In recent days I have observed a nefarious and dangerous phenomenon – the favoring of certain ideologies’ freedom of speech over another.
Our Constitution does not qualify who may speak freely; it states, in the Bill of Rights:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Bill of Rights, 1st Amendment
Newark, NJ Mayor Ras Baraka wants to categorize white supremacist groups as “terrorists” and thus have them banned from the city. He also announced a desire to create a database of American hate groups – defined as those that “vilify entire groups of people based on immutable characteristics such as race or ethnicity.”
Of course those listed in the article are Nazi groups, the KKK and white supremacy groups.
Will that also include the New Black Panther Party or the Nation of Islam, which the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights all consider to be hate groups? What about Holocaust denial groups that are also considered hate groups? How about the Westboro Baptist Church? Antifa? Are these all going to be categorized as terrorists and banned from Newark’s city limits? I certainly hope so, or else Mayor Baraka may be accused of unconstitutionally curtailing white supremacist groups’ First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and freedom to peaceably assemble.
In another worrying episode, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton’s NYT Op-Ed was decried and an editor resigned over it, while an article defending pedophilia ruffled not a single feather. Is this further evidence that the media continues to cover up pedophilia in the highest offices?
Anti-Lockdown protests have been vilified as “based on white supremacy” and discouraged by healthcare professionals while Black Lives Matter and anti-police protesters have been encouraged.
There is a definite anti-conservative bent to the Mainstream Media and the general online paradigms one finds. Every article by a major news source that mentions Trump or is about him uses sometimes blatant, sometimes subtly-negative language to subversively further a negative connotation that the reader already has, or create one.
I don’t offer my own views on the views listed above – what concerns me is the erosion of freedoms and rights of some groups in favor of others, and the overstepping of government on Americans’ rights – All Americans. This goes for the existing injustices and inequalities that are rampant in our systems and must be changed, as well as new ones.
We can and should move forward together, and do that we have to focus on our similarities rather than our differences.
Politics to Potting Mix 