Amy Coney Barrett recently couldn't even remember the five freedoms listed in the First Amendment; but the bigger problem may be that the government has been slowly chipping away at many of the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment.
Some good alternative historians, like Howard Zinn, have reported on how the government has been suppressing free speech for decades, if not since the American Revolution. There was plenty of efforts to suppress speech supporting abolition of slavery before the Civil war and censorship has been common in the decades afterwards, often even more during war time, often suppressing speech about the lies that leave us into war. During the First World War both Eugene Debs and Charles T. Schenck were charged, and imprisoned, under the espionage act for speaking out against the War. In the case of Charles T. Schenck argued that his was justified because, "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic;" however, they never established that either Schenck or Debs ever made false claims!
The truth is supposed to be a solid defense for libel or slander, and it's also supposed to be protected speech when it comes to government corruption or wars based on lies; however, in practice, it's often not. In fact, far more often than not it's our government lying about justification for war then persecuting those telling the truth. During World War I they lied about the arms on board the RMS Lusitania, later they lied about coups in Iran, Guatemala and Chile, they lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident and traditional media practically never mentioned the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence and the fact that Ho Chi Minh had far more political support than American puppets, showing that war wasn't to defend Democracy at all.
They continued lying in one war after another since then, including the Iran/Iraq War, which we did participate in, the invasion of Granada and Panama, both Gulf Wars and the arming of the Mujaheddin, which became the Taliban and al-Qaeda, contributing to the attack on 9/11 and much more. And as demonstrated by the persecution of Bradley/Chelsea Manning and Jillian Assange they continue charging people that are protesting wars based on lies and disclosing illegal activity by our government.
This got even worse when the media were allowed to consolidate in the nineties so that only five corporations now control over 95% of all national media and the next half dozen or more are controlled by multimillionaires, or in most cases billionaires. With this much control of the media the oligarchs have a major advantage when it comes to indoctrinating the public. The leading principle of propaganda is that "a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth," or at least it seems to, especially if no one is providing alternative views to the majority of the public.
This makes the right to protest even more important; but the threat to this right didn't begin with Donald Trump or Amy Coney Barrett. There have been efforts to suppress the right to protest for decades, often at the local level, as Howard Zinn pointed out in several of his books, and it escalated under the Bush Administration with the use of "Free Speech Zones," which are often located in locations where only other protesters go; they claim that the media can cover them, which may be true; but, if the media does mention them, it's only to say that people are protesting without getting their message across so the public knows what they're protesting.
For all practical purposes the right to protest has been severely watered down, if not eliminated, and they're passing laws across the country and trying to pas even more to reduce the right to protest even more, yet the vast majority of the public is unaware of it. At least there was some coverage in the mainstream media about Amy Coney Barrett not remembering the right for a redress of grievances or protest, although it was quickly forgotten. This is standard operating procedure for views or accurate facts that go against the best interests of the corporations controlling the media. Deceptive propaganda is routinely repeated over and over again, while the best research on many subjects is ignored.
Both political parties have been chipping away at our Constitutional rights for decades, and with Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court it's now much more likely they could be weakened even more. Some of the laws states have tried to pass include giving people immunity for "accidentally" running down protesters, others define protesters, including those protesting environmental destruction or police brutality, as terrorists, despite the fact that both the police and energy companies are responsible for far more deaths than the protesters. The police have been killing over a thousand people each year since citizens began tracking it, yet, the only protester against police violence that I know of that was suspected of murder was Michael Forest Reinoehl, who may have acted in self defense, according to some accounts, and he was killed by police under suspicious circumstances.
There are no environmentalists that I know of that have resorted to violence against people, although some might have resorted to property destruction; however, there have been numerous environmentalists, mostly in third world countries, including Berta Caceres, that have been murdered, in some cases by people with ties to the oil or timber industries; and there have also been dozens of people killed in pipeline explosions or other disasters caused by the oil or other energy industries. And, there are much more killed every year as a result of pollution related diseases with estimates between 100,000 and 200,000 or more based on several studies, globally it runs into the millions, yet there's little or no coverage of this in traditional media, while they sell an enormous amount of propaganda ads to oil companies making them look like environmentalists. However, since the right wing extremists claiming there is a serious problem with "environmental terrorists" they manage to convince a lot of the most credulous, emotional people, even though it doesn't stand up to a minimal amount of scrutiny.
However, even though many of the best informed protesters are much closer to the trruth on many issues, they can't get their views across to the vast majority of the public, and there's a good chance this can get even worse before it gets better, especially since the Democrats, including Biden, aren't much if any better than Donald Trump and the Republicans; Democrats in Congress put up minimal resistance to the confirmation of Barret, even though there were many things they could have done to at least slow it down and inform the public just how much of a threat she, and the rest of the extreme Justices, are to our freedom. Biden is no better, sending out mixed messages at best; he said, "I have nothing-- I'm not opposed to the justice. She seems like a very fine person."
