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The ‘Digital Curtain’ Comes Down
Using the pretext of the brief Capitol takeover, Progressives and their Big Tech allies are moving apace to secure the country. Yesterday, a digital pogrom took place — the President was banned from Twitter and Big Tech took actions to block and minimize the reach of any alternative to Twitter that the President or his allies could use. Other prominent conservative voices were likewise silenced.
As I contemplated these actions I was put in mind of an analogy: the “iron curtain” imposed by the Soviet Union on eastern Europe. Winston Churchill, although not coining the phrase, gave it publicity and prominence in his speech in Fulton, MO, on March 5, 1946. Here is the oft-referenced statement: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” The statement was included in a larger speech entitled “The Sinews of Peace” where Churchill argued for a special relationship amongst the English-speaking peoples, as a means of promoting liberty and well-being for humankind.
Now I come to the second danger of these two marauders which threatens the cottage, the home, and the ordinary people—namely, tyranny. We cannot be blind to the fact that the liberties enjoyed by individual citizens throughout the British Empire are not valid in a considerable number of countries, some of which are very powerful. In these States control is enforced upon the common people by various kinds of all-embracing police governments. The power of the State is exercised without restraint, either by dictators or by compact oligarchies operating through a privileged party and a political police. It is not our duty at this time when difficulties are so numerous to interfere forcibly in the internal affairs of countries which we have not conquered in war. But we must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.
All this means that the people of any country have the right, and should have the power by constitutional action, by free unfettered elections, with secret ballot, to choose or change the character or form of government under which they dwell; that freedom of speech and thought should reign; that courts of justice, independent of the executive, unbiased by any party, should administer laws which have received the broad assent of large majorities or are consecrated by time and custom. Here are the title deeds of freedom which should lie in every cottage home. Here is the message of the British and American peoples to mankind. Let us preach what we practise—let us practise what we preach. [emphasis added]
Setting aside whatever condescension may have existed in Churchill’s attitudes as a Victorian peer, his statements are true. The American Declaration of Independence remains the touchstone of human liberty. So thought Frederick Douglass:
I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.
From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. Cling to this day — cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight. [emphasis added]
Douglass’ speech was a rebuke to an Antebellum America that celebrated liberty on the 4th of July while holding millions in chains. That rebuke did not discredit our Constitution, only the unequal application of it. And that is what we face today as the digital curtain comes down on America. “Speech for me, but not for thee” is not an organizing principle for liberty. Come this July 4th we may all have cause to lament as did Douglass:
I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. — The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!
“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”
Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them.
Progressives have learned that they need not formally amend our Constitution. It is sufficient to redefine it to promote their purposes. As George Orwell formulated this dystopian society in 1984:
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
If we do not voice the preferences of the Party, we will have no voice at all. That is the dictate of the Tech oligarchy that has moved quickly to silence dissent. These are the same folks who have aided the Chinese Communist Party in controlling their people. Why should we be surprised?
Published in General
They said unambiguously what they would do. They meant it. Get your dumb phone from some non Amazon source soon.
When the Democrats lost total control of Congress and the White House after the 1994 midterms, the angry activists on the left were mad that Clinton, George Mitchell and Tom Foley hadn’t focused more on nationalizing health care. So when they regained that total control in the 2008 election, Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid focused on trying to nationalize health care. But the angry activists in 2009-10 were then mad after the ’10 midterms that the Dems hadn’t forced on better silencing their political opponents in the wake of the ’08 wins, so here we are.
The question now is how important are Twitter, Facebook and the other social media portals controlled by the left to the dissemination of speech? And how important is having an app on Google or Apple rather than reaching a portal via a web browser? Hollywood has spent the better part of the past decade attempting to put woke SJW in charge of historically popular franchises in an attempt to (in their minds) have a ready-made mass on people ready to be radicalized via ideologically-driven scripts that place politics over a good story. The result has been massive abandonment of those politicized portals, as people find better/more entertaining things to do.
So that’s the question here — because Google or Apple won’t allow people to put a Parler app on their phones, does that mean everyone has no choice but to remain with Twitter, even as Twitter selectively chokes down what is allowed on their site in one direction? Since information wants to be free, my guess is Twitter’s going to make the same mistake Disney has in hyper-politicizing their franchise brands, where the main thing a year or two from now might be any Republican 2024 hopeful has a major strike against them in primary voters’ minds if they still are major users of Twitter and not some alternative media option.
Outstanding post! I am sick of O and Michele coming out of the woodwork regurgitating BLM rhetoric – being lectured to by all those who “tolerated” and asked us to tolerate all the burning, looting, rioting and harming of law enforcement and store owners and average people – they all make me sick.
Can anyone start a running list of those conservative voices who have been silenced via social media or doxed since this week?
There are calls to have amazon cancel Parler since they buy their hosting through aws.
Twitter is too new to be a permanent requirement in our lifestyles. It is merely a habit. A complacent populace showed you nothing these past few years. An energized one will show you a lot. The Democrats have already energized to their max capacity. That is why they must lie about racism and other things. We have not energized to our max capacity and the Democrats are helping us fix that.
