The same regime that destroyed Lois Lerner’s emails and then lied about it to cover up its persecution of conservative political groups is looking for ways to censor internet speech so as to “assist in the preservation of open debate.”
Through a National Science Foundation grant, the U.S. government is paying for the creation of a database of “suspicious memes” and other “false and misleading” political ideas posted on social media.
“[The proposed technology] could mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda, and assist in the preservation of open debate,” the grant states.
Those sentences should be horrifying to anyone who wants to continue to live in a free society, but unfortunately, a lot of people don’t. They want their feelings protected from being hurt by being exposed to ideas that challenge their prejudices. e.g. Criticism of Obama’s policies, opposition to gay marriage, skepticism of human-caused global warming and anything else the left defines as “subversive” “misleading” or “hate speech.”
They want to silence the opposition, and they are working on the tools to do that.
Hat Tip: Sondra K
Winston worked at the Ministry of Truth. Winston was the creation of George Orwell. George Orwell (Eric Blair) wrote Nineteen Eighty Four based on his own “personal journey through this labyrinth of betrayal, back-stabbing and paranoia.”
The problem with any Ministry of Truth lies in determining what is actual without conjecture. That means, that the delusions, dreams, abstractions, jargon, double entendres, beliefs, perceptions, idealism, relativism, cultural artifacts, naiveté, concepts, interpretation, alternatives, consensus, illusion and allusion have been stripped away.
But, if the Ministry of Truth is the child of politics it must protect the mystique from which it arose, because it cannot serve two masters: the truth and the political force which created it.
Political power is all about projecting a type of imagined “reality.” If the outcome is not observable, it must at least be comprehensible. Being comprehensible leads to causality in which processes, statistics, variables, etc. lead to or toward a desired outcome or effect.
Clearly, “truth” and political “reality” are not one and the same. One only need look at the corpse of Michael Brown to see the issue. Is he the unarmed, hands in the air, gentle giant victim of the cops and the state or did he get himself killed by his actions? How would the Ministry of Truth handle this “two different worlds” clash of reality?
Clearly, any such government manipulation of the freedom of speech is a form of unilateral censorship. Who would you appoint to lead such an enterprise?
(I am fully aware that Orwell’s Ministry of Truth was to “correct” the past. But propaganda is all the same. So having a Ministry of Snopes is really no different once you have reason to doubt their credibility or recognize an ideology.)
More assaults on the COTUS and the Bill of Rights by the sociopaths within 2-3% of the population. If only the Germans and Russians of the 20th century knew they were dealing with 2-3% of the population.
If it’s not broke, don’t fix it; is the cliche’ that comes to mind & the govt under the libs is again laying the groundwork for altering a basic foundation for the country. Without regards, to the logic that it might someday be used against them, if indeed it is taken further & encoded into law.
At least, that’s what I get out of this & it’s only my opinion. But it’s not the only chipping away of our freedoms of expression & it’s well known that our idiotic US liberals admire Europe’s social democracy & it’s severe restrictions on speech & expression.
The one thing they want to suppress beyond all others is the Bolsheviks killing of over 160 million white Christians. Known as the Holodomor, they did it by first taking away their guns, then they took all the food at gunpoint even the seeds. Hennery Kissinger advocated using food as a weapon like this as well.
The time is fast coming where conservatives and libertarians will be utterly ostracized from society. We must be willing to get out while we can, or hunker down away from the centers of “culture.”
I’ll be disappointed if I’m left out of the database….
Eric Hines
There is something you must understand about liberals if you are to fight them effectively:
They know they are right. No, there is no debate. They are right. It’s that simple.
Their arrogance is clearly in the narcissism stage. It doesn’t matter what the facts are, if they disagree with their belief, the facts are wrong. That simple.
Once you understand that, You stop bothering to get them to see the truth. They already KNOW the truth, and you are wrong. If you continue to insist on talking, you are just causing trouble and need to be silence…by any means necessary…so the truth can be heard.
It’s scary, I know, but it’s unfortunately becoming more and more true every day.
9 year-old girl kills a shooting instructor with an Uzi.
@Ignatius many gay men don’t have strong enough wrists to handle the lift of Uzis. That’s why they make shot guns with ports on them like the O-Hole skeet shoot pic.
Another excellent recipient of the richly-deserved Darwin Award.
“Gun Control” is keeping your weapon pointed down-range at your intended target at all times…and two-round head-shots.
Stop disinformation? Obama Administration should be hardest hit.
Always amazes me how the Left has to shout down and decry opposition. If they had actual facts behind them, they wouldn’t NEED things like this. But, since their entire philosophy is based on lies and outright deceit, this is all they can do.
When your case is strong in the law, pound the law. When your case is strong in the facts, pound the facts. When your case is strong in neither, pound the table.
Gee, I wonder why the Left is always pounding the table?
It’s ATTACK – WATCH all over again.
It can be destroyed in exactly the same way.
As soon as it is up and running FLOOD it with perceived suspicious memes.
“Well, I heard you can’t keep your doctor!
Can’t be true, can it?
Obama promised!”
Stuff like that.
If I could censor speech, the first on my list would be the ACLU. It would keep them from poisoning society with its perverted values. For example requiring the U of Michigan to install a foot bath, at taxpayer expense, for muslim students to bathe their foot before entering into prayer; while forcing the removal of Crosses, Manger Scenes, and Menorahs from public squares. Next would be the main stream media, to see that they accurate present the news and not be a cheerleader, the same for newsprint media, a censor in every office to approval editorials and opinions prior to publication. Finally, the left wing blogs for the same reason and to prevent a tyranny by the minority. The more I think about it, it seems like the best possible government is a benign dictatorship!