Although I tend to focus on stuff going on in America, there are times when I do have to train my gaze elsewhere just to see if their Leftists are as fucked up as ours are. Given what I just read, I can say they are.
The Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper that has its origins in two newspapers established in the 19th Century, published an opinion piece with the scorching hot take…excessive free speech is bad. I would chalk this up to frostbite affecting Canadian Leftists’ brains, but it’s harder to do so when American Leftists seem to have taken on a similar viewpoint.
Hoo boy. This is gonna get messy.
free speech
What the Left thinks it means – a right that has become too dangerous not to be curtailed by government
What it really means – a weapon the Left doesn’t want you to have so you can’t call out its bullshit
It wasn’t that long ago that liberals and even Leftists held free speech in high esteem, mainly because they were the ones exercising it the most at the expense of the Establishment. Recent First Amendment pioneers like Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Norman Lear, Richard Pryor, and so many others made their livings off thumbing their noses at those who would seek to control their speech. To them, free speech wasn’t just a proverbial hill to die on; it was their jobs.
Then, something happened. (Sorry, I was cribbing notes off Rep. Ilhan Omar for a second.) It’s hard to pinpoint when Leftists decided free speech was a bridge too far, but I would say it had something to do with Ronald Reagan spearheading the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine. In theory, the Fairness Doctrine required controversial topics get an equal hearing, and it was good at the time mainly because the most controversial topics during the bulk of the time the Fairness Doctrine was in place was whether mayonnaise or Miracle Whip made better egg salad.
But as the Left went nucking futs and media companies started to concern themselves with financial viability more than principles, the Fairness Doctrine started to be more one-sided towards more “mainstream” opinions (which would exclude most of Leftist ideals then and now). So Leftists did what they normally do: overwhelm the system to the point they took it over. Then, they didn’t give one-tenth of one shit about fairness because they could run whatever opinions they wanted while simultaneously bashing Reagan for repealing the Fairness Doctrine.
So, a win-win for them.
And with the kind of power the Left has within the media comes the temptation to use it to quiet the opposition. That’s why they demanded conservative talk radio show hosts like Rush Limbaugh be forced to comply with the Fairness Doctrine (even when they didn’t believe it). After all, what good are rules unless you can fuck over someone else in the process, amirite?
That’s one of the fundamental differences between a liberal and a Leftist. A liberal will work within the system to address inequity through compromise. A Leftist will warp the system to created inequity in the name of equity through force. The latter is often the quicker option, which benefits Leftists on many levels (mainly because they don’t want to wait for people to come around to their point of view). And let’s not forget the satisfaction of near-instant gratification. But as it too often occurs with microwave popcorn, it starts to stink if you’re not paying attention to it.
This brings us to the current state of Leftist hatred of free speech. To them, the only people who should have free speech are those who parrot Leftist squawking points. But that’s not free speech; it’s controlled speech. Free speech requires the ability to have pushback, which is something Leftists hate. They need to have control of the not just the narrative, but the means by which any narrative gets disseminated.
But in a world where there are people who have more ways to communicate than Baskin Robbins has flavors, it’s getting harder for the Left to dominate like they once did. That’s why they’re trying to rebrand anything they don’t agree with as “misinformation.” Even when it’s not. This goes into Leftist delusions about being fucking brilliant when they’re dumber than a bag of hammers, but that’s a blog post for a different time.
In the interest of transparency (and to fill out this Leftist Lexicon entry a bit more), I am a free speech fan. I mean, how couldn’t I be when being able to express myself is my gig here? To me, the solution to bad speech is more speech, not less. You want to shout racist sentiments at a black family? Yell more tolerant sentiments back, or at the very least tell the other party their hood’s on crooked. Yes, there are some limitations to that (the whole “with great power comes great responsibility” thing), but I would prefer to live where I can be shouted down instead of where I can be shot or beaten.
And, yes, that’s where the Left really wants to take this. There are Leftists out there who would think nothing of bashing someone’s head in with a brick for the crime of…not agreeing with them. If you thought the “fiery but mostly peaceful” Summer of Love was bad, just wait until Leftists decide to turn your words into their actions.
