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Academia, Internet Giants vs. Free Speech Part 2

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government continues its examination of the growing threats to free speech throughout the United States academia, and the rising influence and power of social media giants.

Hayden Ludwig, a communications associate at the Capital Research Center, reports:

“If you’ve ever contemplated what censorship in media looks like, here’s an illustration.

At 12:00 PM on February 8, the Capital Research Center released our latest short video entitled ‘The Dirty Secrets of Democratic Politics.’ I narrated that brief exposé on Robert Creamer, the longtime Democratic Party operative whose attempts to smear Donald Trump supporters in 2016 using violent agitators were exposed by the investigative group Project Veritas. When Project Veritas promoted the video in a tweet that afternoon, we discovered that YouTube had removed CRC’s video for supposedly violating their community guidelines on ‘hate speech.’  In less than 6 hours, our video—which contains no “hate speech” or other violations of YouTube’s community guidelines of any kind, and even used footage from Project Veritas that has been up on YouTube for well over a year and has millions of views—was flagged for review and removed by a platform supposedly built on promoting free speech.It isn’t the first time YouTube has censored our work. In December 2017, the company targeted another CRC video called ‘Right-Wing or Left-Wing, Identity Politics is Destroying America,’ narrated by CRC film and video producer Joseph Klein. Despite our nonpartisan critique of identity politics for driving Americans apart, YouTube restricted access to the video—blocking it from view in 28 foreign countries and halting American viewers from advertising, commenting, or ‘liking’ the video…After we fought back and brought these outrages to light, YouTube quietly reinstated both videos. But it’s become increasingly clear: when it comes to allowing free speech, YouTube is willing to break their professed values if it advances their ideology at the cost of conservatives.”

The assault on First Amendment rights can be seen within the workplace environment of social media giants. A Reuters analysis reported in the New York Post provided an example in January, concerning  a Google employee who claimed that “The company has failed to protect employees from workplace harassment related to their support of President Donald Trump or conservative political views, according to the lawsuit.”

Hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis’s function which is not perfect nor stable, that is the main reason. viagra samples no prescription The medicine like other substance will produce more serious symptoms for those who have used the drug experimentally to treat pregnant women with high blood pressure and blood vessel problems. prescription cialis In addition, you can also go with online service. cheap viagra no prescription Avoid smoking and taking alcohol before and after ED prices cialis tablets. Robert Epstein, writing in U.S. News, states that “Google, Inc., isn’t just the world’s biggest purveyor of information; it is also the world’s biggest censor.  The company maintains at least nine different blacklists that impact our lives, generally without input or authority from any outside advisory group, industry association or government agency. Google is not the only company suppressing content on the internet. Reddit has frequently been accused of banning postings on specific topics, and a recent report suggests that Facebook has been deleting conservative news stories from its newsfeed, a practice that might have a significant effect on public opinion – even on voting. Google, though, is currently the biggest bully on the block.”

Sometimes, the pressure to attack First Amendment rights on the internet come from abroad. Project Veritas  disclosed the following: “Twitter Bans Users Under Pressure From Their Foreign Governments: ‘We Do That a Lot for China…[a] Project Veritas undercover investigation has revealed a former Twitter software engineer admitting that Twitter acts under the whims and pressures of foreign governments – notably China – by silencing and banning users at their request.”

How has censorship become an increasingly acceptable tactic, predominately for those on the left? Andrew analyzed the question in a City Journal article:

“Nothing scandalizes a leftist like the truth…The Left has co-opted our good manners and our good will in order to silence our opposition to their bad policies. The idea is to make it seem impolite and immoral to mention the obvious…Google/YouTube now stands charged by multiple accusers of singling out conservative voices for censorship, “fact-checking,” and demonetization. Hidden-camera videos released by Project Veritas this week show Twitter employees conspiring to “shadow ban” conservatives on their system. On campus, intelligent conservative speakers of good will like Ben Shapiro, Charles Murray, and Christina Hoff-Sommers have faced violent protests meant to shut them up. No person of importance on the right seeks to silence anyone on the left. The Left, on the other hand, is broadly committed to ostracizing, blacklisting, and even criminalizing right-wing speech…”

 

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Quick Analysis

Academia, Internet Giants vs. Free Speech

The growing threats to free speech throughout the United States come from a number of sources, including government officials, academia, and the rising influence and power of social media giants.

The threats by government leaders, such as former attorney general Loretta Lynch who, while in office, considered “criminally prosecuting” anyone who disagreed with President Obama on climate change, and the move by Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) to limit the application of the First Amendment concerning paid political speech, may have diminished due to the results of the 2016 election. But in other circles, the pressure to mothball free speech rights continues.

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has released a vital document, which charts academic freedom over the past 103 years. According to author David Randall, “We publish this chart today because America faces a growing crisis about who can say what on our college campuses.”

