search for him begins. Time passes allowing him to go wherever he wishes.
Film script says: “Across China cameras with artificial intelligence are in widespread use.” Cameras are shown getting facial recognition of everyone moving in the city in its search for a target. “Some can read faces, others can estimate age, ethnicity and gender.” Cameras are shown doing so.
We are next taken inside a huge factory making cameras. For those who value liberty one day freedom itself could be against the law, as it is in China, thus the following is especially horrifying.
Film script reads: “This factory in Hangzhou has sold one million facial recognition cameras in China. We can match every face with an ID card and trace all your movements back one week in time. We can match your face with your car. Match you with your relatives and the people you’re in touch with. With enough cameras, we can know who you frequently meet.”
Cameras are shown doing everything said above searching every face in the city for this one dissident or criminal taking shots of every person multi-directionally—even how he walks.
BBC Correspondent Sudworth “Well here we are. I just got out of the car close to the city center, and for the purposes of this exercise, the plan is for me to start walking in the direction of the bus station. My image has already been flagged to the authorities as a suspect and in theory, it should only be a matter of time.”
Sudworth walks noticing the cameras about him. “So already on this bridge. I can see one, two, three CCTV cameras. Of course there is no point hiding from them. Just keep on walking.” Life size scenes in the police control room show their ability to zero in on him as the cameras find him.
Film script in Chinese: “When the system recognizes a face the control room raises the alarm.”
Sudworth sees police approaching him from all directions. “Right behind me you can see over my shoulder there. ‘Hello guys, I've been expecting you.’ Maybe these guys aren't in on the joke.”
Film script: “The exercise took just seven minutes “
Script: Xu Yan Guiyang Policewoman “For ordinary people we will only extract their data when they need our help. When they don’t need help, we won’t gather their data and it remains only in our big database. We only use it when needed.” While she speaks a vast electronic filing data system is shown.
BBC Correspondent: “If you have nothing to hide. You have nothing to fear!” Female Chinese officer smiles and says. “Yes that’s true. Citizens don’t need to worry.”
But citizens do need to worry, especially Americans!!! All tyrannical governments, of which China is one, want to know of, and round up, those who oppose them. Otherwise the American Revolution, which gave us the Declaration of Independence and liberty would have never gotten off the ground. No government should have surveillance sufficient to know what their people are doing at all times nor the power to locate and round up dissidents as viewed in this video. King George III would have loved rounding up, his dissidents, our Founding Fathers, in seven minutes.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org
Jun 15, 2020 | Liberty Articles
“What I'm saying is not any defense for Derek Chauvin, I hope Derek Chauvin gets the justice that he deserves” and his family also for the way that he died. But, “George Floyd is not my martyr. He may be yours.” So said Candace Owens a black defender of liberty in a recent YouTube video.
As noted by honest observers, Bid Tech has turned radically left blocking and removing anything outside the Democrat Party narrative. As private corporations they have a legal right to do this but as a monopoly of information in the public square they do not. Before YouTube censors this Candace Owen’s video, from which the following originates, (as they have some of her others), LibertyUnderFire defends Candace Owen’s right to the public square.
Owens continues, “But I also am not going to accept the narrative that this is the best the black community has to offer. For whatever reason, it has become fashionable and despicable, for us, the last few years, to turn criminals into hero’s overnight.” And “I'm not going to play a part in it no matter how much pressure comes from black liberals and black conservatives.”
Officer Derek Chauvin is portrayed by the media “as the devil that he is” and is not uplifted or defended by white Americans “but George Floyd is being uplifted as an amazing human being,” which he is not. At the time of his arrest he was high on fentanyl and methamphetamine, according to both autopsy reports. The 911 police call transcript calling for help “described somebody who was out of their mind high,” and that they were fearful of his behavior both during his attempt to use “a fake bill to purchase something” and thereafter until police arrived.
A clip of him placed in handcuffs and against the wall showed a white baggie falling from his body. “The media is refusing to circulate it,” Owens said. “You can find it on Twitter if you use DuckDuckGo and look up, George Floyd baggie. You can watch the clip yourself with your own eyes. He had drugs on him at the time of his arrest.”
