Dakota Beacon

If we learned one thing from the "covid" experience it was this:  We must NEVER again allow an "emergency" to override our Constitution, we must never allow our basic Constitutional rights to be stripped from us in the name of a "pandemic" or any other kind of emergency, EVER.  The reason is that if we do, the emergencies will keep on coming - they will never stop.  We will be forced to live in a perpetual emergency because that is how those in power become and remain dictators and we become and remain serfs.  Nothing must supersede our Constitution.

I recently had a conversation with a friend.  She dislikes TikTok, so she felt supportive of the “Restrict” bill now being debated in Congress.  As I have said here before, I most definitely do not support this bill.  The Restrict Bill would put you in jail or cost you $1 million in fines - at the government’s discretion -  if you so much as use your VPN for its intended purpose - to protect your privacy - should you want to look at TikTok or any other platform the government does not approve of. This doesn’t mean I approve of TikTok.  In fact, I believe it to be a detrimental, subversive element and one which is undermining our people - especially our young people.  It serves as a wonderful opportunity for people to embarrass themselves and gives others the fuel to mock them.  It undoubtedly gathers information for the CCP.  None of this is good.  But the greatest damage the Chinese Communist Party can possibly do to America is induce us to destroy ourselves.

How can China make us just like them without firing a shot?  How can they win the over-arching cultural war with what has been, throughout modern history, the most powerful nation on the planet and, not coincidentaly, the most free society in the world?  How can they most effectively defeat America?  And without expending one bullet or risking one Chinese soldier?  

They could do it by corrupting our government, which we know they have done, through buying a president’s loyalty through the laundering of his son’s income.  They could do it through causing misery and disease with the help of our paid bureaucrats, as they did through Anthony Fauci, our highest paid - ever - federal employee, by artificially engineering a virus to frighten us into suspending our basic human rights through lockdowns, imposing mask wearing, even to the point of forcing some of us to accept experimental injections as part and parcel of “getting back to normal” - in other words, blackmailing/bribing us with the simple desire to go about our own business, take care of our families and educate our children.  We’ve already seen this and we have also seen how readily our members of Congress have fallen in with their plans. They would love to see us ban guns and many are jumping on that bandwagon at many levels of government.  MInnesota is trying right now (HF 2890), in fact.  They would like to see our culture drowned by “transgender” mutilation of our schoolchildren -  and our kids as well as our military corrupted with Drag Queen story hours.  And they are getting a lot of help in this from some very foolish Americans, who would strip parents of the right to care for their own children and safeguard them.  The war on religion has been raging for nearly a century and it looks like religion is losing.  All of this makes Xi Jinping smile.

But the greatest defense we have against any and all of this is our Constitution.  America did not come with a royal family.  It did not provide for a dictatorship.  We do not pledge our allegiance to our government and we really shouldn’t to our flag.  Our allegiance must always be to the one common denominator of all patriotic and loyal Americans - our Constitution.  This is our historical political bedrock.  Whether we are Democrats or Republicans or anything else, the one institution with which we must absolutely maintain faith is that document. It is not a “living” document at all.  If it were it would mean nothing.  It is, rather, that bedrock upon which our nation’s amazing success was built, a truly unifying factor in a diverse and vibrant society, a free-enterprise system where someone with humble beginnings can become a millionaire, where a new immigrant can see his small business flourish and provide for his children.  It is because we have this Constitution.  It is what has historically made America a “nation of laws and not of men”, the equalizer.  

It was not the off-hand work of a few ignorant or hide-bound extremists back in 1787.  It was the product of thoughtful, sometimes heated, debate among the greatest minds of their - or quite possibly, any era, men from various walks of life.  Every word was weighed in its meaning of the time.  The Second Amendment, for example, was not for sportsmen or for some kind of Cossack enforcers - it was for citizens, as a defense against the tyranny the colonists had experienced and fought to escape.  It was so as not to leave the people naked against brute force.  It had nothing to do with deer hunting or skeet shooting.  It was entirely for the people’s self-protection and to ensure that no government would abuse them.  

