Guest Post by Alex Berenson
And it’s not about Joe Biden
A majority of Americans – and an overwhelming number of Democrats – no longer support First Amendment protections for free speech.
The government should restrict “false” information online, even if doing so blocks people from “publishing or accessing information,” 55 percent of Americans said in a large poll released Thursday. Only 42 percent disagreed.
The antipathy to free speech represents a sea change in attitudes in just five years. It is driven by a powerful new hostility to First Amendment rights on the left.
In an identically worded poll five years ago, Democrats and Republicans favored free speech online by roughly 3 to 2 margins. Today, Republicans still favor the First Amendment by about that much. But Democrats have turned against it by even more.
The support for government suppression of “false” speech clearly violates the First Amendment, which does not distinguish between “false” and legal speech, or online or traditional platforms for speech and debate.
The stunning finding comes from a survey released Thursday by the Pew Research Center, a Washington think tank. Pew’s online poll covered over 5,000 adults, and Pew has asked the same question three times in five years; the trend is unmistakable.
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(Freedom? We don’t need no stinkin’ freedom!)
(Note that the second part of the poll questioned whether technology and social media companies should also censor. Americans support that private censorship as well, but that is a less radical position. Private companies are generally not subject to the First Amendment unless they are acting at the behest of the government, though companies deemed “common carriers” may have to carry all speech whether they want to or not.)
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When Pew split the respondents by political party, the split – and the change in attitudes – was even more striking.
In 2018, Democrats supported free speech by a 57-40 margin, almost identical to the Republican view. They now oppose it by 70-28, a massive shift over the last five years, while Republican views have not changed.
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(Maybe we should call it a Cultural Revolution – I feel like I’ve heard that phrase befor?)
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The poll had almost no good news.
Younger adults favored free speech slightly more than those over 50, but they have shifted against it even faster than older adults in the last five years, probably because they tend to lean to the left.
The poll did not examine the reasons why views have shifted so far so fast. But presumably endless alarmism about the dangers of “misinformation” and “disinformation” by left-leaning media outlets has been a huge factor.
In any case, the poll puts into context the bizarre New York Times article Thursday suggesting that freedom of speech, rather than being a core American right, presents “thorny questions.”
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The left – the entire left, readers and writers, consumers and producers of information -is clearly losing confidence in the First Amendment, telling itself a tale of the dangers of too much speech, and trying to wall off opinions and even facts it does not like.
And those of us who hoped the end of Covid and the manifest failure of the mRNAs would spell an end to censorship, or at least a serious rethinking of its pros and cons, appear to have been sadly mistaken.
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Those not appreciative of free speech are less likely in being able to discern what’s being said. A remarkable symptom of being dumbed down. Free speech can be tempered but don’t mess with their feelings.
Covid proved far too many can’t or won’t think for themselves. It’s no surprise that many of those same people don’t want to have to see, hear or read about information they don’t agree with or don’t like.
Trudeau is hard at work here in Canada passing laws that will all but ensure the only thing the masses will be allowed to see, hear or read is information he and his minions approve of and nothing else.
Trudeau and Gavin Newsom are totalitarian twin sisters.
… along with Jacinda Ardern — who has now moved on to a higher position in the BORG …
That’s right. Stupid does not admit to being stupid it just doubles down.
Would respectfully point out that censorship is not a ‘left’ or ‘liberal’ value, but is in fact totalitarian and authoritarian, part of the political spectrum usually considered ‘far right’.
Hypocrisies regardless which side of the two party dupe or the LP or the Greens…
The word liberal means free, but has been long appropriated by the totalitarian left, just as the alphabet sex brigade has appropriated the rainbow. Censorship is authoritarian and totalitarian (as is disarmament). .Gov is the same, whether it refers to itself as left or right.
If there is to be a left and right, then there must be what is referred to as a “political spectrum”. Like the electromagnetic spectrum, it must measure a greater or lesser amount of something from left to right or vice versa. On the electromagnetic spectrum, the thing measured is frequency, or wavelength. It has been proposed that on a political spectrum, the thing measured is greater or lesser government control, with the farthest left representing the most government control (i.e., totalitarianism) and the farthest right representing the least government control (i.e., libertarianism, or sometimes anarchism).
If anyone would like to propose another thing to be measured from greater to lesser along a political spectrum, I would appreciate learning of it.
Most people seem to “define” left and right based upon a random assemblage of beliefs that they either love or hate and then randomly apply a definition-less label to a given assemblage … mostly based on what their preferred flavor of government propaganda tells them is cool to say.
