What Can You Say?

It's refreshing to learn that the technology giants are rushing to save free speech, by censoring what they euphemistically refer to as hate speech.  Yep, Google, Facebook, Twitter, several hosting services, ESPN and others have endeavored to save us from speech - both conservative and from-the-right -  that may offend us.  Whew.  As fractionalized as the United States has become under the clinched fist of the Great One, the Kenyan, it's good to know that some of these benighted tech CEOs are there to protect us.

Facebook has cancelled accounts of conservative groups, citing violations of terms of service as their justification. Yeah, like expressing political opinions, which is emphatically protected by the first amendment.  No matter, that.  Anything not in keeping with Facebook's echo chamber, by their definition, is hate speech, and therefore must be stifled.  And they do.   Further, Facebook caved in to Pakistan's government to censor and delete any criticism of Islam.

Google is worse, in that it's essentially the search engine of default in most browsers.  Results of queries are screened for conservative content, and then subsequently filtered in favor of liberal, left wing results. Go ahead, search a controversial topic - "Clinton's crimes" could be an interesting example - and run the same search in Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, or others, and note the difference in what is returned as a match.  Are the results  history, propaganda or political commentary?  It's subtle, but it's there.

One could argue that these are private corporations, and they can set policy as they please.  Fine, I agree.  But the government has retained the right to bust up monopolies, and has done so in the past.  As cultural realities in the 21st century require a reliance on the internet, both for input and output, it's of societal concern to Americans that the medium for political free speech be - as the first amendment guarantees - uncensored.  Even, or especially, if that speech may be repugnant to some.

If someone is prejudiced against certain religious groups, and wished to express that position, such speech should be uncensored.  That goes for opinions that are anti-Muslim, as well as anti-Jew  or anti-Christian, for instance.  Or those opinions that may be anti-black, as well as those who may be anti-white.  Or any other contentious opinion.  That's free speech.  Bigotry is a human attribute, after all.  We're tribal.  Non sunt mei: They are not me.  So what?  It's a good thing that we're different.  We can agree to disagree on whatever topic without either government or corporate censorship. 

Those easily offended among us would do well to remember the famous quote: "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

That's the American way.