I wouldn’t waste your time. It would be constantly edited. Better to make a list of those Republicans who are blind to the threat so you will know who isn’t reliably aware of the threat or too afraid to do something. I am optimistic that the left can be neutered by rational folks rather quickly. Their weakness is Biden, who wanted to be President for his own fame. He will not want to be forever shamed in history as the leader of a communist overthrow of liberty.
But would he even know it?
A sane, rational Biden might feel that way. But if we’re dealing, as some have claimed, with a Biden who’s experiencing the onset of dementia, he may not even really be aware of what’s happening, much less be able to do anything about it.
Now that is the problem. He is Robespierre and doesn’t know it.
For every person deplatformed, there are 100 more that will self-censor their speech. When any political speech is silenced, all political speech is affected.
Is it a coincidence that China has had their biggest crackdown in decades in the last week? Are you enjoying your Global Reset yet?
The Founding Fathers gave us kids all the tools we would ever need to protect ourselves. One of the most interesting is the United States Postal Service. Until today, I have always been puzzled about that odd inclusion in the Constitution. In terms of the scale of the issues they were contending with in building that document, that one has always seemed vaguely out of place.
Now I get it.
Thanks, Dad.
The Biden that based his entire rational for running for president was the Charlotte Hoax? His response to the viking invasion was racial demagoguery. That guy is part of the problem.
Amazon threatened to reneg its provision of data servers to Parler. Microsoft is similarly political, having recently promoted fundraising for the Black Lives Matter anti-American marxist hate group.
President Obama oversaw Operation Chokepoint in which financial institutions were pressured by the Department of Justice to refuse services to particular legal industries, like sellers of firearm ammunition. As I recall, VISA and other lenders more recently closed a family’s accounts for one member’s political activity.
We should maintain credibility with those who can be persuaded by not overstating the case. YouTube still hosts many conservative commentators, as does Twitter. But the threat to free expression and free enterprise extends well beyond social media.
State governments need to get on the ball and ameliorate the worst of this.
Agreed. Federalism is going to be the only firewall for a lot of this stuff, and that’s going to be tough considering how much money they get from the Feds.
Exactly.
Nothing has changed. It’s just out there now as an issue that we can’t postpone dealing with.
Smartphones are terrible. I don’t know how they ever became popular in the first place. We spend millions on security systems for our home computers while we have created this security-destroying connection between our mobile smartphone and our home computer. The smartphone is able, with our blessing and permission, to suck all of our secure information out of our home computer.
When the pandemic first hit in China, when the western press was following it as best they could, there were stories about how millions of smartphone numbers disappeared in China. The western press speculated that those were people who had died. That speculation stoked fear in the west. But it came about during the CCP’s attempt to track all of its citizens under the pretext of finding people who were infected, and I think it was smart Chinese citizens who wisely threw away their phones–that is, the devices the government was using to track them. We should follow suit.
The more I think about these events of last night and today, the funnier they strike me.
Imagine the conversation going on right now between the heads of our new Democratic Party government and Twitter and Facebook.
Low-life Democratic Party bureaucrat: “But if 75 million people stop communicating with each other over Twitter and Facebook, if 75 million people throw away their smartphones, how will we monitor their communications and track their movements?”
We don’t need the Internet. It’s wonderful entertainment, but that’s all it is.
Love this. I have a feeling you can thank Ben Franklin specifically.
He’s not the one in charge – The Obamas are in charge since their opinions seem to be everywhere – magazine articles, books, covers, social media (have you noticed?) along with the big money behind the Democratic Party. Go back to The Great Reset (and don’t let a good crisis go to waste).
They are also calling for revoking unfair trade practices put in place by Trump. Let’s see how long it takes Biden to cave.
We may see a return of the cash economy after all; especially when it comes to certain items such as ammo.
I never got it until I read your comment.
Amazon better rethink that threat. Of all the threats against Parler, theirs would create the most harm to the one doing the threatening.
We have gone far in protecting individuals against discrimination for services and products delivered in the marketplace by private vendors. Why would this not apply to big tech offerings?
I’ve highlighted where we are now that is giving us a result differing from that intended.
I have been saying that the postal clauses are the most interesting clauses in the constitution.
Of all the US Founders, Ben and his printing presses and newspapers would probably best grasp the current situation, both dangers to free speech and technological advances being used to threaten it right now.
Yes, plus he was a contractor for the mail via the Pennsylvania state government.
Digital Pogrom indeed…
I just updated a B-school classmate thusly:
[Begin copy/paste]
LinkedIn has put my account in “temporarily restricted” status.
No reason specified and no timeframe/forecast for when they anticipate lifting the ban — in principle I can “submit an appeal.”
I will not be taking such a step, however — I know that I was targeted for verbalizing Wrongthink as part of the hyper-accelerated multi-platform/multi-oligopolies purge of Trump supporters and other anti-China-Class activists.
So I may just check back in a week or two in order to see if LinkedIn releases my account from restriction without my groveling.
If they still require groveling, I’ll simply #walkaway and live without the service.
Should be an exciting next couple of weeks — what might be in store?…
[End copy/paste]
LinkedIn? I didn’t see that coming.
That is a real surprise to me. I thought Microsoft was smarter than the other tech giants.