In Full Regression

The tendency for governments to impose their will against that of the people is pervasive. The Magna Carta and the US Constitution were attempts to keep the excesses to a minimum, but nothing can overcome the human desire to control everything in their environment. It’s the way mankind has survived and where modifications to one’s environment become artistic, rather than merely functional, it can be said that humanity has progressed.

We are in full regression from that lofty ideal of making what is merely functional, a government, into something artistic: a republic that respects the rights and individuality of the human being. It’s not enough, it seems, to encode that into the constitution, write a Bill of Rights; every time the left or the right are insulted by speech, they want to eliminate freedom of speech for one side or the other.

Let me say, unequivocally, that it is no less distasteful coming from the right as it is from the left. The very idea, the concept, that the Trump Administration will seek to punish speech that is not directly associated with the call to violence against a specific target is just reprehensible, not only to me, but what would have been so to Charlie Kirk himself. I cannot think of a more ridiculous tribute to Charlie Kirk than to limit speech that criticizes him or Turning Point USA with legal force. It is purely disgraceful. Where those same attitudes are directed toward antisemitism it is even more repugnant. This is the tactic of such great totalitarians as the Soviets, the CCP and Islamists, not free people.

Free speech carries with it its own penalties. The old adage that it is better to have people think one a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt still applies. Unfortunately, the internet has allowed too many fools to open their mouths, but freedom does not allow for a legal penalty, it has a social penalty. Everything I write in this Substack is subject to review by the reader; acceptance or rejection are always options and if I start writing nonsense, I will be abandoned. Hopefully, the converse is true, that if I’m making sense, it will inspire people to support my work. I’m completely comfortable in that environment and I take that responsibility seriously.

Freedom had better start being important to people, more important than anything else in their lives, because if it’s not sufficiently important, it’ll evaporate before our eyes and be denied to posterity. This is already true. All of the things one has to accept to use any electronic device is a violation that should have been protected by law as violations of privacy and data security as much as any papers or effects. This is a whole section of the Fourth Amendment that has been forfeited in miniscule writing prior to turning one’s cell phone on. It’s a travesty and should rightfully have inspired mass demonstrations in front of AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, but we have already lost so much of our natural self defense against invasion that it did not happen and so has become embedded in everything these communications companies touch.

The contradictions and illegality became apparent during the pandemic. What was only recently secured in law, one’s health records, suddenly became open on demand from some employer or school or institution and the logical mind ground its gears trying to sort out how this was suddenly approved and supported by regulation or “advice” in contravention of the law. That is the world in which government, given the slightest leeway, prospers.

It’s clear to see that freedom of speech needs to be the hill to die on for many of us. Not only against the great liberal states, but against the conservative ones as well. There is no excuse to forfeit that territory, when it so readily polices itself. It is a totalitarian instinct to limit speech. The very inclination suggests an immaturity and an insecurity in one’s beliefs that they might be derailed by some malcontent or propagandist. Charlie certainly never had such insecurities.

When one speaks the truth, it resonates. That’s the shield honest brokers of ideas shelter behind when crafting their message designed to enlist support. Discovering the truth, therefore, becomes the most important occupation of one’s time. From that flows reality that can be addressed with policy. But to deny the propagation of information, out of fear of losing an argument, hinders all progress toward the solution of any problem.

This all, once, was known, valued and put forward when the First Amendment was drafted, even during the maelstrom of propaganda that the founders were criminals and of specious character. Even in that environment, with the British vilifying them relentlessly, besmirching their reputations, the founders recognized the necessity of free speech to allow truth to rise up out of the swamp of disinformation.

If there was one thing that could be done to destroy lies and propaganda, it’s not to limit speech or literature, but to better educate the people in critical and logical thinking. There is, you will notice, no effort to do so, no program to better develop these abilities, because that is the pathway to a free society, everything else leads to totalitarian and the trajectory we find ourselves on. It must stop and we will never be stronger than we are attacking a supposedly patriotic administration who delves into these tactics to solve some rhetorical problem it has at present.

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