Joyce Krawiec serves in the North Carolina Senate. She represents Davie County and Forsyth County, NC. Christian, wife, mother, small business owner, and conservative.
The first amendment to the Constitution guarantees our right to free speech. Our founders believed religious liberty and free speech to be of such importance that they placed it at the top. In case you’re not familiar with it, it says:
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.
It is clear that our founders expected the American people to practice their religious beliefs and to speak their minds freely. Even criticizing the government is clearly delineated as a right.
Today there is a coordinated effort to silence voices of dissent. We see it in the news media and in social media circles. I’m sure you’ve heard lots of stories about social media picking and choosing which voices can be heard. Twitter, Facebook, et al have been under some scrutiny for shutting down conservatives but allowing progressive liberal voices to continue.
The news of Hunter Biden’s laptop is a perfect example. Before the 2020 election, news outlets and social media platforms allowed very little exposure of this discovery. There are many examples of voices being silenced until after the election. We are just beginning to hear the stories of Hunter Biden and the President’s involvement in his business dealings. Voters should have had the opportunity to hear that news and decide for themselves if it was accurate.
Another perfect example is the coverage of the Covid pandemic. It is so sad, that millions have died and there were brave medical providers offering treatments that were not allowed to be discussed. I have met with so many providers who treated Covid patients with great success and were punished for it. Many are being investigated by the Medical Board. I will never understand why this happened. The media and the large Medical Community, under the direction of Dr. Fauci, denied the right to try these alternative treatments. After admitting that there was no treatment and people who entered hospitals and placed on ventilators usually died, why would we not be trying everything? Some of the alternative treatments were ordinary drugs that had been marketed and used for decades so there was no question about their safety. Voices were silenced and media platforms shut down any information not approved by the Fauci crowd. We will never know if these deaths could have been avoided.
We are protected under the Constitution against government censorship, but the government has a left-wing media to do the censorship for them. What difference does it make if you’re free to speak if nobody hears you?
We saw the protests and the threat to the Supreme Court justices recently over the Roe decision. The protests began, after the leak, in an attempt to intimidate the justices. This is frightening when violence has become the way to silence voices of dissent.
In 1945, George Orwell wrote the following in his book 1984.
The chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of … any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist must face … The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.
Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban … the same veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films, and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is “not done” to say it … Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.
Did he nail it or what? The fact is that we may have the freedom to speak our opinions but if we are too afraid to speak, we have been silenced.
We must remember when the opposition begins name calling and threats, they have no valid arguments. Speak out and don’t be silenced.
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Joyce Krawiec serves in the North Carolina Senate. She represents Davie County and Forsyth County, NC. Christian, wife, mother, small business owner, and conservative.