This cialis buy usa herbal supplement offers effective cure for sleeplessness. As everyone knows A healthy viagra spain heart is the pumping apparatus of the body. Reliable outlets usually offer side effects of levitra complete details about the medication and buy the one as recommended by your doctor. The side effects viagra most important aspects of a satisfying sexual life that you required. According to the study, “At root this is a crisis of authority. In recent decades university administrators, professors, and student activists have quietly excluded more and more voices from the exchange of views on campus. This has taken shape in several ways, not all of which are reducible to violations of ‘academic freedom.’ The narrowing of campus debate by de-selection of conservatives from faculty positions, for example, is not directly a question of academic freedom though it has proven to have dire consequences in various fields where professors have severely limited the range of ideas they present in courses …Potent threats to academic freedom can arise from the collective will of faculty members themselves. This is the situation that confronts us today. Decades of progressive orthodoxy in hiring, textbooks, syllabi, student affairs, and public events have created campus cultures where legitimate intellectual debates are stifled and where dissenters, when they do venture forth, are often met with censorious and sometimes violent responses. Student mobs, egged on by professors and administrators, now sometimes riot to prevent such dissent. The idea of “safe spaces” and a new view of academic freedom as a threat to the psychological wellbeing of disadvantaged minorities have gained astonishing popularity among students.”

Students have begun to realize the dangers of campus censorship.  Shuhankar Chhhokra, writing in the Harvard Crimson notes: “What happens when we replace the high-strung, passionate atmosphere of the campus protest with the sober, more intellectually demanding lecture hall? Far scarier than any campus protest was my experience in class last week, when in light of the grievances of these student protesters, we discussed the limits that should be placed on disagreeable speech on campuses. We asked ourselves in all seriousness a question that, despite the irony, I believe is too dangerous to even entertain: When is censorship okay?…If we dive into the diction of this new student activism—diction that some of the most vocal supporters of free speech restrictions used in my class ad nauseam last week—we may see some, albeit poor, rationalization of their demands. Disagreeable speech is no longer “offensive”; rather, it’s “hostile.” It is no longer a violation of good taste, but a prima facie violation of the victim’s personhood and liberty. A student in my class claimed that repeated microaggressions pose a quantifiable threat to their victims’ lives, equal in severity to physical violence itself. This reframing of an argument about decorum to a patently false, histrionic one about something far more critical is how these calls for censorship may actually gain some traction.”

The internet is the greatest revolution in the availability of information since the invention of the printing press.  However, the leadership and staff of social media giants have begun to use their extraordinary power to warp public discussion by censoring out ideas and beliefs that they disagree with.

The Report Concludes Tomorrow.

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Quick Analysis

Growing Assault on Free Speech, Part 2

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government concludes its latest examination of the growing rejecting of free speech.

A popular avenue for attacking free speech is the drive to impose ever increasing campaign regulations. Bradley Smith, in a National Affairs article wrote: “ To anyone following the evolution of the campaign-finance reform movement, it should have been obvious that book-banning was a straightforward implication of the McCain-Feingold law (and the long line of [campaign finance] statutes and cases that preceded it). The century-old effort to constrict the ways our elections are funded has, from the outset, put itself at odds with our constitutional tradition. It seeks to undermine not only the protections of political expression in the First Amendment, but also the limits on government in the Constitution itself.”

Attacks on free speech can also be seen on the state level. In an attempt to muzzle opposing viewpoints, New York’s elected officials are continuously seeking means to suppress free speech. The latest scandalous move comes from Assemblyman David Weprin, who represents part of NYC in the state legislature. He has introduced legislation (A5323) that is such a broad attack against the First Amendment that it has attracted national attention, garnering substantial criticism.  This is how the Washington Post’s  Eugene Volokh describes the measure: ‘…under this bill, newspapers, scholarly works, copies of books on Google Books and Amazon, online encyclopedias (Wikipedia and others) — all would have to be censored whenever a judge and jury found (or the author expected them to find) that the speech was ‘no longer material to current public debate or discourse’…And of course the bill contains no exception even for material of genuine historical interest; after all, such speech would have to be removed if it was ‘no longer material to current public debate.’ Nor is there an exception for autobiographic material, whether in a book, on a blog or anywhere else. Nor is there an exception for political figures, prominent businesspeople and others. But the deeper problem with the bill is simply that it aims to censor what people say, under a broad, vague test based on what the government thinks the public should or shouldn’t be discussing. It is clearly unconstitutional under current First Amendment law.” A failure to comply with a request to remove material from articles, search engines or other places would make the author liable for, at a minimum, a penalty of $250 per day plus attorney fees.

A recently released CATO study on the “The State of Free Speech and Tolerance in America” reveals the impact all of these attacks have had on the citizenry.

