The Censorship Boomerang Authored by Bret Swanson via The Brownstone Institute, “Madness is rare in individuals; but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.” – Friedrich Nietzsche They fooled themselves. The censorship meant to keep regular people in the dark instead blinded the pseudo-elite censors and their friends.  The shock – both feigned and real – over Joe Biden’s long-obvious dementia cements our 2022 diagnosis of the ruling class’s dysinformation disorder. Yes, some knew and hid the truth, as the brilliant Timur Kuran explains. But many journalists and Democratic power brokers appear to have been truly clueless. Otherwise, they would have changed course long ago.  The refrain that Joe is “sharp as a tack” was just the latest in two decades’ worth of increasingly preposterous propaganda.  Iraqi WMD Russian collusion 51 intel officers Everything Covid SARS2 emerged in a wet market Lockdown Mask your toddlers Jab the healthy Horse dewormer Ukraine is winning – escalate! The border’s secure This propaganda is believed most deeply and fervently in Washington, D.C., New York, and Hollywood. Those who think they know the most turn out to know the least. So what? Lots of people are wrong lots of the time.  Well, it turns out self-delusion at scale is no trifling matter. With Covid, it produced the biggest set of policy debacles since the Great Depression and has now brought us closer to nuclear conflict than any time since October 1962.  A Dangerous Info Gap In June of 2020, we warned of growing censorship spurred by the Internet’s very openness:  The democratization of knowledge, expertise, and opinion is a fundamental and mostly welcome shift. Over time, it should allow us to learn faster and better stumble our way toward the truth. Ideally, preference cascades that expose falsehoods and improve the world won’t take decades to emerge.  But not

TOKYO — Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te and ex-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lamented fraying religious freedoms in today’s Asia, saying the issue required renewed international focus and that Communist China was a main obstacle to progress.

Anti-Free Speech Laws Hit New Heights In Italy: Reporter Fined For “Body Shaming’ PM Meloni Authored by Jonathan Turley, I have long been critical of the erosion of free speech in Italy and other Western European countries, including the use of criminal libel laws against critics of the police or government. This week a Milan court has ordered a journalist to pay Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni damages of 5,000 euros ($5,465) for making fun of her in a social media post. Giulia Cortese was also given a suspended fine of 1,200 euros for a joke on X. It is the latest absurd example of the expanding crackdown on free speech. In my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss how this anti-free speech wave from Europe has finally reached our shores. The rapid loss of free speech in countries like Italy, France, Germany, and Great Britain should be a wake up call for all Americans to protect this “indispensable right.” There are many in the United States, including Hillary Clinton, who want to replicate the anti-free speech laws in the United States. This is a prototypical example of how vague laws are being used to crackdown on everyone from journalists to politicians to even comedians. Cortese posted a comment on Twitter in Oct. 2021 about Meloni’s height. She objected to the government’s attack on “freedom of expression and journalistic dissent.” Cortese published a mocked-up photo of Meloni with a picture of the late fascist leader Benito Mussolini in the background. As she clashed with the Prime Minister, she then later added: “you don’t scare me, Giorgia Meloni. After all, you’re only 1.2 metres (4 feet) tall. I can’t even see you.” Notably, Meloni supported the legal action despite the fact that she is part of a party long in the minority