For my Canadian readers, you may be fucked. After all, you have Justin Trudeau at the helm and he’s about as sensible as Hunter Biden on a meth binge. Fortunately, The Globe and Mail is getting soundly roasted for its insanely stupid “excessive free speech” take, so all may not be lost yet. Keep on them, and remind them that without free speech, they wouldn’t have a newspaper. Tell ’em I sent ya.
As far as America is concerned, we still have some time before things go tits up. For one, Leftists aren’t handling the free speech tide going against them, especially on social media. By the way, how’s Mastodon doing? Are you finally up to double digit users yet?
The other thing that hinders Leftists when it comes to fighting for free speech is…well, they’re pussies. The only way they can be brave is by ganging up on weaker targets and being better armed than said targets. Any group that can match them, they avoid. That’s why you see very few Leftists at Girl Scout cookie sales.
More to the point, Leftists are classic bullies, and the best way to beat a bully is to show no fear. And if you really want to pour salt in the wound, mock the bully.
Let’s just say I’m investing heavily in Morton Salts right now.
On a grander level, free speech is vital to our nation’s health. Debate is healthy, even if we aren’t. When Leftists think free speech is dangerous, that’s when we know we’re hitting them where it hurts the most.
And that’s when we keep speaking.
Tag: freedom of speech
Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week
As we get older, we tend to reminisce about our younger days and the great times we had. Whether it was sock hops, sit-ins, snorting lots of cocaine, or spending quarters in a Pac Man machine, we look back fondly and even wish we could go back. But there are some things that should be left in the past and buried under all the copies of the Atari 2600 ET game.
Unfortunately for us, one such thing has come back, thanks to the Federal Communications Commission. Yep, I’m talking about net neutrality, the only thing standing between order and chaos online (at least in the Leftist hivemind). And thanks to the Puddin’ Head Joe Administration, it’s trying to make a comeback.
So, what exactly is the New Coke/Crystal Pepsi of online endeavors and why is it coming back? Prepare for a journey into the absurd!
net neutrality
What the Left thinks it means – a necessary tool to hold internet providers accountable
What it really means – a way of making internet service shitty for everybody
Net neutrality on paper is simple. In theory, it makes sure providers aren’t treating customer’s differently because of the amount of internet they use. All content, whether it be a Facebook post or a lengthy documentary on Netflix would be treated the same, even if the former uses 100 times more bandwidth than the Netflix user.
Now, internet providers, being capitalists and, thus, not complete economic dumbasses, see traffic as potential revenue streams and seek to maximize the number of people who are using their service whenever possible. You know, like every other fucking business on the planet? As a result, providers started limiting the usage of some high-level users so others could use their service, a practice called “throttling.” The ethics of throttling can be debated, but what can’t be debated is the effect net neutrality will have on internet providers.
Just like when Leftists talk about economic justice or climate justice, the goal is to create equality by fiat rather than cooperation. Internet providers are in it to make a buck, and thank God or Bill Gates or Al Gore for it. As the technology has spread further into the global consciousness, internet access has gone from a “neat to have” to a “need to have” in people’s minds. Why else do you think teenagers today have emotional breakdowns over losing their phones? After all, they need to let the world know what shoes they wore to school today or what dance they learned off TikTok. You know, really important shit!
To that end, the Left has slowly been working on making internet access a utility or, in some cases, a human right. That’s not because they give two shits about poor people having internet; it’s because it makes the argument for government intervention easier.
The federal government, at least in theory, is charged with protecting its citizens and their freedoms as guaranteed by the Constitution. As we’ve seen with the southern border, though, that’s a theory that doesn’t stand up to current scrutiny. Regardless, elevating the service that brings us Nigerian princes, penis enlargement pills, and hot Ukrainian women who want to date American men to an essential part of life brings in the expectation of the government to rally for and provide for this need. Hence, net neutrality becomes the back door to making that a reality.
Which has been the plan all along. The problem the Left has with the internet as it stands right now is they don’t control it. After all, what good is free speech online if the Left can’t control it, amirite?
