Ron Paul: Separate Tech and State

[WisconsinLiberty]

Separate Tech and State

Ron Paul
November 28, 2022


Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) recently got in touch with his inner mobster and threatened Elon Musk — the new owner of Twitter and the CEO of electric car company Tesla and space ventures company SpaceX. He told Musk, “Fix your companies” or “Congress will.” As part of this threat, Markey referred to an ongoing National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigation into Tesla’s autopilot driving system and Twitter’s 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Markey has done more than make threats: He is one of a group of Democratic senators who wrote to the FTC urging an investigation into whether Musk’s actions as the new owner of Twitter violated the consent decree or consumer protection laws. Since FTC Chair Lina Khan wants to investigate as many businesses as possible, it is likely she will respond favorably to the senators’ letter.

President Biden has also endorsed an investigation into the role foreign investors played in financing Musk’s Twitter purchase. Biden may be concerned that Musk is not likely to ban tweets regarding Hunter Biden’s business deals.

Concerns that Musk would allow tweets containing information embarrassing (or worse) to the Biden administration point to the real reason many Democratic politicians and progressive writers and activists are attacking Musk. They support efforts to suppress conservative, libertarian, and other “non-woke” speech on social media. They view the prospect of a major platform refusing to silence those who dissent from the woke mob or the Democratic Party establishment as a threat to their power. Musk further angered the left by committing what, to many Democrats (and Liz Cheney), is the ultimate hate crime — allowing Donald Trump back on Twitter.

The threat against Musk shows the threat to liberty is not just from big tech; it is from the alliance between big tech and big government.

Some conservatives think that increasing government’s power over social media is the correct way to make big tech respect free speech. However, increasing the US government’s power over social media can just end up putting more power behind government threats like those from Rep. Markey. Expanded government control over how social media companies conduct their business can also further incentivize the companies to work with the federal government to shut down free speech.

Once the government steps in with increased regulation, the risk is that greater government control over what is communicated on social media will follow. The question will just be who is calling the shots on the exercise of that control. Will the result be an increase of the liberal or “woke” pressure on social media companies to silence conservatives, libertarians, opponents of teaching critical race theory and transgenderism in schools, and those who question the safety and effectiveness of covid vaccines? Alternatively, will a new sort of pressure become dominant, maybe pressure to comply with conservative or Republican preferred limits on speech? Either way, liberty loses.

Big tech companies silence their users to curry favor with politicians and bureaucrats, often after “encouragement” from politicians and bureaucrats. Therefore, to end big tech’s censorship, Americans should demand that all government officials — including the president — not violate the First Amendment. We must work to put an end to government officials pressuring or even “encouraging” social media platforms either to silence any American citizen because of his opinions or to downplay or suppress any news story. The way to protect free speech online is to separate tech and state.

[dannno]

How do we separate TikTok from the state of China?

[CaptUSA]

I'd like to separate EVERYTHING from State, please.

[osan]

THis post is just another datum illustrating just how hosed we are.

In theory, we could neuter the "state" in short order, but that would require a critical mass of like-minded Americans that currently does not exist, nor is it likely to exist any time prior to hell freezing solid to the ninth circle. The reasons for this are several and not worth speaking of here. Suffice to say that the likelihood of Americans coming together to take proper measures to right-size so-called "government" is vanishingly small.

Consider the words used, as one example of how far down the poo-hole we really are. Even the great Ron Paul, for whom I still hold great respect and affection, refers to the "state" in ways that can easily be taken to connote a reality of its own, when in fact "state" is naught but an abstraction to which people so foolishly subscribe in their beliefs and, consequently, their behaviors. This never ceases to amaze me, no matter how low my opinion of the mean man falls. It astonishes me to no limit that so few people see the greatest fraud ever perpetrated against humanity. While I came to this revelation on my own long years ago, I s discovered corroboration in the writings of Bastiat. All any adult need do is pick up a copy and start reading. Freddie saw what I see, and I am sure tons of other smart men have as well. But that's not enough. The mean man needs to be taught, but he has no interest in learning because, being the corrupt bastard that he is, it is far more convenient to go along to get along.

