Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace

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April 30, 2023

The forces determined to monopolize the public square through censorship, lies, and social pressure have devastated universities and scholarship generally, allowed a corrupt public health bureaucracy to ravage our lives, and stuck us with the most incompetent and corrupt leadership in our history. There are signs that this monopoly is hitting some bumps in the road, and if you are brave enough you can and should help the cause by fighting to keep your right to speak freely.

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One of the biggest forces behind the shifting tide is Elon Musk, who spent a fortune to unlock Twitter from government control. He speaks for me here:

@elonmusk

 “It’s bizarre that we’ve come to this point where free speech used to be a liberal value. And yet we see from the ‘left’ a desire to censor. That seems crazy. I think we should be extremely concerned about anything that undermines the First Amendment… 

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We must protect free speech, and free speech is only relevant when it’s someone you don’t like saying something you don’t like because, obviously, free speech that you like is easy. The thing about censorship is that for those who would advocate it, just remember at some point that will be turned on you.” 

Two candidates for the presidency have joined the battle for free speech. Whether you support them or not, they represent a significant force for exposing political mendacity and fighting for the truth as they see it.

The first is the biggest threat to the nomination of the Biden-Harris American wrecking balls: Robert F, Kennedy, Jr.,  author of The Real Anthony Fauci, a takedown of the slippery man who was lionized by the press as he destroyed our economy and civic life. Fauci’s day in the sun  is fast coming to a close as he weasels his way in an effort to avoid accountability for what he’s done,  and Kennedy’s attacks on him, the pharmaceutical industry, and the warmongers is significant.

The other is a brilliant Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, who every day espouses positions with which I am in full agreement. Like this:

Abolish teachers unions. Shut down the Dept of Education & use the $$ to fund school choice + 3 armed security guards in all schools to protect children. Publish curriculum online & cameras in the classroom. Revive civic education without apology. I’ll do my part as President, but it’ll take all of us doing our part

This:  

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The Fed has tried to play God with a fat finger for the last 25 years & failed miserably. You can’t hit two targets — inflation & unemployment — with one arrow. Time to go back to focusing the Fed on stabilizing the dollar, period. If elected, I will

And this: 

Unleash the American economy: achieve >5% GDP growth. We can *grow* ourselves out of our economic problems. We’ve done it before. We can do it again. End the climate cult. Stop paying people to stay home. Abandon the culture of apology. 

Some Free Speech Heroes

They aren’t alone by any means, though major media and those who book guests on TV and cable slots rarely mention them. There are people like Bob Woodson, who has spent a lifetime working to actually help the poor:

CRT [Critical Race Theory]

has distorted the meaning of the previously attractive word “equity.” To proponents of critical race theory, it means distributing benefits by racial percentages, rather than by individual merit. 

Even Bill Maher believes the Left has overstepped, welcoming Elon for a discussion on free speech and attacking the racialists:  

Bill Maher says 327 people are responsible for a third of all shoplifting cases in New York, young black men killing one another are responsible for the majority of shootings in Chicago, and prominent black celebrities should publicly denounce the violence and crime: “Why aren’t there a hundred giant black celebrities who would have the respect of those people saying what are you doing to yourself? Why are you killing each other?”

Compare with the mendacious lies about George Floyd’s death and support for the BLM rioting which followed in almost every major media and educational institution. Indoctrinating young blacks into falsely thinking they are targets of police and defunding them has led to widespread lawlessness, and few have the courage to speak out on this.

There are three scientists of note who were silenced and marginalized when the government monopolized discussions in the press and social media about COVID, who signed and circulated as best they could under that blackout the Great Barrington Declaration critical of the lockdowns and advocating focused protection of those most at risk: Sunetra Gupta, University of Oxford, Martin Kulldorff, Harvard University, and Prof. Jay Bhattacharya, Stanford Medical School.

A more level-headed strategy would emphasize keeping schools open and letting younger members of our society — who have no voice in the concerns of the day — get back to their lives. For them, the COVID restrictions cause many more problems than COVID itself. Such a strategy would help minorities and the poor, who have also been silenced in the current debate. They have suffered far more adverse outcomes from COVID and the lockdowns than the laptop class of professionals who stayed at home without financial hardship during the pandemic. 

A rational COVID strategy would also significantly improve the mental health of all people, everywhere. The lockdown strategy has explicitly induced fear of COVID in the population, without regard to the greater risk older vulnerable populations face. This fear has led to elevated levels of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. The GBD strategy helps the public accurately contextualize the risk from COVID, putting in context against other risks and accurately conveying the sharp age (and selected other chronic diseases) differences in risk posed by COVID. The GBD strategy will help people explore how to learn to live with COVID without fear as it becomes endemic in our society.

None of the lockdown policies and COVID restrictions, including many of the highly intrusive Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs), promote public health. In the US, we have seen the CDC and Dr. Anthony Fauci have supplied a narrative of constantly changing positions (on masks, for instance), erroneous information (such as the downplaying of immunity after COVID recovery). Their directives have served to undermine trust in public health when it is most needed and have failed to protect the people that need the most protection during this difficult time. 

Dr. Naomi Wolf reports what happened to her when she supported the Barrington Declaration. She was labeled a “conspiracy theorist” by CNN’s Matt Gertz and following that and her appearance on Tucker Carlson, who rather singularly departed from the media’s overblown reportage of the January 6 Capitol riot, she was shunned and deplatformed.

This hit piece, calling me a “conspiracy theorist”, did a great deal to set the stage and provide the talking points for my later deplatforming at the hands of the White House working with Twitter and the CDC, and the subsequent reputational attack that spanned the globe and led to my wholesale ouster from legacy media and my former community on the Left. [snip]

But having appeared on Mr Carlson’s show, to raise these and other real concerns, I also was peppered ceaselessly with nasty comments from my own “side.” Why? Because I had talked to Tucker Carlson. That was literally how they phrased my “crime.” 

This was the first real confrontation I had with the unreason and the cultlike thinking that were engulfing my “team”. I kept receiving messages, emails, DMs and direct confrontations by phone, with friends and loved ones and even family members. 

There were about handful or two of brave doctors who openly fought against the CDC’s monopoly of information — most of it shifting, wrong and political — and some suffered for speaking the truth and advocating for different treatments than the vaccine which was named as such though it didn’t fit the prior definition of preventing disease and its transmission. 

And then there’s Kaye Hymowitz  keeping it real on the Transgender Children’s Crusade, a striking blow against the madness of transitioning kids to believe they are a different sex than the one they were born with: 

 It’s not that many kids sign up for bottom surgery; on the contrary, those numbers remain extremely small. But trans and “gender questioning” minors have been joining a little-understood revolution in striking numbers. The “gender journey,” the search for one’s “authentic” gender identity, is reshaping the biographies of the susceptible young into a radical and damaging new form. The crusade has been urged on by social and corporate media and their celebrity representatives, endorsed by a shockingly complicit medical establishment, promoted by educators, advanced by judges, and applauded by politicians at the highest levels. (“Incredibly brave transgender children,” is President Biden’s characterization.) Whether they realize it or not, supporters are showing a willful ignorance about child nature and endorsing views completely at odds with child psychology and legal and cultural traditions. In the process, they are undermining children’s understanding of, and parental confidence in, the most basic human realities.

These heroes need support. Don’t be cowed by social pressure and threats. If you do, you and your views may forever be silenced.

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