Now, if net neutrality were actually effective, we might have an issue on our hands. Fortunately for us and anyone else who thinks government intervention in the internet works about as good as a Crocs diving helmet, we don’t yet. A recent poll by RealClear Opinion Research shows Leftists are still in the minority when it comes to stifling free speech, but only by 6%. As demographics and mortality rates change, that number is most likely going to get tighter.
When that happens, net neutrality will be realized, regardless of how effective it is. And if you thought Twitter under the Leftist hivemind was bad, wait until these same dumbfucks take over the internet as a whole.
Of course, what we on the “fuck net neutrality” side have going for us is the speed at which technology changes versus the lack of speech at which legislation and regulation changes. To put it mildly, even the most tech-savvy Leftists on Capitol Hill are subject to the whims of Representatives and Senators so old they used to exchange phone numbers on cave walls beside drawings of their last mastodon hunt. And these old-timers aren’t necessarily going to push for something they barely understand and the new blood can’t explain well enough to bridge that gap.
In my lifetime, we’ve gone from dial-up internet where 28.8 baud modems were the cutting edge to fiber optic and satellite internet service cropping up like dandelions in a Midwest lawn. Right now, the pro-net neutrality crowd hasn’t caught up to the current tech, which puts any efforts to make net neutrality a thing at a great disadvantage. When technology can be obsolete by the time you put it on a credit card, the glacial pace of government means their solution will be light years behind the technology it’s supposed to regulate.
Fucking brilliant!
Even so, we can’t fall asleep at the switch on net neutrality because the Left will continue to find ways to make it a thing. Whether it’s an appeal to emotions, an overstated sense of urgency to save the internet, or the Left’s favorite method of persuasion (outright lying), the arguments the Left will roll out will appeal to the uninformed. Which, oddly enough, will appeal to other Leftists more than anyone else, but that’s neither here nor there.
Still, it won’t hurt to bring up a fact the Left wants memory-holed: they predicted the death of the internet if net neutrality wasn’t in place.
How’s that working out for you, net neutrality fans?
Discord vs IRC
I’ve written about a few of these topics in the past and I’m sure they will be revisited again in the future. In our modern world connected as we are through the technology of the internet. There is still a need for text only based real time chatting between 2 or more people.
Text only based chatting has many advantages over both voice or video methods of communication. Far less bandwidth is needed is the biggest advantage. It can work on even the worst internet connections and the slowest of PCs.
In the days of Dial-up internet, were AOL was the king of providers, they had a multitude of chatrooms for many topics and communities across their membership. And outside of AOL and accessible to it, and all other providers were the many servers and networks of Internet Relay Chat (IRC).
During the height of IRC’s popularity it had over a million users signed in across the multitude of networks and servers. Today, with the rise of Social Media, this number has been reduced to a quarter of what it once was.
A vast majority of IRC users are now found on the Discord service. It has a number of similarities to IRC that allows users to feel “at home” there. However there are a lot of differences too between the 2 platforms.
Here are some of the similarities and differences:
Discord has a native “pretty” interface. Granted IRC does not but it’s totally depends on which IRC client one uses to access IRC.
Discard has audio and visual communications options. IRC does not have these functions at all. They are left to other services to provide them.
Discord has Avatars and Profiles. Although IRC at its base level does not. There are IRC clients that provide similar functions.
Both services have bots running on them in multiple channels performing a multitude of various tasks.
Discord requires registration in order to use it. IRC does not require registration, but many networks and servers have registration available and it’s recommended.
Discord has the ability to create channel threads. Topics that filter out of the main channel discussion into a sub-channel without leaving the channel. IRC does not have this unique ability. In IRC one would have to chat privately or form a separate channel with the smaller number of users.
Both services off the ability to chat privately between users.
IRC is independent. There are networks and stand alone servers. Each one is unique. Discord “servers” are all part of Discord and ran on the same equipment as all others.
This one fact can lead to a single point of failure for Discord. If the Discord service goes down. All of the Discord “servers” are done. Not true at all with IRC since each server and network are independent of one another.
