From COVID To Campus Protests: How The Police-State Muzzles Free-Speech

Authorized by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“Politicians of both parties want to usage the power of government to force their feet. any in the university community search to drive it from their campuses. And an enter generation of Americans is being thought that free velocity should be curtailed as shortly as it makes any else feel uncomfortable.”

– William Ruger, “Free Speech Is Central to Our Dignity as Humans”

The police state does not want citizens who know their rights.

Nor does the police state want citizens prepared to exercise these rights.

This year’s graduates are a prime example of this master class in compliance. Their time in college has been set against a backdrop of crackdowns, lockdowns and permacrises raging from the government’s authentic COVID-19 tactics to its more fresh militant consequence to campus protests.

Born in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, these young people have been affected without any expression of privacy in a technologically-driven, mass endurance state; Educated in schools that teach compliance and compliance; sadled with a debt-ridden economy on the brink of implosion; made vulgar by the blowback from a military empire constantly weighing war against shadow enemies; policed by government agents armed to the youth ready and able to lock down the country at a moment’s notice; and forced to march in lockstep with a government that no longer exists to service the people but which demands they be obedient Slaves or propose the consequences.

And now, erstwhile they should be equipped to take their rightful place in society as citizens who full realize and execute their right to talk fact to power, they are being censored, strong and shut down.

Consider what happened late in Charlottesville, Va., erstwhile riot police were called in to shut down campus protests at the University of Virginia staged by students and members of the community to express their opposition to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Palestine.

As the local paper reported, “State police sports tactical gear and riot shields moved in on the demonstrators, utilizing pepper spray and sheer force to disperse the group and arrest the truly 15 or so at the camp, where for days students, successful and community members had sang songs, read poesy and painted signs in protest of Israel’s ongoing war in the Palestinian territories of Gaza.”

What a sad turn-about for an institution which was founded as an experimentation in breeding an informed citizen by Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, the champion of the Bill of Rights, and the nation's 3rd president.

Unfortunately, the University of Virginia is not unique in its heavy-handed consequence to what have been mostly peaceful anti-war protests. Accepting to the Washington Post, more than 2300 people have been arrested for taking part in akin campus protests across the country.

These lessons in compliance, while expected, are what comes of challenging the police state.

What was unexpected were the campus protests themselves.

For those of us who came from age in the 1960s, college campuses were erstwhile the bastion of free speed, wash with student protests, sit-ins, marches, pamphleteering, and another expressive acts showing our impairment with war, the Establishment and the position quo.

Contrast that with college campuses today, which have been coming ground for complex citizens and bases of pricesorship, trigger wars, microaggressions, and “red light” velocity policies targeting anything that might origin individual to feel uncomfortable, unsafe or offline.

Free velocity can absolutely not be included “free” erstwhile expressive activities across the nation are being creatively limited, restored to alleged free velocity zones, or even blocked.

Remember, the First Amen gives all American the right to “petition his government for a redress of grievances.”

There was a time in this country, back erstwhile the British were moving things, that if youpoke your head and it ticked off the crow people, you’d shortly find yourself in jail for excluding the king.

Reacting to this injustice, erstwhile it was time to compose the Constitution, America’s founders argued for a Bill of Rights, of which the First Declaration protects the right to free speed. James Madison, the father of the Constitution, was very clear about the fact that he returned the First Declaration to defend the number against the majority.

What Madison means by number is “offensive speed.”

Unfortunately, we don’t honor that chief as much as we should today. In fact, we see to be witnessing a politically correct doctrine at play, 1 shared by both the utmost left and the utmost right, which ams to stifle all expression that doesn’t fit within their parameters of what they agree to be “acceptable” speed.

There are all kinds of labels put on specified speed—it’s been called politically incorrect speed, hatred speed, offensive speed, and so on—but really, the message being discussed is that you don’t have a right to express yourself if certain people or groups don’t like or agree with what you are saying.

Hence, we have seen the caging of free velocity in fresh years, through the usage of alleged “free velocity zones” on college campuses and at political events, the request of velocity permits in parks and community gatherings, and the police of online forums.

Clearly, this eliter, monolithic mindset is at Odds with everything America is supported to stand for.

