Article is from May; section 702 was just renewed 3 days ago: https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/16/24004356/section-207-rea...
There is still hope for reform.
Higher power / natural law
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Irrevocable natural rights of individuals
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Revocable rights given to the state for the common good
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We can revoke the government’s mandate to rule us at any time. I understand people may have forgotten, or don’t know or have the background to understand, or maybe even don’t care. But that doesn’t change anything about the natural order or founding principles.
The system we are currently headed towards:
State
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Subjects
This is monarchy / totalitarianism, and while it may be done for all the right reasons, it’s stepping backwards in terms of what’s good for the world, the progress of civilization, and is a failure to learn the profound lessons of the enlightenment that unleashed the greatest period of technology innovation and unrivaled economic expansion in history.
Authoritarianism is looming in the US and elsewhere; I worry about the efforts to "burn down the corruption" being replanted with a new authoritarian replacement.
But these changes don’t usually happen until we have atrociously difficult or insanely outrageous behavior from the government, or conditions that are incredibly poor. People don’t make these kinds of changes easily and will argue for the status quo until the very, very last opportunity generally. At that point it is an inevitability…
Still, worthy point.
IMO, this is the most infuriating aspect about the censorship push of the past few years. They've already been suppressing freedom of speech using people's livelihoods as a covert form of blackmail... But that wasn't enough and so they had to break the pretense and engage is overt censorship.
Literally everyone who works for a corporation engages in regular self-censorship. This implies that they believe that they may be reprimanded for speaking their thoughts. As someone who has actually spoken their thoughts, I can tell you that it's more than just a belief! The consequences are real.
The executives responsible stepped over the line and should be tried and jailed.
Speak for yourself! I work in the private sector and I can’t think of any way my speech is circumscribed by that - unless of course I tried to discuss politics in the workplace, which is simply frowned upon because it’s cringe.