If you want to know who the totalitarians are, they are the ones who are outraged at Elon Musk buying Twitter. The prospect of all human beings allowed to voice their opinions on a social media platform is threatening to them. They see any post that does not support their ideologies as dangerous. It is not a coincidence that the same people who are in favor of censoring social media, were also in favor of locking down the country, shutting down businesses, closing schools, forcing us to wear masks, and mandating vaccines. They are the ones trying to take away our guns and are preventing parents from having say in what their children are taught, or what medical procedures they get. They claim, as they always do, that they’re taking our freedoms and rights for our own protection. But who is protecting us from them?
Censorship has nothing to do with protecting American citizens from so-called dangerous speech, it is all about Democrats gaining and monopolizing political power by silencing their opponents. The perfect example is Frank James, the man who shot up the New York City subway two weeks ago. His social media accounts were filled with racist posts about killing white people, and other extreme threats of violence. Not one social media platform censored his dangerous or threatening posts or alerted the authorities, and he was free to shoot a dozen people. But a Republican who questions the validity of mask mandates, is censored to protect us. Blocking opinions on social media has nothing to do with keeping America safe, it is solely about silencing political opponents. Media Research Center has found that Big Tech companies including Twitter and Facebook have censored criticism of Joe Biden 646 times from the start of the 2020 Presidential election cycle to today.
But Democrats will always clam that taking away Americans’ freedom and rights is for our benefit. They want the power to take care of us from cradle to grave under the guise that it’s for our own good, but in the end, they are the ones benefitting the most. Welfare, raising taxes, deficit spending, government run healthcare, social security, the public schools, are all sold to the American people as benefitting them, but in the end, all those programs do is further entrench the corrupt politicians in Washington. That is why the left is so scared of Elon Musk, and also why they were so scared of Donald Trump. And why they both have to be destroyed. They are direct threats to the deep-seated cabal in Washington, filled with Democrats and many Republicans, and protected by corrupt corporate media. Their inability to control Trump, and now Twitter, leaves them vulnerable for their corruption to be exposed.
Are we really that fragile that we need some overlord protecting us from other people’s words? Whenever there is talk of censorship, the question always arises, who gets to be the censor, who gets to be the arbiter of the truth? Which person is qualified for that job? Why should we trust them? What special quality gives them the insight to know what is truth and what is not truth? Isn’t that the ultimate question of humanity? What is truth? Isn’t truth hard to find, difficult to pin down. As messy as it is, our best hope to get as close to the truth as possible is having as many different voices and points of view expressed. The process that gets us as furthest from the truth is censoring voices and opinions. That always ends up with masses of people being completely ignorant, and seriously harmed. In world history, the biggest censors turned out to be the evilest people and most repressive countries – Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, North Korea, China, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Cuba, Russia. So, those in our country calling for more censorship are aligning themselves with these evil entities.
It is up to each and every individual to take in as much information from as many points of view as possible, and process that information in order to arrive at their beliefs. There is a reason why we have two eyes. If we only look at an object through one eye, from one point of view, we will never see the object with the proper depth. Each eye looks at the object from a different angle, and our brain takes in those two images, and melds together to create the three-dimensional image we see. Censoring opinions cause us to look the world with one eye, from a singular point of view which creates a flat two-dimensional incomplete distorted view of the world.
Tony Fauci viewed the pandemic from strictly one point of view – ending the pandemic. So, his recommendations did not take into consideration the negative effects that lockdowns, school closures, shutting down businesses and churches would have on the people. He did not care about the financial, physical and psychological damage his recommendations would cause; his one and only concern was stopping the pandemic, and in doing so he caused more harm to our society and to the people then if he just would’ve done nothing.
We must be vigilant in the way we handle the information that comes to us. We cannot take what we read on social media or see on the news at face value. We must take into account the source, their credibility, their expertise in the field, their political point of view, their motivations, their potential financial or career gains. We cannot be passive receivers of information who become indoctrinated through osmosis. We must take an active role in the way we receive and process what we read and hear.
The Democrat party does not want us to be active participants when receiving information. They want us to accept what they say on face value. That’s why they tell us that we must “believe the science” or “believe all women” when doing so benefits them and their authoritarian policies. We are not allowed to question their science, or the accusation of a woman who is supporting their agenda. No questions allowed. But when the science says masks don’t work, the Democrats ignore the science and implement mask mandates anyway, or when a woman accuses their Presidential candidate of sexual assault, the Democrats refuse to believe that woman.
Their push for censorship is all about imposing their ideologies on the rest of us. That’s why they vilify parents who question the curriculum being taught to their children. They want to get to the children as early as possible to indoctrinate them into their ideologies, expecting the young students to simply nod along without questions. That is why it’s so ironic that they call their racial ideology, “Critical Race Theory” because they are not teaching critical thinking at all; they are teaching blind acceptance.
We must be perpetual skeptics of the information that we receive. We must always question any assertion that any person makes from the guy sitting at the corner of the bar all the way up to the President of United States, and every person in between. My three-year-old knows this. Every statement I make to him, he responds with, “why?”, and then asks “why?” to my answer to his first question of “why?”. And this may go on for five or six “why’s?”. That is the way we must approach any assertion that any person makes. We must ask the question, “why?”. If my doctor told me tomorrow that I had cancer, I would go get three or four more opinions. And even if it was determined that I did have cancer, I would try to find as many different approaches to my treatment. That would be the only right and smart thing to do. When your life is on the line, you’re not only going listen to one opinion, and shut up. That doesn’t make any sense.
That is the heart of science. Science is skepticism. Every advancement in science has come from asking a question of why or how. Not accepting the status quo, but pushing beyond the status quo, looking at it from a different point of view, and once that new point of view becomes the status quo, we must push beyond that, and then beyond that. The science is never settled, because science is always advancing, the science is always learning. That’s how we get better by continuing to learn, by continuing to look at all things from as many angles as possible. And the censorship that the Democrats are advocating restricts this vital learning process.
Every generation has many rich, famous and powerful people, and most of those people are forgotten less than a generation after they die. Their names may be written in some history books, but they are not remembered, because they were not generational figures. They used their money or their power solely for the self. How many people can name all 45 Presidents of the United States? How many can name half? Most can only name the generational Presidents; Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt. Every rich and powerful person has an opportunity to make an impact beyond simply enriching and empowering themselves, and well beyond simply donating to trendy causes out of their surplus.
Elon Musk could have easily gone along with the prevailing crowd, not upset the apple cart, continue to enrich himself as the wealthiest man on Earth by simply playing along, and be destined to be forgotten, but he chose to buy Twitter, and expose himself financially and reputationally to be attacked from all sides. But that has given him the opportunity to become that generational figure, and it will all depend on how he uses the power of Twitter. If unlike Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post, he eschews profit and power, and makes structural changes to that platform which brings true free speech to social media that gives everybody in the world a voice, and allows all opinions to be spoken and heard, he will fortify and spread democracy throughout the world to an extent not yet seen before. He will have become that transformative figure of his generation far greater than simply being the richest man in the world. He has taken the first step in that direction; we can only wait and see what he chooses to become.
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Judd Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.