Our First Amendment, the one which is under direct attack right now by the proponents of the egregious (and aptly-named) “Restrict” bill, was understood by these clear-thinking Founders as unquestionably essential to any kind of freedom.  It is a two-way street.  It implies not only the right to speak or write opinions freely, but for all to hear or read the words of others without restriction.  Of course the Founding Fathers would not have appreciated much of what we can find on TikTok or, for that matter, other platforms, or certainly not what the New York Times publishes.  But they would have defended the rights of people to say silly things, make foolish videos, publish the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Grand Forks Herald, whether they agreed with the editorial boards or not.  What they would not have endorsed would be censoring those whose opinions go against the government narrative or in any way punishing people for expressing thoughts and ideas that some, even many or most, disagree with.  The First Amendment is not to protect government speech or speech which agrees with it, but rather to protect those who disagree.  It’s obvious that we don’t need to protect the speech of those in power.  

The TikTok bill, or the “Restrict” bill appeals to a lot of conservatives who are fed up with the drivel and the undesirable aspects of TikTok.  They don’t like TikTok and perhaps fear it, so they want to ban it.  But in banning this often offensive platform this bill would, as the Patriot Act did, punish dissenters, steal our freedom - the freedom guaranteed by the Constitution - to think critically and to confront those with whom we disagree, the freedom to hear what others might have to say.  It is to endanger our future freedom.  Look what the government has already done!  During the “pandemic” our businesses were forcibly closed, people were jailed who simply tried to meet their payrolls.  Kids’ education was damaged, not only for the time being but for long into the future, the younger kids often slow to learn to talk, teens driven into deep depression.  No wonder.  And those who dared to question the government’s response or the so-called “science” were silenced.  Their posts were taken down, even when they cited official sources of information to support their views.  Doctors were stripped of medical licenses in some cases, lost their practices, or their academic careers.  Nurses and techs were fired if they challenged the “science”, the government story.  Now we know that much of what we were told by our government and our medical establishment was inaccurate at best, outright lies at worst.  It harmed us and our country.  

We do not need to empower these people to “restrict” our communication any further.  The price of freedom is that you sometimes have to take a chance on someone expressing an opinion you disagree with.  The price of your freedom to pursue your life choices is that there will be spies.  If you really worry about spies, here’s an idea for you - unplug your Alexa, take it out to the back yard and bury it six feet down.  Thow away your cell phone.  Better that than throw away or bury our Constitution.  

The Constitution was intended as a firm grounding for freedom, full of protections which were not known in any previous society, built-in so that if we would only live by these rules we could have a free life - free to fail or to become an expert in something, to build a business, to raise our children as we see fit, to worship as we please, to write what we like - even if it should be critical of those “in power”, because their power was restricted, not ours.  For 200 years it provided room to grow and develop.  We fine-tuned it so as to include all citizens.  And within our borders we could guarantee this freedom.  (Which is why borders matter.)  

By all means, read this “Restrict” bill.  You will find that it is a totalitarian’s dream.  If you so much as get up in the morning you can be fairly sure that at some point during the day you will violate something.  Some of you have taken the precaution of having a VPN to safeguard your privacy.  Under this bill, for example, if you use it to keep private that you have accessed any platform the government (under Biden at the moment, but always under un-elected bureaucrats as well) disapproves of, you can be subject to a minimum of 20 years in prison or $1 million in fines, or both.  This isn't about TikTok at all.  TikTok is merely the pretext for a massive power grab!  This is a disaster.  Americans have an absolute right as citizens to look at any platform and read anyone’s message.  That right is absolutely essential to our freedom.  

With respect to the issue of espionage via TikTok, I would ask you to reflect on this question:  Would you prefer to have the CCP, on the other side of the world, spy on you . . . or your own government, which can come to your home and kick down your door?  Just ponder it no pressure.  I would take my chances with the CCP and try my best to eliminate TikTok by other means, preferably neglect and abandonment of it by most American citizens of their own free will.  Banning access in government workplaces and schools can and probably should be accomplished without the Restrict bill.

If we don’t want our kids on TikTok, don’t supply them with the phones.  Better yet, don’t let a daycare or the public schools raise them for you.  Teach them sound values at home and demonstrate them.  (They won’t see your demonstration, though, if they are spending their formative years in daycare.)  Teach them and show them and supply them with the background to resist TikTok and its silly traps on their own.  We have fallen into error by allowing others to bring up our kids.  Now parents are shocked when they are not welcome to speak out at school board meetings.  It makes the news.  Tiktok is a problem only because parents have done a very poor job of raising their kids and teaching them values.   One value they should be teaching is our history and our Constitution.  There’s really no excuse in being ignorant.  If you can’t afford expensive college tuition (I know I can’t) you can go online and study the Federalist Papers and the Constitution through Hillsdale - for free.  I would encourage Kevin Cramer and others who support this unconstitutional “Restrict” bill to do just that.