A Tyranny Brews In Washington
https://issuesinsights.com/2022/06/17/a-tyranny-brews-in-washington/
One of the hallmarks of authoritarianism is the crushing of free expression. Speaking against the state is not allowed. What, then, to make of the Biden’s administration’s efforts to silence Americans?
We’ve editorialized against the Disinformation Governance Board, which is wounded though not as dead yet as it should be. That’s but one example. Add to that the White House’s campaign to enlist the private sector in muzzling voices that dare oppose the loony green energy policies Democrats have been trying to force on the country for decades. It’s not just the Second Amendment this administration wants to erase, it’s the first one, too.
Many Americans are skeptical of the promises that renewables like wind and solar will not only meet this country’s energy needs but will do it at low cost. We have many times over the years shown why this distrust is warranted. So have our valued contributors, most recently when H. Sterling Burnett of the Heartland Institute wrote that “belief that wind, solar, batteries, and electric vehicles combined can effectively and cheaply power the nation … is foolish and belied by existing evidence.”
I&I has also made the case over and over, as we did last month, that the claims that man is overheating his only planet are, well, overheated themselves. Doing so has probably put us on a White House blacklist of dissenters whose ideas have to be squashed. We think of it as an honor.
Though he served under the pen-and-phone president, Joe Biden has not issued an executive order that would prohibit challenges to the green narrative. This is not necessarily to his credit, because, for now, the administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress want to enlist the private sector to censor speech it doesn’t like.
This became clearer than ever in an interview last week in which White House National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy, the Obama EPA director whose current “job” should not even exist, said “tech companies have to stop allowing specific individuals over and over again to spread disinformation.”
“We need the tech companies to really jump in,” she added.
McCarthy’s friendly media inquisitor set up this useless bureaucrat to further endorse speech-policing when she asked: “Isn’t misinformation and disinfo around climate a threat to public health itself?”
To which McCarthy replied: “Oh, absolutely.”
This is a variation on a theme to chill speech that the ruling class and party don’t like. This administration has already asked the private sector to be its agent in censorship. Before that, congressional Democrats were using hearings “to exert control over the content on these online platforms,” independent journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote last year, because they wanted the country to believe that “misinformation and disinformation” was “plaguing online platforms.”
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