Social media platforms, corporate media, the government, and political persuasions are censuring and canceling you for your thoughts and beliefs. Those who disagree with the radical left are labeled, marked in society, ridiculed, hated and canceled. Likewise, radical right movements also employ psychological mechanisms of self-censorship toward followers by selling the idea that some unnamed force is taking care of the wrongs in the world, so no action is necessary, just wait and see. People don’t know what to believe. They feel they can’t speak out. Anything said can be branded racist, bigotry, extremism, or some other form of inhumanity. In my opinion, this is the most deadly virus faced by today’s America.
Epoch Times’ Peter Svab writes, “Due to the psychological mechanisms of self-censorship, a single account blocked, a single video deleted, or a book banned can result in a broad chilling of speech. Important policy debates don’t occur, news story ideas aren’t pitched to editors, and books aren’t accepted for publishing, or written to begin with…it appears the censors employ the psychological tricks on purpose, achieving maximum suppression with minimal responsibility. These methods aren’t new—in fact, they have long been employed by totalitarian regimes. The principle of self-censorship is that people, just to be on the safe side, refrain from saying even things that aren’t outright banned by some applicable rules.”
Alexis de Tocqueville, in his book Democracy in America, Volume II, wrote in 1840, “It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence: it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
Last week, DC Circuit Court Judge Laurence Silberman, a Reagan appointee, warned with his dissent in a libel case, that the mainstream news media and Silicon Valley with its influence over news distribution are tools of the Democratic Party. He wrote in his opinion, “It should be borne in mind that the first step taken by any potential authoritarian or dictatorial regime is to gain control of communications, particularly the delivery of news. It is fair to conclude, therefore, that one-party control of the press and media is a threat to a viable democracy.” Silberman says this suppresses a vibrant trade in ideas and could give rise to countervailing extremism.
Liberty is a flame that lives in the hearts of men and women. It is not eternal. When it dies, it takes more than a spark to rekindle it, perhaps persecution beyond imagined to strike the flint of freedom. So, as Galatians 5:1 says, “Stand fast, therefore, in the Liberty by which Christ has set you free and be not again entangled with the yoke of bondage.” True liberty starts with Christ, then perhaps you may know the price of soft tyranny and the atrophy that follows when freedom is not regularly exercised. Be vigilant. Stand up. Speak out. A free people can only exist by adhering to the precepts of God. Bondage is bondage, whether it is sin or tyranny. It is the most deadly virus faced by today’s America.
