Let’s talk about something that should scare the hell out of every American who gives a rip about free speech.
For years, we’ve watched as our fundamental right to speak freely gets chipped away, bit by bit. It’s like death by a thousand cuts—and most of us didn’t even notice we were bleeding.
Now a new free speech consensus is forming in Washington, D.C. that has globalists fuming.
John Kerry dropped a bombshell last year at the World Economic Forum, basically admitting what we’ve all suspected: the First Amendment is a roadblock for those who want to control what we hear, read, and think.
Think about that for a second. A former Secretary of State sees our Constitutional right as an “inconvenience.”
Matt Taibbi, a journalist who’s been in the trenches exposing this mess, has been tracking how European regulations are quietly reshaping our digital landscape. Companies like Facebook and Twitter were already bending to these rules just to keep their market access. It was a backdoor way of gutting our free speech protections.
But here’s the wild part: after Donald Trump’s resounding win some politicians are actually pushing back. Senator Ron Wyden and Tulsi Gabbard – people from opposite sides of the political spectrum – are finding common ground. They’re saying, “Hold up. This isn’t right.”
SEN. RON WYDEN: While you were in Congress, you introduced legislation prohibiting the government from mandating that Americans’ phones or apps include mechanisms to allow the government to bypass encryption or other privacy technology. In your written responses to the committee questions, you reconfirmed your opposition to these mandates. Is that still your position?
TULSI GABBARD: Yes, these backdoors lead down a dangerous path that can undermine Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights and civil liberties.
“How beautiful is that, though? That’s a Democrat asking an ex-Democrat in the Trump administration to cooperate on speech issues to stop this problem that is really coming from Europe, mostly now. It’s a beautiful thing to me. I kind of hope that’s the way politics goes from now on,” Taibbi said on Reason.com’s “Just Asking Questions” podcast.
“And you know, somebody like Wyden embracing the idea that, ‘Well, maybe there are things we don’t like about the Trump administration, but on this, we’re going to work with them on it.’ This is how politics should work,” Taibbi added.
Liz Wolfe from Reason.com shared something that hit hard. She talked about how the Snowden revelations woke her up to how quickly our rights can vanish. We’re talking about a potential dystopia that could arrive faster than your next Amazon delivery.
If Kamala had won, that’s the dystopian future the country was staring down.
“I didn’t publish who I voted for because I never do, but you can probably guess. But look, the reason was that I saw this, and you would see these documents talking about how we just need to do this, this, and this, and we’ll be part of this common digital environment with the Digital Services Act and everything. And you think about what that world would look like, and you know, we could be living in a dystopia within 18 months or even less. It was absolutely horrifying,” Taibbi said.
Taibbi argued J.D. Vance deserves serious props. During the campaign, he was the first major politician to really shine a light on this digital rights nightmare.
“You know, we’ve been pushing for people to kind of make it an issue, and he brought it up during the campaign, and I think he really believes in it, and it shows. That was a great speech, I thought, that he gave, and it was a real reaffirmation of what American values are. So I get kind of tingly listening to it,” Taibbi concluded.
The technology still exists to shut us down completely. Algorithmic content moderation, cross-border regulatory frameworks – we’re talking about tools that can silence dissent with the click of a button.
The only thing standing between us and that nightmare besides Trump’s election which bought us some time? Our commitment to calling bulls*** when we see it.
That’s the only way to keep the core promise of America’s First Amendment: that every voice matters, even – especially – the ones that make people uncomfortable.
Now we’re at a turning point. The pandemic, the Twitter Files, the increasing attempts to control information, Europe jailing people for sharing memes – people are finally waking up.
But here’s the million-dollar question: Are you ready to fight for your right to speak freely?
Because make no mistake – if we don’t defend our First Amendment now, who will?