And with the independence, IRC is individually owned. Where as Discord is corporately owned and could change any aspect of its service with a board member vote. Including making the entire service a paid service.
On Discord you can @mention another user of the “server” you are connected to and they would be notified of the mention. IRC doesn’t have this as a built-in function. However, like other functions that are built-in to Discord, many IRC clients have similar functions.
On Discord, if you join a “server”, you are automatically in all the channels save for ones that are role restricted which can cause unwanted notifications of chats. One IRC when you connect to a server you only join the channels you want to join or none at all.
With IRC, anyone can create a new channel just by joining it. And that person gets admin rights in that channel automatically. If there is registration available and the user desires they can register the channel and make it permanent. But on Discord, only Admins can create new channels. It’s the same role given to create, destroy, or modify any channel so it’s not given out to everyone.
Discord has a history feature. Once you join a “server” and are in the channels you can infinitely scroll up to see what was previously said in that channel by anyone. On IRC, there is a +H mode that can be set on some servers or networks that allow a similar functionality but it’s usually not infinite.
Discord admins have the ability to delete chats in a channel. IRC doesn’t have this ability. Once the chat is there it’s there. But new users generally wont see it because of the lack of history available.
Bots are on both services as previously mentioned. And bots are very handy to have to provide functions and features that aren’t part of the system. With Discord, you have to have Dev permissions to create a bot. And that bot cannot run on a regular member’s account. Doing so would get the bot and user banned from Discord. On IRC however, there are a variety of scripting options available. Some are based on the client program use to connect to IRC and others are dependent on the bot being used. And you can run scripts from your own client as well.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to comparing IRC and Discord. Just looking at this list the favor leans towards IRC over Discord despite some of its unique features. Many Discord features can be duplicated or simulated in IRC with a bit of scripting or simple options enabled on one’s client program.
I will always be an IRC enthusiast. After all I have ran my own IRC network/server for 25 years. And in this day and age of cancel culture, the freedom of an IRC server is just what is needed.
I am sad to say that I have lost a few IRC channels to Discord. And looking at those Discord “servers” I could have over a 1000 users on my IRC network if they stayed or came back.
But if you are looking for a place to have an online real-time text based chat. I’m happy to help you get setup on IRC. You can connect via a browser at https://web.communiti.chat or point you favorite IRC client program to irc.commuinit.chat and get setup to go.
Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week
With everything going on in the world today, it’s a good bet someone is going to get upset about something. And if that person is motivated enough, he or she may decide to whip up support by protesting that thing.
For Leftists, it happens on a day ending in, well, “day.”
Yet, for all of the protesting the Left does, they don’t always support protesting, as we’ll see in a bit. But first, a little housekeeping in the form of a definition.
protest
What the Left thinks it means – exercising a First Amendment right to express an opinion
What it really means – exercising a First Amendment right to express a Leftist-approved opinion
Among the myriad rights outlined in the aforementioned Amendment are freedom of speech and the right to redress grievances with the government. (Although, I’m not sure I want to know how the grievances got naked in the first place.) These combine like Zords into a Megazord we call protesting, and it’s a right many Americans exercise more than they exercise, literally.
Protesting is one of the rights the Left hold dear because otherwise they might have to get jobs and be productive. However, they have a two-tiered approach to it, and as the definition I provided shows, it’s based on ideology.
I’m going to call this next section “A Tale of Two Protests.” And hopefully the estate of Charles Dickens doesn’t sue me into oblivion. Our first protest is one that has made the rounds in conservative media circles because of its sheer intensity and literal volume. Jeff Younger is running for the Texas State House in large part because of the way the courts treated him. You see, Younger is the father of a young boy who has been convinced by his mother he’s a girl. After a lengthy court battle, he won a small victory by a judge’s decision barring his now ex-wife from giving his son drugs that would restrict puberty and essentially transition him from male to female.
Well, Younger appeared on the campus of the University of North Texas and the Left showed up in droves to disrupt his speech because…transphobe? Actually, I can’t quite make out the logical arguments they made because a) I don’t speak Shrill Leftist Harpy, and b) they didn’t make any. They were simply there to cause chaos, go viral, and take a stand against trans hate. As a fan of the First Amendment, I can’t begrudge their protest, no matter how asinine it was, and the Left agreed. The students protesting were in the right.
