Astonishing California bill would shut down free speech, require fact-checkers

by John Rappaport

The new Pope of NSA-Google-Facebook

The Free Individual is greater than the State

Why the political Left feels emboldened to shut down free speech

By Jon Rappoport

First of all, when I talk about the so-called political Left, I’m talking about people who are firmly in the Globalist camp. They may not know they are, but they are.

The Globalists work through various versions of socialism and quasi-socialism and Communism and Marxism and “free the people” and all sorts of other slogans and guiding ideas. These political philosophies and strategies have nothing to do with Globalism per se—they’re just provisional tactics Globalists use to gain power, because power is the goal. Their system is top-heavy control under a variety of names and deceptions. That’s just the way it is.

The Globalists are run by crony capitalists at the top who stole their way to riches and then turned around and decided to limit the game, so they would remain in charge. Their approach is to appear humane. It’s a lie. Their goal is straightforward: they want to make the planet one nation, which they operate like a machine. The stand for The Machine, and against life.

The political Left, at ground level, is clueless about all of this. They’re sucked in by the humane propaganda. They look to a utopia where nobody has to work or earn money. Many of these ground troops are hoping and dreaming about that day because they’re convinced they can’t make it in an open market. That, too, is just the way it is.

Now they’re emboldened to shut down free speech, meaning speech and language and words and ideas they don’t like, because…

They’re finding out they can.

That’s the simple answer.

They can.

It gives them a sense of power they haven’t felt. They can do “big things.” They can riot and throw bricks through store windows and shut down campus speeches and whine and cry about trigger words and safe spaces and get away with it. They can have an impact. They’ve never experienced that before.

It moves the adrenaline. It moves the blood. It lights a fire.

If no one keeps free speech available, if no one cares about the Constitution, the field of operation is a grand opportunity: Shut down free speech. It feels real. It seems important. There’s a direct cause-and-effect result. WE SCREAMED AND PROTESTED AND DEMANDED AND RIOTED AND THE PEOPLE IN CHARGE WENT ALONG WITH US. THEY SHUT DOWN WHAT WE DON’T LIKE.

So the close-out tactic becomes fashionable. The thing to do. The trendy action. It’s a sport. “I can’t play on a team or study or think or contemplate what I really want to do in life, but I can do this. I can close people’s mouths.”

And higher on the Globalist food chain, there are people who are praising the end of the 1st Amendment. This gives the clueless ground troops a jolt of confidence. This tells the troops they’re really working toward a better society and a better world. “Bad people are saying bad things. If I stop the bad people, humanity will make progress…”

It’s easy to see how a dumbed-down education system permits such a “stop the bad people” formulation to come into existence and bloom like a poisonous plant.

Instead of a system that tries to raise students up and make them smarter, so they can discover where the real political power is in this world and what that power is trying to achieve, the op is all about seeking the lowest common denominator, and pushing down young minds to a primitive “good vs. bad” notion with the goal of censoring the bad into extinction.

The ground troops of the censorship op are receiving elite support. That’s the catch:

“We, the leaders, are on your side in the struggle to reach a better future, and in order to do that we have to make you as dumb as a rock, while you actually believe you’re smart and on the cutting edge.”

Of course, across the planet, oppression of populations is quite real. Is the solution opening up markets to something resembling freedom; or is it handing over control to governments, who collude with each other and with mega-corporations and banks, to institute a centralized worldwide system of production and distribution of goods and services?

“A better world is at hand. Soon we will create a specific center that rules One Economy for All. We will determine what is manufactured and who will benefit. We will decide who eats and who goes hungry. We will decide how much energy each person can consume in a given time period. We will act for the greatest good. We will be kind. Count on us.”

If you actually framed the future in those terms, and if the people who are trying to shut down free speech actually understood they were serving that master, would they continue their attack against open speech and debate?

It’s hard to tell. People can reach such levels of mindless non-comprehension, they no longer care. They’ve crossed the line. Pulling them back from the abyss is a herculean task.

Better to keep promoting free speech and engaging in it.

In the long run, freedom is more contagious than the appetite for destruction. Sometimes the long run is very long, but it doesn’t matter.

As an example, independent media will survive, despite all attempts to censor it.

If indeed the recent temporary shutdown of my website, which is now back up and running, was an illustration of someone’s censorship—well, I’m still here.

Overall, the struggle of centuries to establish individual freedom are not in vain, must not be in vain. Once again we are seeing that what we take for granted is not automatic. We must assert our rights. We must not stop.

The lesson is not always easy. But we have to learn it.

As always, there are people who can’t stand freedom. They recoil from it, as if it is a threat to their very survival. Having sunk to such a low level, they attack the basis of life itself.

So be it.

We’re not going anywhere.

Source: Why the political Left feels emboldened to shut down free speech

Power of the states vs. power of the federal government: who cares? « Jon Rappoport’s Blog

By Jon Rappoport

There are 50 countries in the US. They’re called states.

All right, that’s an exaggeration. They are states. But they could be countries.

If you don’t think so, consider the 2015 state budget of tiny Rhode Island: $8.9 billion. The 2016 budget for the nation of Somalia was $216 million.

The 10th Amendment to the US Constitution reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States [government] by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

The 11th Amendment reads: “The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.”

If you combine these two Amendments, you begin to see the considerable powers granted to the states.

Of course, now, relatively few people care about these powers. They should, but they don’t. […]

Read the entire article at its Source: Power of the states vs. power of the federal government: who cares? « Jon Rappoport’s Blog

Mike Adams, Alex Jones, and the war against the 1st Amendment « Jon Rappoport’s Blog

“Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges.” (Blazing Saddles, 1974)Free speech? We don’t need no stinking free speech.