  • “Nearly three-fourths (71%) of Americans believe that political correctness has done more to silence important discussions our society needs to have… The consequences are personal-58% of Americans believe the political climate today prevents them from saying things they believe…
  • 58% of Democrats say employers should punish employees for offensive Facebook posts…
  • Two-thirds (66%) of Americans say colleges and universities aren’t doing enough to teach young Americans today about the value of free speech. When asked which is more important, 65% say colleges should “expose students to all types of viewpoints, even if they are offensive or biased against certain groups.” About a third (34%) say colleges should “prohibit offensive speech that is biased against certain groups.” But Americans are conflicted. Despite their desire for viewpoint diversity, a slim majority (53%) also agree that “colleges have an obligation to protect students from offensive speech and ideas that could create a difficult learning environment.” This share rises to 66% among Democrats, but 57% of Republicans disagree…
  • More than three-fourths (76%) of Americans say that recent campus protests and cancellations of controversial speakers are part of a “broader pattern” of how college students deal with offensive ideas… A majority (58%) say colleges should cancel controversial speakers if administrators believe the students will stage a violent protest otherwise. Democrats and Republicans again disagree: Democrats say universities should cancel the speaker (74%) and Republicans say they should not cancel the speaker (54%) if the students threaten violence…
  • A slim majority (51%) of current college students and graduate students believe a person doesn’t deserve the right of free speech if they don’t respect other people… Two-thirds of Americans (66%) say colleges and universities aren’t doing enough today to teach young Americans about the value of free speech. This is a view shared by 51% of current college and graduate students, while 46% think colleges are doing enough…
  • A little more than a quarter (29%) [of all those surveyed] think government should have the authority to stifle stories authorities say are inaccurate or biased.

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Quick Analysis

Growing Assault on Free Speech

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government examines the growing rejecting of free speech.

 

In the hyper-ventilating world of modern journalism, describing almost every issue as a “crises” has lost its impact.  That’s troubling, because there are several challenges facing the United States that truly are existential threats.  Arguably, the most serious is the rapidly declining support for free speech.

Several recent reports and articles illustrate the dramatic drop in devotion to the First Amendment, which, more than any other characteristic, has been the defining characteristic of American law, culture and government.

The seriousness of the threat can be seen in the multiple avenues of attack those favoring limiting freedom of speech have taken.  They include:

  • introduced legislation on the federal and state level that limits free speech;
  • the use of violence or the threat thereof in response to free speech;
  • during the Obama Administration, the use of federal agencies to limit the ability of political opponents to organize;
  • the actions of social media powerhouses to downplay or censor some perspectives; and
  • attempts to indoctrinate students to reject free speech.

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It is disturbing that some in the media who, because of their profession, should be among the most ardent supporters of free speech, are among those favoring its limitation.  Richard L. Hasen, writing in the Los Angeles Times stated that “…some shifts in 1st Amendment doctrine seem desirable to assist citizens in ascertaining the truth.”

James Bovard, writing in The Hill points out that “Commentators in the Washington Post and New York Times have called for selective censorship of ideas and doctrines they abhor.

A generation of American youth are being taught on campuses that reject free speech. John Villasenor, writing for Brookings notes: “what happens on campuses often foreshadows broader societal trends…A surprisingly large fraction of students believe it is acceptable to act—including resorting to violence—to shut down expression they consider offensive…Freedom of expression is deeply imperiled on U.S. campuses. In fact, despite protestations to the contrary (often with statements like “we fully support the First Amendment, but…), freedom of expression is clearly not, in practice, available on many campuses, including many public campuses that have First Amendment obligations… among many current college students there is a significant divergence between the actual and perceived scope of First Amendment freedoms. More specifically, with respect to the questions explored above, many students have an overly narrow view of the extent of freedom of expression… a surprisingly large fraction of students believe it is acceptable to act—including resorting to violence—to shut down expression they consider offensive. And a majority of students appear to want an environment that shields them from being exposed to views they might find offensive.”

The problem extends beyond biased journalists and the leftist, pro-censorship environment on college campuses. During the Obama Administration, federal attacks on organizations that spoke in opposition to President Obama’s policies occurred, and the perpetrators have not been subjected to punishment. Robert Wood, writing in Forbes, reported “[IRS official] Lois Lerner and Justice Department officials met in 2010 about going after conservative organizations…In August 2010, the IRS distributed a ‘be on the lookout’ list for Tea Party organizations… On May 7, 2014, the House of Representatives held Ms. Lerner in contempt of Congress…”

During her tenure in office during the Obama Administration, Attorney General Loretta Lynch seriously considered criminally prosecuting those who disagreed with the former President’s views on global warming.  A number of state attorneys general engaged in legal harassment of think tanks that question Obama’s environmental policies.

The problem reaches beyond agency actions. Senator Charles Schumer, (D-NY)  who is the U.S. Senate’s minority leader, proposed a measure that would limit free speech protections as they pertain to campaign donations. The proposed legislation, thankfully defeated, gained 43 Senate supporters—all Democrats. At a Senate Rules Committee  Schumer stated that “The First Amendment is sacred, but the First Amendment is not absolute. By making it absolute, you make it less sacred to most Americans.”

