The thing about inalienable rights is that it's an all-or-nothing package. You can't cherry pick which liberties you want to discard and which you want to preserve. The same rule applies to government suppression. Ruling bodies, no matter how well-intentioned, cannot restrain themselves from overreaching in just a few areas. Once they start, they can't and won't stop.
September 11, 2001. Islamic terrorists hijacked two passenger planes and flew them directly into the World Trade Center, the second collision occurring on live TV. Another plane crashed into the Pentagon, and another, likely intended for either the White House or the Capitol building, was retaken and forced down in Pennsylvania by its brave passengers.
Americans were forced to leap to their deaths from the Twin Towers as the buildings burned, eventually collapsing in a pile of ash and smoke. All of America was, for a brief time, united during this unprecedented attack on national sovereignty and freedom.
All, that is, except the federal government, who didn't hesitate to use the tragedy and deaths of American citizens to tread on civil liberties and suspend human rights in the name of "safety and security."
The government's response to the 9/11 attacks spawned the Patriot Act and the NDAA i.e. giving the Swamp the ability to spy and collect data on American citizens. We allowed this, because we were afraid. It's been 21 years since the Twin Towers fell, and since then, many more of our civil liberties have fallen with them.
Who could have predicted two decades ago how suppressive, greedy, corrupt, indifferent, and sometimes straight-up Communist the U.S. government would become?
After the Patriot Act was passed and Americans surrendered a handful of our rights, anyone who knew anything about history probably predicted it.
Joe Biden's new Disinformation Governance Board has shocked and alarmed anyone and everyone who values freedom, but while this is a dangerous move, it's not an unprecedented one in the long, sordid history of government takeovers.
Beginning in 1917 and reaching its height under Joseph Stalin, the Soviet government had the Decree on Press. When cries for Freedom of the Press arose, Vladimir Lenin reassured the people with the following:
"1. Only those publications can be suppressed which:
(1) call for open resistance or insubordination to the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government;
(2) sow sedition through demonstrably slanderous distortion of facts;
(3) instigate actions of an obviously criminal, i.e. criminally punishable, nature.
2. Publications can be proscribed, temporarily or permanently, only by decision of the Council of People’s Commissars.
3. The present ordinance is of a temporary nature and will be repealed by a special decree as soon as normal conditions of social life set in."
Sound familiar?
The infamous Chinese dictator Mao Zedong, the bloody tyrant who's body count is almost as high as that of World War II, and who Joe Biden has quoted positively at least three times, was also a master at censorship and media manipulation. Even after his death, Mao's Communist regime continues its quest to control the narrative with a massive online censorship and information collection apparatus termed The Golden Shield or Great Firewall of China. Even worse, several Western companies helped China set up this leviathan of censorship.
Adolf Hitler was the champion of anti-disinformation campaigns. The Nazis censored newspapers, political cartoons, radio broadcasts, newsreels, soldier's letters to home, and even made it illegal to poke fun at their glorious Führer.
The greatest tool of censorship Nazi Propaganda Minster Joseph Goebbels wielded was in the classroom. German school children were made to read textbooks approved by the State, while those that did not meet Hitler's standards were discarded and banned. Parents had no say in the matter.
In 1933, the Nazis passed the Editorial Law, which among many other things ordered newspaper editors to remove any content that, "...is misleading to the public by mixing selfish interest with community interest."
And what of the Kims of North Korea and their Korean Central News Agency, Bashar al-Assad and his law that allows the Syrian armed forces to scrutinize online forums, or repressive countries like Cuba, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, who fiercely censor and suppress free speech. Ukraine has also recently passed "disinformation" laws, and is now investigating and in some cases arresting citizens for violating them.
Even in America, censorship is growing amongst Big Tech companies like Google, Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook. Convention of States itself has received two strikes on our Youtube account. While many flock to self-proclaimed "parallel economy" sites like Rumble and Gab, this does not change the fact that every single oppressive government regime in human history has employed censorship as a first big step towards Despotism, and now, with the new Disinformation Governance Board, the U.S. federal government has joined them.
Join the Convention of States movement to stop this country from being transformed into another tyrannical regime. Speak out and do not be silenced!
