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Post by Michael Downing on Jul 21, 2014 18:07:08 GMT -5
tenthamendmentcenter.com/2014/07/16/chilling-free-speech-establishing-tyranny/Chilling Free Speech, Establishing TyrannyThe whole purpose of the First Amendment is to permit, encourage and even foment open, wide, robust debate about the policies and personnel of the government. That amendment presumes that individuals — not the government — will decide what language to read and hear. Because of that amendment, the marketplace of ideas — not the government — will determine which criticisms will sink in and sting and which will fall by the wayside and be forgotten. Surely, government officials can use words to defend themselves; in fact, one would hope they would. Yet, when the people fear exercising their expressive liberties because of how the governmental targets they criticize might use the power of the government to stifle them, we are no longer free. Expressing ideas, no matter how bold or brazen, is the personal exercise of a natural right that the government in a free society is powerless to touch, directly or indirectly. Yet, when the government succeeds in diminishing public discourse so that it only contains words and ideas of which the government approves, it will have succeeded in establishing tyranny. This tyranny — if it comes — will not come about overnight. It will begin in baby steps and triumph before we know it. Yet we do know that it already has begun.
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