They'll Do Anything To Stop Us From Speaking

But it's the other guys who are fascist, honest!

Apologies for the second e-mail in one day, but this was too big to simply lump in with the last piece. Yesterday Joe Biden reiterated his support for the removal of “social media immunity” with regards to “hate speech”.

There’s no pussyfooting around this: Biden and the rest of the circus want to be able to determine what is and isn’t acceptable speech — with the predictable result that political dissent will be unacceptable. OF COURSE they couch this desire in widely desirable terms — we’re just keeping those nasty white supremacists in check!! — because that’s how they sneak the camel’s nose under the tent.

It’s only the BAD people who will be impacted by these changes — just like the USA PATRIOT Act was only used on foreign terrorists! (And maybe some journalists. Oh, and druggies.)

As I joked earlier, once everybody guilty of wrongthink is banned, social media will be a utopia where we all agree that government is simply the things we do together — like punishing people for feeding the less-fortunate, or sending billions of dollars to Ukraine. Everybody will agree 2020 was the cleanest election ever! And if the very same social media companies are acting as agents of the state and spying on Americans, uh…..MAGA EXTREMISTS ARE THE REAL PROBLEM HERE!

It’s been a handful of months since I decided to add a paid subscription option so that Substack could have definitive proof that people are willing to support a platform that supports free speech. Since then (and even before), we’ve been expanding the community and welcoming new people with new opinions into the fold. Yet the underlying threat to free speech remains, in the form of government’s giant sledgehammer of force.

So I want to send out a reminder today that we haven’t won. The tide is turning and we’re gaining allies, but our enemies still have considerable power and seem to be less shy about using it every day. We still need to throw our support behind platforms such as Substack that allow a free discussion of ideas and evidence. So if there’s a ‘Stack you’ve been thinking about paying to subscribe to but have been on the fence, just do it. Even if it’s just for one month, even if it’s a ‘Stack I might find personally distasteful! The biggest impact we have is the ability to vote with our dollar, and when we spend inside the Substack community, we’re voting for the continued ability to speak our minds without fear of being banned for wrongthink.

It’s first for a reason…..