Of Course They Want to Control Our Speech

There’s a reason America’s founders were dead set against the tyranny called democracy. It’s tyranny of the majority. If you can persuade 501 people out of a thousand that they ought to confiscate the property of someone in the minority, then that little guy loses his property to that group of thieves.

The dangerous one in that scenario is the one doing the persuading.

image found here

That persuasive guy is probably not going to say something true, like, “That guy worked as hard as any of us for the extra cow he’s got. But we want it, and all of us together have the power to take it. So that’s what we’re going to do. And then we’ll butcher the cow and divide it up among a few of us.”

That wouldn’t persuade. He would be more likely to say something like, “You worked hard for what you’ve got. Why don’t you have an extra cow? Is it fair that this rich guy has an extra cow and you don’t? The only explanation for him having an extra cow is that he unfairly deprived you of the chance to have it. The way to settle this unfairness is to even things out: take his cow, divide it up among all the less fortunate.”

If he controls the message that the people hear, repeating that lie, instead of the truth, over and over, so it’s the only idea people have access to beyond their thinking, he’s likely to get half plus one—of those making the effort to vote—to go along with that tyranny of the majority.

Democracy is especially dangerous when someone is controlling the message.

Their History of Message Control

Do you remember, back in 2011, when Obama was pushing for something they called internet neutrality? And then his efforts to give away US control of the internet in his second term, succeeding at the tail end of 2016? Yeah, those things happened.

Barack Obama
screenshot from here

Last week he was heard to say that tech platforms, private businesses, “need to recognize that they play a unique role in how people consume information. And their decisions have an impact on every aspect of society. With that power comes accountability.”

Wonder what he means by accountability for all that power? He means, of course, more control of the messages they allow—or maybe government needs to step in and control the message. To protect “democracy.” He says,

Each of us has to pick a side. Do we allow our democracy to wither, or do we choose to make it better? That’s the choice we face, if it’s a choice worth embracing. Solving the disinformation problem won’t cure all the ills our of democracy or tears all the fabrics of our world. But it can help rebuild the trust and solidarity needed to make democracy stronger.

What’s the problem with media, again? Disinformation. How does he lay out this big problem? Again, he’s talking to Big Tech:

Some of us have an opportunity to do what America has always done at our best, which is to recognize that, even when the source code is workin’, the status quo isn’t. And we can build somethin’ better—together. This is an opportunity. It’s a change that we should welcome for governments to take on a big, important problem, and prove that democracy and innovation can coexist. It’s a chance for companies to do the right thing. You’ll still make money. But you’ll feel better.

Who wants Obama—or anyone who believes and talks as he does—in charge of controlling the messages we get to hear? Anyone?

What about Hillary Clinton? She put out this tweet: “For too long tech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability.”

Hillary Clinton tweet from April 21, 2022

Ahem. There was that Trump-Russia-collusion hoax—paid for and disseminated by the Clinton campaign. That was actual Russian disinformation. But that’s not what she means. There was the Clinton email server—info that was mostly quashed in the media, but was actual. She doesn’t mean that. Well, she considers the true story of it to be disinformation—because she doesn’t like that message.

Clinton and Obama were both pushing for the Digital Services Act to be passed in the European Union. It did pass, by the way. She says, “The EU is poised to do something about it”; i.e., something about all that stuff she labels disinformation. She continues, “I urge our transatlantic allies to push the Digital Services Act across the finish line, and bolster global democracy before it’s too late.” 

Bolster global “democracy” by controlling the messages that are allowed. She doesn’t mean (although she wants you to think she means) supporting the idea of self-rule, where the people rule rather than the tyrants. She means supporting the tyranny of the majority—when the majority is formed by controlling the messages they are allowed to hear. And she wants that controlling tyranny to be global, rather than just national.

This has been evident for a while to people who have been paying attention. But now they’re getting so obvious that inadvertently they’re waking up the masses they thought they had under their spell.

In Sunday’s Crossroads episode [first half hour on YouTube], Joshua Philipp spends an hour going through some of the history, which was making me feel like things were hopeless; we were doomed to suffer this censorship and loss of our free speech. But there was good news by the end. And more has happened this week. Every day there’s more, so I’d better just finish this today. After hearing Joshua Philipp, I went back to see what I had in my files to add to what he talked about.