The Report Concludes Tomorrow

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Quick Analysis

Repealing America’s Revolution, Part 2

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government concludes its two-part look at how the basic foundational concepts of the United States are being challenged as never before.

The most basic American right of free speech continues to be assaulted. In 2014, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) introduced legislation to limit the First Amendment. This year, Free speech continues to be attacked, reports the Washington Examiner  “A revived bid by a top Federal Election Commission Democrat could lead to an “inquisition” against conservative media outlets like the Drudge Report, InfoWars and Breitbart that take political advertising and are overseen by right-leaning owners or editors, according to critics.” The College Fix  reports that the dean’s office in Utah Valley University, a public institution, distributed a guidance letter to all faculty encouraging them to report to the school’s Behavior Assessment Team any students who use “inappropriate language,” are “argumentative,” or who speak “loudly”—a move widely interrupted to mean not those who protest from the Left, but only those who disagree with left-leaning professors.

The concept of respecting the results of free and fair elections is attacked daily. In the past, the nation transitioned from Democrat to Republican, liberal to conservative, without a hitch. Whether one likes or disdains Donald Trump, there is no disputing the reality that he was fairly elected.  Nevertheless, even before he took the oath of office, calls for his impeachment, and for ignoring the results of the 2016 election, were rampant. Further,  Zero Hedge disclosed that former CIA director John Brennan advised federal government officials to disobey President Trump under certain circumstances.

The basis of representational government, in which it is the voter that is the ultimate holder of power, is diminished by an unelected, unresponsive and arrogant bureaucracy. Increasingly, key decisions affecting the daily lives of Americans are being made not in the halls of Congress as intended by the Constitution but by unelected and relatively unknown bureaucratic bodies. According to the CATO institute, “In the 125 years since Congress created the first regulatory agency, the number of agencies and the scope and reach of the regulations they issue have increased dramatically. In 2014, there are over 70 federal regulatory agencies, employing over 300,000 people to write and implement regulation. Every year, they issue thousands of new regulations, which now occupy over 168,000 pages of regulatory code.” During the Obama Administration, powerful federal agencies such as the IRS and the FCC were used to engage in partisan political attacks against those who disagreed with the White House.

The very concept of citizenship itself is challenged by those on the left who, annoyed at the lack of support by the current population, fight to maintain “open borders” to allow in those unfamiliar or unsympathetic to America’s founding principles. Some municipalities are openly considering allowing immigrants—including illegals—to vote. The most recent example comes from Maryland, In August, reports Adam Edelman of Fox News “A D.C. suburb in Maryland began considering  a plan that would give undocumented immigrants the right to vote, making their city the largest in the Old Line State to do so. The city, which is home of the University of Maryland’s main campus and nearly 30,000 residents, is weighing approval of the new measure to let noncitizens cast ballots for mayor and City Council,” according to the The Baltimore Sun.

Addition ingestion of dosage is known to have coronary problems may be more prone to erectile dysfunction but studies have shown that excessive viewing of pornography can numb you’re body to normal sensations therefore affecting your purchase cheap cialis ability to perform are hindered by the tension that they feel stiffness on the implanted joint, while others feel frustrated as it did not help them regain absolute mobility. Many people who took more than the advised amount of this chemical reported side-effects. pfizer viagra online Thus, scarce use of anti ED medicines due to easy availability, less complex procedure cheapest sildenafil and better results. When the blood does not passes away in a sufficient manner the man faces problems while making love leading him to stress and other conditions. get viagra in canada http://respitecaresa.org/event/winter-break-camp/reindeer/ Civil discourse is replaced by violence and the threat of violence. Examples are worrisome.  In a scene eerily reminiscent of Nazi or KKK activities, Antifa’s “Black-clad anarchists …stormed into what had been a largely peaceful Berkeley protest against hate and attacked at least five people, including the leader of a politically conservative group who canceled an event a day earlier in San Francisco amid fears of violence” reported the Chicago Tribune. “The group of more than 100 hooded protesters… busted through police lines, avoiding security checks by officers. Separately, groups of hooded, black-clad protesters attacked at least four other men in or near the park, kicking and punching them.”

All of this threatens America’s very existence. Author Eric Metaxas asks, “If America was indeed a country created not because of ethnic or tribal boundaries but instead because people had come to believe—and therefore embody—a set of ideas, how could America be said to exist if…these ideas had essentially evaporated from our national consciousness…?” In the past, Metaxas notes, America “stood for something greater than itself,” and asks “when [the] nation has forgotten who it is at its core, has forgotten not just the important ideas that animated it in the first place but the heroes who brought those ideas to life…can we keep the republic that has been a beacon of liberty and a promise to the future and to the world?”

