Our country is facing a Free Speech crisis.

[Hafar1014]

As the people reject left wing ideology and propaganda ratings decline and revenues drop. Thats the ultimate test. Its not a free speech issue. Its what people want to hear. All the left wing media sources are losing support. People are tired of the BS false reports bold faced lies and dumb reporters. So we turn them off.

 

[frigidweirdo]

If Trump or his team peruse this site I would strongly advise them to not go down any such road. Based on YT and Twitter responses from conservative voters, it would cost them big time in the midterms and beyond.

Conservatives believe in the 1st Amendment and when Conservatives become Neo-Con they lose power for a long time.

Do they? As far as I can tell from conservatives (and liberals too) that they like rights when it's their thing, but not when it goes against what they think.

 

[Seymour Flops]

There is no way to know if a child was abducted from

There was no way that anyone can know if a child was abducted from their parents but how does that change the fact that they are here and seeing asylum?

I hope you're kidding.

Of course there is a way to know, or at least try to know. Get the kids biometrics, his or her name as well as they can give it and as much other information as the child could provide. Then contact the Mexican authorities and see if they have any information on that missing child. He or she is missing from somebody, they didn't appear at the border by magic.

As far as your other answers, they are all bullshit that do not address the Free Speech issue. In addition, it may be Trump's right to do what he did but it hurt a lot of people and helped no one.

It helped the American people who are tired of huge and wealthy corporationg being give free use of the airwaves and free enforcement of their licenses only to put tired and unfunny "comedians" on the air to punk those taxpayers who pay for all of that.

 

[NetJedi]

Do they? As far as I can tell from conservatives (and liberals too) that they like rights when it's their thing, but not when it goes against what they think.

I'd say historically what you say is true, both the "right" and "left" have at times been guilty of the suppression (or at least attempted suppression) of free expression. Over the last decade or so, conservatives have been generally consistent in support of free expression and 1st Amendment rights, but I believe this was primarily due to the concerted efforts by "the left" to silence them on all fronts (social media, universities, broadcast media, cable media, etc.., etc..). Now the pendulum is swinging back the other way I suspect "the right" will engage in the same behavior we've seen from "the left", I hope not but I'm not very optimistic.

In the left-right dichotomy its always the "an eye for an eye" mentality that dominates and the side that is in power becomes what it previously claimed to despise.

"An eye for an eye, making the whole world blind" -- Mohandas Ghandi

 

[Luckyone]

I hope you're kidding.

Of course there is a way to know, or at least try to know. Get the kids biometrics, his or her name as well as they can give it and as much other information as the child could provide. Then contact the Mexican authorities and see if they have any information on that missing child. He or she is missing from somebody, they didn't appear at the border by magic.

How do you know that wasn't done?

It helped the American people who are tired of huge and wealthy corporationg being give free use of the airwaves and free enforcement of their licenses only to put tired and unfunny "comedians" on the air to punk those taxpayers who pay for all of that.

You mean to say that Trump is not helping his own friends huge and wealthy corporations?

Hey, as far as the comedians, everyone has a choice, meaning if they don't want to see them, they don't. As far as paying for that, the corporations that have these comedians, pay for it out of their own pockets and they are not forced to hire them.

 

[Luckyone]

As the people reject left wing ideology and propaganda ratings decline and revenues drop. Thats the ultimate test. Its not a free speech issue. Its what people want to hear. All the left wing media sources are losing support. People are tired of the BS false reports bold faced lies and dumb reporters. So we turn them off.

Trump is specifically targeting those that have talked against him. That is trying to shut down free speech. No matter the thoughts involved, everyone has the right to express their ideas without being shut down for it.

It really is that plain and simple and if you are contesting that, it means you support a dictatorship and not a Democratic Republic.

 

[frigidweirdo]

I'd say historically what you say is true, both the "right" and "left" have at times been guilty of the suppression (or at least attempted suppression) of free expression. Over the last decade or so, conservatives have been generally consistent in support of free expression and 1st Amendment rights, but I believe this was primarily due to the concerted efforts by "the left" to silence them on all fronts (social media, universities, broadcast media, cable media, etc.., etc..). Now the pendulum is swinging back the other way I suspect "the right" will engage in the same behavior we've seen from "the left", I hope not but I'm not very optimistic.

In the left-right dichotomy its always the "an eye for an eye" mentality that dominates and the side that is in power becomes what it previously claimed to despise.