Many of these protests against police brutality or killing innocent people including Breonna Taylor in a no-knock raid, when the real suspect was already in custody are brazen violations of the fourth amendment, which has been escalating for well over ten to twenty years as Radley Balko pointed out in his 2013 book "Rise of the Warrior Cop" which describes a shocking number of raids that have gone wrong years before Breonna Taylor was killed, yet they're still doing little or nothing to stop it from happening again.
Since Radley Balko wrote his book there have been many more disastrous no-knock raids, including one where they threw a flash-bang grenade into a babies crib, invaded a seventy-eight year old mans house terrorizing him at the wrong house, killed another man in another raid at another wrong house and, like the Breonna Taylor case, there's almost never any accountability, often with the victims being stuck with massive injuries and bills for the damage; when they do succeed in suing, receiving payments, it's not the people making the mistakes and violating rights that pay for it, it's the tax payers that aren't involved in the decisions.
Furthermore, a major reason for most of these no-knock raids is the war on drugs, a lot of which is non-violent, contrary to the propaganda repeated over and over from the media, and the government has exposed the fact that the CIA has repeatedly been covering up for the drug running of their allies, most notably those supporting the Contras in the eighties. This was investigated by a Senate Commission lead by John Kerry and Joe Biden was a member of this Commission, and they came out with a report often referred to as the Kerry Report, which hardly got any media attention at the time, that admitted to some drug running by CIA allies or members of the CIA. This is actually just the beginning of the evidence implicating the CIA in running drugs. It's the most comprehensive government report, but there's much more including lower profile disclosures from many government officials, including some that wrote books about it, although they got no promotions from traditional media. I went into this more in The War On Drugs Is Institutional Entrapment, which explains how this was a fabricated crisis.
Furthermore, Portugal has shown that they can save lives and money by decriminalizing drugs and encouraging treatment instead of putting people in jail. Their program began almost twenty years ago and has had enormous success since then, especially after it had been in place for over ten years; for a while, there was an increase in the murder rate, which was still much lower than ours, but it was never conclusively tied to their efforts to decriminalize and treat drug addiction and then after five years or so the murder rate went down 205 below the rates when the program began, so in the long run they decreased their murder rates and had much better success treating drug addicts. I went into this more in Machiavellian Ideology Ignores Real Science which also covers a program in Finland that dramatically reduces homelessness, if not eliminates it, and points out that they can solve both the drug problem and homelessness and save money at the same time, similar programs also do a lot to reduce violence, including a home visitor program for at risk parents that I covered in Burying Solutions to Prevent Gilroy, Dayton and El Paso Shootings; these three examples show that solving problems before they escalate saves much more money than they cost for the solutions, yet so called "fiscal conservatives" are constantly trying to cut funds for these programs, even though it costs much more to deal with the problems after they escalate.
This also applies to many other social problems including studies showing that Medicare for All saves money and lives, according to 22 studies agree: 'Medicare for All' saves money 02/24/2020, all studies agree that Medicare for All saves hundreds of billions of dollars ever year, the only disagreement is whether it's $200 billion or $600 billion and saves many lives too; and more studies show that renewable energy will save money and lives, including Renewable Energy Isn’t Just Cutting Costs, It’s Saving Lives 08/17/2017 and How Renewable Energy Can Save Over 50,000 Lives, and Millions of Dollars a Year 07/27/2017
Why don't we implement any of these programs, and many more, that solve major social problems and save an enormous amount of money? Because the oligarchs are making a massive amount of money off of this one way or another and it's not in their interests to fix it so they hardly cover the research on this at all, nor do they cover candidates that support effective policies, ensuring they never get the name recognition they need to get elected. Even though the majority of the public may not hear about the best research for many of these programs they still support some of the most popular ones and many other popular policies, which the political establishment and Wall Street oppose, by large margins, including Medicare for All, The Green New Deal, higher minimum wage, an end to wars based on lies, etc. as indicated by several Memes citing polls, which have been confirmed, for Bernie Sanders and the Green Party.
With 57% to 86% support from the majority of the public for all of these policies why don't most establishment politicians support them and why are, many if any being passed into law? We routinely get candidates, for president and Congress who either oppose almost all of these popular policies or campaigns on some of them, then, once in office, does little or nothing to push for them often showing they never supported them in the first place. In 2008 Barack Obama pretended to support some of these issues; but once in office he showed that he never really cared about them after all. In the case of the Keystone pipeline he stopped it temporarily, but only after massive protests, and he paved the way for the next president to push it through. Neither Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden did a good job pretending to support these popular issues. Both of them spent their careers opposing them, then, at the last minute during the campaign made some promises indicating they support a couple of these issues, which is hardly credible. When it comes to Medicare for All and the green New deal, which are among the most popular, Joe Biden said he would veto them both, despite the enormous amount of support they get from his constituents.
