Not So Happy 231st Birthday, Bill of Rights

Not every framer supported them, and they remain under attack today in new ways - people are self-censoring in fear of being doxxed and canceled, and that's unhealthy.

Thursday was the 231st anniversary of our Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution. If anything is “settled law,” it should be that. Unfortunately, the controversies that plagued them during the writing of the Constitution have manifested in new and troubling ways.

Alexander Hamilton, writing in Federalist Paper 84, thought them unnecessary. It suggested the implication of government power that didn’t exist. If he were alive today to see government expansion and incursion into our lives, including the diminution of our rights and liberties, he might change his mind.

It’s never been more important to stand for a broad interpretation of these enumerated rights and to support those who have picked up the mantle to protect and promote them, whatever the venue.

Of course, I’m referring mostly to Elon Musk.

You might stop reading here because you’re not one of Twitter’s 430,000 subscribers. By comparison, Facebook has more than 2.9 million. Because Twitter is (or was) the favorite forum and source of many news reporters, it has outsized influence. As Salena Zito has noted, journalism has largely changed (for the worse) due to Twitter.

While Twitter ranks 15th among global social media forums - behind Pinterest, Snapchat, and the malevolent Chinese Communist intel-gathering site, Tik Tok, and a notch ahead of Reddit - it is ground zero in the ongoing, never-ending war to preserve fundamental rights and freedoms.

How so? Consider:

Since Musk invested $44 billion to purchase Twitter, far-left censorship advocacy groups, including “Accountable Tech,” have been out to cancel Musk and his control of Twitter by pressuring advertisers to cancel their accounts. They’ve had considerable success, especially with spineless consumer goods companies like Kellogg’s and General Motors and the ad agencies that serve them.

The legacy media, a beneficiary of the First Amendment, has given scant if any, genuine news coverage to the release of “The Twitter Files” via independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss (former New York Times editor and now publisher of “The Free Press,” the newest addition to independent digital media). Musk also enlisted former progressive environmental activist turned author Michael Shellenberger for additional coverage. If anything, left-leaning publications such as The Economist have waved off Musk’s release of internal Twitter files and even tried to gaslight readers into believing there’s nothing to them. The Economist even concocted an “analysis” that claims Twitter’s algorithms benefited Republicans more than Democrats. The Twitter Files proved that to be hilariously false.

Most importantly, The Twitter Files exposed this: To circumvent the First Amendment’s protection of free speech, politically-motivated government actors enlisted social media outlets to stifle disfavored speech and information. Not just people with contrary opinions but medical experts who dared to disagree with the official scientific narrative over covid lockdowns, such as Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

The last word on that may not come from Musk and Twitter but from a Florida Grand Jury. Bully to Governor Ron DeSantis for his petition to Florida’s Supreme Court over misleading statements and actions over false and misleading statements regarding the efficacy (or lack thereof) of covid vaccines.

But thanks to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his now-famous interview with the nation’s most popular podcaster, Joe Rogan, we already knew that, especially regarding the suppression of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story from October 2020, exacerbated by the 51 former US intelligence officials claiming, falsely, that it had all the earmarks of a Russian intelligence operation. It certainly was an intel operation. Congressional hearings next year will be interesting. Twitter and Facebook were the first to censor the New York Post’s story, giving the mainstream media plenty of fodder to follow suit. Voters were denied valuable information that might have changed their votes.

Law professor, criminal defense attorney, and pundit Jonathan Turley nails it here:

You don’t need a state ministry of information if the media voluntarily maintains official narratives and suppresses dissenting views. And what emerges from these files is the notion of an effective state media in America — an alliance of media, business and political figures who act, not out of government compulsion, but out of personal conviction.

The notion of a privately-run state media is reinforced by the response to these disturbing disclosures — a virtual news blackout, with most major media offering little coverage of the disclosures. Just as Twitter suppressed dissenting or opposing views in a myriad of ways, many in the media are minimizing coverage of this scandal.

To use a favorite term of Twitter executives found in these files, the media “amplifies” certain narratives or views while “deamplifying” stories that contradict those accounts.

Some of these files reflect specific subjects or measures long pushed by powerful politicians to get private companies to do indirectly what they themselves are barred from doing under the First Amendment.

