While acknowledging this is all a creation of the private sector, the libertarian-leaning Rich still wonders if the problem has become so severe that it\u2019s become so inherently unfair that it constitutes a public threat:<\/p>\n There\u2019s a dangerous trend affecting liberty in the United States \u2013 the home of the First\u00a0Amendment\u2019s distinctive protections of freedom of speech, expression and assembly.<\/p>\n America is the place where the police will defend you while you burn the American flag during a protest, where the gay community can march naked in the streets to show their \u201cpride\u201d and where the Ku Klux Klan can rally in support of their beliefs. While we might not always like the people who are speaking, it\u2019s been accepted that every George Wallace is likely to be countered by a Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. (and hopefully more of the latter).\u00a0To defend one and not the other is an invitation to disorder.<\/p>\n Silencing free speech and free expression has always gone against our grain and our patriotic ideals. To allow even one person to be silenced has been considered abhorrent\u2026 at least in America\u2019s past.<\/p>\n Today, American liberalism has taken the tone of a censor.\u00a0Once the arbiters of free speech and fighters for freedom of assembly, it appears liberals are turning on the kind of American liberty they once championed. After all, it was liberals who fought for free speech to distribute information about \u00a0birth control.\u00a0It was liberals who used the First Amendment to join with whites and Jews and Hispanics to march to end racial segregation \u2013 encountering the wrath of the batons and water hoses of the government along the way.<\/p>\n It was in this unity that liberals ensured a silenced minority could not be bullied, shoved or buried.\u00a0There is no greater passion than an ideal, and liberalism \u2013 for all its faults \u2013 helped give us the modern tools to ensure the survival and success of liberty.\u00a0But that was in a past, seemingly all but forgotten by a generation of liberals who no longer seem to want to define themselves by ideals or triumphs. Bullying, censorship and political oppression are now actually their tools of choice.<\/p>\n In the past, it was the liberals who stood with Dr. King and took the policeman\u2019s boot in their behinds. Today, it\u2019s the liberals who wear the jackboots and do the kicking in the march into oppression.\u00a0Their war on conservatism \u2013 and liberals who harbor independent thoughts \u2013 masks more sinister goals. They have even enlisted the help of corporations for the newest phase for silencing all opposition.<\/p>\n The perfect example of the growing movement of corporate liberalism to silence right-leaning voices is the recent purge of Alex Jones and his InfoWars content from many social media platforms.\u00a0If you think the shock jock political commentator will be the last to be purged, you\u2019ll be wrong.\u00a0\u00a0Even as we speak, fascist-minded liberals are working to essentially kill off the Constitution-loving American \u2013 their perceived arch nemesis.<\/p>\n While Alex Jones and InfoWars appears to represent the most oddball example of conservative commentary, he may also be the least-liked man in both liberal AND conservative circles.\u00a0He\u2019s a sideshow and a test case \u2013 the beginning of what could become an incremental approach banning conservative voices on the Internet.<\/p>\n If the liberals succeed in silencing Jones, they\u2019ll probably begin to purge people who complain about Jones being banned.\u00a0After all, they\u2019re obviously \u201cnut-jobs\u201d or \u201cracists\u201d or \u201cradical conspiracy theorists\u201d who\u00a0violated our terms of service.<\/p>\n If you have followed my blog posts and media interviews, you\u2019ll know that I\u2019m personally on the libertarian wing of things.\u00a0But maybe \u2013 just maybe \u2013 we need to use the liberals\u2019 answer to solve our problem\u2026 big government.<\/p>\n Google, Facebook and others are publicly traded companies who have created platforms that allow people to communicate in a public forum.\u00a0Perhaps we need to extend First\u00a0Amendment protections to these platforms in the same way we would extend protections to anyone else, anywhere else.<\/p>\n As these platforms amass data \u2013 including regulated financial information \u2013 it creates a reason for the government to intrude. And the liberals, don\u2019t forget, are the ones who want to treat the information superhighway like a public utility.<\/p>\n I know I\u2019m the last person to suggest big government to come in and save us.\u00a0But the truth is that the government exists to protect our rights and our freedoms.\u00a0In this case, we need our government to stand up for the little guy.\u00a0The guy who has something to say that goes against the grain is just a threat (and a little threat at that) to those who would lie to us, but it\u2019s the purging of Jones from these platforms that is a threat to the very ideals that make us Americans.<\/p>\n First they hit the college campuses, now they\u2019ve hit Alex Jones\u2026 will you be silenced next?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Rather than promote racism and sexism, we urge the company to consider viewpoint diversity when it makes its board selections. Silicon Valley elites often preen about their commitment to diversity and inclusion, but I don\u2019t think many of you know what that means. Diversity isn\u2019t what someone looks like. Let me repeat that \u2013 diversity isn\u2019t what someone looks like. It\u2019s the sum of what they think, feel and believe. And at this company, thinking and believing in conservative policies appear to be verboten.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Google infamously fired<\/a>\u00a0an employee in 2017 for disagreeing with the company\u2019s diversity hiring philosophy. This firing occurred just after Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt told<\/a> Danhof at that year\u2019s shareholder meeting that the company would not change its views on things such as \u201cdiversity\u201d and \u201cinclusiveness\u201d and that \u201cyou\u2019ll also find that all of the other companies in our industry agree with us.\u201d<\/p>\n With no deviation from this mindset in Silicon Valley, Rich\u2019s concerns about free expression in those companies spaces certainly seem to be valid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Economist George Gilder doesn\u2019t think that the \u201cBig Data\u201d has staying power because Google, Facebook and other Internet-based companies lack security, privacy, the ability to be factual and even to competently process transactions necessary for survival over the long-term. To cope in that wild environment…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":30965,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,36],"tags":[77],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Richard-Holt-small.jpg\")
Project 21\u00a0<\/a>member Rich Holt<\/a> is also worried about the shrinking opportunity of social media to be a true marketplace of ideas. While so many people enjoy the offerings of Facebook and Twitter, Rich feels that the censorship, shadow bans and outright expulsions of people from social media platforms is stifling opportunity and hurting the free exchange of ideas that so many Americans value (but take for granted).<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/nationalcenter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/danhof_sm-2.jpg\")
The Free Enterprise Project<\/a> (FEP) \u2013 like Project 21, another program of the National Center for Public Policy Research \u2013 is a leader in taking concerns about preserving on-line diversity of opinion to the corporate leadership of the high-tech sector. During this past shareholder season, FEP Director Justin Danhof, Esq.<\/a> questioned the extreme left mentality that seems to dominate companies such as Salesforce<\/a>, Facebook<\/a>, Amazon<\/a> and Alphabet<\/a> (the parent company of Google). While many of these companies were announcing new policies to mandate race and gender consideration for future board members, FEP championed the cause of diversity of opinion in the corporate leadership. At the Alphabet meeting, Danhof \u2013 in promoting an FEP-submitted shareholder proposal \u2013 explained:<\/p>\n