Democrat after Democrat at the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee on Wednesday praised the Silicon Valley billionaires for silencing “hate speech” in America and they made it very clear they want more of it.
Unfortunately for them, hate speech is not a thing. That is not to say that people do not say hateful things—just go to a sermon preached by Louis Farrakhan or Jeremiah Wright and you’ll hear more hatred than you could ever dream up—but in America, we don’t label speech. All speech is “free speech” with one small exception that is inciting violence like yelling “fire” in a crowded theater or yelling “RACIST! RACIST! RACIST!” every day for four years until people start burning things and killing cops. But the Democrats want to expand the definition of speech that is not protected to include speech that offends Democrats or pokes holes in their worldview. To them, being humiliated in a Twitter debate is the same thing as “inciting violence.”
Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) said that the hearings had been convened on a “false narrative” and that tech companies need to take more action, not less, on the pressing issues of the day that Republicans and Democrats disagree on. Her examples included articles examining the effectiveness of masks. Baldwin suggested she wants all articles questioning universal masking removed from the internet. She also pointed out that the president tweeted something she disagreed with about COVID-19, including the very true statistic that 99% of people recover from it, and she was outraged that he hadn’t been silenced.
Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said the “issue is they’re leaving too many posts up!” Markey openly advocated for the silencing of people who don’t agree with Democrats. Markey derided Twitter for not removing President Trump’s post that said, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” claiming that’s incitement to violence when it’s really just a policy matter half of us would like to implement. I don’t know anyone who thinks looters (who are in the act of committing violence) should not be stopped with lethal force if regular force doesn’t work.
Democrats Blame Trump for Violence After Months of BLM and Antifa Riots
Everyone on our side loves the Rooftop Koreans and any business owner who defends their property and that’s not a secret. Nor is responding to acts of violence with force “inciting violence,” when the violence is already in progress. Listen to this malarkey by Markey.
Sen. Ed Markey at tech hearing says: “The issue is not that the companies before us today is that they’re taking too many posts down. The issue is that they’re leaving too many dangerous posts up.” https://t.co/4au67uIp3P pic.twitter.com/HWRPRn2hHA
— Caleb Howe (@CalebHowe) October 28, 2020
Maria Cantwell (D-Antifastan Wash.) claimed that the hearings constituted an attempt by Republicans to undermine our election process and that the hearing did not need to be held now even though it was an important conversation about “how we continue to make sure that hate speech and misinformation is taken down from the web.” Good grief! They’re not even hiding it anymore. They want you deleted and they’re not going to stop until they do it.
Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) took the opportunity to remind everyone that she served in the U.S. military — as she does whenever there’s a microphone in front of her — before pushing for Big Tech to engage in more suppression of her political enemies. As a native Illinoisan, I find her pompous visage so disturbing that I am banning her from my articles from this moment forward. If you want to see what she said, google it.
SPEECH POLICE: Fiery Ted Cruz Asks Smug Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, ‘Who the Hell Elected You?’
Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) was one of the only Democrats who didn’t appear too happy with the Silicon Valley trouble-makers, asking Mark Zuckerburg why his algorithms push division in America, which is good for his business but not for America. Klobuchar specifically pointed out that viewpoint manipulation negatively affects both sides of the political spectrum while social media companies rake in the cash. She’s not wrong. Klobuchar did not demand that “hate speech” be removed but she did signal that she’s open to anti-trust discussions. Very interesting.
Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said he believes that there should not be blanket immunity for these giant companies but was outraged that the Republicans called the hearing days before the election. He claimed that Republicans are trying to “bully and browbeat these platforms to favor President Trump’s tweets.”
Blumenthal lobbied the tech giants to censor President Trump even more and take down the president’s tweets if they don’t line up with Democrat talking points. He blamed it on COVID-19 “misinformation” but when even the experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci contradict themselves regularly, who is to say what COVID-19 information is true and what isn’t? There’s no agreement on facts regarding COVID-19 and anyone who says there is has not been paying attention.
In a blatant attempt to persuade Big Tech to censor the president, Blumenthal said, “I want to know if you have a plan… if the president uses your platforms to, say on the day of the election, that there is rigging or fraud without any basis in evidence or attempts to say that the election is over and the counting of votes must stop…[do you have a] plan, yes or no?”
It’s clear to me after this hearing that Democrats are determined to keep social media doing their dirty work for as long as possible: Censor, silence, and suppress all information that hurts their party or helps Donald Trump. The solution is very simple. Big Tech should be regulated exactly like the phone company. They provide an avenue for people to communicate but they have no business regulating what those people communicate. Their algorithms for filtering should be completely accessible to users who can filter their own experience. Americans are adults, not children who need babysitting and supervision over what we read.
These Democrats are the same people who consistently defend the idea that minor children should never be denied any book no matter how disgusting or full of sex, drugs, murder, or violence. They protect the American Library Association that pushes pornography on minors in the name of “free speech” and are in constant war with conservative parents when we try to ask “Hey! Should this book about hand jobs be in my fourth-grader’s school library?”
At the same time they paint parents like me as evil censors, they want to control what adults can read on social media. How do they get away with this? There are no “liberals” left in America. Not one of these people spoke out on behalf of free speech. If you’re a Democrat and worried about free speech in America, you’re in the wrong party. Walk away before it’s too late.