Now, we move on to a different protest, the American version of the Freedom Convoy. If it’s anything like the Canadian version, be prepared for the utter chaos of…honking horns, music, and a sense of community. A worse hellscape than anything Clive Barker could come up with, I assure you.
Seriously, though, the Freedom Convoy by and large was and is a peaceful event with generally good fellowship mixed with a good helping of traffic disruption. Sure, there were some asshats who went overboard, but you’ll get that and they were the exception instead of the rule. And as you might expect, the Left has gone out of their way to denigrate this protest, insinuating it’s backed by Russians, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, conservative media, the Koch Brothers, and a few other groups. As of this writing, I’m not sure if the Freemasons (or even the Reasonably Priced Masons) have been invoked, but it’s still early in the year. And now that the impending war over Ukraine is looming like Michael Moore’s shadow over an all-you-can-eat buffet, Leftists are dismissing the Freedom Convoy protest because “there’s more important things to worry about right now.”
Like…allowing young boys to transition to young girls, apparently?
The thing to remember is both the UNT students and the Freedom Convoy should be allowed to protest, even if we don’t agree with them. The thing the Left doesn’t get about the First Amendment is it goes both ways, not just the way they want it to go. Kinda like Dennis Rodman, but with better fashion sense in wedding dresses. If the Left values the right to protest, they have to allow for the right to protest against them, but they don’t. Otherwise, I would have to be boring you with a different Lexicon topic.
The reason for the Left’s two-faced approach to protesting involves their desire to control the narrative. Once you control how events are presented, you control how they’re perceived and what the audience sees, hears, and feels. That’s creepy enough as it is, but it gets worse when an event is 180 degrees out of phase from reality. Then, the outcome gets messy and even expensive if legal recourse is initiated.
Just ask CNN or its new owner, Nick Sandmann.
Controlling the narrative is essential in protesting as well as in the media/court of public opinion. The chaos and destruction left by Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA protests is hard to ignore, but surprisingly many people only focus on the narrative presented by those groups. Instead of garnering scorn for trying to turn city streets into Beirut on a good day, they garnered sympathy because of the cause. But here’s the thing: no matter how righteous your cause, it loses its righteousness when the resulting protest turns destructive. Blocking the street with a march protesting police brutality and the unnecessary killing of citizens is inconvenient, but doesn’t cross that line. When the protest includes destruction of public property, assault, and arson…well, let’s just say you’ve missed your turn and are zooming down the highway to the Destruction Zone.
The right to protest can be a tightrope walk because of the implications of letting different sides speak their minds. If you allow, say, a Nazi rally in your town, does that mean the town is totally pro-Nazi? Not at all, but with the advent of incredibly fast social media posting and incredibly slow thinkers using them, it can become one faster than you can type OMG. That’s where we need to be a lot more libertarian in our approach to protests, meaning we support what we support and ignore what we don’t. Trust me, it makes life a lot simpler and stops you from having to continually apologize to people who wouldn’t accept your apology under any circumstances.
As with the right to free speech, the right to protest comes with some responsibilities. Just because you can carry a rifle in public doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to do so while voicing displeasure over a public official’s actions. If you feel the need to protest, put your best foot forward (and not to trip someone else, by the way). Be willing to discuss your position in a calm, rational manner. Even if those protesting your protest are screaming like banshees listening to a Yoko Ono CD on repeat, you’ll come off better by keeping cool. Plus, it drives Leftists nuts when they can’t rile you into emotional outbursts, so there’s that.
In the end, though, it cannot be overstated how the right to protest has lead to positive change in this country. It’s one I wholeheartedly endorse and support because of that fact. Even if the Left puts ideological conditions on its valid usage, we don’t need to follow their lead. We just need to allow them to march along to the beat of their own drummers so they can enjoy the fruits of their labor.
And we can enjoy mocking them. Thanks, First Amendment!