"An eye for an eye, making the whole world blind" -- Mohandas Ghandi

I don't think the right has been adverse to stopping freedom of speech in the last 10 years.

Trying to put down Black Lives Matter, a huge campaign to discredit them, to get them to shut up. The same for gay and trans activism as well.

This isn't me saying that rioting should be acceptable, but they went beyond saying "rioting is wrong", they said "oh, Black Lives Matter are Communists", the right wing's go to on anything when they can't think of much to attack someone with. Same in NY with the mayoral candidate, "he's a Muslim, he's a Communist, he should be kicked out of the country"

In fact the right wing's view is that "patriotism" is what they think, and anything else is "treason".

So, it happens equally on both sides. Just in different ways.

 

[SweetSue92]

Here is Trump just yesterday saying that 97% of the media is against him and since they all need licenses to stay open, their licenses should be revoked. In addition, it is not just the media he is trying to shut down. It is every company, institution and Federal departments that oppose him.

What is even worse is that a large number of all Republicans support him on this issue!



This all suggests that Freedom of Speech is no longer important and that being loyal to one man (Trump - no matter what he does), is now a requirement to stay in business, or even for an individual person to stay out of harm's way, simply by voicing his mind and his concerns.

He's talking about the Fairness Doctrine, and he's right. They're BEYOND unfair. Now your retribution is here. So cry about it I guess

 

[Seymour Flops]

How do you know that wasn't done?

The fact that you - a typical Democrat or "not Democrat" immediately said it was impossible is a clue to that. Anyway, you were defending the "humanity" of Biden's border policy. If you know that unaccompanied children dropped on the border were given even the slightest protection from cartels and not simply sent in-country to Cartel-associated sponsors, you can provide the evidence.

Otherwise, I believe my own eyes. These kids were treated as a commodity by both the cartels and the Autopen Administration.

You mean to say that Trump is not helping his own friends huge and wealthy corporations?

No, he is helping them also, along with the American people who are tired of being insulted nightly over the airwaves they pay for the networks to use. So you claim that it is "helping no one" is spurious.

Hey, as far as the comedians, everyone has a choice, meaning if they don't want to see them, they don't. As far as paying for that, the corporations that have these comedians, pay for it out of their own pockets and they are not forced to hire them.

No, but we are forced to pay taxes for the FCC, which protects the networks' use of the extremely valuable public airwaves. I don't think you get that. Democrats aren't good at defending free enterprise, because they don't understand it at all.

 

[Dorian Mode]

I'd say historically what you say is true, both the "right" and "left" have at times been guilty of the suppression (or at least attempted suppression) of free expression. Over the last decade or so, conservatives have been generally consistent in support of free expression and 1st Amendment rights, but I believe this was primarily due to the concerted efforts by "the left" to silence them on all fronts (social media, universities, broadcast media, cable media, etc.., etc..). Now the pendulum is swinging back the other way I suspect "the right" will engage in the same behavior we've seen from "the left", I hope not but I'm not very optimistic.

In the left-right dichotomy its always the "an eye for an eye" mentality that dominates and the side that is in power becomes what it previously claimed to despise.

"An eye for an eye, making the whole world blind" -- Mohandas Ghandi

There really does seem to be a race to the bottom in American politics. It started in the late 60's, festered during the 70's and 80's and started accelerating in the 90's. Now in 2025 we have the most embarrassing political situation in the entire world. And it's not because of Trump. Trump is certainly not the most refined person on the planet, but the way the democraps behaved over the last 20 years with their Identity Politics and Wokeness interwoven into mainstream politics is despicable. Then to make things 10X worse, their vile, incessant, and often unwarranted attacks on Trump over the last 10 years are inexcusable. I can comfortably say the GOP sucks and always has, but the democraps since Bill Clinton now really suck, and make Trump look great in comparison.

 

[NetJedi]

I don't think the right has been adverse to stopping freedom of speech in the last 10 years.

Trying to put down Black Lives Matter, a huge campaign to discredit them, to get them to shut up. The same for gay and trans activism as well.

Bad example:
Black Lives Matter pretty much discredited themselves with all the financial shenanigans of its leadership and then not doing a damn thing to improve the situation for African Americans, all that organization managed to do was participate in destroying African American neighborhoods and causing people to get injured or killed.

It became a grift as soon as the grass roots let it be hijacked by race hustling pimps.