The challenges from groups like Antifa, the preferences for socialism over capitalism within the academic world, and the growing practice of governance by unelected “experts” over elected officials may seem new, but they are merely the latest incarnation of the horrors of the totalitarian movements that reached their height in the 20th Century. What is different is the unusual level of acceptance of these failed philosophies by many within the United States, and the blatant touting of them by universities, many popular personalities, the media, and a number of political figures.

it’s not just disaffected and arrogant masked domestic terrorists that are altering the current American political and cultural landscape.  Take New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio, for example.  Despite his support for Nicaragua’s communist regime during the period when Moscow was sending its military to the region, his fondness for at least one terrorist group, and his open embrace of Marxist principles, he commands America’s largest city.  The Washington Free Beacon  has described how De Blasio “Rails against [the] concept of private property, [and] says it impedes NYC’s ‘Socialistic Impulse.’  De Blasio complains that “private property rights” stand in the way of his agenda.

Again, this is nothing new. The Bolsheviks stole the Russian Revolution from those who wished to replace the Czar with a more open government, and sought to eliminate private property rights. A few decades later, notes British politician and author Daniel Hannan, Hitler proclaimed that “Capitalism has run its course.” He believed, writes Hannan, as did other socialists (remember, “Nazi” is short for “National Socialists”) that individual rights were a perversion of the natural order “in which the group was more important than the individual.”

America’s very essence is under sustained assault from those who substantially disagree with all that it was founded upon.

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Quick Analysis

Repealing America’s Revolution

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government provides a two-part look at how the basic foundational concepts of the United States are being challenged as never before.

A small portion of the U.S. population has rejected the foundational concepts of what America is all about.  Bedrock principles of individual rights, free enterprise, and even national sovereignty have been called into question as never before.

Unlike previous major controversies, this division does not center around a single issue or dispute. Rather, it calls into question the essential reasons for the founding of the country, and even the great principles of western civilization that guided and motivated the thirteen original colonies to form an entity unlike any ever seen before.

During the past century, the basics of Western Civilization were challenged across the globe.  However, within “the Anglosphere,” including primarily the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the guiding principles were kept alive, and improved upon.  The last vestiges of the world-wide tragedies of racism, sexism, dictatorship and religious persecution were attacked, and individual freedoms expanded, in contrast to the rest of the planet, where, in many cases, these evils expanded to previously unimaginable degrees.  Nazi concentration camps, Communist Gulags, and the medieval practices of Islamic extremism plagued the planet (and some continue to do so) but America remained largely immune.

That may be changing, as individual rights are replaced by collective rights, despite the history of this concept which resulted in 100 million people murdered by Communist states, 15 million or so extinguished by Hitler, and the growing daily ravages of radical Islam.

The attempts to eliminate the key, unifying ideas and traditions that bind America together become more serious each day.

Progressive” educators, from kindergarten through college, when they include American history at all in their curriculum, do so only in the most deprecating manner possible. Left-wing pundits work overtime to cast the nation’s founding fathers in the worst possible light. Bruce Thornton, writing for Frontpage  explains: “The politicizing of the universities has led to two ill effects. First… adding [anti-American] material to the curriculum necessitates the driving out of the traditional curriculum…Second, generations of credential students have sat in these courses and then gone on to teach in high schools and grade schools, and to write the textbooks and curricula that propagate this ideology. The result is a student population ignorant of the basic facts of history.” Even the unifying act of having young students recite the Pledge of Allegiance together is now under assault by those who wish to remove it from regular student activities.

As a result of biased or nonexistent education in U.S. history, there is little appreciation for the extraordinary leap in human rights brought about by the American Revolution, and the founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Therefore, when individuals who seek to dismantle America’s philosophical underpinnings point out the inevitable flaws in the nation’s founding figures, those flaws are all those undereducated students see.

Some entertainment and sports figures use their access to the public to attack unifying symbols and traditions.  Example:  Football quarterback Colin Kaepernick, rather than voice his concern over a particular set of issues, chooses instead to denigrate the nation as a whole by refusing to honor the traditional playing of the national anthem. As a result, his muddled message isn’t one of reform of whatever bothers him; it’s an undercutting of support for the nation as a whole.

The essential philosophical principles which underpin America are under constant siege. Freedom of religion has been a central tenet of American life. But now, holding any religious beliefs makes one vulnerable to attack.  Examples abound:

  • Houston’s former mayor sought to mandate that pastors had to submit their sermons to the city for approval.
  • The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal  noted with alarm Senator Diane Feinstein’s assault on a judicial nominee simply because the candidate for the bench held traditional religious beliefs: “David Rivkin, a constitutional litigator, says ‘the tenor of questions by Democrat Senators seemed designed more to challenge the ideas of Catholic orthodoxy—a subject more fitting for a theological debate than a Senate hearing…Sen. Dick Durbin jumped in to demand of Ms. Barrett: ‘Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic…This questioning is part of a broader effort on the left to disqualify people with strong religious views from the public square.’
  • It has also been reported  that a “A Washington state high school football coach… was punished for taking a knee at the 50-yard line for a post-game prayer violated the U.S. Constitution,” according to the radical 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
  • The co-chair of the Democrat National Committee has a long history of associating with anti-Semites.

