This article was originally published by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead at The Rutherford Institute.
“What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer… And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”—Hannah Arendt
In a perfect example of the Nanny State mindset at work, Hillary Clinton insists that the powers-that-be need “total control” in order to make the internet a safer place for users and protect us from harm.
Clinton is not alone in her distaste for unregulated, free speech online.
A bipartisan chorus that includes both presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump has long clamored to weaken or do away with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which essentially acts as a bulwark against online censorship.
It’s a complicated legal issue that involves debates over immunity, liability, net neutrality, and whether or not internet sites are publishers with editorial responsibility for the content posted to their sites, but really, it comes down to the tug-of-war over where censorship (corporate and government) begins and free speech ends.
As Elizabeth Nolan Brown writes for Reason, “What both the right and left attacks on the provision share is a willingness to use whatever excuses resonate—saving children, stopping bias, preventing terrorism, misogyny, and religious intolerance—to ensure more centralized control of online speech. They may couch these in partisan terms that play well with their
The remainder of this article is available in its entirety at SHTF Plan