Freedom of speech is worth fighting for

Let’s make it a decisive issue in the 2024 Presidential campaign

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

—Martin Niemöller, German pasteur 1946

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Ever since the Twitter files were first released in December 2022, there has been a torrent of information on how the American federal government is deliberately and systematically censoring opinions on social media. Accurate facts, jokes, and mere ironic statements. You name it. They have come after freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech is the single most important freedom in a liberal democratic society. Without freedom of speech, all other freedoms become hollow.

Just as important, freedom of speech is essential to the problem-solving abilities of our society. No person is smart enough or virtuous enough to have a monopoly on truth. Nor is any group within our society.

While we may hold dearly on to our opinions, in truth, they are all a combination of signal (i.e. useful information on material reality) and noise (i.e. incorrect opinions). And none of us know which of our opinions is signal and which is noise. Freedom of speech is the first step in separating the two.

I passionately believe in the Progress-based Perspective and result-based experimentation. We can only improve material reality by trying things and assessing their results in the real world. But before we do that, we must freely discuss amongst ourselves all of the options. This increases our chances of trying the best possible option first.

And most importantly, freedom of speech enables us to avoid taking the worst possible action. Societies without freedom of speech are far more likely to make rash decisions and oppress those who inconvenience the majority of voters or powerful minorities. A society without freedom of speech is a tyranny waiting to happen.

And it does not even take a deliberate decision by evil people to slip into tyranny. All it takes is a groupthink mentality and the hubris that all humans share to a certain extent. Once lost, the freedom of speech may never be regained as those in power will have every incentive to not let it happen.

Just ten years ago social media seemed like a liberating technology. But now it is becoming increasingly Orwellian.

For those who have not followed the story, an alliance of federal bureaucrats, third-party organizations, and social media corporations are systematically working together to censor freedom of speech. They say that they are trying to stop “disinformation” from foreign governments, but it is increasingly obvious that this is a cover story.

If this seems impossible to be taking place in the United States in the 21st Century, you are not alone. Only one year ago, I would have said that nothing like it is happening. In fact, I would have said that nothing like this could possibly take place in this country.

But it is. Right now. And those responsible have done nothing but stone wall.

If you do not believe me, read a few articles from the Substack columns of Michael Shellenberger

Public

and Matt Taibbi

Matt Taibbi

. They are both reputable sources. As far as I can tell, they were loyal Democrats up until quite recently. They both testified before Congress on the issue.

For far too many people, this is a partisan issue. It should not be. Democrats and many voters on the left side of the political spectrum either are completely ignorant of the facts or are deliberately evading them. For most of my lifetime, Democrats were the party of freedom of speech, but they seemed to have forgotten that fact.

It is time for them to remember.

This is not about Donald Trump. This is an issue that will affect you long after Donald Trump is gone from the political scene. Democratic stone-walling on this issue only gives Trump greater credibility with Independent voters. If Democrats want to undermine Trump’s cause, they should fully embrace free speech.

As we have seen from the censorship of pro-Palestinian activists, once the machine is built, it censors as if on autopilot. As Martin Niemöller explained in post-Nazi Germany (see quote at top of post), they may not be coming for you now, but eventually they will.

It is time to make common cause across party lines on this issue.

We are living in a time where digital technologies are easily able to silence voices without anyone even knowing that it is being done. Communist China has already developed sophisticated software and hardware to monitor and silence their people. This trend towards censorship is no longer restricted to authoritarian regimes. It is now happening in Europe. It is only a matter of time before those technologies are fully implemented in the United States.

We need to fight back before it happens! If we wait, we become like the people of Hong Kong. We will never have more power than we have now. To delay is to accept it.

Now a major election is ramping up. The 2024 Presidential election looks like it will have multiple third-party candidates. There is no better time to raise the issue of freedom of speech, because all candidates’ views are potentially threatened by the loss of it.

We need to make defending freedom of speech a major issue in the 2024 Presidential election campaign. We need to force all candidates to take a stand on censorship and freedom of speech, and demand that they each propose concrete solutions to be implemented immediately.

Force Joe Biden to take a stand and all the other Democratic candidates.

Force Donald Trump to take a stand and all the other Republican candidates.

Force Robert Kennedy Jr and all the third-party candidates to take a stand.

Force them all to take a stand!

I do not pretend that I have all the answers for how to fight this problem. We need to have a national debate on how best to balance freedom of speech with security and civility. Inevitably, values that we hold dear must be balanced against other values that we also hold dear. Reasonable people can have different opinions on how to achieve the right balance. That is exactly what election campaigns are supposed to be about.

What I do know for sure is that we are on the wrong course, and the longer we wait, the harder it will be to resist.

So let’s start with this:

• We must demand the abolition, or at least a radical shrinking of the powers, of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA).

• We must demand the end of National Science Foundation financing for the development of censorship and disinformation.

• We must demand a full investigation of all federal bureaucrats, party leaders, and elected officials included in the Twitter files (and other leaked documents) and all persons in their departments and organizations.

• We must demand that all the emails between those officials, social media, and traditional media organizations be posted on the internet so that it is fully transparent and searchable to all.

• We must fire all managers and executives in the federal government who made the key decisions and managed the process. If they broke the law or the Constitution, then legal proceedings should begin.

• We must demand that all major social media organizations publicly release their algorithms and manual flags and post them on the internet so that it is fully transparent and searchable to all.
  Obviously, the personal identity of social media users should be obfuscated.

• We must demand that all government funding to non-profit front organizations fighting “misinformation” be immediately terminated, including:

  • Election Integrity Partnership (EIP)

  • Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO)

  • Virality Project (VP)

  • Cyber Threat Intelligence League (CTIL)

• We must also remove tax-except status from all those organizations as they are clearly political.

If we do not deal with this in 2024-25, it will become normalized and get much worse. The time to fight is now.

We recently celebrated Veteran’s day: a day celebrating those who fought and died for our freedoms. Some of them paid the ultimate price. For us today, the fight is so little in comparison. So let’s do it.

Are you up for it?

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EDIT: When I wrote this article, freedom of speech was completely absent from the Presidential election campaign. Later, RFK Jr. made this is central part of this campaign, and after dropping out of the race, he apparently convinced Trump to take the issue seriously.

Less than one week after winning the election (and two weeks after I wrote this article), President-Elect Donald Trump promised to annihilate social media censorship by the federal government. If implemented, this would be a huge step back from Soft Totalitarianism.