So let’s go through that trajectory, from history to what’s happening today.

There’s a Wall Street Journal Political Diary piece by Jason L. Riley, from February 3, 2011, 12:44 P.M. ET. The lead-in says,

About Those New Internet Regulations

Two days before Christmas, the Obama administration issued new "net neutrality" regulations for Internet service providers. But Republicans now in control of the House say the issue is far from settled.

The issue at that time was mainly about ISPs (internet service providers), and whether they could charge for different tiers of service. Rep. Marsh Blackburn was trying to get it blocked. One argument was that the FCC didn’t have power to make this rule without going through Congress. The issue appeared to be mostly partisan. Entities favoring “net neutrality” included, according to Wikipedia, computer science experts, consumer advocates, human rights organizations, and internet content providers. Opposition included ISPs, computer hardware manufacturers, economists, technologists, and telecom equipment manufacturers. There are various reasons. But, as with virtually all areas where government interferes, there would be unintended consequences, and they would likely be exactly opposite of the stated goal, which was better internet speed for all. I won’t list all the details of how it played out, but in 2017 President Trump got rid of it.

About halfway through Obama’s second term, he started pushing for further control of the internet. An Investor’s Business Daily piece from November 11, 2014, starts with this: 

While in China, where free speech is suppressed, the president again pitched net neutrality, in which a "free and open Internet" is regulated by a government that would be both gatekeeper and traffic cop.

He’s still calling it “net neutrality” at this point. But it’s about government control of content, something the Chinese have been fully embracing for a long time. That editorial reminds us, “In a 2010 speech to graduates at Hampton University in Virginia, Obama complained that too much information is a threat to democracy.” He’s consistent on that to this day.

Back in June of 2016 the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) “decided” (I’m assuming at the Obama administration’s insistence) to turn over control of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Senator Ted Cruz was fighting to prevent that from going through. In an American Thinker editorial I had saved, they said,

On the surface, this would appear to be a welcome effort to privatize a former government function, but in reality it relinquishes the U.S. government’s role as the arbiter and guarantor of Internet freedom and turns over full control to a group subject to the anti-freedom impulses of the so-called international community, including the United Nations.

The important detail here is that it wasn’t just the assigning of names and numbers that got turned over. And the story we got told was that the US didn’t relinquish control; it just dispersed some of it. Instead of the US Commerce Department, which must abide by the US Constitution's free speech clause, the US is now one of 171 nations plus 35 observers in the Governmental Advisory Committee. None of those other entities have any obligation to abide by our Constitution.

There’s more to be concerned about. In September of 2016, Joshua Philipp was one of the few reporters talking about this turnover. In an article for the Epoch Times he writes:

In November 2014, Li Yuxiao, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Cyberspace, stated, according to the state-run China Daily: “Now is the time for China to realize its responsibilities. If the United States is willing to give up its running of the internet sphere, the question comes as to who will take the baton and how it would be run.

“We have to first set our goal in cyberspace, and then think about the strategy to take, before moving on to refining our laws,” he said.

Li is now the head of a department designed to enforce the Chinese regime’s laws on technology companies. His comments are tied to a process announced by the United States in 2014 to relinquish control of the internet by ending the contract between the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

This process is now nearing its completion, with a deadline of Oct. 1.

It took a bit longer than October 1, but by December 2016, the turnover had happened—so, prior to Obama leaving office.

A Chinese paramilitary policeman tries to block photos of a military 
parade rehearsal prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics (Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)
image found in Joshua Philipp's 2016 article

China, of course, seized the opportunity to fill the vacuum. Here’s an explanation from Philipp from his 2016 article:

Li is now the secretary-general of the Cyber Security Association of China, which is chaired by Fang Binxing, the creator of China’s Great Firewall, which censors and monitors the country’s internet. The association, formed on March 25 [2016], gives the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) a vehicle for spreading its systems and laws for governing the internet abroad, while giving its efforts a benign facade under the label of “cybersecurity.”

The association is registered as a national nonprofit organization, but according to the report, it answers directly to the Leading Small Group for Network Security and Information—which is chaired by CCP leader Xi Jinping—and is “responsible for shaping and implementing information security and internet policies and laws.”

According to the report, the Cyber Security Association of China, among other tasks, focuses on “public opinion supervision to help in information control and propaganda” and “protecting core Chinese interests under globalization, and promoting globally competitive Chinese IT companies.”

