Social Media, the Government, and the War on the Bill of Rights

U.S. and foreign globalists are using old Soviet propaganda tactics, domestic influence operations, and brute force to attack basic American rights.  These bad actors wish to change our liberties from individual rights granted by God and guaranteed by the Constitution, to collective rights granted by oligarchs and easily removed by them.

Since Obama was president, leftists have tried to change things as essential as our Freedom of Religion to what they call the freedom to worship.  This means you can pray, but don’t try to take God past your front door or you will be mocked, persecuted, or prosecuted.  More recently, they want to change the Freedom of Speech and the Press to woke shadows of our current “rights.”  They want rights that will be controlled by the politically correct.  Everything they dislike will be labeled as hate speech, disinformation, or conspiracy theories.

The hallmark of Soviet propaganda operations was that they used a set of simple and mutually supporting messages that were centrally controlled for consistency and put out in a variety of channels to give the illusion of widespread support.  They were repeated endlessly over time to gradually change people’s thoughts and perceptions.  You can see these qualities every night on the legacy “news” broadcasts when the same talking points are used repeatedly by all the networks.

In totalitarian states this process is controlled by bureaucrats and functionaries.  Since bureaucrats here do not yet have total centralized control, it appears to many that they decided to outsource the job to functionaries in legacy and social media. 

U.S. media types love to repeat the old adage, “The pen is mightier than the sword.” But today’s activist news readers seem to be more at home with the old Japanese saying, “Pen and Sword in Accord.”  This alliance of the Liberal Second and Fourth Estates have given the political Left an unprecedented amount of unchecked (and possibly unconstitutional) power.

What is even more disturbing, is that the FBI (which is supposed to be protecting our rights) appears to be funding social media outlets as they censor, shadow ban, or cancel American writers who do not toe the Democrat/Progressive/Globalist party line.  For example, recently released Twitter files indicate that the FBI paid the platform $3.4 million for “administrative costs” to compensate Twitter for the time their employees spent working with (for?) the federal agents. 

Working with federal agents?  The First Amendment says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. 

So, when do the provisions of our Constitution take effect?  Do they apply when reports say that the FBI was working with Twitter to manage messaging and censor people in the Twitterverse?  Do they apply when, as some sites maintain, many social media sites are “riddled” with FBI and intelligence community people?  After all, these are the same people who won’t mention Christmas in schools because it’s supposedly establishing a religion.

The progressives (and federal assets who work with [for?] them) like to say that Twitter is a private organization and can publish or not publish anything they like — and the Constitution does not apply to them.  Imagine, federal employees, our public servants, believing that the Constitution does not apply to them. 

Of course, if the FBI and their allies in the media had been collaborating in silencing any non-Democrats, they would have to deny it — and they have.  The FBI and their supporters say that Twitter emails released by Elon Musk suggesting that their agents pressured Twitter to censor or ban some conservative users were untrue. 

They said that these stories (Twitter emails) were generated by conspiracy theorists who were peddling misinformation to Americans.  Then they said that “The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public.”  This, even though some Twitter emails indicated that the FBI bullied Twitterites in 2020 for not removing enough of what then insisted was enemy “propaganda”.

The FBI says that its mission is to uphold the Constitution and protect the American people by staying ahead of national security threats to the homeland.  Their website on “What We Investigate” says that they investigate foreign influence operations — which include covert actions by foreign governments to influence U.S. political sentiment or public discourse.

However, the Twitter files indicate that the company allowed the U.S. to run influence operations in foreign countries while supposedly maintaining a strict ban on doing the same thing here.  But, isn’t censoring valid information and deciding (with agents of the U.S. government) what Americans can read or hear, waging influence operations in the U.S.?  (I guess we have to discover what their definition of the word ‘strict” is.)  One report even said: “Twitter had so much contact with so many agencies that executives lost track of them.” 

And apparently, it’s not just Twitter emails that are on the government’s naughty list.  Last August, Sen. Ron Johnson said that FBI whistleblowers had reported that Agency officials had “intentionally undermined efforts to investigate Hunter Biden”. 

Recently released Twitter documents say that the FBI was just the tip of the iceberg and that they coordinated releases of information to numerous other government agencies.  These included the State Department, the Pentagon, and even the CIA.  Other reports indicate that the U.S. government used numerous back channel tools to censor posts. 

Now, one would think that the possibility that our government might have been colluding with the media and social media to silence Americans and manage what Americans are allowed to write, see, or read seems like it would be a big news story.  But for the most part it is not.  So far the legacy “news” media have all but ignored the issue. 

Even worse, despite the Constitutional guarantees of freedom of the press, some government leaders seem to think censoring Americans is actually a good idea.  Adam Schiff offered to protect media companies that silence political opponents when he said. “If you’ll be responsible moderators of content, we will give you immunity.”  Gee, if it’s not illegal, why would they need immunity?  And to think, Schiff swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. 

That the unconstitutional silencing of American citizens is now seen as a positive thing and something to be rewarded is alarming.  That it is done by modern “liberals” — you know, the ones who always talk about “democracy” — is frightening.  That it may be done by law enforcement agents in the DOJ/FBI is terrifying. 

As Benjamin Franklin said of free speech in 1722:

This sacred Privilege is to essential to free Governments, that the Security of Property, and the Freedom of Speech always go together; and in those wretched Countries where a Man cannot call his Tongue his own, he can scarce call any Thing else his own. Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech; a Thing terrible to Publick Traytors.

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