So what else has the media not shared about Mr Floyd. Apparently he has been a convicted felon for some time—at least five times, beginning in 1998 with “theft with a firearm.” For that he served 10 months. And again, eight months in 2004, “for a cocaine offense.” And again for cocaine another ten months in 2005. Another ten months for cocaine in 2007.
But the event that convinced Candace Owens most that Floyd was not a good person, most certainly not the outstanding citizen to have T-shirts made and distributed in his name as a pillar of society representing the black community, was when he and five others forced entry into a black pregnant woman’s home to rob her. “George Floyd took out a gun and pressed it to her stomach. She was screaming, begging for her life and he put her inside of her living room and instructed one of his criminal friends that was with him to watch her, and to make sure she didn't leave the living room…while they ransacked your [her] home looking for drugs and money.” Finding neither, they ended up taking her wallet and cell phone. A neighbor, viewing some of the above, called in the license plate of the vehicle driven by Floyd and he served a five year sentence, his sixth, being released in 2014.
Owen’s was quick to note that even with a record you may deserve another chance. People make mistakes. “But I do draw the line when it comes to second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth chances.” But Floyd was still breaking laws dealing with counterfeiting, using fentanyl and methamphetamine when arrested in May 25, 2020.
None of this justifies a police officer placing his knee on the prostrated victim’s neck causing his death. Nothing!!
Still “he was an example of a violent criminal his entire life. This does not mean that he deserves to die at the hands of police but,” Candace explains, “it does mean that I am not going to play a part of the broken black culture that always wants to martyr criminals. Who wants to pretend they were these upstanding human beings.”
Owens was noticeably disturbed with Americas rush to judgement. Few were willing to wait for other information before taking to the streets to burn, loot and riot each other. “I did just basic searches,” she said, implying that anyone could know the same by doing a little homework.
George Floyd is a martyr for a fake narrative. “Racially motivated police brutality is a myth.” She cites 2018 figures showing that violent white criminals have a 25% higher chance of dying from police than black violent criminals. Moreover, that nine unarmed blacks verses 19 unarmed whites were killed in 2018. “Unfortunately, the black community…commit a disproportionate amount of crimes compared to the white community…black men, 6%, of the population, count for 44% of all murders in this country according to 2018 statistics.” Respecting the myth that cops hunt blacks disproportionately because they are black, she added, that this is, “complete smoke and mirrors! It's all made up! It's just election fodder! It's white versus black, because it's an election year.”
Not only are we allowing this myth “to inspire riots, riots in which black people are dying, in which actual upstanding black citizens are dying.” She references, 77 year-old David Dorn, a black retired police officer just defending a black friend’s pawn shop, openly murdered by a black assailant.
With respect to black on black crime which is the major problem in black communities, never addressed by Democrat media or politicians. “We blame white people. Right!! We only point a camera to white people when they do something, even though we do it at a higher rate to ourselves, right!!.” She might have added, “And it works so well for keeping my people enslaved to the Democrat Party.”
So “if you want to hang up posters of criminals on your wall and talk about them as your martyrs, do it, do it, you can do it!” But “you're not going to catch me outside, trying to grab a TV pretending it's because a martyr named George Floyd got killed.”
Author
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Jun 9, 2020 | Economy, Liberty Articles, Taxes
By Harold Pease Ph.D.
In March Congress added $2.3 trillion to the national debt with the stimulus package. Most were jubilant to receive a stimulus check. But what does this mean? Just to pay this back today would cost each taxpayer $18,863 (compare U.S. Debt Clocks Nov. 2019 with April 2020).
In May the Treasury Department announced that it will borrow another $3 trillion this quarter making our total coronavirus indebtedness $5.3 trillion and thus what we owed for the smaller loan more than doubles (Matt Egan, The US is becoming the king of debt. It's a necessary risk, CNN Business). To pay both loans in August would be more than $37,726 per U.S. taxpayer.
