{"id":7624,"date":"2016-09-19T19:46:48","date_gmt":"2016-09-20T00:46:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thetruthplainansimple.info\/thebiblerevealed\/?p=7624"},"modified":"2019-11-20T12:03:30","modified_gmt":"2019-11-20T18:03:30","slug":"is-congress-working-to-destroy-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thetruthplainansimple.info\/thebiblerevealed\/is-congress-working-to-destroy-free-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Congress Working To Destroy Free Speech?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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If there is no freedom of speech, then there is no United States of America. It\u2019s foundational to our liberty. Free speech isn\u2019t always speech we like, but it\u2019s necessary none the less.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Well, it seems as though the federal government wants to segregate speech into acceptable and unacceptable categories. According to Eugene Volokh at The Washington Post<\/em><\/a>, the House of Representatives passed the Consumer Review Fairness Act, which deals with form contracts between customers and businesses. But in the murk of legalese and jargon, a clause leaps to the forefront which sends a truckload of red flags, as Volokh notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The law \u201cshall not apply to the extent that a provision of a form contract prohibits . . . submission of,\u201d among other things, material that \u201ccontains the personal information or likeness of another person, or is libelous, harassing, abusive, obscene, vulgar, sexually explicit, or is inappropriate with respect to race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or other intrinsic characteristic.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

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So speech on all sorts of viewpoints would be protected by the proposed law, even against private contractual restrictions. A business couldn\u2019t require users to agree to a contract that forbids critical reviews. A fur store couldn\u2019t do the same as to anti-fur reviews; a restaurant couldn\u2019t do the same to reviews that faulted it for serving foie gras. A business whose owner was\u00a0pro-Donald Trump, and who was\u00a0afraid that clients would\u00a0learn this and would\u00a0then publicly excoriate him for it, couldn\u2019t do the same as to anti-Trump reviews. But contracts barring speech that \u201cis inappropriate\u201d (whatever that is) \u201cwith respect to race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or other intrinsic characteristic\u201d would remain perfectly legal.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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That\u2019s called unconstitutional. This is planting a seed of speech policing that could grow to allow federal lawmakers to decide what is appropriate speech and what is inappropriate speech. May it never be!<\/strong><\/p>\n

For those who\u2019ve forgotten, let\u2019s take another look at the Constitution\u2019s First Amendment. \u201cCongress shall make no law\u2026\u201d Stop right there. That\u2019s as clear as a bell. Continue:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Yet, it appears they are making a law that blurs the lines. It may be a first step and a very small one at that, but those steps will get larger, and our rights will erode faster unless we do something to call back that power. That\u2019s why an Article V Convention of States is now more important than ever.orking To Abolish\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      If there is no freedom of speech, then there is no United States of America. It\u2019s foundational to our liberty. Free speech isn\u2019t always speech we like, but it\u2019s necessary none the less.   Well, it seems as though the federal government wants to segregate speech into acceptable and unacceptable categories. According…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[117,883,867,886,93],"tags":[882],"class_list":["post-7624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-the-attack-on-free-speech-and-basic-american-freedoms","category-the-clinton-controversy","category-president-barack-obama","category-u-s-news","tag-is-congress-working-to-destroy-free-speech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetruthplainansimple.info\/thebiblerevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetruthplainansimple.info\/thebiblerevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetruthplainansimple.info\/thebiblerevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetruthplainansimple.info\/thebiblerevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetruthplainansimple.info\/thebiblerevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thetruthplainansimple.info\/thebiblerevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7624\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetruthplainansimple.info\/thebiblerevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetruthplainansimple.info\/thebiblerevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetruthplainansimple.info\/thebiblerevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}