This sounds ominous. In practice, it might have simply looked on the surface as international trade with China, which was being encouraged at that time (and you could insert a story about Biden family corruption in China as well). Philipp’s article continues:

The Chinese regime has begun bringing major U.S. tech firms—including Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., and International Business Machines Corp. (IBM)—into its newly formed committee, the Technical Committee 260.

You may recall that, around that time (2015 and beyond), China was pressuring tech companies to turn over their source code. Apple refused; IBM gave in. China was also demanding encryption keys and backdoors to be built in. China threatened to bar these tech companies from the Chinese market if they failed to comply.

Maybe you noticed that, shortly after this Obama-administration turnover of the Internet, censorship started increasing. Messages on Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms started getting taken down, blocked, shadow banned, or tuned in such a way that it didn’t come up for most users. Google algorithms started filtering out certain sites, stories, and viewpoints. All this was well timed ahead of the 2016 election.

This Digital Services Act in the EU, that Hillary Clinton was lobbying for last week—in a Financial Times piece about it, they admit,

Regulators will also include an emergency mechanism to force platforms to disclose what steps they are taking to tackle misinformation or propaganda in light of Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine.

What has the actual misinformation/disinformation been?

·       There are no treatments; hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin don’t work and are dangerous.

·       Lockdowns and masks prevent the spread of the virus.

·       The vaccines are safe and effective.

I’m still unsure what Ukraine-related information is actual misinformation, or disinformation. There may not be a good side, just people who are suffering because of various corrupt regimes fighting each other. It may take more time for a clearer picture to come through.

But, there was a fair amount of disinformation and censoring of information to prevent people from knowing about the Obama administration connection to Ukrainian corruption, and the Biden family involvement in corruption there and in China, and elsewhere.

There was the Hunter Biden laptop. That actual, true information came out just ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Should American voters have been allowed to know about it? Mainstream media, in lockstep with those who favor internet controls to disallow free speech, claimed it was Russian disinformation. It was not.

They delayed the truth coming out. But the thing is, the story is coming out anyway. We now know that the Hunter Biden laptop is what the 2020 New York Post story said it was—the story that was taken down by Twitter and Facebook. To protect you from “misinformation.”

Good News for Truth

Truth has a way of showing up—eventually. And maybe the pressure of all that speech suppression is calling for a truth explosion.

Here are some recent good news items:

·       Disney has lost $35 billion in shareholder value. [That was when I wrote this on Monday. As of Thursday it was around $41 billion.] This is in response to the public learning that Disney has indeed implemented a not-so-secret effort to aim LGBTQ-sexualized materials at children. Disney decided to support wokeness rather than the families that have been their customers.

·       Disney lost its special privileges in Florida and will be subject to the same taxes and regulations as other businesses.

·       CNN+ launched and failed in less than a month, losing $300 million in the process. One wonders why they thought something that people could get for free and were choosing not to tune in to would bring in viewers if they had to pay for it.

·       Netflix has lost 35% of its share value, costing them $400 million. This is in response to pushing woke programming.

·       Spotify dropped the Obamas. That was a better business decision for them than dropping Joe Rogan, whom they had tried to censor because of his COVID-19 experience, which didn’t comport with the allowed message.

·       Trump’s new platform Truth Social has improved after moving servers to Rumble. Reports from Joshua Philipp, as well as several Blaze contributors, is that engagement is suddenly much better on Truth Social than they had had on Twitter.

·       Twitter—there’s the big story of the week. Elon Musk had bought enough shares to be offered a place on board. He turned that down. That wasn’t enough to give him a controlling interest, and he didn’t want to be limited from buying more shares. So he made an offer to buy the company outright. That sale went through on Monday of this week. He may take it private. But whatever he does, the intention appears to be to restore free speech to the public square.        

That’s a lot of good news for free speech in a short amount of time.

The opponents of free speech are reacting as you might expect: with weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.[i] Literally, in the case of that story of Disney losing government privileges in Florida. Independent reporter Andy Ngo provided video from the floor of the State House in Tallahassee. While the speaker was calling for mutual respect and decorum surrounding the vote on the issue, Democrat lawmakers and lobbyists were literally shrieking in the background.

