by P. F. Kelly, Jr.
Do a little digging on Harris’s past statements while you still can. More
What would a Kamala Harris victory mean for free speech in America? Nothing good, it seems, if you read the campaign’s tea leaves and her previous statements on the subject. Of course, with most things Democrat, it’s hard to tell what the truth is. And that’s exactly the point.
If Harris strikes out in November, there might be no joy among Democrats, but three cheers should go up from any American who values constitutionally protected free speech, the American institution that is the envy of freedom-loving people everywhere. Sifting out the truth from the cavalcade of lies this administration and the media dish up isn’t easy, but it will only get worse if Harris wins. Her campaign is already a distressing mix of half-truths, flip-flops, and deceptions about her past positions. With a win, you can bet she will try to expand government control over social media to keep the truth under cover.
The entire Harris campaign is about selling the American people something that’s not true. The campaign and the media want you to think Harris is all about “joy” and “good vibes,” and that the incumbent administration presiding over American economic decline for the last four years is magically plotting a new way “forward.” All you have to do to find out about the new way forward is to listen to the policy prescriptions Harris has clearly stated over the years on a number of topics — that is, if you can find them anymore. The Great Switcheroo is in full swing. Casual Harris fans and independent suburban voters who buy into the hype need to grapple with that.
The Harris campaign is not an exercise in joy and a woman’s right to choose. The unvarnished truth is closer to her recent proposal for price controls to fight inflation and the other radical economic ideas she has shared over the years, like abolishing private health insurance. A Harris victory in November would place the U.S. economy into a socialist straitjacket, coupled with new controls on social media to stifle dissent, just as this administration did during the COVID vaccine debate. Don’t forget that Harris was very involved in the administration’s efforts to stifle all debate on COVID vaccines and treatments. This double-whammy — socialist economics and European-style speech control — will truly enable a “new way forward” never before seen in America.
But the truth-telling on price controls is never mentioned anymore, as the media happily erase it from memory. When serious blunders like her proposal on price controls can be memory-holed so easily, ordinary voters should take note. Not a peep about that in the recent debate. Harris enthusiasts need to understand that they are spoon-fed approved facts like baby food. Thanks to social media arm-twisting and outright censorship from the Biden-Harris administration, we now live in a controlled media environment, where the government works to suppress facts on social media that are inimical to its policy goals and it uses its partnership with the mainstream media to push the administration’s approved facts, whether true or not.
Is European-style speech control really possible here in the land of the free and the home of the brave? Absolutely. As Mark Zuckerberg of Meta recently admitted, the federal government wielded its enormous power to pressure Facebook and others to silence COVID dissenters during the pandemic. And government censors did it again to suppress damaging revelations connected to Hunter Biden’s laptop prior to the 2020 election to shield Papa Joe’s campaign.
Governmental pressure on free speech — or more rightly, government pressure to suppress the truth, since we know now that what was being suppressed was, in fact, true — worked in those cases, and the Biden-Harris administration is anxious to continue it. In fact, they would be doing so right now in the campaign if not for the courage of one man, Elon Musk, who has refused on X to be cowed into replacing the truth with government propaganda.
If Harris wins, the attacks on Musk and the oversight of social media companies will intensify, since her victory will be received as a repudiation of Musk’s — and Trump’s — defense of traditional American free speech. With a Democrat victory, America will make a new leap forward into a future that looks like France, where the French government attacks “unapproved” speech and arrests the media platform Telegram’s founder, Pavel Durov. Or in England, where the socialist Labor Party is suppressing any voice that questions the radical attack being waged there on all things English. Or in Brazil, where the ruling Socialist party has banned Musk’s media platform X, threatening to arrest him and its users in Brazil. Those are “free” speech environments that Harris and Walz — a big admirer of Communist China — dream about.
As Americans prepare to pass judgment on Harris, they need to realize this is not an academic exercise about free speech; it’s not about yelling “fire” in a crowded theater or burning an American flag. This is a battle for the very right to speak the truth. This is not about dangerous speech; it’s about truth-telling that is dangerous to the interests of the powers-that-be. It’s about whether you have the right to say what you believe is true. It is about whether we can still uncover the truth through a free and open debate.
In many places in Europe now, governments are telling citizens that they can’t say what they think out loud — even if it’s true — if it doesn’t conform to the government’s policies. Governments are determining what is true before the debate begins and then brooking no disagreement. That is the developing media landscape in Europe and South America, accomplished through a heavy dose of social media censorship.
Voters understand this is completely un-American, but it is happening here by baby steps. The ground is being prepared through attacks on the Constitution and attacks on the courts that defend free speech, including the U.S. Supreme Court, by Vice President Harris and her surrogates. Governmental control of information, where an all-powerful government silences all challengers, has been a central goal of the Biden-Harris administration since COVID. It will be pushed vigorously by a Harris administration because, despite some setbacks for Biden’s censorship regime, the effort by Democrats to suppress free speech and introduce European-style speech controls will be encouraged by a Harris victory.
That’s why a vote for Harris is about much more than “joy” and woman’s rights. Are we going to keep playing pretend as a nation, like when we pretended Joe Biden was fully competent? Are we going to pretend Kamala is just about joy and good vibes, or are we going to examine the radical ideas she has supported in her years in politics? Do a little digging on Harris’s past statements while you still can.
Image: Pezibear via Pixabay, Pixabay License.
P. F. Kelly, Jr.
Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/09/will_free_speech_survive_a_possible_harris_victory.html
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