By Mike Huckabee
August 13, 2024
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Though it’s commonly said that the Second Amendment is the most important because it enforces all the others, we can’t forget that government “of the people, by the people and for the people” is not possible without the First Amendment, specifically the free exchange of information. To govern themselves, people must be able to think freely, read widely, hear different opinions, arrive at conclusions and express their own thoughts.
Indoctrinated people have the illusion that they’re doing this, but that’s what it is --- an ILLUSION. They’re not really governing themselves, even if they believe they are; they’re actually living the existence their masters have chosen for them. If they’d had more information, they might have made very different choices.
Their opinions have been assigned to them by way of the information others permit them to see and hear. And as important as the Second Amendment is, it won’t really matter much that they’re allowed to carry guns if they’re so indoctrinated they won’t fight back.
We’ve seen this in escapees from North Korea who have no idea what it is to be an individual with a free mind. And it’s where we’re headed today in our own country, particularly those in college and recently graduated, as the exchange of information is shut down in social media and the left has taken over one institution after another: news, academia, education, the arts, almost everything. It’s so bad now, it’s not hyperbole to say this November is likely our last opportunity to beat it back. The Supreme Court had a chance this year to dig into public/private partnerships limiting social media speech but blew that. With that, if the left holds power next year, they will swiftly complete their takeover.
We don’t have to go to North Korea to see what form this will take --- just look at England, where the crackdown on speech has been hard. Not only do they assume the right to punish “insulting” speech with prison sentences, they want to be able to extradite people from other countries if their social media posts have been deemed sufficiently unacceptable. The government is darkly warning Britons to "think before you post," lest your unapproved opinion land you in prison.
It’s so bad that a video from 2012 has gone viral showing the great British actor and comedian Rowan Atkinson (“Mr. Bean”) speaking out against an earlier law that made insults a crime and explaining his “passionate belief that the second most precious thing in life is the right to express yourself freely,” as in, second only to the food that sustains his very life.
He said he didn’t anticipate being arrested for his own free expression “because of the undoubtedly privileged position that is afforded to those of a high public profile” (in today’s even more oppressive UK, that might no longer hold true – they might even arrest him for what he said in 2012.) He was concerned not so much for himself as for those who are “more vulnerable” because of their lower profile. He gave a few examples, such as “the man arrested in Oxford for calling a police horse gay” (true) and “the cafe owner arrested for displaying passages from the Bible on a TV screen.”
It’s the kind of legal harassment that brought to mind for Atkinson a comedy sketch he once did about arresting someone (in that case a black man) on ludicrous charges such as “walking in a loud shirt in a built-up area during the hours of darkness,” “looking at me in a funny way,” and “walking around all over the place.” Now he sees life imitating art, “so exactly.” Indeed, this can’t help but remind us of the very real charges of “parading,” etc., made against people who simply walked into the Capitol building on January 6 (the FBI next wants to charge those who just walked past the building outside – I’m not kidding) and the charges against President Trump.
Even if the more ridiculous charges are withdrawn, Atkinson said, it’s still “censoriousness of the most intimidating kind, guaranteed to have...a chilling effect on free expression and free protest.” And how does one determine speech to be insulting? “Criticism is easily construed as insult by certain parties,” he said presciently. “Ridicule, easily construed as insult. Sarcasm, unfavorable comparison, merely stating an alternative point of view to the orthodoxy can be interpreted as insult.”
The Huckabee Newsletter would be banned, that’s for sure. We try to be ladies and gentlemen about it, but where insult is deserved, we’re there! Many on the left would love to see us marched off to the Tower of London or wherever they’re incarcerating heretics now. Heck, they even have a problem with the term “ladies and gentlemen.”
Here’s where Atkinson’s brilliance shines: “Although the law under discussion has been on the statute books for over 25 years, it is indicative of a culture that has taken hold of the programs of successive governments, that with the reasonable and well-intentioned ambition to contain obnoxious elements in society, has created a society of an extraordinarily authoritarian and controlling nature. It’s what you might call ‘the new intolerance,’ a new but intense desire to gag uncomfortable voices of dissent.”
