Scratch a Lib-Find a Tyrant – Page 14

Biden Transition Team Has A Problem With Your 1A Rights Too

While we may not know the outcome of the election until after the courts are finished with the cases, Joe Biden is still going forward as if he’s the president-elect.

In fairness, he probably should. If the courts find for President Trump, he’s out a bit of time and energy–something a man his age doesn’t have much of–but if it doesn’t, then he’s out time for transitioning the government that he can never get back. While I hope his time is wasted, it’s not a bad move.

Unfortunately, a member of Biden’s transition team is giving us a good glimpse into how little any of our rights matter to the former vice president.

President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team leader for US-owned media outlets wants to redefine freedom of speech and make “hate speech” a crime.

Richard Stengel is the Biden transition “Team Lead” for the US Agency for Global Media, the US government media empire that includes Voice of America, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Stengel, an Obama administration alumnus, wrote last year in a Washington Post op-ed that US freedom of speech was too unfettered and that changes must be considered.

He wrote: “All speech is not equal. And where truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails. I’m all for protecting ‘thought that we hate,’ but not speech that incites hate.”

Stengel offered two examples of speech that he has an issue with: Quran burning and circulation of “false narratives” by Russia during the 2016 election.

“Even the most sophisticated Arab diplomats that I dealt with did not understand why the First Amendment allows someone to burn a Koran. Why, they asked me, would you ever want to protect that?” Stengel wrote.

Now, let’s remember that many of those “false narratives” were shared in good faith by people who believed those narratives. Besides, Russia advanced false narratives playing to both sides.

And we live in a country where burning the American flag is considered protected speech, but Stengel wants to punish people for doing the same thing to a particular book?

What about the Christian Bible? Would that fall into the same view in Stengel’s mind? Continue reading “”

Biden COVID-19 Advisory Board Member: Time to Shut Down Indoor Dining, Gyms, and Home Gatherings

During a Fox Business Network interview, Biden COVID-19 Advisory Board member Dr. Celine Gounder said we need to target “places that we know are big contributors to transmission are indoor restaurants, bars, gyms, and also private social gatherings of friends and family in the home” for closures. On the plus side, she is suggesting this as an alternative to shutting down the whole country. She also said the “draconian lockdowns” the country did earlier were a mistake. Instead, the country should,

“be much more targeted about how we tighten up some of our measures. I think of it like a dimmer switch, whereas before we had an on and off light switch. So, we can dial up and dial down in a much more granular fashion. So, some of the places that we know are big contributors to transmission are indoor restaurants, bars, gyms, and also private social gatherings of friends and family in the home. So, those are really the places we need to target for closures while keeping other services, for example, schools that are — have not been major contributors to transmission, they’re not zero-risk, but they are much lower risk, and they’re an essential service. And so, we’re really prioritizing keeping schools, for example, open.”

While we definitely don’t want to go the lockdown route, there are big problems with this type of thinking as well. For example, while there are studies saying different things, there is a lot of evidence that COVID-19 IS NOT spreading in gyms. Will a Biden administration destroy the restaurant industry, gyms, bars and challenge the 1st Amendment protections for churches based on….what exactly? Models that have been proven wrong over and over? Educated guesses that have also been wrong over and over? If you’re looking for definitive scientific evidence for what she’s suggesting here about where the coronavirus is spreading, you aren’t going to find it. You’re going to find a mishmash of different studies and guesses pointing in different directions that we are years away from being able to sort out.

One of the problems with these out-of-touch elites is that they feel very comfortable and confident about making decisions that destroy other people’s lives “for their own good.” They don’t think you “need” to go to church or to the gym or see your family, so it’s out. What they don’t understand is that the best person to make decisions for you is YOU. That doesn’t mean you won’t make mistakes. It doesn’t mean you won’t get it wrong. But, nobody knows you and your life better than you and unlike the elites that think they know best, you have to face the consequences if you blow it. Meanwhile, if they wreck someone’s life with a dumb decision, it’s not their problem. This is why they don’t have any business making decisions like this in the first place.