Is there such a thing as one single source of truth? Is it the government, social media platforms, TV, radio, a book, or a political party? Probably not. All of these things come from people, and we all make mistakes. Nobody is right all of the time about everything.
Our government and the social media platforms say they want to protect us from misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. Do you believe them? Is that what they’re doing? Or are they just censoring viewpoints they don’t like for the power and control they can acquire? Let’s think about it.
They censored evidence the covid virus originated in a lab in Wuhan, China. We now know that’s true. Even China doesn’t dispute it. They censored claims the vaccines didn’t prevent infection and that masking didn’t stop transmission. We know they got it wrong there too. They censored ideas about natural immunity. They censored opinions about election irregularities. They censored reports about a laptop belonging to a presidential candidate’s son. They censored evidence questioning the extent of global warming and its consequences. The list goes on and on.
The point is we need to take what we see, hear, and read with a grain of salt. We should probably look at the qualifications of the author. We should probably pay attention to their record of being right or wrong, as the case may be. The quality of our judgment depends on our sources and our ability to get a sufficient variety of sources to be able to hear dissenting positions.
A pretty good way to sift through a variety of positions and information we acquire is to discriminate. That is, to mark or perceive the distinguishing or peculiar features of the information we have accumulated. We should distinguish by discerning or exposing differences. Only then can we recognize or identify as separate and distinct, the positions of the various sources. Discrimination, you see, is a good and necessary thing… but I digress.
A censored opinion may often be called “misinformation” yet turned out to be true. We know our government and its Big Tech allies even suppressed information they knew was true. They colluded in their efforts to do so. Things such as the adverse effects of the Covid vaccines. That censorship blinded some Americans to the risk of the vaccines, which led to lethal outcomes. Doubt it? Look up the case of Ernest Ramirez and his 16-year-old son, Facebook, and the White House.
When the government and the social media platforms anoint themselves the arbiters of truth, they suppress “misinformation.” But if anything can be learned from the Covid debacle, it is that no one; not a prime minister, a president, not Anthony Fauci, not the White House… No one has a monopoly on that essential commodity… truth.
The government and the dominant media platforms were wrong about the vaccines, medications, masks, ventilators, business lockdowns, school lockdowns, the virus’s origins, and the Hunter Biden laptop. Yet they say we should rely on them to identify “misinformation,” really?
We shouldn’t. There is only one way to arrive at the truth. The way we do so is through open, uncensored discussion and debate. Nothing is more deadly to the truth than centralized censorship. Centralized censorship is precisely what the government and the media platforms are imposing on us. It is absolute tyranny. The government should never have the power to determine what is true, what is false, and what is an error, misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation.
That role cannot be left to the social media platforms. They are as centralized and maybe more centralized than the federal government. We have to grasp that, being dependent on the government means you can be made to do its bidding. This was made clear by the Twitter files released by Elon Musk. Look it up if you don’t understand the reference.
Censorship is mind control. That’s why governments want it… for the control and the power it brings. That is exactly why they shouldn’t have it. Think about how this plays out in the political sphere. Speech is how individuals learn about political candidates. It is how political opinions are formed. Without free speech, there can be no free elections.
When the government controls election speech, it controls elections. When the government controls elections, you no longer live in a democracy or a representative republic. Too many Americans think free speech is something only for them, not their political opponents. Their view is that censorship is desirable, and the First Amendment is just a quaint 18th-century artifact.
Well, no. The point of freedom of speech is that all of us should be free to explore all sorts of ideas. That is the only way we can test claims of truth for error. The ability to do those tests for ourselves is critical. None of us is infallible. None of us has all of the truth. We depend on others to correct our mistakes and teach us what we don’t know.
Perhaps the most important thing we can do is to speak up for freedom of speech. We must stand, not just for ourselves, but for everyone else, most especially those with whom we disagree. No one has a monopoly on truth, and equally as important, we all have a right to be wrong and be heard. That’s how we learn and get better. That’s why we need open, uncensored discussion and debate.
The forces arrayed against free speech are formidable. Their censorship or attempts at censorship will be their everlasting shame. Your defense of freedom of speech will be to your everlasting credit. It may be the most important thing you ever do.
The risk of one-party rule, if free speech is captured, is severe. Success in the implementation of government censorship will irreparably damage our country and the possibility of freedom for people everywhere.