We do have to take responsibility for what we say, he said, but also, “we’ve learned how appallingly prickly and intolerant society has become of even the mildest adverse comment.”
Ironically, he quoted a UN speech given by President Obama (ironically because it was under his bureaucracy that narrative-shaping and attacks on conservative speech ramped up considerably): “Laudable efforts to restrict speech can become a tool to silence critics or oppress minorities. The strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression; it is more speech.”
https://twitchy.com/amy-curtis/2024/08/11/mr-bean-on-free-speech-n2399492
Be sure and watch Atkinson’s whole talk. Then, check out Mollie Hemingway of THE FEDERALIST on FOX NEWS SUNDAY talking about the incredible job of gaslighting the media are doing now that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are the Democrats’ new anointed ones. This is not new. “It reminds me so much of what we saw in the 2020 race,” she says, “when Joe Biden was allowed, through the complete help of [the] corporate media, to run his campaign from the basement…to only speak publicly in completely protected fashion.” Today, we’ve got global chaos and barely a word from either the President or the VP. But it has to be this way, because in order to brainwash you, they have to separate you from observable reality.
Hemingway suggested to Mark Levin on Sunday night that people in positions of power “stop giving legitimacy” to media outlets “that operate in service to Democrat Party power.” These are actually, seriously referred to as “news” outlets --- we don’t call them that, of course --- “when all they do is lie, about literally every issue of importance to the country.” We’d say these outlets need to be met as Rowan Atkinson would meet them: with ridicule and mockery.
For more on free speech under threat, Levin also spoke with Jonathan Turley, whose new book THE INDISPENSABLE RIGHT gives a valuable historical perspective.
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6360280048112
We mentioned earlier the ridiculous over-charging over January 6; in a new column, Turley cites DC District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton for his treatment of defendant Daniel Goodwyn, who pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building. (He was inside for under 40 seconds.) Normally that crime, for a first offender like Goodwyn, would not bring prison time, but Judge Walton handed him a 60-day sentence and a “chilling probation order” that regulated what he was reading and communicating. This judge actually ordered that Goodwyn’s computer be subject to “monitoring and inspection” by a probation agent to check if he spread January 6 “disinformation” during the term of his supervised release.
This was appealed to the DC Circuit Court, who sent it back to Judge Walton. He doubled down, and now the DC Circuit Court has refused to hear the emergency appeal.
It was the DOJ who, according to Turley, pushed for this provision in Goodwyn’s probation, using the argument that he refused to abandon his “extreme political views.” (!!!!)
In this, Turley finds similarity with the trend in Britain addressed by Rowan Atkinson, saying the Walton order “is reminiscent of our previous discussion of how courts have criminalized ‘toxic ideologies’ as part of the crackdown on free speech in the United Kingdom.”
Finally, in a MUST-SEE video, under 7 minutes, Mike Benz explains how technology is being used in classrooms to essentially teach children not to think independently. This is the “Media Literacy” program, supposedly designed to help in assessing the truth of what is seen in the media. (You see the danger already.) It started at college level but versions are now being rolled out to grades K-12. It teaches that “if you don’t read the right [‘official’] media sources...regime-compliant media, then you are illiterate...You need to get your mind right, to read the right media sources.”
Several big blue states have already passed laws making this program mandatory. (It’s about “literacy” --- what could be wrong?) “There’s tons and tons of government money propping this up,” Benz says. It instills fear that “if you do critical thinking, you will become a heretic, a wrong-thinker...” You might not trust government narratives, not trust the system, and that would be bad. What this program essentially does is train kids to be dumb. Add TikTok and shake well.
https://x.com/mikebenzcyber/status/1727101742309937533?s=46
The good news: President Trump is doing an interview with Elon Musk Monday night (8PM Eastern), and one would imagine a big topic will be how to save the free flow of information. The essential first step, of course, is to re-elect Trump.
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