The Attack on the First Amendment: the ACTUAL threat to Democracy!
John Kerry thinks the First Amendment hinders the ability to govern.
Establishment swamp creature John Kerry recently vilified the American First Amendment while speaking at a World Economic Forum event. According to Kerry that pesky free speech guarantee strongarms the government, making it “hard to govern.”
Kerry harkened back to the good old days when gatekeepers ensured a consensus on information. According to Kerry, social media has made it next to impossible to reach a consensus. The former presidential candidate believes there needs to be a way to hold purveyors of “misinformation” accountable for their fake facts.
Much of Kerry’s adult life has been spent working in politics. He is a former lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, a senator, and secretary of state under Obama, and he was named after the Hillary Clinton debacle. In 2004, the Democrats tapped him to take on incumbent George W. Bush, an election he lost. In 2021, Joe Biden brought Kerry back into the fray, giving Kerry the chance to fly around the world, injecting the atmosphere with carbon as he lectures people on climate.
Likely, Kerry sits back like Uncle Rico, reminiscing about days past. Instead of dreaming about high school football, Kerry feels nostalgic for the days when Americans were manipulated into believing the government.
The small, viral snippet is quite damning. Kerry doesn’t even try to hide his aims, stating the only way to rid us of our freedom of speech is to do it on the ground, through elections.
The way Kerry feels is likely how most establishment government types do. He’s of an era where political leaders were virtually deified. The former senator is from a different era of American history. He grew up connected as a member of the Forbes family, getting an expensive secondary school education before heading off to Yale. Kerry enjoyed quite the social scene, boating with John F. Kennedy and gaining admittance to several prominent social clubs. The days of the American aristocracy are long behind us, but Kerry is still hanging on.
America’s political leaders were highly respected during Kerry’s coming up. Those were the days when you literally flipped your TV dial to see what was on the three or four channels. News came from radio, newspapers, and news networks. The intelligence arms of the American government had great freedom, promising to protect Americans during times of great anxiety and impending global apocalypse.
Fast-forward to 2024, and Americans have information available in an instant. We all carry glowing rectangles that give us unlimited access to information in a flash. Fact-checking can be done instantaneously. What’s troublesome for members of Washington’s blob, probably the most troublesome, is the ability to communicate instantly with millions on social media.
This world of instant information and communication has left the political establishment behind. It’s how pathological liars like Joe Biden struggle to get away with the act. Whenever they demonize Donald Trump for debunked talking points, they still act as though the internet is non-existent. It’s like we can’t all see that Snopes exposed the “Very Fine People” hoax for precisely what it was: a hoax.
The game has been exposed. Older generations desperately cling to the idea that political play-acting is legitimate. Somehow, watching candidates put on a fake decorum as they debate over policy is real life. As everyone talks in robotic voices, sitting up with perfect posture, somehow people will think this represents a class of people who are better than all of us. They live in a world of sophistication and class, deserving our utmost respect and total control because we’re incapable of thinking for ourselves.
The social media generation has crumbled the very idea of the political establishment. I’m not talking about your aunt on Facebook, but users of platforms like Twitter, Rumble, and open platforms. Countless blogs, news sites, and publishing sites like Substack, which allow free speech, are the thorn, bleeding our trust in government.
What people like John Kerry fail to recognize, is the very reason why they’re being rejected. It’s not because they have access to endless streams of misinformation. It’s not because people are so stupid they’re just choosing the wrong source of information. It’s because they have access to the truth and the truth isn’t whatever establishment propaganda being spread on CNN or other corporate sources.
The recent pandemic spelled doom for the establishment, corporate, and media narrative. The writing was on the wall as corporate news networks spent nearly 24/7 talking about the evils of Donald Trump. These same networks cut up clips to paint the former president as a new kind of evil. The political establishment and deep state concocted stories, framing a sitting president for treason, yet there wasn’t a shred of evidence to back their claims.
Then came the pandemic, when “experts” and “scientists” backed by the government threw their weight around, forcing lockdowns and economic destruction. They sold people on a medical treatment that would reopen the world despite no proof this would work. Anybody who doubted their fearmongering was a purveyor of dis- or misinformation. In the end, those who rejected the government-media narrative were right. To many running the ship, though, it was because those people just happened to get lucky.
The lack of “consensus” is not borne of misinformation, as John Kerry claims. It’s a byproduct of common sense. The establishment clearly lacks this. Instead of working to earn back trust through telling the truth, they want a mechanism to block anyone from countering their manufactured truth.
John Kerry wags a finger at the First Amendment as it gets in the way of governing. That’s the point of the First Amendment. The founders recognized that the First Amendment was needed to critique the government. It dispels the gaslighting and fake narrative pushed by those who think they are above us. Nothing stops the government from “governing” aside from those who reject the storyline espoused by the government and media. Why do they reject it? According to Kerry, they draw information from a “sick” source.
The former Secretary of State implies that most Americans are too stupid to discern fact from fiction. They get their ideas only from outside sources who are antithetical to the interests of the US, even though rejection is an issue solely because these “leaders” have been exposed.
Somehow, you should believe that our political leaders have our best interests at heart. Somehow, we should believe they care about us. That they know what’s best, too, because their years spent floating aimlessly through the waves of bureaucracy have given them some level of knowledge we normal folks don’t have.
Despite the constant pearl-clutching about democracy under threat, there is something far more nefarious going on here. Something that is a far greater risk to your well-being. That’s the push to crush free speech.
VP candidate Tim Walz recently argued that there’s no “right to misinformation or hate speech” under the First Amendment. Supreme Court Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson recently said that the First Amendment “hamstrings” the government, hindering its ability to govern. This is someone tasked with upholding constitutional rights, yet she fails to understand the reason for these very rights. The federal government has exhausted resources going after social media companies, telling them to censor users.
When Elon Musk held an X space with Donald Trump, the EU wrote Musk a threatening letter, arguing that the space would violate European hate-speech laws. Any laws trying to curb “hate speech” and “misinformation” in the US would spell the end of your liberty. That is an absolute fact. Without your ability to speak freely, all other rights would be threatened because you could never voice the infringing of your rights after that.
The future generations of political leaders need to be hand-selected. Primary elections should be the central focus, as the only natural way to combat a bloated and heavy-handed government is to select the right people. The anti-establishment stance of the American First crowd is the ultimate threat, and there aren’t many willing to step up and put Americans first. That crowd is the ultimate threat to the establishment. Liberty-driven leadership is the only way forward.
At the end of Kerry’s viral clip, he states that the only real way to overcome that darn First Amendment is to win enough elections, putting people in place to peel back speech protections. This should inspire far more outrage than it has. Kerry targets social media despite most sites taking a heavy-handed approach to moderation. Only a few “free speech” venues still exist. Elon Musk will be their ultimate pariah as he made X a free speech platform. Presidential candidate Kamala Harris has already said that he should have to follow a set of moderation rules or lose his platform.
We need to understand how crucial it is to protect liberty. Protecting your ability to push back against the government narrative is the only way America survives. It doesn’t matter who wins in November. The drive to crush your free speech will continue to be an establishment aim going forward.