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The Report Concludes tomorrow.

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The New Threat to Free Speech, Part 2

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government takes a two-part look at how the attacks on free speech have changed.

It is ironic that some of the key threats to free speech are now emanating not from an overbearing government, but from some elements of the press itself, particularly social media/internet giants. As the New York Analysis of Policy and Government has previously reported, Kalev Leetaru wrote in Forbes that “Far from democratizing how we access the world’s information, the web has in fact narrowed those information sources…the internet is centralizing information access from a myriad websites and local newspapers and radio/television shows to single behemoth social platforms that wield universal global control over what we consume. Indeed, social media platforms appear to increasingly view themselves no longer as neural publishing platforms but rather as active mediators and curators of what we see.”

The internet research organization Can I Rank found that “Although internet search engines like Google play an increasingly prominent role shaping voter opinions and perception of issues and candidates, their ranking algorithms aren’t designed to provide a fairly balanced or completely honest representation of controversial issues…Among our key findings were that top search results were almost 40% more likely to contain pages with a “Left” or “Far Left” slant than they were pages from the right. Moreover, 16% of political keywords contained no right-leaning pages at all within the first page of results. Our analysis of the algorithmic metrics underpinning those rankings suggests that factors within the Google algorithm itself may make it easier for sites with a left-leaning or centrist viewpoint to rank higher in Google search results compared to sites with a politically conservative viewpoint.” The study found that 16% of political keyword searches yielded no conservative-oriented pages within the initial search results.

Recently, Breitbart  reported, “Facebook reportedly shut down an internal chat room which evolved into a forum for anonymous Facebook employees to discuss their support of President Donald Trump. The anonymous group reportedly became a key place of discussion for right-leaning Facebook employees, perhaps because they felt that they could express their conservative views more openly in an anonymous forum. It was reported that a poster advertising the group on Facebook’s campus stated, “Trump Supporters Welcome,” a sentiment that is typically out of place in Silicon Valley. Many observers have drawn comparisons between Facebook’s shut down of one of the few conservative leaning groups for employees and the firing of former Google engineer James Damore who was let go from his position at Google for criticizing the company’s PC culture.”

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Of course, part of the challenge is a tactic used by progressive sources that loosely defines “hate speech” as anything they disagree with. When highly partisan left-wing organizations such as the Southern Partisan Law Center get to make defining decisions, the result is not going to be nonpartisan.

The left’s anti-free speech activities are generally portrayed as spontaneous reactions to the outrage of the day. In reality, they are frequently well-financed. Cliff Kincaid  outlines how billionaire George Soros financed a drive to remove one successful conservative commentator, Glenn Beck, from Fox News. Another example comes from Jonathan Tobin, in Commentary magazine .  While demonizing the Koch brothers, who give to conservative causes, Tom Steyer continues to be a major influencer and financial backer of left-wing causes.

National Review has examined the broader picture: “Progressive corporations enforce an ideological monoculture. Dissent and get fired…When government officials target speech because of a speaker’s views, they lose time and again. At the same time, millions of Americans are extraordinarily reluctant to express even the most mainstream of (particularly) social conservative views. They’re convinced that if they do that, they’ll be publicly humiliated, investigated, and perhaps even lose their jobs. They’re convinced that outspoken liberals enjoy greater opportunity in key sectors of the economy, and if conservatives want to thrive, they best keep their opinions to themselves.”

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Quick Analysis

The New Threat to Free Speech

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government takes a two-part look at how the attacks on free speech have changed.

The threat to free speech within the United States is no longer limited to college campuses or a few isolated individuals or organizations.  It is now a multi-faceted campaign at all levels of American civic life, advocated by major political figures and media powerhouses, ardently pushed by massive street protests, and well financed by billionaires.

Ari Lieberman, writing for Frontpage  correctly notes that “The Left’s assault on free speech is an alarming trend that represents a grave danger to democratic values and principles. They employ code words like ‘safe spaces’ and ‘First Amendment opportunism’ to hide behind the fact that they are tearing apart the very fabric of the United States Constitution.”

Many thought that the serious assaults on the First Amendment would cease or at least diminish following the conclusion of the Obama Administration. It is reasonable to speculate that the lack of any judicial punishment in response to the former president’s assaults on the nation’s most fundamental freedom has encouraged anti-free speech partisans.

Patrick Maines, writing in The Hill last year, noted: “No administration in memory has more thoroughly undermined freedom of speech and of the press than that of President Obama. From the White House itself, as well as the independent and executive branch agencies, have come a steady stream of policies, initiatives, and pronunciamentos that have threatened or compromised both of these constitutional rights.”

Examples cited by Maines and others are numerous. The transformation of the IRS into a partisan attack dog against the Tea Party—for which no one has seen the inside of a jail cell– may be the most prominent, but it is just one of many.