On Monday, after news came out of Elon Musk’s success in purchasing Twitter, panic set in among the speech suppressors. First, here are a couple of things Musk said:

“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”—Elon Musk

We’ll forgive him for using the word democracy; in this sense I think he means self-rule. He also says,

“I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter,

because that is what free speech means.”—Elon Musk

Now, for the critics. The prize goes to Ari Melber of MSNBC:

“You could secretly ban one party’s candidate, or all of its candidates, all of its nominees, or you could just secretly turn down the reach of their stuff and turn up the reach of something else and the rest of us might not even find out about it until after the election.”

He seems blissfully unaware that that is what actually happened. It has been happening for several elections. It is a big reason for someone who favors free speech to step in and stop their rule by secret algorithm.

Other classic responses include several pundits handwringing about how dangerous it is to have a billionaire own a tech platform—while they are working for a billionaire-owned tech platform. (There’s a collection of responses here, with some brief pithy commentary.) 

So, as Laura Ingraham puts the question:

“Netflix losing subscribers. CNN+ shuts down. Disney stock value dropping. Twitter takeover by Musk. Just the beginning?” —Laura Ingraham

image found here

More Battles to Come—But We Know the Outcome of This War

Yes. Let’s hope this is just the beginning. My sense is, like some wars, you can look back and see when the final outcome was determined, but there are still battles to go through on the way there.

The control of the Internet—along with so many media outlets—will continue to cause serious free speech casualties. The evil overlords seem intent on imposing CCP-style speech controls on all of us.

Thursday the Biden administration announced its creation of a Ministry of Truth (1984 reference), which they are giving the dystopian name of Disinformation Governance Board, under the Department of Homeland Security. It appears DHS is now in the business of—not protecting our borders, or protecting US citizens from America’s enemies seeking to commit terrorism here on US soil; rather it is in the business of spying on US citizens, down to the details of their social media posts, to stop them from disagreeing with the controlling tyrants.

While the timing makes it appear this new DGB was in response to Musk’s purchase of Twitter, it must have been in the works for some time. They announced that this new law enforcement agency will be headed by 33-year-old Nina Jankowicz. Tucker Carlson went through what we know about her—which is both dystopian and ridiculous. This was a colorful line: “Jankowicz comes from a place called the Wilson Center. That’s a nonprofit named for America’s other mentally incapacitated warmonger bigot president.” The Wilson Center produces disinformation, and supposedly information about disinformation. It is heavily funded by the Biden administration.

Jankowicz happens to be a former advisor to the neo-government in Ukraine, which at this time in history makes that connection to the Biden administration look more than suspicious. Tucker plays video of her singing—yes singing. A little ditty about disinformation that she has set to the tune of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” from Mary Poppins. In another place and time, her voice might be acceptably pleasant. But here, this ditty is too unbelievable to be put in a dystopian novel.

Nina Jankowicz, head of the new Disinformation Governance Board
screenshot from here

The ACLJ covers this new agency as well. They point out that, to stop it, Congress merely has to cut off funding. That’s the short solution. The longer one is to take things to court, because the very existence of an agency to censor the speech of US citizens is clearly unconstitutional.

The thing is, we see what they’re doing. We’re speaking freely regardless. We’re finding free speech alternatives. We’re finding new and maybe better ways to be heard. If they try to control the Internet, who knows, we may find some entrepreneur who will develop a parallel, free-speech internet that they can’t control.

So, battles still to come. But we know the outcome of this war on free speech. Truth wins.

---

[i] Matthew 13:42, Matthew 8:12, related to Revelation 19:20

Freedom Is Endangered But Not Extinct

In the last post I talked about the sci-fi series Extinct, created by Orson  Scott Card for BYU TV. There’s another theme I’d like to look at from that series—about freedom, or free will.

There are, among the few people who have been brought back to life 400 years after the extinction of humans, who are different from the handful who are the protagonists. This other group is called skin riders. There is a parasite, appearing as a glowing lump on the back of the neck, that joins with the human body. Ezra’s brother (from earlier earth days) is one of them; in fact, Silas is their leader.

The skin riders search out the humans, capture them, and try to make them join up.

In episode 2, Ezra has evaded the larger group of skin riders, and ambushes Silas alone. He overpowers Silas, and checks the glowing thing on the back of his neck. Here’s their first conversation [Ep2 40:58]:

Ezra tries to find out what has happened to his brother.
Screen shot from Season 1 Episode 2

Ezra: What is that?