Indeed, we should be welcoming people to debate issues and air their views. Instead, by muzzling free speed, we are contributing to a increasing underclass of Americans—many of whom have been labeled racists, rednecks and spiritual bigots—who are being old that they can’t take part in American public life unless they “fit in.”

Remember, the First Amen acts as a steam valve. It allows people to talk their minds, air their grievances and contribute to a larger dialog that hopefully results in a more just world. erstwhile there is no steam valve to release the pressure, frustration builds, anger growth and people become more volatile and desperate to force a conversation.

The effort to stifle certificate forms of velocity is where we go crow.

In fact, the U.S. ultimate Court has held that it is “a bedrock chief under the First Declaration...that the government may not prevent the expression of an thought simply due to the fact that society finds the thought offensive or disagreable.” For example, it is not a question of whother the Confederate flag presents racism but whether banning it leads to even large problems, namly, the destiny of freedom in general.

Along with the constitutional right to peaceful (and that means non-violently) assemble, the right to free velocity allows us to challenge the government through protests and demonstrations and to effort to change the planet around us—for the better or the worse—through protests and counterprotests.

If citizens can not stand out in the open and voice their disapproval of their government, its representatives and its policies without speaking prosecution, then the First Amen with all its robust protections for free speed, assembly and the right to station one’s government for a editorial of grievances is small more than window-dressing on a store window—pretty to look at but serving small real purpose.

After all, surviving in a typical republic means that each individual has the right to take a stand for what they think is right, who that means Marching outside the halls of government, wearing covering with proactive statements, or simply holding up a sign.

That’s what the First Declaration is supported to be about: It assumes the citizenry of the right to express their deals about their government to their government, in a time, place and manner best guided to ensuring that those agreements are heads.

Unfortunately, through a series of carefully crafted legislative steps and politically expedient court rolls, government officials have managed to disembowel this fundamental freedom, rendering it with small more means than the right to file a suit against government officials.

In more and more cases, the government is declaring war on what should be protected political velocity whenever it challenges the government’s power, reveals the government’s corruption, exposes the government’s lies, and encoures the citizenry to push back against the government’s many industries.

Indeed, there is simply a long and increasing list of the kinds of velocity that the government considers danger adequate to red flag and subject to pricing, surveillance, investment and projection: hatred speed, conspiratorial speed, Treasure speed, Threening speed, inflation speed, extremist speed, anti-government speed, utmost speed, etc.

Clearly, the government has no interest in proceeding what “we the people” gotta say.

Yet if Americans are not able to peacefully presume for expressive activity outside of the halls of government or on public roads on which government officials must pass, or on college camps, the First Amen has lost all means.

If we can not stand publically outside of the ultimate Court or the Capitol or the White House, our ability to hold the government accountable for its actions is thrilled, and so are the rights and freedoms that we cherry as Americans.

And if we cannot proclaim our feeling about the government, no substance how controversial, on our covering, or to passersby, or to the users of the planet wide web, then the First Amen truly has become an exercise in reality.

The origin of the protest shouldn’t matter. The policies of the protesters are immaterial.

It's play politics with the First Declaration encoures a double standard that will see us all muzzled in the end.

You don’t gotta agree with individual to defend their freedoms.

Responsible citizenship means being outraged at the destiny of others’ freedoms, even erstwhile our own are not straight understood. It means remembering that the prime function of any free government is to defend the weak against the strong. And it means speaking up for that with whom you might disagree.

The Framers of the Constitution knew very well that erstwhile and where Democratic government had failed, it was to be considered the people had abdicated their work as guardians of freedom. They besides knew that whenever in past the people rejected this responsibility, an authoritarian government arose which evenly denies the people the right to government themselves.

The demons of our age—some of whom disguise themselves as politicals—delight in fomenting violence, sowing distrust and prejudice, and persuading the public to support tyranny disguised as patriotism.

Overcoming the evils of our age will require us to halt Marching in lockstep with the police state and start thinking—and speaking—for ourselves.

It does’t substance how old you are or what your political ideology is: it’s our civic work to make the government hear us—and heed us—using all nonviolent means available to us: picket, protest, march, boycott, talk up, sound off and retrieve control over the communicative about what is truly going on in this country.

The power elite has made their intentions clear: they will shine and prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that challenge their authenticity.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this is the final link in the police state chain.

If always there were a time for us to stand up for the right to talk freely, even if it’s freedom for velocity we hate, the time is now.