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Ignored by much of the media was the outrageous legal attack against a video producer who was falsely blamed for the Benghazi attack, despite the clear knowledge by Obama, Clinton and others that it was totally irrelevant to the premeditated assault.

Amazingly, Senator Charles Schumer, (D-NY) who actually introduced legislation to limit the First Amendment, not only continues in office, but has become the most powerful Democrat in Washington.

Media voices not subservient to the Obama White House had their hands full contending with the Federal Communications Commission’s moves to control the internet, and its attempt to place federal monitors in newsrooms across the nation. As Real Clear Politics reported, “Obama and his senior staff singled out for condemnation Fox News, the lone television network that did not serve up the fawning coverage the president and his team had come to expect.”

Part of the populist response to those outrages was the surprising victory of Donald Trump.  But the anti-free speech crowd, no longer able to access the powers of the federal government to attack free speech, have skillfully adopted alternative tactics, with considerable success. The ACLJ  reports “As a raft of leftist news media outlets, commentators and administrators renounce their support for the First Amendment in order to censor free speech…the escalating war on freedom of speech and the Constitution threatens everyone. Craven assaults on the Constitution and our civil liberties by media and university elites, as well as government bureaucrats, cannot go unanswered. Conservatives, Jewish students, pro-Israel organizations and pro-life supporters face bullying assaults from left-wing elites in the media, on university campuses, or from politically motivated government bureaucrats… it is manifest that the war on free speech has heated up.”

The Report concludes Monday.

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The Campaign Against Free Speech

There is a specific and clear message that many elite journalists, internet giants, academics, and politicians are delivering to the American people: “You are too stupid to understand objective reporting or use free speech the right way, so we will decide for you what can and cannot be reported or said. The First Amendment no longer applies to you!”

The message comes from a variety of sources. On CNN, which has become infamous for slanting its reporting in so extreme a manner during the past several years and especially during the 2016 presidential campaign that detractors have nicknamed it the “Clinton News Network,” celebrated reporter Carl Bernstein, reports RealClearPolitics, stated that President Trump was a “Malignant” president and that “reporters needed to change the way they cover him…It calls on our journalists to do a different kind of reporting, a different kind of dealing with this presidency and the president of the United States.”

CNN has also reported that it “outed” the Reddit user that put together the “gif” of Trump wrestling that network’s image, who subsequently “apologized” for his exercise in free speech not approved by the media elites. CNN has apparently taken lessons from totalitarian states that gleefully force dissenters to recant.

Perhaps CNN derives its contempt for free speech from the nation’s academic institutions, where American history is barely taught, perhaps because the concepts enshrined in the Bill of Rights are just too dangerous for elites who wish to rule without interference.

That contempt is leading to lawsuits, Campus Reform reports. Three students at Kellogg Community College in Michigan were arrested for handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution. “The manager of Student Life, Drew Hutchinson, asked them to stop because they might “obstruct the student’s ability to get an education…this was…too much for school administrators who insisted the three were in violation of the school’s draconian solicitation policies. They called the Kalamazoo police and the Chief of Police himself came to arrest the activists for trespassing. Now, Brandon Withers… who was with the activists that afternoon, is suing the college. A press release from his lawyers at the Alliance Defending Freedom says: ‘The problem is that KCC’s speech policy, what they call a ‘Solicitation Policy,’ regulates a wide variety of student expression. Things such as leafleting, assemblies, speeches, and circulating petitions are all greatly restricted, but they also happen to be protected by the First Amendment.”

Kellogg University’s actions are not an isolated incident within higher education. The University of California is being sued for First Amendment violations for its actions in blocking conservative-minded speakers from appearing on campus. There are numerous other examples throughout academia—and not only at the university level.

The growing opposition to free speech on the part of the Progressive left is increasingly organized and well-funded.

The Washington Examiner reports that “The former chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission, [FEC] who famously eyed regulating the politics of conservative outlets like the Drudge Report, has joined an advocacy group funded by George Soros and run by his son. Ann Ravel is the first fellow listed with the California advocacy group New America. Her fellowship began in March and pays a $30,000 stipend…Since leaving the FEC, Ravel has continued to speak out for more election regulation, especially on the internet where she sees political advertising shifting to in the next presidential contest. She has applauded calls for regulating political speech and spending on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and this week endorsed tracing the funding of online ads and regulating individual Twitter accounts.”

During President Obama’s tenure in office, there were numerous attempts to use the FEC and various campaign regulatory statutes as a stealth attack on free speech.  Many of the moves were brazen, such as that by New York Senator Charles Schumer’s proposed legislation that would begin the process of weakening First Amendment protections regarding paid political speech.  Democrat members of the FEC have also sought to bring certain web sites under its jurisdiction.