The reason for this is largely becasue a fraction of 1% controls over 95% of the media and they ignore the best research on any given subject when it impacts their profits. They can't completely supress it; however, the vast majority of the public doesn't know where to look for this research. This is all the more reason why we need equal rights to free speech instead of a system where billionaires ahve a massive propaganda advantage enabling them to repeat misleading information or outright lies over and over again without being challenged. Furthermore, they can and do, rig elections all over the country, by simply refusing to cover candidates they oppose so they can never get name recognition.
Both political parties are relentlessly trying to chip away at the constitutional rights that are supposed to protect the vast majority of the public, while continuing to take advantage of the flawed portions of the Consitution that helps them rig elections, like the Electoral College, and the fact that Senators from small states have as much power as those from large states. No doubt that Amy Coney Barrett and the other extreme judges being appoiinted are a threat to our Constitution as well as Donald Trump; But Joe Biden and the establishment Democrats, like Diane Fienstien, who played softball with Barrett and lectured little kids for critisizing here negligence on Climate Change, are little or no better, although they sometimes pretend to be better.
This is all the more reason why we have to defend our first amendment rights to protest and speak the truth about epidemic levels of corruption from both parties, before we lose those Constitutional rights. However, if there's one silver lining to another Trump presidency, it's that at least those on the left recognize how horrible he is. Many supporters of Biden, especially celebrities, have indicated they're willing to look the other way at his epidemic levels of corruption and efforts to chip away at the Constitution a little more subtly.
Within the last couple days according to 'No Excuse For The Looting': Biden, Trump Respond To Philadelphia Protests 10/28/2020 Joe Biden said "There is no excuse whatsoever for the looting and the violence. None whatsoever," which may seem reasonable to many people who only see the looting, without hearing about the leading causes of many social problems and how elites are causing them by ignoring the best research. There's no excuse for rigging the economy so that large numbers of people are forced to live in poverty and are often pushed to desperation. There's no excuse for ignoring good research that shows how to reduce violence, homelessness and drug addiction and save an enormous amount of money at the same time. There's no excuse for starting wars based on lies and killing thousands if not millions of innocent people. There's no excuse for epidemic levels of white collar crime which does far more damage than these riots.
Of course you don't hear any of that on mainstream media, because they're involved in much worse forms of looting, by rigging the economy and elections so that only corrupt candidates like Trump and Biden can get the presidential nomination! They even censor opposing views, sometimes even on news outlets that were created to challenge the Oligarchs like the Intercept.
According to Glenn Greenwald: My Resignation From The Intercept 10/29/2020 The Intercept is now censoring articles critical of Joe Biden including his corruption problems in Ukraine, which contrary to establishment propaganda isn't entirely made up by Russia. Greenwald claims they refused to publish his article critical of Biden and writes, "But modern media outlets do not air dissent; they quash it. So censorship of my article, rather than engagement with it, was the path these Biden-supporting editors chose." Ray McGovern also reported on how the establishment is using Russia as a scapegoat in Blaming Moscow for Hunter Biden’s laptop is Russiagate disinformation 10/23/2020 There's much more about Biden's corruption and his long record defending Oligarchs that donate to his campaign, enabling them to get away with epidemic levels of fraud, including massive efforts to rig the primary for him, but it's almost completely absent from traditional media, although they may have reported on a lot of it in the past, they've let it fall down the memory-hole for the duration of the election, this information is, for the most part, only available in alternative media outlets that don't get nearly as much attention from complacent voters.
The following are some additional sources or related material:
Amy Coney Barrett HUMILIATES herself, FORGETS First Amendment when asked 10/14/2020
Barrett Confirmation Hearing, Day 3 Part 2 10/14/2020
First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Amy Coney Barrett can't name the 5 freedoms in the First Amendment: ‘What am I missing?’ 10/14/2020
Amy Coney Barrett Won’t Say Climate Change Is Real; Forgets 1st Amendment Protects Right to Protest 10/15/2020
The First Amendment Freedom That Amy Barrett Forgot Is Really Revealing 10/14/2020
‘What am I missing?’: Amy Coney Barrett unable to name five freedoms in First Amendment 10/14/2020
Wikipedia: Free speech zone
When Colleges Confine Free Speech to a ‘Zone,’ It Isn’t Free 02/07/2019
Media Consolidation Means Less Local News, More Right Wing Slant 07/30/2019
How Media Consolidation Threatens Democracy: 857 Channels (and Nothing On) 05/12/2017
Sailing And Sinking The RMS Lusitania: A Century Of Lying America Into War 05/06/2015
ACLU: Anti-Protest Bills Around the Country
US states have spent the past 5 years trying to criminalize protest 06/04/2020
States Rush to Pass Anti-Protestor Laws Updated periodicaly
3 States Pass Anti-Pipeline Protest Bills in Two Weeks 03/30/2020
Update: Lawmakers in Ten States Have Proposed Legislation Criminalizing Peaceful Protest 01/23/2017
'Protesters as terrorists': growing number of states turn anti-pipeline activism into a crime 07/08/2019
Natural Gas Pipeline and Infrastructure Explosions Nationwide In just 2015 to 2017, there were 12 deaths and 10 injuries reported from natural gas pipelines in the US.