Some may think this some sort of pedantic irrelevancy, but I assure everyone that it is not. It is a philosophical point expressed as an analytic statement that exposes this horrific cancer that has been foisted upon humanity. Words are the single most important things in our lives because they enable abstract thought. Our words form our thoughts and our thoughts form our realities. Therefore, the only proper place to begin the process of coming to truth is by changing the words we use, to analyze our current usages (e.g. "state" and "government") to discover their truer natures, and then apply that understanding in whatever ways may make sense to us. But understanding is absolutely key, and the path to that is through picking apart the notions so many of us take for granted as being true, or at least set in stone.

What word would I use in place of "state" or "government"? Ron Paul, above, refers to a Congressman's "inner mobster", and I think "mob" and "mobster" are perfectly appropriate terms to replace the lies that are "state" and "government". Perhaps someone has a better suggestion. Maybe a new term should be coined... how about "psemata" from the Greek for "lies"?

I'm serious as a heart attack about this. People need to be jogged loose from their mental cages and the only real way to do it without beating them with iron bars, is to change the words they use. Without this, people either never find their ways out of their mental prisons, or emerge only to get sucked back in because they are so habituated to that old way of thinking, which is heavily influenced by the words they utter, which serve only to reinforce the walls of their cells.

Broadly speaking, our problems are so vast and deeply rooted, few are able to see what is really going on... forest for the trees and all that. Change in the relevant sense here must start at the most fundamental levels of human cognition. The best way is to use different words. For those who doubt, just consider the wild successes of the "left", largely courtesy of CPUSA. Consider the vast impact of the made-up, phoney baloney term "racism" has had on the entirety of humanity. The communists needed a hammer, and that was it. The same may be said of all manner of words that have been vomited forth into the laps of humanity over the last 100 or so years, and they left keeps churning them out. "Non-binary", the bastardized use of "cis-", "gender fluid", and so on down what is now a considerable list of vacuously inane terms that have no precise meanings, are semantically redundant at best, but which carry vast emotional impact for those who have embraced their use, the most significant of those emotions being blind rage and bitter envy.

One need not work too hard to find example after example of such words arising, almost exclusively from the so-called "left", the degenerate, regressive "progressives". Stop your minds for a moment and endeavor to quell the noises in your head, then get to the heart of things. You will see what I mean. To use Theire terms is to play their game. The left discovered this long ago and twigged to the idea of making up their own terms. It has been successful enough to bring the human world to its current, dolorous pass. It has been so successful precisely because so many have been willing to adopt Theire phony baloney words, which perforce sets people to play Theire game.

In my opinion, those of us who are serious about human autonomy would be well served by following the example of the communists, those endlessly clever devils, and start contriving, disseminating, and bringing into common use terms intended to break the Meaner's state of catatonia. So long as one uses words like "state", the idea behind the term retains vaildity. THAT is the power of the word, and it must be recognized, understood, and respected for what it is if there is to be any hope of recapturing liberty from the jaws of the globalist stooges.

"State" and "government" are terms that signify grand lies that have foisted more evil upon the world of men than all other sources combined by several orders of magnitude. Do what the left does, however distasteful one may find it, because it works. Expose the lies and repeat the process over and over until people can no longer lie to themselves about the lies they have consumed and made part of their core beings.

At the very least, doing this will set the lefties to ever greater rage and howling, which can only be a good thing because such wildly blind extremity of negative emotion tends to put people off balance, and that is precisely where we want them. Weaken them and keep them that way chronically, forcing them to the choice to pipe down or move to physicality, the latter of which I have no trouble with because at this point we have little to lose by going to war. Would that people came to their senses and became decent enough to respect their fellows, but that contingency appears to carry with it no practically significant chance of being realized. That leaves two possibilities: we capitulate to tyranny, or we fight. I say fight and bring as many of those bastards to hell as you can. But first things first. We, the purported good guys, have failed miserably in our duties to all that is good between men. Rather than feel shame, I'd prefer we began acting in accord with the things we claim to hold dear. At this point circumstance is so degraded, we can no longer afford the luxuries of the higher road. Our very existences, certainly the qualities thereof, are in question and we are at that nexus point where we will decide how we will meet the coming troubles. And as I have noted many times in the past, each of us will indeed choose. The only question remaining will be whether we do so proactively, or by a miserable and pathetic default. Either way, there will be no escaping it, so I'd suggest everyone take a goodly moment or ten to sit with himself in a quiet place with no TV or cell phone, and think seriously about how you will respond when Theye come knocking.

