RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/will-elon-musk-save-the-first-amendment/

Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter was finalized last Friday, and the world’s richest man confirmed his reason for doing so: “I acquired Twitter because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence.” Musk is reacting to Twitter’s blatantly politicized censorship and bullying of conservatives and others who publicize opinions that challenge or expose progressive Democrats’ orthodoxy.

Here’s hoping that Musk keeps his nerve and reforms Twitter by purging its staff and policies that arrogantly run rough-shod over the First Amendment, based on their delusional belief that they are virtuous “brights” who are so certain of their superior knowledge that only they should be allowed to speak in the town square, and be charged with silencing heretics and blasphemers against their sacred narrative of “our democracy.”

What these censors don’t get is that free speech is not just an accessory to our Constitutional order, but a defining foundation of it. That’s why free speech is the first unalienable right to be codified in the Bill of Rights, for without it political freedom can’t exist.

This link between free speech and political freedom, moreover, arose in ancient Athens, the first government ever to allow non-elites, or the demos, the masses, to become citizens who voted, deliberated, consented to the laws, and served in offices. No matter how low their birth, how lacking in education, or poor, they were politically equal and free.

But giving citizens the right to speak without fear of retaliation in the public and civic spaces of the polis had to acknowledge the larger diversity of the new political community, compared to the oligarchies of wealth or birth, which were much more homogenous in their interests and way of life. Restricting political speech by rules of style or decorum, would necessarily function as a gatekeeper that excluded and diminished some citizens’ diverse ideas and arguments, and their various styles of presenting them.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/10/31/can-midterm-election-red-wave-heal-divided-america-ii-tipp-poll/

Americans remain deeply gloomy about the state of the nation’s unity, new data from the latest I&I/TIPP Poll show. The big question that looms is will the electorate’s sense that the U.S. has become more fragmented have a major impact on the outcome of the midterm election?

Each month, I&I/TIPP asks voters “In general, would you say the United States is”, followed by five possible responses: “Very united,” “Somewhat united,” “Somewhat divided,” “Very divided,” and “Not sure.” From these data we get a monthly reading, plus create an index that allows us to make comparisons over the lifetime of the index.

For October’s poll, the results showed a nation deeply concerned about the lack of unity of their fellow citizens, suggesting a growing political, cultural and ideological fragmentation among the electorate.

Just 28% said the nation was “united,” with only 13% saying “very united” and 15% saying “somewhat united.” That compares with 69%, or more than two to one, calling the nation “divided.” That includes 28% saying we’re “somewhat divided” and 41% saying we’re “very divided. Only 3% said they were not sure.

https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/pelosi-and-kavanaugh-murder-plots

David DePape, the suspect in an alleged assassination attempt against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, wrote a series of right-wing blog posts in recent weeks. “Many of the posts were filled with screeds against Jews, Black people, Democrats, the media and transgender people,” notes The Washington Post. “In one post, written on Oct. 19, the author urged former President Donald J. Trump to choose Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, as his vice-presidential candidate in 2024,” reports The New York Times. “In another,” wrote The Los Angeles Times, “he called ‘equity’ a leftist dog whistle ‘for the systematic oppression of white people’ and ‘diversity’ a ‘dog whistle for the genocide of the white race.’”

But the blog posts confirm my original reporting yesterday that DePape has been, for at least a decade, in the grip of a psychosis caused by mental illness and/or drug use. The Washington Post, to its credit, reports in the first paragraph that DePape’s blog was filled with “delusional thoughts, including that an invisible fairy attacked an acquaintance and sometimes appeared to him in the form of a bird” and that, as each post loaded, “a reader briefly glimpses an image of a person wearing a giant inflatable unicorn costume.” The New York Times acknowledged that, “mixed in with those posts were others about religion, the occult and images of fairies that the user said he had produced using an artificial intelligence imaging system,” albeit not until the 22nd paragraph.