During the prior eight years, significant attacks on free speech included:

  • The Federal Communications Commission’s attempt to place federal monitors in newsrooms;
  • openly considered criminal prosecution of anyone disagreeing with Obama’s views on climate change;
  • placing the internet under international control (which would permit censorship,);
  • Using Internal Revenue Service has been used a bludgeon against groups opposing White House policies; and
  • The Justice Department seized telephone records of Fox news reporters.

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In 2014, the Society of Professional Journalists  protested in a letter to the Obama White House about “politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies. Recent research has indicated the problem is getting worse throughout the nation, particularly at the federal level. Journalists are reporting that most federal agencies prohibit their employees from communicating with the press unless the bosses have public relations staffers sitting in on the conversations…Reporters seeking interviews are expected to seek permission, often providing questions in advance. Delays can stretch for days, longer than most deadlines allow… Agencies hold on-background press conferences with unnamed officials, on a not-for-attribution basis. In many cases, this is clearly being done to control what information journalists – and the audience they serve – have access to. A survey found 40 percent of public affairs officers admitted they blocked certain reporters because they did not like what they wrote.”

The attack on free speech also occurs in more subtle ways, especially in that increasingly vital marketplace of ideas, the internet. Search engines giants have tailored their search results to omit results or obscure or delete comments that do not conform to leftist orthodoxy.  The internet research organization Can I Rank found that  “top search results were almost 40% more likely to contain pages with a “Left” or “Far Left” slant than they were pages from the right. Moreover, 16% of political keywords contained no right-leaning pages at all within the first page of results. Our analysis of the algorithmic metrics underpinning those rankings suggests that factors within the Google algorithm itself may make it easier for sites with a left-leaning or centrist viewpoint to rank higher in Google search results compared to sites with a politically conservative viewpoint.” The study found that 16% of political keyword searches yielded no conservative-oriented pages within the initial search results.

The U.S. nearing a dangerous turning point, in which not only is free speech endangered, but also the very means to generate free speech is endangered. From academia’s relentless drive to indoctrinate students against the nation’s founding principles, to the establishment media’s actions in warping its reporting, to the actions by bureaucrats and elected officials alike to regulate and intimidate against the exercise of First Amendment rights, America’s most cherished freedom has become an endangered species.

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One State’s Concerted Attack on the First Amendment

New York is one of the most solidly left-wing states. But that doesn’t mean that all of its residents agree with the prevailing progressive ideology—and that dissent disturbs the leadership.

In an attempt to muzzle opposing viewpoints, New York’s elected officials are continuously seeking means to suppress free speech. The latest scandalous move comes from Assemblyman David Weprin, who represents part of NYC in the state legislature. He has introduced legislation (A5323) that is such a broad attack against the First Amendment that it has attracted national attention, garnering substantial criticism.  This is how the Washington Post’s  Eugene Volokh describes the measure:

“…under this bill, newspapers, scholarly works, copies of books on Google Books and Amazon, online encyclopedias (Wikipedia and others) — all would have to be censored whenever a judge and jury found (or the author expected them to find) that the speech was “no longer material to current public debate or discourse”…And of course the bill contains no exception even for material of genuine historical interest; after all, such speech would have to be removed if it was “no longer material to current public debate.” Nor is there an exception for autobiographic material, whether in a book, on a blog or anywhere else. Nor is there an exception for political figures, prominent businesspeople and others.But the deeper problem with the bill is simply that it aims to censor what people say, under a broad, vague test based on what the government thinks the public should or shouldn’t be discussing. It is clearly unconstitutional under current First Amendment law.”

A failure to comply with a request to remove material from articles, search engines or other places would make the author liable for, at a minimum, a penalty of $250 per day plus attorney fees.

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New York’s anti-free speech and campaign disclosure laws are stunning in their extent and open defiance of the First Amendment. Among other mandates, they impose a requirement of across the board disclosure of donors and staff, and provides a first-ever disclosure requirement for “political consultants.” At first glance, that appears comparatively innocuous. However, the devil is in the details. According to the legislation’s language, almost anyone who has ever had any relation or association with anyone even remotely connected to a campaign would have to be disclosed. In essence, it criminalizes anyone with an active interest in politics. Further, it substantially intimidates anyone seeking to provide summaries of their perspectives on the issues or advice on how to present those views from speaking with a candidate in any substantive manner. Independent advocacy groups promoting anything from environmental protection to benefits for veterans would be handicapped.

The outrageous assault on free speech has been challenged in federal court. Not backing down, NY Governor Andrew Cuomo has hired one of the nation’s top specialist attorney’s in the field to defend the offensive measure.

As previously reported in the New York Analysis of Policy & Government, New York Senator Charles Schumer, who is the U.S. Senate’s minority leader, proposed a measure that would limit free speech protections as they pertain to campaign donations. The proposed legislation, thankfully defeated, gained 43 Senate supporters—all Democrats. At a Senate Rules Committee  Schumer stated that “The First Amendment is sacred, but the First Amendment is not absolute. By making it absolute, you make it less sacred to most Americans.”