Does anyone even do definitions anymore?
The hell you say. The left LOVES censorship. Did Twitter,or does the FBI seem far right MAGA Republicans to you?????
When you meet and talk with them, do not be polite and call them progressives. Call them the Commies they are. When you are polite and use their term you are contributing in the Hypnotic process called Utilization. Each false word puts you deeper in the trance.
This true f them and their pronouns and alphabet genders. The movie Sound of Freedom says it all. Both sides of isle and residency says it all.
Pew is obsessed:
And.much more similar.
Yeah, Pew is acting as a shill constantly suggesting the stifling of free speech is a popular view.
It isnt.
They are lying.
This is the end-run workaround since The Ministry Of Truth and ” Scary Poppins ” got called out and totally rejected !
Came to say the same, these “polls” are just to get the sheep to accept loss of freedoms.
“Well if the poll says I shouldn’t speak my mind, I better do what the tv says.”
4 out of 5 dentists can’t be wrong 🙂
80% success eh?
Pew apparently is in the consensus building game.
Mark off another corrupt corporation as untrustworthy, and I’ve got the receipts!
Polls are part of propaganda.
Pollaganda
Pollaganda – using polls to drive public opinion.
Pollygandhi, Hindu parrot
This is what a Democratic/socialist/communist/indoctrination controlled school system does
You’re a fool if you trust the polls these days.
90% of American adults act like sheep. Sheeple need,and want, to be told what to think,what to do,and where to shyte. If you avoid searching for facts, or fail to apply common sense and logic to those facts; you are the functional equivalent of retarded. Retards can’t operate complex machinery or republics.
The polls are fake just like everything else in this country. Government and media need to be abolished immediately.
And that’s why we have a Constitutional Republic. 2/3 of the citizens could vote for eating dog-crap sandwiches, but I won’t. At the rate we are going, that’s more likely than not.
Pew is what you say when you eat “dog-crap” sandwiches.
Mentos, the “freshmaker”
As to
Pew, the “fear monger”
Aaah!
So close!
Pewtos-The Fear Maker
Now I suppose peeps are not free to say fags drink Bud Light.
try to say that on one of the Yahoo articles. you will be blocked if you say anything remotely disparaging about any “protected” groups, I know! been there, done that and am likely on their special shit lists!
I don’t do those type sites. My comments stay here.
If this poll is at least 50 % fair, this scares me
no way to know the truth but this is a country full of idiots and not looking good.
People have been dumbed down to such a degree they are unable to see how these thoughts endanger their own lives.
All I can hope for is these stats are lies too.
The gov.com must have polled the people the Nuge was describing, that took the jab…………..
Some people prefer power to truth. Ironically, truth is more powerful than the powers they serve.
The democrat party and RINO’s are like poison to freedom and liberty.
an in politics there is nothing else left to protect or restore either one!
As long as I am the arbiter of what is true and what is false, I agree 100%, otherwise it is a non-starter.
These folks are just another contingency within the useful idiots that their masters will eliminate at the earliest possible date … along with their university professors …
I have unflinching respect for TBP because it posts articles from that hippocritical website:ZeroHedge.
TBP provides an avenue to respond to the Tyler’s articles without the overwhelming censorship and being banished for uttering an opinion or citing obvious Facts.
you are correct sir. That’s why I post on FF alot. It relieves frustration from only 1 weel of FJB
Some people do not stay long at sites without comment sections.
Like me.
This comment section has the best commenters and comments.
[They ain’t all gems tho]
Some of the best articles and comments I have ever enjoyed participating in.
Thankyou all regulars and admin.
Thankyou Jim.
Where else can one say “Fuck Joe Biden”? Those are some creepy peeps.
Then there is that Featherhead monster in Pennsylvania! He can’t be from this world.
“Then there is that Featherhead monster in Pennsylvania! He can’t be from this world.”
what are you talking about?
quinn is as bald as they come —
agree wholeheartedly.
As I have mentioned before tis amazing the monkey wrenches on can drop into the system solo.
Nice pattern.
Maybe done on purpose?
Apparently after spilling special sauce on keyboard
The amendments cannot be infringed. They are God given rights as human beings.
That means, the government can try, but the states and not a single citizen is required to follow an illegal law.
The government is putting a target on the back of every government worker. Those people will be shunned, at least. Harassed? Hopefully.
No one should enforce or ‘go along with’ these ‘laws’ or policies. They must be stopped. Especially at the point of the spear.
People that say free speech should be limited should be censored whenever they say that. /s.