is the first amendment "out of control"?
a morning missive
once upon a time there was a big idea:
and it manifested as two amendments in the bill of rights.
the first was meant to safeguard speech, the second to safeguard the first.
the spectacle of the very press whose freedoms the first amendment was explicitly written to defend advocating against free speech is about as clear a sign of an ideology in decline as one could ever ask to see.
the first amendment is not "out of control."
professors, bureaucrats, mediafolk, and politicians are losing control and they do not like it.
they are losing control because they are losing the debate.
they are losing the debate because their ideas and ideologies are rancid and false.
their answer is not to evolve or improve but rather to shout louder and to seek to be the only ones speaking.
this is not protection, it's subjugation.
it’s a deviation as old as time: those who cannot convince, compel.
the entire purpose of the first amendment is precisely to prevent such abuses and to keep the public dialogue in the hands of the public and not of the state.
it's the safeguard, the bulwark, the check against tyranny.
so hold this truth to be self-evident: that the role of the state is not to decide upon truth but to defend the right of we the people to debate, discourse, and to make up our own minds free from the tentacles of leviathan.
anyone who says different is selling something that you very much do NOT want to buy.
As everyone knows by now I speak weekly to My Friend From Fifth Grade and on Monday she sneered at me for saying that Biden's is the worst Administration since John Adams' regarding our Constitutional liberties because of its assault on free speech, and she wanted to know what it was that I felt I couldn't say, and I told her I write emails with extreme care because so many common expressions and phrases contain words and concepts the Big Eared Bureaucrats would sweep for.
And she kept sneering of course. This is a big-city girl with several degrees and yet again I thank God I never bothered to become more credentialed than having a HS diploma.
Tim Wu looks like the castrated pug. The only thing out of control is tyrannical fascists destroying free speech.