The democracy beat shouldn’t be some kind of specialized innovation, but a widespread rethinking across the mainstream media.

Making this happen will call for something that Big Journalism is notoriously bad at: An open-minded, nondefensive recognition of what’s gone wrong.

Top editors, Sunday talk-show moderators and other news executives should pull together their brain trusts to grapple with this. And they should be transparent with the public about what they’re doing and why.

As a model, they might have to swallow their big-media pride and look to places like Harrisburg, Pa., public radio station WITF which has admirably explained to its audience why it continually offers reminders about the actions of those public officials who tried to overturn the 2020 election results. Or to Cleveland Plain Dealer editor Chris Quinn’s letter to readers about how the paper and its website, Cleveland.com, refuse to cover every reckless, attention-getting lie of Republican Josh Mandel as he runs for the U.S. Senate next year.

Margaret Sullivan
July 28, 2021
Our democracy is under attack. Washington journalists must stop covering it like politics as usual.
[Ms. Sullivan openly demands the suppression of views which diverge from her narrative.

Prepare and respond appropriately.—Joe]

The FBI needs to go away. It should happen in an orderly and thoughtful process, over a period of months. Congress should authorize and create an investigative division in the U.S. Marshals Service and open applications for law enforcement officer seeking to be rigorously screened, vetted and then accessed into the new organization. Similar action was taken before in the very creation of the FBI. It is now time to clean house and restore the public’s trust in the “premier investigative agency” of federal law enforcement.

Chris Farrell
July 28, 2021
Disband the FBI
[About 99% of the Federal government needs to go away to be operating with the limits set by the U.S. Constitution. So the FBI is just a tiny snowflake at the tip of the iceberg.

And if you think about it a little bit you realize the bigger issue is all the Federal laws the FBI enforces. The laws need to be eliminated first or at least concurrently with the FBI. If they didn’t have laws to enforce their “teeth” would be essentially pulled and be mostly irrelevant.

The FBI was once extremely well regarded. I remember my dad once telling me, I must have been about eight years old at the time, how great the FBI was. They trained to shoot one handed and using their weak hand only. I was amazed at this. And, “Once the FBI is on a case the case will be solved. The FBI always gets their man.”

After Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the failed coup against President Trump, to hit just a few of the low spots, many people now rightfully regarded the FBI as an enemy of the people.—Joe]

If we’ve gotten to a point where a giant tech company, or even a little company, is silencing people who are providing first-hand sourcing for major, major news stories, or reading press releases from elected officials, that’s like not America anymore.

Naomi Wolf
July 30, 2021
Former Clinton Adviser Naomi Wolf: Big Tech Bans Leading to Self-Censorship
[I was chatting with someone about this sort of thing a few weeks ago and he said something which surprised me. He said, “I don’t expect Facebook to exist a year from now.”

I expressed my surprise but there were more important things to discuss and I dropped it. He is a former Secret Service agent, but I don’t see how that would give him insider knowledge about something as big as the elimination of Facebook as a company.

Is this a QAnon thing I haven’t heard?—Joe]

From Newsweek (emphasis added):

Millions of Americans could be forced out of their homes after the Biden administration declined to extend the federal eviction ban put in place last September to protect tenants during the pandemic. The White House said Thursday that it would not extend the moratorium, citing a Supreme Court decision last month against an extension past July.

…

Bush and Pressley spearheaded a letter to Biden Saturday—signed by six others including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota—calling for “an urgent government response,” according to Politico. “Extending the eviction moratorium is a matter of life and death for the communities we represent,” they wrote.

Rep. Maxine Waters of California called on Biden to issue an executive order to “expand and extend” the moratorium on CNN Saturday, criticizing the president for following the Supreme Court’s ruling. “We thought that the White House was in charge,” she said. “We have families, probably 11 million families, out there who stand to be evicted.”

I grant you that Rep Waters isn’t the sharpest Fruit Loop in the knife drawer, but her “thought” seems to be shared by others. This appears to include the writer of the article. I find this “thought” of hers extremely telling. She and others do not regard SCOTUS decisions as binding on the executive or legislative branch.

