Dakota Beacon

I saw an interesting pop poll on the internet the other day.  The question was whether the reader/viewer thought that now that Trump has been elected, should we go after his opponents and prosecute or punish them for what they have been saying.  Well, you can answer that yourself, of course.

My own answer would be in most cases a firm “no”.  It should be obvious.  We have been through more than four years of suppression of freedom of speech, press, assembly and redress of grievances and even suppression of our religious freedom, first through the insane response to “covid” and then through reaction to that insane response.  We have been through some very dark times in our nation’s history, when it was accepted that we could not hold religious services, that our restaurants and gyms and hair salons, etc., could be shut down and we could be forced to sit at home unemployed.  Our kids were denied the fake education that we pay for (although we did learn through this that it is vital for young kids to be able to speak and for toddlers to learn to speak at the proper times).  The masks were an outward symbol of the silence being forced upon us.

Also proscribed was any suggestion that we have some problems with election integrity.  Were you an “election denier”? Hundreds of thousands of Americans have harbored serious doubt as to the integrity of our election in 2020.  But it was not permitted to be aired, much less investigated.  If you said that January 6 was not an “insurrection”, you were labeled an “insurrectionist” yourself as well as an “election denier”. 

If you disapproved of the participation of the United States in the Ukraine war, or felt that our tax dollars (all $106 billion of them to date) should be spent on reducing our own debt, fulfilling our obligations to our own people in need, rather than lining the pockets of a deeply corrupt and cynical Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his cronies while annihilating the ordinary people of Ukraine in order to shore up our own corruption there, you were a monster and your views must be kept to yourself.  

The list of prohibited thought has been getting longer every day.  We are not allowed to call women women or men men.  We are punished if we use the “wrong” pronouns or the “wrong” names.   Our speech actually places boundaries on our thought.  Without free speech we have no freedom of thought.  We know that in nations such as North Korea or Iran, thought itself is prohibited.  Any action or speech which is outside the narrow boundaries of “acceptable” in such places is punished.  Now it has come here.  George Washington said, “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”  

Nothing has been so precious to us as our First Amendment, guaranteeing this freedom of expression, whether spoken, written, or as part of our right to assembly or the redress of grievances against our governments.  Nothing.  There is no way to imagine any other freedom without this.  So when we are asked, “Should opponents be punished when we are in power?” we should, without hesitation, say emphatically “no”.  

We do have laws protecting our justice system - laws against perjury, for example.  We do have laws which inhibit disorderly conduct which could threaten others such as screaming “fire!” in a crowded theater - the usual example.   Conspiracy to commit a crime is illegal.  But we should not run around, now that Trump has a mandate to clean up the mess again, punishing others for what they have been saying beyond those specific instances.  If you file a false police report, lie under oath in Congress or in Court, or as a professional in, say medicine, give medical advice and information you know to be false, this is actionable - in these cases you have caused harm.  

There are, as with many populist (that is to say, not based on principle) movements to take instant revenge without regard to principles.  Our Constitution - not our President, not our police, not anything less, is what we must consult before we go off on a binge of revenge for insults and lies.  We have defamation laws and those who have been harmed by defamation or false prosecution should pursue their cases with no holds barred, but as for the rest of the pathetic liars, we should look to our founding fathers’ belief in freedom of speech as the more important issue, not tagging some silly talk show host or pundit or placard-carrying protester.  One of the first things we should do is put an absolute end to any kind of coercion of compliance with a government narrative by the media.  A free press is also essential to freedom of speech and of thought.  We now know the truth - that the Democrat administration pressured media and social media platforms to censor comments and to suppress alternative points of view.  

We can see the harm done in recent years by merely suppressing information about “covid” and about various treatments for it - people died who might not have with proper treatment which might have included Ivermectin, for example.  Our medical establishment brought shame upon itself by separating people from their loved ones to die alone for no real medical reason, to increase the public panic and fear.  Had we been free to speak, doctors could have debated with evidence and knowledge the best way to handle an illness such as this.  Maybe if we had not suppressed the truth about the origin of the virus, we might have taken action to stop producing these viruses in labs.  

So my conclusion is that freedom of speech and press is far too important to sacrifice on the altar of revenge for the irresponsible, malicious and lunatic speech we have been hearing, the Trump Derangement Syndrome symptoms.  It would be far better to educate the deluded with more free speech than to punish them because they are benighted due to its denial.

That said, we should prosecute those who knowingly lied and it led to harm, such as Anthony Fauci.  He lied in just about every direction, knowing all the while that his sell-serving lies were causing harm and even death to thousands of people.  We have a right to know the truth about these things from those in a position to know.  That’s not the same as punishing some college kid or elderly person who believed him and passed it along.  

I have said before that we need to get our election process cleaned up and this might mean some prosecution based on lies - not “misinformation”, but lies.  And we should take action to end the presentation of opinion as fact by professional broadcasters.  Calling protestors peacefully walking to the Capitol “insurrectionists” gets them thrown in prison.  Calling our concerns about election integrity “baseless claims” as a “fact” prevents our clearing this up.  Those are professionals - the employees of NPR, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, and others, as well as our newspapers.  This amounts to defamation because they are perceived as having the truth - and so they should, if they are going to say these things.  Otherwise they could say “those who have questioned the efficacy and safety of the vaccine”, or “those who have called into question the election process in some of the states”, or “those who disagree that everything was done to ensure a fair process”, etc.  

I do believe we must finally resolve our division over our election processes.  So far we have not been hearing as much about fraud and unfair practices this year - some burned ballots or some dumped in a ditch, but on a smaller scale.  Any breach is too much because it denies us a voice, so we must restore fair elections and processes and thus our faith in our government.  Suppression of free speech has no place in this.