Will people really die due to Trans Mountain pipeline protests? 06/15/2018
Body of Glendale man found in river near former Dakota Access Pipeline protest camp 04/10/2017
Dakota Access pipeline: 300 protesters injured after police use water cannons 11/21/2016
Standing Rock protests, killing of activist, unite indigenous struggles 03/14/2017 Protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in the United States and the killing of prominent Honduran land rights campaigner Berta Caceres have united the struggles of indigenous peoples on the continent, a Guatemalan indigenous leader said on Tuesday.
100,000 Americans Die from Air Pollution, Study Finds 04/08/2019
US among top 10 countries for pollution-related deaths, new study shows 12/18/2019 US ranks seventh for overall deaths and is the ‘wealthiest’ nation to feature in top 10 with 197,000 lives lost in 2017 .... Toxic air, water, land and workplaces killed at least 8.3 million people around the world in 2017, accounting for 15% of all premature deaths. (If the United States had the same average as the world, the pollution related deaths would have been over 425,000 by this estimate. This means that we have less than half the global average, and other areas must have higher than 15% of premature deaths caused partially by pollution.)
Mortality in the United States, 2018 January 2020 In 2018, a total of 2,839,205 resident deaths were registered in the United States—25,702 more deaths than in 2017.
Air Pollution Accounts for 1 in 8 Deaths Worldwide, According to New WHO Estimates April 2014
Amy Coney Barrett's past calls into question her pledges of impartiality 10/26/2020 Guardian investigations reveal a deeply conservative jurist committed to reversing abortion rights
What Amy Coney Barrett Means For Voting Rights 10/26/2020 Unless we act, I fear a return to Jim Crow regime under which my grandparents and tens of millions of Black people suffered is inevitable.
Wikipedia: Kerry Committee report
Kerry Committee report: original documents scanned in.
Kerry Committee report: searchable text.
Joe Biden Not Opposed to Amy Coney Barrett, Says She 'Seems Like a Very Fine Person' 09/29/2020 "I have nothing-- I'm not opposed to the justice," Biden said. "She seems like a very fine person."
He Sought Asylum After MS-13 Tried to Kill Him. Amy Coney Barrett Sent Him Back Into Danger. 10/09/2020
Amy Coney Barrett’s Take on Voting Rights Act Exposes Her Entire Legal Philosophy as a Lie 10/14/2020
A No-Knock Raid in Houston Led to Deaths and Police Injuries. Should Police Rethink the Practice? 02/01/2019
Cops do 20,000 no-knock raids a year. Civilians often pay the price when they go wrong. 05/15/2015
Qualified immunity: Police off the hook for no-knock raid on wrong house 09/10/2020
Ex-Georgia Deputy Acquitted After Flash Bang Grenade Hurts Toddler 12/13/2015
Family of Toddler Injured by SWAT 'Grenade' Faces $1M in Medical Bills 12/18/2014
Mississippi Police Fatally Shoot Man at Wrong House While Serving Warrant 07/26/2017
Police Raided the Wrong House 41 Times! 03/22/2011
Authorities shot a woman during a botched raid at her home. The real suspect was already in jail. 12/24/2019 Wayback machine or original article
Mobile officers shoot woman during search for man already in jail 12/21/2019
Radley Balko "Rise of the Warrior Cop" 2013
Laws ending no-knock warrants after Breonna Taylor's death are 'a big deal' but not enough 09/10/2020
Fact check: Louisville Police had a 'no-knock' warrant for Breonna Taylor’s apartment 06/30/2020
Polls With Citations: Americans Want Bernie’s New Deal For All 07/26/2019
At best some establishment candidates might support a couple of these policies, like Roe v. Wade, or even legalizing of marijuana; however, when it comes to policies that enrich the wealthy elites, which include the rest almost all politicians, including all presidential nominees oppose all the issues overwhelmingly supported by the public! This is the opposite of how a Democracy is supposed to work!
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