While recent polling shows majority support for Musk’s efforts to “free Twitter,” it depends on how the question is framed. The support for “censor culture,” especially among self-identified Democrats, is undeniable and disconcerting.

It is one thing to place reasonable guardrails around “free speech.” It should go without saying that speech that violates the law - incites or promotes violence, is defamatory, or knowingly false - is out of bounds. It is quite another to so broadly define “hate speech” and “incitement to violence” to include almost anything that anyone may find incorrect and unacceptable. Or my favorites, misinformation and disinformation. Those are the tools of cancel culture, which are now being used as weapons to force political and cultural conformity at the expense of other First Amendment rights, especially freedom of religion, association, and even the press.

You need not look far for evidence. Consider this Musk tweet:

Elon Musk @elonmusk

My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci

Nearly 1.3 million accounts liked this tweet, including Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert. Someone at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune - or more likely, a left-wing advocacy group or activists - found out that Gobert “liked” Musk’s tweet and fed that to a reporter. Gobert, no doubt prompted by Timberwolves management (the NBA is, if anything, very woke), rushed to apologize for his “transphobic” tweet (mocking the expression of “preferred pronouns”), and that self-proclaimed avatar of science, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

You know the template. We’ve seen it before.

"My intent was never to hurt anyone," Gobert said. "I think Elon tweets about stuff like that and sometimes you like a tweet, but you don't understand the full meaning of it. … I just think I got to learn a little bit more about the pronoun thing."

Off to re-education camp for you, Mr. Gobert. You will memorize all 68 terms of gender expression and identity. There will be a test. There will always be a test. No diversity of thought here is allowed.

This template has manifested itself in other ways. Take this blog, for example. I don’t get many “likes” and comments are rare, even though my subscriptions are on an excellent upward trajectory. The same is true when I cross-post this blog on Facebook and other social media sites. Recently, several people have privately and very kindly expressed appreciation for my contributions but are reluctant to “like” or comment publicly.

I get it. They fear an adverse reaction, like having an offended client, co-worker, or a woke mob come after them, even being doxxed, which can be a dangerous threat to safety. They don’t want to be hassled. You can even be singled out if you don’t say and do the “correct” thing. Meanwhile, your woke colleagues are posting their politics unapologetically on company Slack channels or other platforms, often to thunderous applause.

Self Censorship

Discretion and tact are, of course, virtuous. It is generally unwise to offend others intentionally. Sometimes it is better to remain silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt, as Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have said. Self-censorship - suppressing views in fear of cultural or political retribution - is something else. It’s alarming. It is inconsistent with the letter and spirit of the First Amendment and its five rights and freedoms. It dehumanizes and converts America into a soft concentration camp.

There’s a reason that the First Amendment was written that way. Those five rights - speech, religion, press, association, and petitioning the government - are intimately interconnected. If one falls, the others won’t be far behind. Viewpoint suppression retards our ability to learn and grow, both as individuals and communities, and robs our society of the grace it sorely lacks. It caves to our cultural bullies who revel in a toxic brew of victimhood and sanctimony.

Thank goodness our Constitution’s framers didn’t self-censor in fear of how George III might react. They knew. They pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor in defense of the Declaration of Independence. They possessed the moral courage to pursue freedom of thought, speech, belief, and association, at a high cost. That courage and sacrifice have inspired and guided the generations that followed, although presentism continues to attack and undermine their legacies today.

My next several posts will feature my long-promised virtual tour of our United States Capitol. A feature of my Capitol tours are points of great debate and friction involving contentious speeches and even violence, from the first five Senators honored in the chamber’s reception room to the infamous caning of Charles Sumner (Whig-Massachuetts) in 1856, even the fatal shooting of former US Rep. William Tawlby (D-KY) by news reporter Charles Kincaid near the House chamber 32 years later. The First Amendment and the debates and incidents they engender often come at a price. But the cost without one is higher. Much higher. Just ask the 60-80 million victims of communism during the 20th Century.

Happy birthday, Bill of Rights. May the candles on your cake burn bright, despite the dark winds swirling around us. And thanks, Elon, for diverting those winds for a while.