Posted on 10/31/2018 10:23:18 AM PDT by Jim Robinson
No, we do not want the government regulating free speech or freedom of association. Not at political rallies or protests, not at churches, schools or public institutions, not at associations or corporations or businesses, not at newspapers or publications, not on the Internet and certainly not at social medias sites!
The first amendment reigns supreme in these regards and must remain supreme!
Government regulation of free speech no matter how well intended at the start will be the downfall of liberty in the end.
The first amendment guarantees our God-given rights to free speech and freedom of association and expressly prohibits the government from having any say in the matter:
"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."
Let's say I, or even a group of people like me assemble together and form a corporation and set up a website on the Internet to discuss political events with our peers and to protest against government policies or officials not to our liking and to rally for candidates and policies we favor, then we certainly can't have government regulators stepping in to say you can't say that or you can't have that protest or that rally.
And further, we decide to associate only with like-minded people who are pro-God, pro-life, pro-family, pro-America and want to fight for our Judeo-Christian values and our God-given constitutionally guaranteed inalienable rights and for constitutionally limited government, etc, then we certainly do not want government stepping in to say that we can't do that or that we have to allow people of an opposing view, ie, Satanists, socialists, abortionists, homosexualists, globalists, etc, have their say too on our website.
Likewise, we are not going to demand that we are free to post our conservative Judeo-Christian views on someone else's more progressive/sectarian website if they don't want us there.
If godless progressive twitter doesn't want to be associated with us, fine. If godless progressive facebook doesn't want to be associated with us, fine. We'll build a better mouse trap. Ain't freedom garand?
Know thine enemy.
Ever vigilant!
And I'm not going to bake the wretched souls a cake either!
Amen, Jim.
I couldn’t agree more.
Thank you.
Amen!!
You may not need Twitter or Facebook, but you do need a registrar and a host.
What happens in your hypothetical when those private entities say they are not subject to the first amendment?
Bump!
It’s easy to understand how some can have a knee-jerk reaction to FB and Twatter’s censorship against conservative thought and speech but you’re right; in the long run it would be distorted like many (most) government stifling regulations are.
The free market will solve this problem. Those sites like Infowars, Lifesite, and Gab will find a way forward despite the heinous bias and discrimination of their server/site hosting, site registration, finance, and video hosting companies.
Who owns the internet? Serious question. But I believe registrars and hosts are most likely owned by corporations and they have constitutional rights.
“Fighting” words and incitement to riot are the reason most speech-stiflers give for their desired restrictions. They won’t admit the truth about their agenda.
The problem is the “guardians” of free speech (FB, Google, Twitter, et al) have now gotten SO BIG that they are doing it themselves and not violating any law by doing so.
If websites and server farms can act as editors they are (or should be)liable for slander or libel. If they are merely conduits or bulletin boards for others to use they can’t be both immune from libel laws and responsible for the content. It has to be one way or the other.
The Civil Rights Act ended the concept of free Association.
Lawmakers have no regard for the restrictions placed upon them by our Constitution when making Laws that impact the Citizenry.
The construct of our Representative Republic hinged on Electing Honorable Men who revered our Constitution as the Foundation of our Society.
Those concepts are long since forgotten.
Jim
It sounds as if you are alluding to starting another internet property.
Some kinda facebook/twitter thingy.
“but you do need a registrar and a host.”
No you don’t.
Both can be bypassed. Apply directly to ICANN for your name and IP block.
Buy your own network access and build your own servers.
Private corporations do it all the time. It’s very, very common.
I see internet providers as utility companies.
They are necessary in this age for our society to function efficiently and are every bit as important as water, sewer and power utilities.
Facebook and Twitter not so much.
It is distressing how many of us are being silenced on fakebook and twitter but if they have to bake the cake then we will have to as well. I appreciate having a safe space here where I’m not attacked for my beliefs. I live in the heart of enemy territory as you will know if you look up my registration information.
I deactivated fakebook because I don’t want to associate with people like that. It’s just another leftist hive of insanity. They believe all the propaganda put out by MSM and occupy democrats is the gospel truth.
I understand we are supposed to get the message out there and whatnot but the other side is a very stiff necked people and utterly unreachable IMO.
You know, there have been way too many vanities here lately. Someone should do something about that. 8!)
Bkmrk.
Who owns the internet? Serious question
~~~
Well when it comes to domain names and registrars, there’s a bit of a gray area, as I would say they are tenuously considered closer to public than private, although ICAAN has transitioned from government from US Government control to a private corporation recently, you’d have better grounds to dispute lack of choice and competition for that then you would with web hosting. However, individual registrars (Godaddy, Namecheap, etc) are private entities and each one could cast you to the wind at their own volition.
So it seems to me, the problem (as it often seems to) goes back to media pressure on private entities to censor or boycott those who they politically disagree with, and if someday, as you have suggested, that just being a god fearing, freedom loving website is enough to get these private entities to blackball you, what help is the first amendment going to be?
If your situation was dire enough, you could go to off-shore hosts and covert to a foreign TLD, but the individual ISPs who host the DNS records that all their customers do look-ups against could basically censor you from being visible within the U.S.
All this because a small group of powerful media and political organizations have become arbiters of how and who to apply subjective politically correct assessments of proper speech to.
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