Silas: Don’t hurt it. I’ll die if you do.

Ezra: What have they done to you?

Silas: Opened my mind. [others arrive] Don’t kill him!

Jaz: I won’t. [strikes Ezra, scene goes black. Ezra wakes at night near a campfire.]

Silas: If you try to run, I’ll call the others. You wouldn’t get far. I sent Jax to find your friend. (Ezra checks his own neck) We haven’t injected you. Jax wanted to, but…  I think it’s best if you choose to join us.

Ezra: I’ll pass.

Silas: Four hundred years and you haven’t changed. Nobody can teach you anything.

Ezra: Did the Sparks remake you?

Silas: The Sparks? Fascinating, aren’t they? How they can make anything—humans, clothing, a bologna sandwich, albeit a soggy one.

Ezra: That thing on the back of your neck—It’s alive, isn’t it?

Silas: A companion. It teaches me, comforts me, connects me to my brothers and sisters.

Ezra: I’m your brother, Silas.

Silas: You were. Join us and you will be again.

Ezra: It controls you.

Silas: Does knowledge control you? That’s what the companion provides. If I need to know how to start a fire, it shows me. It’s a gift!

Ezra: Can you remove it?

Silas: Why would I want to?

Ezra: Because it’s turned you into someone else.

Silas: Someone better, yes. What was I to you before, other than a disappointment? Now look at me. A leader. A spiritual advisor. I’m worth something now.

[flashback scene]

Ezra: You weren’t a disappointment, Silas.

Silas: Bankrupt at 20?

Ezra: Because you hired all those people, and you didn’t have the heart to let ‘em go when you should have. It makes you a bad businessman, not a bad person.

Silas: Doesn’t matter. I’m the person I want to be now.

Ezra: A slave?

Silas: A servant.

Ezra: Let me take you to the Sparks. They can heal you.

Silas: And go back to what I was?

Ezra: What you were was a better man, Silas.

Silas: My companion is very tired. (signals for Ezra to escape)

It appears, in a moment of weakness, the real Silas was able to come through, and that’s why he lets Ezra escape.

In Episode 4, Ezra’s wife, Lynn, is reconstituted (brought back to life as a human), but is quickly taken captive by the skin riders. She escapes but is eventually retaken. Somewhere in the sequence, one of the skin riders was killed by one of the other humans. At the moment Lynn is brought to Silas, he is going through a ritual about the dead man, removing his parasite (crystal in his neck), so his memories can be preserved. Anyway, Silas gives us this description of what that “Companion” does for them:

Silas: The humans kill our brother with one touch of their weapon. We offer them a companion to choose for them, to remove from them the burden of discipline and self-mastery, guilt, and shame. We offer them guaranteed joy, and they give us this.

He’s not, apparently, interested in the life and memories of the human, but of the parasite that inhabited him.

In episode 5, Silas is trying to persuade Lynn to voluntarily become injected with the parasite/companion. He starts out gently telling her how normal and improved they are. But when she asks what happens if she refuses to join them, the answer is pretty threatening.

Later he brings in a red drone, and produces a hologram of Lynn and Ezra’s daughter, but the hologram quickly disappears [Ep 5 12:38]:

Lynn: Is this what you’ve become? Cruel?

Silas: Death is cruel, Lynn. It rips us from those we care about, and buries them away forever. But what if I told you there was a way to connect with the dead? To see and feel their memories and knowledge whenever you needed them? Not with a machine, but with your mind?

Lynn: The crystal in your neck—

Silas: Always so smart. The crystal is the mind of an organism we call “a Companion.” It’s a friend, a counselor. But the human brain keeps getting in the way. Reactions are slower, decisions are muddled. There’s resistance.

Lynn: What do you want from me?

Silas: The drone and the Sparks wove the neural pathways in our brains. I want to block some of them, to give greater control to the Companion.

Lynn: I’m not a brain surgeon. I can’t help you.

Silas: I don’t need a surgeon, Lynn. I need a test subject. [pulls out a vial with a sharp end meant for injecting] You prick yourself. The companion does the rest. Once it’s taken root and you’re one of us, we can begin with the drone.

Jax: You should just stick her and get on with it.

