CNN guest panics over Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter, complains the left won't be able to control speech any longer
By jdheyes // 2022-05-04
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There is no better example of how authoritarian the Democrat-voting left has become than their reaction to billionaire Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter after he pledged to -- gasp! -- turn the platform back in to one that truly supports free speech. What's even more astounding is that much of the outrage over Musk's commitment to free speech on Twitter is literally coming from leftists who make their living under the First Amendment's free speech guarantee. So the next time one of these losers tries to claim that Donald Trump and Republicans are “Nazis,” “fascists,” and “tyrants,” remember how they responded to Musk. Journalist and author David Zurawik appeared on the misnamed CNN program “Reliable Sources” over the weekend to complain to host Brian Stelter about how Musk's 'free speech' vow was somehow a threat to our constitutional republic -- the same one that is guided by a Constitution that enshrines free speech and freedom of the press as core citizen guarantees. During the episode, Zurawik addressed Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk’s Twitter acquisition, which he said is nothing short of “dangerous.” “When we focus on the personality of people like Elon Musk … there’s a bigger problem about how we are going to control the channels of communication in this country,” he warned. “In 1927, we had the Radio Act. In 1934, the Communications Act. Congress stepped in; we made rules.” The Federal Communications Commission, he noted further, “wasn’t great, but it is still regulating the broadcast industry.” “We gave over our what amounts to our airwaves, or our internet waves, to Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, and we are in so much trouble,” Zurawik insisted. “Because those guys believe in making money. We’ve already seen that with the 2016 election and Zuckerberg when he was taking rubles for ads from Russia and saying, ‘Oh I think it’s crazy to think that they had any influence on this election.'” Musk, he added, is supposedly cut from the same cloth — and that our country quickly descended into chaos following the election of former President Donald Trump (it did, thanks to the machinations and scheming of the deep state, which includes much of the ‘mainstream media’ — guys like Zurawik who serve as willing dupes). “This is dangerous!” he shouted. “We can’t think any more in this country — we don’t have people … in Congress who can make regulations that can make it work. I think we can look to the Western countries in Europe for how they are trying to limit it, but you need — you need — controls on this. You need regulation. You cannot let these guys control discourse in this country or we are headed to hell. We are there. Trump opened the gates of hell and now they’re chasing us down.” Watch him rage: In another example cited by famed constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley, Time magazine columnist Charlotte Alter — again, using Musk as her foil — claimed outright that free speech is racist because white men are “obsessed” with it. “Why does Musk care so much about this? Why would a guy who has pushed the boundaries of electric-vehicle manufacturing and plumbed the limits of commercial space flight care about who can say what on Twitter?” she wrote. Alter then claimed that “‘free speech’ in the 21st century doesn't mean the same thing it did in the 18th century when the Founders enshrined it in the Constitution: "The right to say what you want without being imprisoned is not the same as the right to broadcast disinformation to millions of people on a corporate platform. This nuance seems to be lost on some techno-wizards who see any restriction as the enemy of innovation.” Turley responded this way: Censorship has always been based on the notion that the underlying speech was false or harmful. Calling it “disinformation” does not materially change the motivation or the impact. What Alter calls a “Tech Bro obsession” was the obsession of the Framers. Alter is confusing free speech values with the rationale for the First Amendment. For years, anti-free-speech figures have dismissed free speech objections to social media censorship by stressing that the First Amendment applies only to the government, not private companies. The distinction was always a dishonest effort to evade the implications of speech controls, whether implemented by the government or corporations. The Democrat left is the party of groupthink and authoritarianism, as these examples prove. Sources include: Summit.news JonathanTurley.org
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