Those who pay no federal taxes, which is about 50% of American adults, are not assessed. “The latest spending packages are estimated to be worth about 14% of the country's economy…the national debt soared above 100% of GDP” (“Coronavirus: US to borrow record $3tn as spending soars,” BBC News, May 4, 2020).
So what is a trillion dollars? To begin with a trillion is the number one followed by twelve zeros. A trillion dollars is a thousand billion and a billion is a thousand million. These numbers mean very little to the average person. who count their money in tens, twenties and hundreds .
One mathematician gave us a very practical way of evaluating our outstanding debt. One trillion one-dollar bills stacked atop each other (not end to end but flat) would reach nearly 68,000 miles into space—a third of the way to the moon (See CNN News Cast, Feb. 4, 2009). If so, the debt thus far incurred by the coronavirus alone, $5.3 trillion, would reach to the moon and two-thirds back to earth.
Senator Mitch McConnell gave another illustration just as awe striking. He calculated that if we spent a million dollars every day since Jesus was born, we still would not have spent a trillion dollars—only three-fourths of a trillion dollars (Ibid).
Who will pay these two coronavirus loans? Since we never liquidate our debt—only increase and pass it on to posterity—our grandchildren yet unborn, will be saddled with this debt plus the interest on it. How can I prophesy with such certainty? The United States has not been free of debt since Warren G. Harding 98 years ago (US Debt by President by Dollar and Percentage Who Increased the U.S. Debt the Most? Depends on How You Measure It. By Kimberly Amadeo Updated November 04, 2019)?
Yes the coronavirus is a massive rogue wave that has sunk many businesses in its path but following closely behind it is a tsunami almost six times its size—the national debt—that is and will bring down this country because our children cannot pay it either. Our national debt has soared to $25.5 trillion, and with the newly announce $3 trillion loan to $28.5 trillion. Our debt in one dollar bills laid flat atop each other will now go to the moon and back almost five times.
I ask students, “Who gets to go without so that this debt can be paid?” “Go without!!!?” That is a concept foreign to this generation!! They do not know, and neither do their parents and grandparents who laid it on their backs. When they are told that their share to liquidate this debt is not just $37,726 for a coronavirus, but $205,440 per taxpayer—due immediately, they get angry (see USDebtClock.org). Someone should have told them that government handouts are not free.
The 13th Amendment ending slavery has been rescinded, they are America’s new slaves. Bondage was given them before their birth, or while they were in the womb, or before they were old enough to know what it meant to be sold into slavery. The past generation wanted nice costly programs for free and were willing to sell their children to have them. Worse, the older generation is still anxious to incur even more debt on our defenseless children and grandchildren. Are we not the most debt addicted, insensitive generation in U.S. History?
Yes these are hard times and in such adding to a national debt is said to be justified. What isn’t justified is that in prosperous times, of which most of the last 70 years have been, we should, and could have, liquidated that debt. Then a $5.3 trillion debt to handle a virus could have been repaid in the next prosperous time or perhaps by the children, but not now. We have squandered our wealth in foreign endless wars, foreign aid and domestic welfare.
I had hoped with the robust Trump economy (the best in several decades) that we could get to paying back the debt. I previously published that we could survive and turn things around if we did three things: made significant cuts in our top 6 major expenditures, did not elect a big spending congress, and did not incur a big funding event. Unfortunately we made no major cuts in spending, maintained a big spending congress, and did incur a big funding event—the coronavirus.
Trump remains our only hope for rebuilding the economy because he already did it once, but chances of removing even the coronavirus portion of the national debt enslaving us is slim.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Jun 1, 2020 | Constitution, Liberty Articles
Is it possible Americans are watching the death of free speech and therefore liberty? The defiance of the 1st and 4th Amendments of the Bill of Rights from March-May by Democrat governors and mayors has been beyond mind boggling and demonstrates that the Constitution, at least in these states, is on a ventilator.
But the growing collusion between Big Tech and government has been even more threatening as the former seems hell-bent on political censorship in favor of the left. At a time when the world is threatened by an unknown virus dissenting speech from physicians who work with the virus would be most valued, but it was stifled.