Find new words. I've offered one possibility. If it's no good, do better. Fight the left with their own tools and give no quarter because they want you set to wrack and ruin. Will you simply lay down for the likes of Obamas? Clintons? Bushes? McConnells? All the vermin scum we supposedly despise? What would it say about us to simply give in? Start in the right ways, but be ready for blood if things come to that. Better that than taking a knee to those unworthy clean your spoiled boot with their tongues.

Best wishes.

[Brian4Liberty]

How do we separate TikTok from the state of China?

https://twitter.com/KristiNoem/statu...78584742572033

[Occam's Banana]

How do we separate TikTok from the state of China?

https://twitter.com/KristiNoem/statu...78584742572033

But will South Dakota continue to have part in the intelligence gathering operations of the Chinese Communist Party American fascist agencies?

https://twitter.com/KennedyNation/st...70925569806336

Kennedy: "You have a lot of people, particularly Republicans right now, who are up in arms about TikTok surveilling American users, but [...] look at what the federal government has been doing [...] based on Edward Snowden's revelations, and [...] what we have learned from the Twitter files [about] what the government was doing with Big Tech, and today we learn that the Pentagon was using Twitter as a propaganda arm."

Spike: "Exactly. This is just what we know about from Twitter, and it's just what we know about with basically two stories - the Hunter Biden laptop story with the FBI, and the Pentagon having their fake propaganda accounts whitelisted and given blue check marks when Twitter knew that they were spreading disinformation, and even breaking federal law by interacting with known foreign terrorist groups like ISIS. But they were still green-lighting them and giving them [special privileges, and] that's just these two things that we know about. I increasingly think, because I was always suspicious of this push by the US government to ban TikTok, and they would say [...] "they're colluding with the Chinese government", and I'm sure that's true - but so is Google, so is Disney, so is the NBA, for that matter. Everyone's doing the bidding of the Chinese government. The fact that they're picking on TikTok, I think, is because [TikTok is] not colluding with the US government the way the other Big Tech [companies] are [...]."

[Brian4Liberty]

But will South Dakota continue to have part in the intelligence gathering operations of the Chinese Communist Party American fascist agencies?

Kennedy: "You have a lot of people, particularly Republicans right now, who are up in arms about TikTok surveilling American users, but [...] look at what the federal government has been doing [...] based on Edward Snowden's revelations, and [...] what we have learned from the Twitter files [about] what the government was doing with Big Tech, and today we learn that the Pentagon was using Twitter as a propaganda arm."

Spike: "Exactly. This is just what we know about from Twitter, and it's just what we know about with basically two stories - the Hunter Biden laptop story with the FBI, and the Pentagon having their fake propaganda accounts whitelisted and given blue check marks when Twitter knew that they were spreading disinformation, and even breaking federal law by interacting with known foreign terrorist groups like ISIS. But they were still green-lighting them and giving them [special privileges, and] that's just these two things that we know about. I increasingly think, because I was always suspicious of this push by the US government to ban TikTok, and they would say [...] "they're colluding with the Chinese government", and I'm sure that's true - but so is Google, so is Disney, so is the NBA, for that matter. Everyone's doing the bidding of the Chinese government. The fact that they're picking on TikTok, I think, is because [TikTok is] not colluding with the US government the way the other Big Tech [companies] are [...]."

I saw that. Very possible. I'd have to guess that the FBI has already attempted to exert the same influence on TikTok. How successful have they been? Any FBI people or Democrats have jobs at the US version of TikTok yet?

If TikTok has not been compliant enough, it would certainly make sense for threats to ban TikTok to be an attempt to gain leverage, just like threats from Congress about regulating Silicon Valley companies was probably leverage.