In the wake of the economic and political censorship imposed on Infowars and Natural News (Google’s delisting of Natural News has now been lifted), it’s become apparent that free speech is passe. Why did we ever need it? Let’s get rid of that illusion.

Let’s embrace, instead, the consensus of virtue-signaling heroes.

If something is offensive, rub it out.

In Alex Jones’ case, a large company that places ads, adroll, decided to drop Jones’ site, Infowars, as a client. The decision still stands. The loss of revenue for Infowars is estimated at $3 million.

Here are the top 12 reasons for eliminating free speech.

ONE: “I’m triggered by what you just said. Stop talking.”

TWO: People who say certain things could give other people the wrong ideas. […]

Read the rest of the reasons at the Source: Mike Adams, Alex Jones, and the war against the 1st Amendment « Jon Rappoport’s Blog

Jefferson Was Correct – The Road Less Traveled

Jefferson’s Final Warnings (He was right)

In his last years – after a lifetime of learning and experience, Jefferson had one thing preeminently on his mind: the principle of decentralized government.

Rather than saying “centralization,” Jefferson used the word “consolidation,” but they mean the same thing. Here’s his core statement on the subject, from his autobiography, written in 1821:

It is not by the consolidation, or concentration, of powers, but by their distribution, that good government is effected.

This statement put Jefferson at odds with the political leaders of his time and raised difficulties for him, as he writes in a letter to Judge William Johnson in 1823:

I have been blamed for saying, that a prevalence of the doctrines of consolidation would one day call for reformation or revolution.

For the following passage – a letter to William Johnson, written in 1822 – Jefferson’s words are set in italics and explanation/commentary in plain text:

They [a political party] rally to the point which they think next best, a consolidated government.

Here he points out that political parties tend to favor centralization, which they certainly have since.

Their aim is now, therefore, to break down the rights reserved by the Constitution to the States as a bulwark against that consolidation.

This party is trying to steal the power of the individual States and centralize it in one city, and they are willing to alter or bypass the Constitution to do so. The fear of which produced the whole of the opposition to the Constitution at its birth….

Here Jefferson is saying the Anti-Federalists were right and that the Constitution could not prevent the theft of liberties by the national government.

I trust…that the friends of the real Constitution and Union will prevail against consolidation, as they have done against monarchism.

Notice his phrase, “the real Constitution.” Already in 1822, he needed to make this distinction, because the Constitution was already being twisted, overridden, and bypassed. Alternately, he may have been referring to the original Articles of Confederation.

In a letter to William T. Barry in 1822, Jefferson writes this:

The foundations are already deeply laid by their [the Supreme Court Justices’] decisions for the annihilation of constitutional State rights, and the removal of every check, every counterpoise to the engulfing power of which themselves are to make a sovereign part.

Jefferson is likely referring to the Marbury v. Madison decision of 1803, a decision that American schoolchildren are taught to revere. Jefferson, however, considered it a disaster, as he explained in the following:

The question whether the judges are invested with exclusive authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law has been heretofore a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties. Certainly there is not a word in the Constitution which has given that power to them more than to the Executive or Legislative branches.

—Thomas Jefferson to W. H. Torrance, 1815. ME 14:303

But the Chief Justice says, ‘There must be an ultimate arbiter somewhere.’ True, there must; but does that prove it is either party? The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union, assembled by their deputies in convention, at the call of Congress or of two-thirds of the States. Let them decide to which they mean to give an authority claimed by two of their organs. And it has been the peculiar wisdom and felicity of our Constitution, to have provided this peaceable appeal, where that of other nations is at once to force.

—Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823. ME 15:451

But, you may ask, if the two departments [i.e., federal and state] should claim each the same subject of power, where is the common umpire to decide ultimately between them? In cases of little importance or urgency, the prudence of both parties will keep them aloof from the questionable ground; but if it can neither be avoided nor compromised, a convention of the States must be called to ascribe the doubtful power to that department which they may think best.

—Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. ME 16:47

This member of the Government (the Supreme Court) was at first considered as the most harmless and helpless of all its organs. But it has proved that the power of declaring what the law is, ad libitum (at one’s pleasure), by sapping and mining slyly and without alarm the foundations of the Constitution, can do what open force would not dare to attempt.

—Thomas Jefferson to Edward Livingston, 1825. ME 16:114

Clearly, this action by the early Supreme Court was extremely alarming and vexatious to Jefferson. Though, what he couldn’t foresee was the plethora of Supreme Court decisions extending and expanding the unitary power contributing to the destruction of state rights.

Jefferson continues:

If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface.

Lincoln’s Civil War (which enslaved the states to the national government) brought the states under a single government. Washington DC is the seat of the American Empire, and the individual states are minor players. It was supposed to be the other way around. Unfortunately, most people have no real appreciation for the treason of this action. This is precisely where the precipitous decline of this federation of independent states began. This action was immediately reinforced by the passage of the 14th Amendment (Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868), which, among other things, created the heretofore unheard of “United States Citizenship.” It’s instructive to note that this amendment was issued and ratified over a two year period where only a few of the southern states had been readmitted to congress, these re-admissions occurring between 1866 and 1870.

Here is a fragment from Jefferson’s letter to C.W. Gooch in 1826:

…I have little hope that the torrent of consolidation can be withstood….

Finally, a passage from his letter to William B. Giles, in 1825:

I see…with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the usurpation of all the rights reserved to the States, and the consolidation in itself of all powers, foreign and domestic; and that too, by constructions which, if legitimate, leave no limits to their power.

(Adapted and expanded from Jefferson’s Final Warnings http://www.freemansperspective.com/author/freemansperspective/)

Source: Jefferson Was Correct – The Road Less Traveled