In fact the right wing's view is that "patriotism" is what they think, and anything else is "treason".

So, it happens equally on both sides. Just in different ways.

While there are some prominent voices on the right that like to cry "treason" whenever someone Else doesn't fall in line with their view of what "patriotism" entails, I haven't seen anyone on the right censoring, de-platforming, de-banking and de-monetizing anyone over the last decade, have you? If you know of some examples, I'd like to hear them.

Calling people names is fine, criticizing people publicly is fine; censorship, de-platforming, de-banking, de-monetizing, banning speakers from campuses, bugging journalists and assassination is not acceptable.

We all saw what was in the "Twitter files" and what Zuckerberg himself had to say about government coercion and censorship and that was just the tip of the iceberg of what "the left" has been up to over the last decade, I really hope the right doesn't decide to pay them back in kind but I'm afraid that they will.

"If the left wants peace, there will be peace, if the right wants war, there will be no left"

 

[Crepitus]

Here is Trump just yesterday saying that 97% of the media is against him and since they all need licenses to stay open, their licenses should be revoked. In addition, it is not just the media he is trying to shut down. It is every company, institution and Federal departments that oppose him.

What is even worse is that a large number of all Republicans support him on this issue!



This all suggests that Freedom of Speech is no longer important and that being loyal to one man (Trump - no matter what he does), is now a requirement to stay in business, or even for an individual person to stay out of harm's way, simply by voicing his mind and his concerns.

The crisis is past, free speech lost.

 

[OhPleaseJustQuit]

The crisis is past, free speech lost.

.

We can see how you can believe that.







.

 

[frigidweirdo]

Bad example:
Black Lives Matter pretty much discredited themselves with all the financial shenanigans of its leadership and then not doing a damn thing to improve the situation for African Americans, all that organization managed to do was participate in destroying African American neighborhoods and causing people to get injured or killed.

It became a grift as soon as the grass roots let it be hijacked by race hustling pimps.

While there are some prominent voices on the right that like to cry "treason" whenever someone Else doesn't fall in line with their view of what "patriotism" entails, I haven't seen anyone on the right censoring, de-platforming, de-banking and de-monetizing anyone over the last decade, have you? If you know of some examples, I'd like to hear them.

Calling people names is fine, criticizing people publicly is fine; censorship, de-platforming, de-banking, de-monetizing, banning speakers from campuses, bugging journalists and assassination is not acceptable.

We all saw what was in the "Twitter files" and what Zuckerberg himself had to say about government coercion and censorship and that was just the tip of the iceberg of what "the left" has been up to over the last decade, I really hope the right doesn't decide to pay them back in kind but I'm afraid that they will.

"If the left wants peace, there will be peace, if the right wants war, there will be no left"

Perhaps the reason you think it's a "bad example" is because you've heard the right's discrediting of Black Lives Matter. Perhaps you just proved me right.

"de-platforming, de-banking and de-monetizing"

Instead we have them trying to stop people vote voting, trying to take over the Supreme Court, gerrymandering and all other kinds of things. You can be selective about what you think the left have done to silence people and say "well the right haven't done this, therefore they're not as bad" but the reality is, they're different, but not much different.

Assassination? Do you think that "the left" goes around assassinating people? As far as I can tell, the two recent assassinations have been one victim on the left and one on the right. Both seems to be have been done by isolated individuals, rather than a concerted effort to wipe out politicians on one side of the aisle.

 

[NetJedi]

Perhaps the reason you think it's a "bad example" is because you've heard the right's discrediting of Black Lives Matter. Perhaps you just proved me right.

I've heard it from all sides, including people that were part of that "movement" and walked away severely disappointed by the corruption.

"de-platforming, de-banking and de-monetizing"

Instead we have them trying to stop people vote voting, trying to take over the Supreme Court, gerrymandering and all other kinds of things. You can be selective about what you think the left have done to silence people and say "well the right haven't done this, therefore they're not as bad" but the reality is, they're different, but not much different.

Yeah the left has done all those things too but my list was getting kind of long so I didn't feel it was really necessary to include them.

Assassination? Do you think that "the left" goes around assassinating people

Uh-huh, not only committing assassinations but also publicly celebrating and justifying assassination, even now left wingers are publishing "wish lists" of targets all over social media following the Kirk assassination.