The examples of big tech censorship are many, we identify only two. Dr Knuit M. Wittkowski, former head of biostatistics epidemiology and research design at Rockefeller University, argued that massive lockdowns, mass quarantines, were a mistake, “We will see more cases among the elderly, because we have prevented the schoolchildren from creating herd immunity.” A dissenting view that conflicted with that of the government. “Google decided that disagreeing with the government is forbidden” (Tucker Carlson Tonight, May 19, 2020).
In mid April two Bakersfield, California physicians, Dan Erickson and Arten Massihi reported similarly, “Our immune system is used to touching. We share bacteria, staphylococcus, streptococcal bacteria, viruses. We develop an immune response, dealing to this stuff…. When you take that away from me,” Erickson continues, “My immune system drops as I shelter in place…. You keep me there for months, it drops more. Sheltering in place decreases your immune system and then as we all come out of shelter in place with a lower immune system, and start trading viruses, bacteria, what do you think's going to happen? Disease is going to spike” (https://youtu.be/xfLVxx_lBLU). YouTube, decided to back lockdown state governors and removed both videos because they conflicted with the government’s position.
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, in an interview with CNN, admitted that, “Anything that would go against World Health Organization recommendations, would be a violation of our policy.” It would be classed as unsubstantiated or harmful misinformation and therefore removed (Tim Hinchliffe, “Big tech COVID-19 surveillance data & censorship threaten privacy & free speech: op-ed,” The Sociable, April 22, 2020).
In effect Big Tech has created an unholy alliance with Big Government and Big International agencies against the people to control the parameters of acceptable opinion and speech world wide. Harmeet Dillon, civil rights attorney, acknowledged that these companies, although private, have exceeded the rights of being just private. “But where the government is actually instructing and conspiring, which is happening with some of these states, contacting and working with Google, Facebook, Twitter and others to say take down the misinformation. That is the government using these tech companies as their tools and all of a sudden, it's a whole different scenario in terms of legal liability, as well as in terms of the terrible impact on America.” (Tucker Carlson Tonight, May 19, 2020).
Facebook, defining political speech it disagreed with as hate speech, in 2018 banned Infowars’ Alex Jones from his Internet audience of millions. More recently, using the virus as an excuse, it began removing what it called misinformation speech, basically blocking anything out of harmony with the WHO. Now it is removing “event posts for anti-lockdown protests in various US states, in tandem with state officials”—specifically in California, New Jersey and Nebraska. “Facebook ‘reached out to state officials to understand the scope of their orders’ and resolved to ‘remove the posts when gatherings do not follow the health parameters established by the government and are therefore unlawful’, such as when protests intend to flout social-distancing rules.” They have made themselves “arbiters of truth” (Tom Slater, “We need to stop the spread of Big Tech censorship,” Spiked, May 8, 2020).
Facebook and YouTube both “monopolize huge arenas of public discussion. Writers and thinkers unable to promote their work on Facebook, or video makers unable to upload their work to YouTube, are effectively denied access to a significant portion of what now constitutes the public square. At a time when billions of people are under house arrest, and the literal public square is largely off-limits, this is an even more sinister development. As is the fact that governments and powerful organizations seem to be working hand in glove with tech firms to enforce conformity” (Ibid.).
Emboldened by their new power they will only accelerate it. “Facebook has stressed that state governments did not ask them to remove specific posts. But what seems to have happened is almost worse. Facebook moderators appear to be banning events posts on the basis of what they reckon the laws of a particular state constitute” (Ibid.).
How serious is this? Social platforms were already important theaters for democratic participation and deliberation; now they’re the only game in town (Sam Adler-Bell, “Facebook Is Removing Protest Pages. That’s a Terrible Precedent,” Harvard Law Today, April 24, 2020).
Tucker Carlson assessed the damage to liberty, “The right to have your own opinions, to think for yourself, to disagree with your elected leaders, politicians, was the most basic right that every American enjoyed for 240 years, it was the signature right of this country.” He warned, “They’re going to try and censor Fox News next, you watch” (Tonight, May 19, 2020).
Author
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
