Pulling Rank: How Freedom of Speech Must Be Protected Listed From Silence to Say It Loud!

The word “censor” is sometimes reserved for radio and television busybodies who seek to curb the content that a program or presenter offers to an audience. Often the joke goes, “this won’t get past the censors.” But is this the case? The only censorship, as it is understood properly, that can be carried out is by the government. Private institutions cannot censor material. This task is left to the United States government to block material that is not offensive but could incite riots or worse. Private organizations may sift through, reject, or slap ratings on a given work, but that is not censorship. That is due diligence on the part of private individuals who want to bar pornography, graphic violence, or other material that they might find to be unworthy of posting or publishing. This is free speech. This is the act of discerning what a given platform has the liberty of disseminating to its audience. Big Tech corporations like Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet all hold the right to block any content that they deem to be beneath their standards for excellence.

So, for them to “ban” a person or show, that is at their discretion and they retain the final decision on such entities. The ability for a writer, creator, or other professional to submit content is his or her right. And the company which receives that material can either accept or shoot down it. By taking into account the cases of those who have violated the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) set of rules and have been fined for their “misdeeds,” it would seem that this government body would have already been phased out when the late great George Carlin issued his famous “Seven Words that You Can Never Say on Television” over four decades ago. So, get your Twitter fingers tweeting and your YouTube eyes focused for Pulling Rank: How Freedom of Speech Must be Protected Listed from Silence to Say it Loud!

The tools of the trade promote the power of the press.

Pencils, pens, paint brushes, chisels, keyboards and pads, and microphones are but a few tools of the individual on the vanguard for the freedom of speech. Bullets, bombs, and missiles are the weapons employed by the roving thugs who wish to silence the thoughtful and the intellectually driven. These brutes have no power of the mind and resort to stooping to unintelligent acts of the initiation of physical force. Their goal is to instill fear, break down the communication between rational individuals, and destroy any semblance of order. They possess an agenda which claims that death is the ultimate in life. As backwards as this may seem, these figures are committed to the bloodshed of those who only wish to drop ink. These factions cannot produce the works that the artists and designers make. Inside of their deprived souls, they could never conceive of a novel or painting or sculpture, or cartoon of any kind. This envy spills out in the form of vicious violence all because they failed to pick up a pencil.

The system by which they move is the morality of death. As their ilk chants “Death to America,” what lies beneath this rhetoric is death to all and everything. Because they don’t value life, they choose to take their inner demons and frustrations out on the people who wish to live. This is anathema in the face of freedom of speech. It has been said that you have a right to speak on a microphone or write a column but your audience is not given to you as right. It is something to be earned. The brutes who never understood the power or the meaning behind the notion of expressing oneself with complete liberty only want to kill the creator and the audience. They want to see death and destruction at the root of an ideology. That is why the fight for free speech is so crucial. From Salman Rushdie to Charlie Hebdo, the world still is reeling from the threats and actual brutish force leveled against the writer and artists, respectively. All of this stems from the image of the Prophet Muhammad being employed by the novelist and cartoonists whether through words or images.

The sick and twisted irony behind the feeling that these barbarians exhibit is that Muhammad (or Mohammad) is the name most widely used as a given name in the world. So, the logic is that you can utter the name but it is a “sin” for him to be depicted in a negative light in fiction or in any light in illustration. How bizarre is that? Why is this? What is the problem with showing a figure of mysticism? For the faithful, wouldn’t it be a boost to see what you’re praying to looked like in life? Or is that too much of a burden for the truth to outweigh such mysticism? Are people too afraid to confront the reality that to kill in the name of a vicious tradition is detrimental to everyone’s health? The fact remains that to terrorize in the name of a name is irrationalism at its worst. The aforementioned tools are the only line of defense for tearing down evil and building up the good.

Rank: Silence

The history of a word can bear parallels.

A word that has had a similar experience as the image of Muhammad is the word which starts with “n” and rhymes with “rigor.” Throughout the ages, people have tried to bury the word, forget it, look past it, employ euphemisms, and other ways of trying to avoid it. Some would say that it is a beautiful word. Others would decry it as a mark of shame originating from a blight on the American soul. Today, whether in secret or on record, all races use it. From the womb of Hip Hop that has now spread around the globe like Dengue fever.