Silas: You underestimate Lynn, Jax. She always makes the right choice.

But it’s not much later, a day or less, when he comes back and tries more persuasion [Ep5 23:26]:

Silas has Lynn captive.
Screen shot from Season 1 Episode 5

Silas: You still haven’t chosen to join us.

Lynn: Still weighing the pros and cons.

Silas: You haven’t changed, Lynn.

Lynn: Wish I could say the same for you.

Silas: You don’t know what you’re rejecting. You could be one with the Community.

Lynn: I’m one with my husband. That’s enough for me.

Silas: Technically, he’s no longer your husband. You were married “until death do you part,” remember?

Lynn: I remember. I remember you were his best man. And I remember the toast you gave. That you had everybody laughing one moment, and most of us crying the next. Because everyone knew you loved your brother. That’s what I remember. Do you?

Silas: I remember my knees shaking, my voice almost cracking, my heart pounding. Because I was weak and fragile. Now I’m not. I’m beginning to think you’re not going to make the right choice here, Lynn.

Lynn: I’m never going to join you, Silas. I’ll never give up who I am.

[he stabs her in the arm with the vile]

Silas: I didn’t want to have to do that. You’re angry right now, but when you have your Companion, we’ll have a good laugh about this. About how much fuss you made. Sleep well.

There’s a line in The Princess Bride where the Grandpa interrupts the story to say, “She doesn’t get eaten by eels at this time.” So, like that, I’ll say, she doesn’t become a skin rider at this time.

What I’m interested in, in these interchanges, are the enticements from the skin riders, through Silas. He offers freedom from error, freedom from weakness, freedom from “the burden of discipline and self-mastery, guilt, and shame.”

This is very much like the choice from the Council in Heaven—Lucifer’s plan. “I will take away your ability to make bad choices.” But that takes away humanness, and with it the ability to choose to be a good human being, leaving something far inferior.

Silas makes a show of offering a “choice,” but the choice isn’t really there; give in to having your self taken, or your self will be taken.

So, I was thinking of this “choice,” when I read an opinion piece from the New York Times called “WhyAre Millennials Wary of Freedom?” by Clay Routledge.

There are some disturbing statistics from the World Values Survey, the Pew Research Center, and other surveys:

·         Only 30% of Americans born after 1980 believe democracy (rule by the people) is essential, compared to 72% of older Americans.

·         In 2011 24% of young adults think democracy is a bad idea; they would prefer to be ruled over.

·         40% of millennials believe government should control speech they find offensive (not profanity, but rather ideas they disagree with).

·         20% or more of students of either party believed it was acceptable for student groups to use violence to prevent speech on a college campus that they disapprove of.

Routledge offers an explanation for why young adults have so little respect for freedom: “I propose that the answer is fear—the ultimate enemy of freedom.”

The Spherical Model can give us some perspective here. People who have not been brought up to understand the blessings of freedom live in the southern hemisphere, oscillating between chaotic tyranny and statist tyranny, unaware of the entire northern hemisphere of freedom. Those who seek power create, or at least point out, the chaos, accentuate its danger, and then promise to make everything calm. “Allow us to rule over you, and we’ll make what you’re scared of go away. But, if you don’t choose to be ruled by us, we’ll force you to.” That last part gets left unsaid, but it’s there in every tyranny.

As Reagan once said,

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

Freedom isn’t extinct yet, here in our world. But if those statistics are an indicator, it’s on the endangered list.

If you have any influence over a young person, let them know that real freedom is not freedom from financial concerns, interpersonal challenges, or “the burden of discipline and self-mastery, guilt, and shame.” Let them know what real freedom is for: to thrive, grow, and live a fully human, happy and sometimes painful but meaningful life.

Supreme Court Sampler

It’s that season, when all of us watch, with nailbiting expectation, to see who the winners and losers are.

No, I’m not referring to World Cup Soccer. That’s for normal households. In the Spherical Model household, we’re watching the Supreme Court rulings come in. (If I had a graphic arts team here at Spherical Model, I'd have justices in robes kicking around a soccer ball in a grand stadium. Please imagine that here.)

The biggies for this session (Hobby Lobby and others who don’t want Obamacare to force them to purchase things against their religious views) have not shown up yet. There are still a few more days.

But there are a few things that appeared so far this week.

