Anyone who cherishes freedom must be against censorship. Throughout history, tyrannical governments have used this weapon to silence their enemies. The first step is to narrow the range of thought and eventually extinguish, once and for all, the possibility of independent thought; their intended goal.
Big Tech censorship is the enemy of Democracy, but it is embraced by many who want to trample on the rights of their (perceived) enemies. President Trump was banned from Twitter and then Apple, Google, and Amazon banned the social network, Parler. People are being targeted and books are being banned. Is this just the beginning? Will those who are in control of our government, the internet, tell us what to think? Tell us what to believe? Tell us what we can and can’t say? Fact-check us to death? It’s a scary thought but seemingly the idea, the approval of censoring others who disagree, along with purging and deprograming, is gaining more steam every day.
“Who controls the past…controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,” wrote George Orwell in his dystopian social science fiction novel, 1984. So, if you control the present, the future is yours to control, and the past is yours to change when it is convenient to do so.
“Not power over things, but over men…thought is all we care about,” Orwell also wrote, realizing man, society could be controlled when thoughts were outlawed, when freedom of speech was curtailed, but more so, when freedom of speech was eliminated from the public square.
Censorship is embraced by those who want to control others who disagree with them.
Control our speech.
Limit our thoughts.
It is so wrong on so many levels, and extremely dangerous.
Freedom of speech is a basic civic right and without it, civil discourse will cease to exist.
We must unite against censorship anywhere and everywhere it rears its tyrannical head.
“Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist,” Frederick Douglass wrote. “That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right they first of all strike down.”
Ruthlessly control the present.
Conveniently alter the past.
Dishonestly shape the future.
Do we want this in America?
I know I don’t.
And I hope you don’t either.
