Freedom Is Dangerous

“Liberals”, 2004: “Question authority! Free speech is *the* most essential right!”

“Progressives”, 2019: “Free speech is too dangerous for people without tin ‘journalist’ badges to be using”

In the old Soviet Union, citizens used to joke that when a shortage of butter was anticipated, the state media would start running stories on how *bad* butter was for you.

I couldn’t help but think about this over the weekend. And not *just* because our media is resembling the old Soviet media more and more, either.

Following on the NYTimes’ op-ed on free speech being too “dangerous” for mere proles, NPR’s “On the Media” – which is to the big media what a fawning mall cop is to your local blue-and-white – took up the same refrain, giving Marantz a full hour to reiterate his claim (and in so doing giving a whole new spin on “physician, heal thyself”).

Oh, they wrap it in a dirty-sounding word, “absolutism” – but like the NYTimes piece…

…it’s all a rationalization for turning speech over to the “professionals”, to whittle that right (or “right”) down to a size that proles can handle.

And we’re seeing a *lot* of this lately; how checks and balances are just tooooo haaaaard, and the Bill of Rights is just tooooo complex for the herd to deal with.

Makes me think of Soviet Radio. Apropos nothing.

Just saying, Democrats – I liked y’all better 15 years ago.

Posted

October 16, 2019

Lefty “Alt”-Media, Liberty, Media, Media Bias, Progressive Tyranny

Mitch Berg

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8 responses to “Freedom Is Dangerous”

jdm

October 16, 2019

Fifteen years ago? This stuff has been going on for longer than that. Like, say, starting in 1968 after the Democratic convention in Chicago. It’s just been a slow unmasking although the last few years have been quite active. Or maybe a better metaphor would that the Dorian Gray fella.
Joe Doakes

October 16, 2019

It’s astonishing how much President Trump has affected the culture, without anyone giving him credit for it.

The legacy media is now pondering prior restraints on speech as a good thing. They’re starting with Hate Speech, of course, because that’s their audience. But once you pull down the absolutist wall protecting speech from censorship, it’s unclear how you limit the censors.

Nude dancing is protected as a form of free speech. If you can ban Trump from Twitter, can’t I ban pole dancing at the gentleman’s club?

Where’s the end?
Prince of Darkness_666

October 16, 2019

15 years ago they were the loyal, if not annoying, opposition. Now they are psychotic losers trying to undo the American Revolution. They also wish we were still part of Britian in some cases. As the old Soviet saying goes “The future is known, its the past that always changing.”
Swiftee Pinochet

October 16, 2019

I’m willing to restrict the first amendment to professionals when the vote is restricted to property owing men.
Prince of Darkness_666

October 16, 2019

Swiftee brings up an interesting and somewhat ironic point. Because pre-Revolutionary War ruling a government was considered a “divine right” bestowed by only God to a very select few people. and of course the idea of free speech was so ludicrious it was probably laughable but what the founding fathers did, even initially, was probably the most progressive thing done in the last millenia giving people (albeit a select few, but still people) the right to choose their leaders. If the founding fathers were alive today they would be disgusted at what it has turned into.
Joe Doakes

October 16, 2019

It’s also interesting to see the New York Times suggest indirect censorship might be an acceptable subterfuge to get around that pesky First Amendment. Maybe give subsidies to ‘good’ media? Or perhaps tax ‘bad’ media?

Of course, you’d have to figure a way around that pesky Supreme Court ruling in Minneapolis Star v. Minnesota Commissioner.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/460/575/
Mammuthus Primigenius

October 16, 2019

I think that it interesting that the American Left has adopted hatred of half of the American people as the center of its strategy. This strategy is not going to work. It provokes a backlash. I think that the reason that this strategy was adopted was because the Democrats have assembled a coalition of minorities who are convinced that the old majority — white men — has oppressed them. They view democracy as oppression, since they are in the minority. Some of them are quite explicit about stating this, Ta Nahesi Coates, for example.
The “progressive” world that they envision cannot exist. One of the reasons that totalitarian societies fail is because of the effort they must take to enforce totalitarianism. No totalitarian society has lasted more than a few generations. If you look back at human history, throughout all cultures, the most stable variety of government has been aristocracy, government by a ruling class that has different, and superior, political rights than the ruled.
Even the communist regimes of Europe and Asia fir the aristocratic model. Communist party members were, in effect, a ruling aristocracy.
Prince of Darkness_666

October 17, 2019

MP, that strategy and mindset got us President Trump. Well that and 8 yrars of Obama. Political scientists will study for decades how Trump ran roughshot through the 2016 Republican primary field. I truly believe in retrospect Trump was the only one who could have beaten Hillary. It was supposed to be Jeb vs. Hillary but Trump screwed up the establishments design and they have spent the last 3 years trying to destroy him. Trump is the president this country needed at the time they needed it. Screw decorum. As Milo (I cant spell his last name but you know who I mean) has said, “If you turn the presidential election into a reality TV show, dont be surprised when a reality TV star wins” And that is what happened in 2016. The media gave Trump so much free coverage because they never thought he could win. But when he did they looked for people to blame when in reality they were the biggest culprits.