Ron Paul Liberty Report
  • Home
  • Archives
  • About

House Democrats Attack Messengers in ‘Politicization of Government’ Hearing

3/13/2023

 
Picture
By Ron Paul

I often joke that I survived Washington because I had low expectations, but last week’s hearing of the House Weaponization of the Federal Government subcommittee would have tested the lowest of my low expectations. The purpose of the subcommittee is to look into the politicization of US government agencies and its effect on our civil liberties. But last week’s inaugural hearing of the committee was not at all a good look for the Democrats, who brought nothing but insults for the witnesses.

Things got off on the wrong foot very quickly, as Democrat committee Members seemed less interested in what witnesses Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger had to say than in attacking the messengers. Ranking Committee Member Stacey E. Plaskett, a Democrat from the Virgin Islands, began by calling Taibbi a “so-called journalist” who poses a “direct threat” to people who disagree with the work he has done on the “Twitter Files.”

Taibbi, who to the likely dismay of the Democrats on the subcommittee is hardly a right-wing Republican, corrected Plaskett’s smear, pointing out to her that, "I'm not a so-called journalist. I've won the National Magazine Award, the I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and I've written 10 books including four New York Times bestsellers." In addition, Taibbi pointed out that most of his journalism career was spent at Rolling Stone Magazine, which is hardly a conservative political outlet.

The Democrat decision to make this hearing a partisan political issue and attack the journalists who brought us the truth about secret US government censorship-by-proxy of Americans who hold views unacceptable to government elites is extremely unfortunate. The Democrat decision to attack honest liberals like Taibbi for bringing us the truth is baffling. Taibbi and Shellenberger and the other journalists involved in exposing government malfeasance in the Twitter Files have done a great service to all Americans concerned about the collusion between government and corporations to silence speech that the government does not like.

Matt Taibbi posted his statement to the subcommittee as another episode in the “Twitter Files” series and it may have been the most disturbing release to date. In this release Taibbi documented what he calls the “Censorship-Industrial Complex.” This is the collusion not only between government and big tech to censor “wrong” views, but also those parts of the so-called “non-governmental” sector that are directly funded by government.

This “NGO” sector, it turns out, has been a key tool in the US government’s efforts to censor Americans who fail to toe the US government line on everything from Covid to Ukraine. The “non-government” organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab, the Alliance for Securing Democracy and dozens more pose as simply good citizens concerned about disinformation while in fact they are mostly or completely funded by the US government to do the US government’s bidding.

Taibbi calls this the “absolute fusion of state, corporate, and civil society organizations,” but there is another word for it: fascism. And that is where we are headed in the United States unless all of us – conservatives, libertarians, liberals, and progressives - wake up and fight for the restoration of the First Amendment.

Comments are closed.

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015



  • Home
  • Archives
  • About