Recess appointments--Canning v. NLRB (National Labor Relations Board)

This was a 9-0 decision, slapping the president’s hand for reaching into the power cookie jar. But it isn’t as strong a rebuke as it could have been. The Constitution expects presidential appointments to be subject to Senate approval or disapproval (advise and consent). The president doesn’t like to submit to that—even though he has a Democrat Senate, because there are enough Republicans that might bring up the inappropriateness of many of his appointees. He is not the first president to misuse the recess appointment procedure.

It’s in the law because, at the time of the founding, when the legislative branch took a break and people returned to their home districts, it could take weeks to call them back to reassemble. If a need came up during their absence, it made sense to make a temporary appointment, so work would not be held up.

It doesn’t take weeks to recall the Senate now. But the Constitution doesn’t include reasons and intentions, so presidents have used this clause for their own political purposes—more so as transportation becomes less and less an issue. The SCOTUS today ruled that, while the president can indeed appoint during breaks in session, he can’t decide that a long weekend is a break. Even 10 days is probably too short a break. The justices fell short of defining the length of the break, but clearly ruled that the president shouldn’t be doing what he’s been doing.

The more conservative members of the Court held that the rule should be when the legislature is actually not in session—probably just during their annual August break. I’m with them. My son Political Sphere suggests that they ought to have also added the requirement that the appointment be urgent, couldn’t have been made in time before the legislative session ended, or couldn’t wait until the legislative session was to meet again. And of course such appointments ought to be approved or disapproved as soon as the legislature meets again—rather than just letting the appointment stand. In other words, change the expectations for Senate approval of appointments back to what the Constitution requires. What a concept.

I heard several times today that this ruling was the 12^th (maybe 13^th) time SCOTUS has ruled unanimously against Obama’s executive power overreach.

Buffer Zones at Abortion Clinics—McCullen v. Oakley

In this Massachusetts case, there was a rule that within a 35-foot buffer zone, no one could enter the space near an abortion clinic except patients, workers, and anyone with business in the vicinity. In other words, no one could approach someone who might be going for an abortion and offer them “counseling,” or information that might sway their behavior.

This is a free speech argument. We’re talking about public sidewalks, which are traditionally places where demonstrations of speech are legal. And here the restriction is on specific speech on a specific topic—to prevent anti-abortion speech. Why that speech? Why is that targeted, but other speech could be allowed other similarly public locations? What makes the public space around an abortion clinic a non-free-speech zone?

The Obama administration supported censorship. The plaintiff asked for support of free speech rights. While there could be a safety issue to consider, the government must choose the least intrusive alternative. The Court could see that banning all free speech in a specified area, mainly to prevent speech on a specific issue, was not the least intrusive means. (A good discussion was on Hugh Hewitt's The Smart Guys segment Thursday--available by subscription.)

Here are a couple more of the rulings, with links to read further:

·         EPA Greenhouse Gas Regulation—Utility Air Regulatory Group v. Environmental Protection Agency (read here and here).

·         Cell phone searches require warrant—Riley v. California (read here and here).

Meanwhile, in the Tenth Circuit Court, the state of Utah has been disallowed to define marriage. You’ll probably read errant headlines that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage has been found unconstitutional. That’s not really accurate. The 3-judge panel of the 10^th Circuit ruled against the state, in a 2-1 split, based on the Windsor ruling of June 2013, which decided that the US DOMA law was wrong to define marriage as between one man and one woman if other entities (i.e., state governments) defined it differently. In other words, the Supreme Court was leaving the defining of marriages to the states. But every time it has come up since then, some court has decided that states do not have the right to define marriage as between one man and one woman, because it’s unconstitutional. Hmm.

So, the courts are ruling that defining a term in a contract cannot be done at the federal level nor at the state level. That is very troubling. So how can governments define terms in a contract? The way the unelected and nebulous but powerful politically correct police say they can, according to the whims of the day—of course.

In this case, Kitchen v. Herbert, the steps may include appeal to the 10^th Circuit en banq (the full panel of 10^th Circuit Court judges). That may or may not be tried or accepted. If it is, then that court will hear the case first. If not, it could go to the Supreme Court as early as this coming fall. In the meantime, the Court stayed its ruling (will not in the meantime allow same-sex “marriages” to take place while the issue isn’t ultimately settled).