Black, brown, red, yellow, and even white use it with reckless abandon, never knowing what it truly means. The harsh history of the word ought to give anyone speaking it pause. Since it is still a word, and not libel or slander, it ought to be spoke of in it’s fully contextual sense. That sense is the framework of the dark days of slavery and the brutish reality of Jim Crow laws and Willie Lynchism. It is chic to drop the word in a conversation from Finland to France. As the reach of Rap has influenced the world, America continues to be the incubator of the term. Within the lyrics of these rap tunes, the “rigor”-like word is utilized incessantly. The billions of streams that occur each time a new Rap album is released, illustrates the fact that the youngest forming words to the oldest trying to remember them are uttering the word without regard. It has had a tumultuous past and present, to say the least. The noisiness stems from the idea that the word came from a vicious time period during American history: slavery. This word also is rooted in the formation of this country and has been labeled as good for some and a violent reaction or even death for others. Does this sound familiar? Just like the image of Muhammad, the word that rhymes with rigor that starts with “n” bears a resemblance to the name.

If uttered by a person with low melanin count, it could mean a terrible beating or demise. But, like the given name of Muhammad, it can be promulgated through art, media, and in common conversation. The word can go both ways. Allegedly, it is a term of endearment amongst African-Americans, and can be permitted by Latinos as well. Outside of the blacks and browns, whites, yellows, and reds may run into problems if they’re ever caught mouthing the word. In reality, the word can be hurled by mostly African-Americans in a deleterious tone and have no traces of love or “affection” baked into its pronouncement. How ugly is this?

The monstrous doctrine that this represents is that groups of people are given special privileges over language than others. If a given group outside the “special” group comments or draws something that is “offensive” to the former class, then that is equivalent to signing up for a beat down or meeting the end of your life. The “rigor” word only stands as another example of how collectivism and irrationalism bring together only brutes and savages. By clutching the false idealism of what it means to be black or Muslim, the people who go out of their way to throw blows or employ knives, guns, vehicles, and other weapons to attempt to perpetuate evil. The acts of wickedness prompted by these feelings are what ought to not be censored but censured and prosecuted wherever this may arise.

Rank: Dull roar

The government’s role ought not be to control airwaves, tv channels, and the Internet.

Instead of censoring content put on the radio, tv, and Internet, the politicians ought to be doing the only job that is conducive to their roles which is the protection of individual rights. Words that cannot be uttered during certain hours or at all should not be on the docket of the immoral and unnecessary FCC. The actions that the bureaucrats ought to be taking are to eliminate the FCC and enrich police and military forces with the power to stop all attacks from occurring against Americans.

With the FCC cast by the wayside, the government would be able to go after terrorists at home and abroad and bring about the peace and rationality that ought to take root in America. From the president on down, the goal ought to not be to shut up what are called “fake news” organizations or protesting athletes, or shut down Internet giants.

The end game ought to be instituting justice for those afflicted by the cruel hands of irrationalists and to safeguard the lives and property of everyone. Words and images cannot physically hurt anyone. However, scenes of child abuse or pornography, libel, slander, and fraud all constitute as immoral and illegal. Such fair should be on the minds of those in government and to police such images and words and remove them from daily existence. Additionally, government’s role is to be “hands off” when it comes to media platforms. Facebook and other huge corporate entities ought to be able to police themselves. This is the meaning of liberty. To be unencumbered by the thick hand of the State is what is meant by “life, liberty, and property” in some texts. This means that Twitter can allow any words or images that it chooses and reject others at its own discretion. Who needs government to do that? The self-confidence and discernment involved in the process of weeding out certain information that threatens or is illegal to show ought to be the main ideas, not a politician sticking his or her nose in affairs that don’t concern them.

Voices like Alex Jones should be heard on his own platform. If he was booted from Facebook and Alphabet, then why can’t he forge a path of his own and create his own Facebook or Alphabet? That is the problem with most people who feel that they have been censored. They emote that their rights have been violated and that they have been targeted unfairly. They lash out and scream and holler over the fact that their content was not deemed to be of the standards that the company to which they had attempted to upload or publish their work stopped them. This is for good cause. The minds behind the large tech companies have figured out algorithms, tests, and hired people to comb through lines and hours of content. No government could do this. Not only could they not do it, they should not do it. Jones and others who have been banned from Big Tech sites have only themselves to blame. No petitions to the government ought to be on the table, either. They can barely keep up with the fast-paced, whirlwind place that is the Internet.

Rank: Say it loud!