(Via our New English friends at The Connecticut Centinal... --Ed.)
By: DIOGENES
I guess all the threats worked. The weak Supremes caved.
In their ruling on Murthy v. Missouri, Kavanaugh, Barrett and Roberts have destroyed the 1st Amendment. This could mark the darkest day in Supreme Court history with wider destructive ramifications than Dred Scott. The government and media players will say little, but believe me, they will smile.
Here's what can't-see-the-forest-for-the-trees Amy Coney Barrett wrote, “platforms had independent incentives to moderate content and often exercised their own judgment. To be sure, the record reflects that the Government defendants played a role in at least some of the platforms’ moderation choices. But the Fifth Circuit, by attributing every platform decision at least in part to the defendants, glossed over complexities in the evidence.” (This is so not the point that I can only call it moronic bullcrap.)
There were no “complexities in the evidence” — the evidence was clear. The FBI, White House, and other officials were specifically directing, demanding, and coercing social media companies to take down posts related to topics they wanted suppressed. Topics included Hunter Biden’s laptop, vaccines, voter fraud in the 2020 election, and COVID policies of masking, lockdowns, and vaccine mandates. Dozens of intelligence community veterans coincidentally “retired” into jobs in the big social media companies. The government was naming people they wanted to be censored. It can’t get more clear than that.
Although much of what was censored turned out to be 100% true and accurate, truth is not the issue. Free speech is. Only the government has the hubris to think they know the truth for the rest of us. As soon as we allow the government, or agencies they control and influence, or anyone else for that matter, to be the arbiters of truth, free speech is gone. You really can’t get around the fact that ANY censorship destroys free speech. That’s why the Jewish ACLU lawyers defended the Neo-Nazis right to parade in Skokie. Speech is free or it is not. Opinions are allowed or they are not.
Call it a Supreme Failure and say goodbye to the 1st Amendment. The point is that according to this ruling, my opinion can be freely censored by the government and the media with the blessing of the Supreme Court. That is raw power. Once again, the Supreme Court has used one of the worst and most abused legal concepts, that of standing, to avoid having to take responsibility for issues where their action is needed. It is the favorite go-to excuse that judges use to avoid controversy while they watch Rome burn. When totalitarian censorship gets a free pass, no dissenting speech will be safe.
Justice Alito had this to say in dissent, “If the lower courts’ assessment of the voluminous record is correct, this is one of the most important free speech cases to reach this Court in years…. For months, high-ranking Government officials placed unrelenting pressure on Facebook to suppress Americans’ free speech. Because the Court unjustifiably refuses to address this serious threat to the First Amendment, I respectfully dissent.”
Attorney General Andrew Bailey from Missouri, one of the states in the case said, “My office filed suit against dozens of officials in the federal government to stop the biggest violation of the First Amendment in our nation’s history. The record is clear: the deep state pressured and coerced social media companies to take down truthful speech simply because it was conservative.”
Yes, this Supreme Court ruling was only on a stay on the federal government. Yes, the underlying case still has a shot. The optimists will say it was only a procedural ruling. They would be right. But the Supreme Court had a chance to slow down the censorship train, and instead they blew the brakes. With this ruling, the feral dogs of government and media censorship have been unleashed from their chains. And now the standard of proving government censorship will require a confession or an overt written threat, easy things for bad actors to avoid. Just ask the mafia. Say, Joey, you look into that thing? Yeah, boss, all squared away.
For those reasonable-minded individuals sleepwalking through life, I repeat. The Supreme Court just destroyed the First Amendment with the worst ruling ever. I cannot emphasize this enough. The government can now censor the truth through social media or anywhere else with the full support of the Supreme Court. The government has long since figured out that they can use the private sector to violate the Constitution. And now the bar is set so high to prove a government violation you will need a rocket ship to get over it.
When it comes to the First Amendment and free speech in particular, the “camel under the tent” proverb applies. There is a reason Justices Alito and Thomas silently bowed their heads, and Justice Gorsuch was not even present when the ruling was read. We can hope things will get better, but for now, free speech is dead. Long live the tyranny of the mind.
And that’s the simple truth.