This is truly scary stuff. Make appropriate preparations.

Wokeism has infected the system and it is destroying everything. Let’s say the New York Times was always sort of Left, but it wasn’t bananas Left. There was a big plurality of opinion there and obviously Barry Weiss was there.

Barry Weiss, who’s a liberal. She’s a liberal, which doesn’t even really make sense to me anymore. But God bless her, she’s a liberal. She couldn’t even take it there anymore because there’s no Left far enough for the Left. There’s no woke enough for the wokesters.

They’re constantly purging people and as they do that purge, they’re going to destroy every institution that they’re let into.

Dave Rubin
July 27, 2021
Dave Rubin: A Growing Alliance Against the ‘Cult’ of Woke Ideology
[Encouraging stuff in the interview. Rubin claims more and more people are seeing the light. Seeing that the political left has gone completely off their rockers. And once they see this, there is no unseeing it. They then see the toxicity of the left and that it can be accurately described as a cult.

Once they see the insanity they may not become instant classic liberals or libertarians. But they are escaping the cult and are publicly pointing out the errors of the cultists.

Probably most importantly is that people are starting to think for themselves. They realize the sides are not left and right or “woke” and fascists/racist/supremist.

I especially like how he describes the “sides”. The sides are best described by “cognitive liberty” and “cognitive outsourcing”. Once people realize they are allowed to, and are capable of, thinking for themselves the world will be a much better place. We won’t all arrive at some universal truth. But it will mean you don’t become a social outcast if you aren’t woke enough. It will mean we have a decent chance of avoiding universal error.—Joe]

What is truly telling is that the government is no longer afraid to admit they’re blatantly censoring our 1A rights.

Before, they tried to hide it. Now they brag. They feel like they can do anything now.

This is how tyranny starts.

Lauren Boebert @laurenboebert
Tweeted on July 17, 2021
[She is referring to the Biden administration announcement they are “identifying ‘problematic’ posts for Facebook to censor because they contain ‘misinformation’ about COVID-19.”—Joe]

When law enforcement became a growth industry, liberty minded free men became endangered.

Maj Toure @MAJTOURE
Tweeted on July 17, 2021
[Technically, this is probably true. But law enforcement as a growth industry is a symptom. Politicians, in defiance of their constitutional limits, creating all the laws which made law enforcement a growth industry are the source of the problem.—Joe]

Wikipedia, like many other deeply biased institutions of our brave new digital world, has made itself into a kind of thought police that has de facto shackled conservative viewpoints with which they disagree. Democracy cannot thrive under such conditions: I maintain that Wikipedia has become an opponent of vigorous democracy. Democracy requires that voters be given the full range of views on controversial issues, so that they can make up their minds for themselves. If society’s main information sources march in ideological lockstep, they make a mockery of democracy. Then the wealthy and powerful need only gain control of the few approved organs of acceptable thought; then they will be able to manipulate and ultimately control all important political dialogue.

Larry Sanger
Founder of Wikipedia
June 30, 2021
Wikipedia Is More One-Sided Than Ever
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

I’d argue that one of the most in-your-face tyrannical phrases ever constructed is:

“RESTRICTED FOR GOVERNMENT OR LAW ENFORCEMENT USE ONLY”

David Codrea
June 29, 2021
Second Amendment will be Nullified if ‘Common Use’ is Restricted to ‘Popularity’
[A far more appropriate, and almost never used phrase, is found here:

Law Enforcement Restrictions

…

Governments that are unfriendly to basic human rights are not allowed the use…

It appears most people are of the opinion that our public servants are actually masters of the public. This attitude needs to change.—Joe]

Here’s how you take on #BigTech:

-Speed up the legal process to break them up.

-Take away their liability protections by killing Section 230 as we know it.

-Create a private right of action to sue the companies when they censor you.

We’re drafting a bill to do just that.

Rep. Jim Jordan @Jim_Jordan
Tweeted on June 23, 2021
[I would like to see 1,000 old laws wiped from the books for each new law they pass. Even then, I would like to see serious discussion on how we can achieve the desired goals without any new laws.

That said, something along these lines does have some appeal.—Joe]