As a libertarian there used to be areas in common with myself and the left however that's all gone, anti-war left is dead, heck the left is now more pro-war than the Neo-cons, pro-civil liberties left, GONE, they give new meaning to the word "authoritarian", anti-establishment left, GONE, the left IS the establishment now.

I have many disagreements with conservatives but in general they handle disagreements far more reasonably and are far more trustworthy in response to them. The modern left has managed to accomplish something that I previously thought was impossible, they've convinced me to vote for and support Republicans.

 

[frigidweirdo]

I've heard it from all sides, including people that were part of that "movement" and walked away severely disappointed by the corruption.

Yeah the left has done all those things too but my list was getting kind of long so I didn't feel it was really necessary to include them.

Uh-huh, not only committing assassinations but also publicly celebrating and justifying assassination, even now left wingers are publishing "wish lists" of targets all over social media following the Kirk assassination.

As a libertarian there used to be areas in common with myself and the left however that's all gone, anti-war left is dead, heck the left is now more pro-war than the Neo-cons, pro-civil liberties left, GONE, they give new meaning to the word "authoritarian", anti-establishment left, GONE, the left IS the establishment now.

I have many disagreements with conservatives but in general they handle disagreements far more reasonably and are far more trustworthy in response to them. The modern left has managed to accomplish something that I previously thought was impossible, they've convinced me to vote for and support Republicans.

There might be corruption, there might be problems etc.

However the right went after them with everything they've got. Just like they protected slavery with everything they had, and segregation.

When Martin Luther King was out and about, with the civil rights movement, people were trying to discredit him and his movement.

Whether the movement has problems is an issue for the movement, the people who wanted to stop the movement from achieving its goals probably don't care about whether there's corruption or not, they just care to find things to attack them with.


Yes, the left has done this, the right has done that. The US political system, First Past The Post, is fuelling all this nonsense.

The celebrating the deaths of people isn't something only people on the left will do.
The amount of times I've seen people write "bomb the hell out of them" "nuke 'em" and all of that. Someone posted one where a dude on Twitter has complained about people celebrating the death of Kirk, and then another of his Twitter posts where he was calling for people to be killed.

There are sick people out there, people who get off on saying stupid stuff. So what? People on all sides that do this, and yet, the vast majority DON'T. But if one person does it then "The left blah blah" but if it's on the right it's "but it's just an individual"

And you talk like there is only one left, all people on the left think alike. Not true in the slightest. Just US politics is stifling people's opinions in favor of the machine of politics.

 

[RoshawnMarkwees]

No, we’re facing a retarded democrat crisis.

 

[EvilCat Breath]

One question for you based on your response:

"WHO decides whether it is in the public interest or not? Trump?"w

I personally believe that Steven Colbert and more so, Jon Stewart serve the public interest well. They bring up the issues that are facing the country and do it in a humorous way that drives it deeper and more understandable for. the public.

Trump already got rid of Colbert and is targeting Stewart.

In addition, and forgetting comedians and the media, he already got rid of the Department of Education and USAID, both of which served the public interest. So where does that leave your argument?

The FCC decides what is in the public interest. Privately held companies decide what is in their own interest. Getting rid of Colbert was a financial decision made by the company. He was no longer financially feasible. You would take that freedom from that company and make it a democrat propaganda source.

Neither the Department of Education nor USAID had anything to do with American interests. The DOE. should have gone when Jimmy Carter went.

 

[BluesLegend]

Lol, where was Luckyone and the boys when obama and biden were weaponizing depts and spying on their opposition, trying to incarcerate people for sending out Hillary memes, dictating to social media to squash any speech that contradicted the CDC message about the deadly and injurious mRNA injections.

That's (D)ifferent.

 

[Dorian Mode]

The crisis is past, free speech lost.

Yet the neo-left continues to freely spew copious amounts of misinformation and disinformation, especially concerning the POTUS, on this very forum. Seems like Free Speech is alive and doing very well. It's just not benefitting the neo-left as they want. Because I really think few on the left actually know exactly what the first amendment guarantees them, I'll post it for clarity:

First Amendment​

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Now, you friggin' morons, has congress made any laws that violate the first amendment? Can Jimmy Kimmel still peacefully assemble or petition the government for a redress of grievances? Jimmy Kimmel has all of his first amendment rights perfectly intact, Charlie Kirk no longer does though. One of your beloved Transtifa Militants silenced his ability to exercise his first amendment rights.