Leftists are becoming increasingly totalitarian in their antipathy for freedom of speech. It’s an obstacle to their desire for power, so it must be crushed.
An exaggeration, you say?
Just listen to what high-profile leftists have been openly saying about denying you your right to information on both sides of the political equation.
Former presidential candidate and Obama Secretary of State John Kerry has gotten the most attention recently, mainly because of how bluntly he railed against our most fundamental freedom. But former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has been just as repressive—and more detailed. And Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has been her usual self as she demands censorship without much specificity.
Kerry made his comments at a World Economic Forum panel on green energy on Sept. 25. A conservative comedian trying to satirize the views of the haughty ruling class could not have come up with better material.
As Kerry put it, “The dislike of and anger over social media is just growing and growing and growing, and it’s part of our problem, particularly in democracies, in terms of building consensus around any issue,” Kerry lamented, apparently referring to abhorrence of freedom by members of his ilk.
“It’s really hard to govern today!” The problem, he said, was that the internet and social media have liberated people to choose from different sources of information, adding competition. Little over two decades ago, the country was held hostage to the views of the journalists working at three networks and a handful of national newspapers.
Kerry pines for those days. “The referees we used to have to determine what’s a fact, and what isn’t a fact, have been eviscerated to a certain degree, and people self-select, where they go for their news, or for their information, and you get into a vicious cycle,” said the man who came within 19 Electoral College votes of becoming president in 2004. “So, it’s really, really hard, much harder, to build consensus today than at any time in the 40 to 50 years I’ve been involved in this.”
He continued, “There is a lot of discussion now about how you curb those entities, if people go to only one source, and the source they go to is sick and has an agenda and it’s putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to hammer it out of existence.”
Kerry’s solution?
What we need is to win the ground, win the right to govern by hopefully winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change. … Democracies are very challenged right now, and have not proven that they can move fast enough, or big enough, to deal with the challenges that we are facing, and to me, this is part of what this race, this election is all about—will we break the fever in the United States?
Reich also discussed his desire to hammer persnickety sources of information out of existence with a global audience. Writing in the leading newspaper of the British Left, The Guardian, he engaged in a bit of disinformation himself by mischaracterizing the actions of the man he’d like hammered out, X owner Elon Musk.
Musk and former President Donald Trump “have both floated the idea of governing together if Trump wins a second term,” wrote Reich, whereas, in fact, as Reich admitted himself, all Musk has done is recommend that Trump have in a second term a “government efficiency commission” in which Musk “would be happy to help out.” But apparently unaware that he was committing the same crime he accused Musk to be guilty of, Reich went on with his recommendation for how officials around the world should “rein in Musk.”
The first one was for people to boycott Musk’s electric vehicle, Tesla, and his social media company, X. But Reich wants much more. “Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X,” he wrote. As for the U.S. government, it “should terminate its contracts with him, starting with Musk’s SpaceX,” wrote Reich, who published his screed weeks before the U.S. government had to come to SpaceX, hat in hand, asking it to retrieve two astronauts stranded by NASA.
Ocasio-Cortez has been far less trenchant and specific. The young representative, who’s been repeatedly dinged by left-leaning PolitiFact for spreading falsehoods, also wants to “rein in” media she considers guilty of spreading misinformation.
“We’re going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so that you can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation,” she posted on social media. “It’s one thing to have different opinions, but it’s another thing entirely to just say things that are false, so that is something that we’re looking into.”
Unfortunately, these unhinged comments by American politicians don’t come in a vacuum.
There is a sustained attack on freedom of information from Brazil to our ally the United Kingdom to next door in Canada. Of course, that makes it all the more important that we speak up for freedom.
Mike Gonzalez is the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow in the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation.
Reprinted with Permission from The Daily Signal – By Mike Gonzalez
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.