U.S. climate envoy John Kerry announced at the World Economic Forum (WEF) last week that he wants to totally eliminate First Amendment freedom of speech protections.
At a panel discussion on green energy investing and sustainable development, he called freedom of expression a "major block" preventing the government from halting the spread of "disinformation."
Kerry called divergent opinions — particularly on social media platforms — a "part of our problem, particularly in democracies, in terms of building consensus around any issue. It's really hard to govern today."
So ultimately those dang democracies are in the way. If only we were a dictatorship, we wouldn’t have that problem. We could just tell everyone what to believe and that would take care of it.
"But look, if people only go to one source, and the source they go to is sick, and, you know, has an agenda and they're putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence," Kerry added.
Other members of the Biden administration have attempted to curb free speech — including targeting specific social media posts for censorship.
What Kerry and the others fail to understand — or refuse to accept — is that “facts” aren’t static. This is especially true in the sciences — including climate science.
For at least the last decade the accepted "fact" was that planet Earth is in a warming period, and we were about to get a lot warmer due to elevated carbon dioxide emissions caused by human activity.
But earlier this month The Washington Post reported that "Scientists have captured Earth’s climate over the last 485 million years."
The Post included a graph indicating that we’re in a relative cool period.
It’s also been an accepted "fact" for many decades that Earth’s last ice age began about 100 million years ago, and lasted until about 25 million years ago.
Yet according to the same graph 100 million years ago was a very warm period in Earth’s history.
And people are wising up. Last week the Environmental Protection Agency ran a poll on Twitter/X in recognition of Climate Week.
"True or False": they asked. "Humans are the dominant cause of climate change."
The EPA didn’t get the results they were expecting. Less than 10% of respondents believed human activity was the culprit of climate change; 90.1% disagreed.
And that’s why we have a First Amendment — to exchange differing ideas, opposing points of view.
But Kerry isn’t alone — and it’s not just the First Amendment. Last week The New Yorker published a column calling for trashing the entire Constitution.
"Isn’t this undemocratic, sticking us with a dead-hand document that we can’t change when the times do?" asked Louis Menand.
This was something our 44th president could get behind.
In a 2001 interview, then-Sen. Barack Obama thought the Constitution was poorly drafted and could be vastly improved.
He criticized the Constitution as a mere "charter of negative liberties."
Obama explained that "It says what the states can't do to you. Says what the federal government can't do to you but doesn't say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf."
On the contrary, the Constitution provides that the government must protect religious liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to peacefully assemble, the right to keep and bear arms, and the right to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures.
Those are just a few of the many rights and privileges of U.S. citizens that the government must protect.
But when Obama mentioned things that "government must do on your behalf," he probably had social services in mind — things like guaranteed income, guaranteed housing, and guaranteed medical care — things we can provide for ourselves more efficiently than the government can.
He would prefer a government that’s our "sugar daddy" — one that the people depend upon for survival rather than one that protects our fundamental freedoms.
Sam Houston once observed, "When tyrants ask you to yield one jot of your liberty, and you consent thereto, it is the first link forged in the chain that will eventually hold you in bondage."
Those rights that the Constitution commands the government to protect are more precious than what Obama had in mind, and they’re rights that cannot be attained on our own.
Accordingly, our rights must be jealously protected at all costs from tyrants like Obama, Biden, and Kerry.
To the left the Constitution is an impediment; to the people it’s a guarantee of freedom.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and a Second Amendment supporter. Read Michael Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.