Special Opinion by Charles Landis.
On Thanksgiving eve, I received a notice from FaceBook that their independent fact-checker, Politifact, has determined that I posted a quotation of Patrick Henry that was partly false as to his position on limited government. Specifically, I posted a picture of Patrick Henry upon which was written the famous quote “give me liberty or give me death.” Also was written. “Not give me free college, free healthcare, free housing, and make my neighbors pay for it.” My crime, apparently, was thinking Patrick Henry would not be supportive of giving a lot of free stuff or, worse, was not a Socialist Democrat.
The famous quote of Henry was reported as given in a speech he gave at the Second Virginia Convention in 1775 . Historians have said there is no record of Henry actually saying “Give me liberty give me death.” However, there has never been any dispute that Henry spoke about the tyranny of England and that he would fight and die for freedom. A distinction without a difference.
All of this is only an assumption because Face Book did not tell me what was false or partly false, or why. It is a kind of Mao Tse-Tung thing when he ruled Communist China and said “let a thousand thoughts contend as a thousand flowers bloom”; he then established re-education camps to ensure correct thinking. A refugee from one of these camps explained it to me this way: In the dead of night she was arrested and taken from her home in Beijing and confined in a “re-education” camp in a remote rural area. She was not charged with a crime other than she had been reported as having false thoughts. That is, thinking as one would as in the old cultural norms of China; not in accordance with the truthful and correct thinking of the cultural revolution.
In the camp, with others, she was re- educated in how to think correctly. There was no sentence for a certain period of time. To be released, you had to convince your leader that you understood what your false thinking was and what the correct thinking was. Eventually she was released, escaped to Hong Kong, and became an exchange student at a university in Washington.. Another day, the rest of the story.
Being educated in politically correct thinking is not only in communist/socialist countries; we have, for example the NY Times 1619 Project which rewrites all of our history since the founding. Also, schools from elementary to college level teach revisionist history with abandon. Even here on the Eastern Shore there are those who think my book “An Introduction to the History of Virginia’s Eastern Shore. A collection of Essays on Important Persons and Events”, was “fake” history. (As opined by a social justice warrior).[CL1] . They do not say what was fake or false, but I have otherwise learned that they believe the “real” history of the Shore was of social injustice and economic oppression of Black people. Here again I was left to figure out what crime of false or incorrect thinking I was guilty of.
In the final banality and commonality of it all, Face Book, Mao, and the social justice warriors on the Shore assert I am guilty of false or incorrect thinking, I must figure out what my crime is, confess, and do penance for redemption.
Note. In links provided by FB fact checkers, I am informed both “mechanical and human” means are used to determine whether a post is true or false. It appears that both are programmed to identify and link certain words to flag as untrue or false. In my case, Patrick Henry (patriot) linked with free stuff (limited government) alarmed/alerted the fact t checker people/thing and thus decided false or not true. Insidious. Perfidious.
It’s been decades since I read all of the cautionary tale books, “1984”, “Brave New Worlds” and “Atlas Shrugged”.
However, I don’t recall any of them mentioning an armed citizenry.
POLITIFACT, which stands for “Politicized Bull**** Factoids,” is a BULL**** lash-up that is hardly non-biased, and so it is not at all surprising that BIG BROTHER FACEBOOK, the THOUGHT POLICE in America, would be hooked up with POLITIFACT, which itself is a part of something called the Poynter Institute, which institute in 2019 used various “fake news” databases to compile a list of over 515 news websites that it labeled “unreliable,” calling on advertisers to “blacklist” the sites on the list which included conservative news websites such as the Washington Examiner, The Washington Free Beacon, and The Daily Signal.
That is all fact and a matter of record for anyone who doesn’t park their head in their *** to keep their brain safe and warm and who likes to know who it is out there that is controlling their thoughts by limiting the information they are privy to, or in the case of POLITIFACT, distorting that information and skewing it and spinning it and being biased about it, which is a blatant assault on what is called the Marketplace of Ideas in America, which marketplace of ideas holds that the truth will emerge from the competition of ideas in free, transparent public discourse and concludes that ideas and ideologies will be culled according to their superiority or inferiority and widespread acceptance among the population.
Support for competing ideas and robust debate can be found in the philosophy of John Milton in his work Areopagitica in 1644 and also John Stuart Mill in his book On Liberty in 1859.
And while support for competing ideas and robust debate can be found in the philosophy of John Milton in his work Areopagitica in 1644 and also John Stuart Mill in his book On Liberty in 1859, where that support cannot be found today is at BIG BROTHER FACEBOOK, because competing ideas and robust debate are a threat to FACEBOOK, which considers itself the THOUGHT POLICE in America, or controller of what can be thought, and what must not be thought.
So with FACEBOOK, and its stooge POLITIFACT, there is no functioning marketplace of ideas, which brings us back to POLITIFACT, as follows:
Of direct relevance to the discussion in here, after backlash, Poynter retracted the list, citing “weaknesses in the methodology,” issuing a statement, saying: “We regret that we failed to ensure that the data was rigorous before publication, and apologize for the confusion and agitation caused by its publication,” which statement was the subject of an article in The Hill entitled “Poynter pulls blacklist of ‘unreliable’ news websites after backlash” by Joe Concha on 05/03/19, where we had as follows:
The Poynter Institute has apologized for publishing a list of 515 news websites it deemed “unreliable” after backlash from readers and on social media regarding “weaknesses in the methodology” used by the nonprofit publication.
The index was compiled from “fake news” databases curated by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at University of Southern California, Merrimack University, PolitiFact, Snopes and data designer Chris Herbert.
Publications originally on the list included the Washington Examiner and the Washington Free Beacon.
“Soon after we published, we received complaints from those on the list and readers who objected to the inclusion of certain sites, and the exclusion of others,” Poynter managing editor Barbara Allen wrote in an explanation behind the piece that was pulled off the site on Thursday.
“We regret that we failed to ensure that the data was rigorous before publication, and apologize for the confusion and agitation caused by its publication,” Allen added.
“We pledge to continue to hold ourselves to the highest standards.”
Allen said that Poynter launched the audit to test the veracity of the list and that while it felt that many of the sites “did have a track record of publishing unreliable information,” the review also “found weaknesses in the methodology.”
“We detected inconsistencies between the findings of the original databases that were the sources for the list and our own rendering of the final report,” she said in the statement.
The language in the original story also called on advertisers to “blacklist” the sites selected for the list.
“Fake news is a business.”
“Much of that business is ad-supported,” Poynter researcher Barrett Golding wrote in the report.
“Aside from journalists, researchers and news consumers, we hope that the index will be useful for advertisers that want to stop funding misinformation.”
Reaction on Twitter was swift, which included criticism from journalists whose publication were included on the list.
What a disgusting exercise in bad faith from an organization that’s supposed to be about improving and promoting journalism.
Instead, they’re creating tabloid-level listicles to smear reporters without offering even a single piece of evidence.
Shame on you, @Poynter.
— Stephen Gutowski (@StephenGutowski) May 2, 2019
It’s fine to hate the content at @DailySignal or disagree with that.
But we take journalism and accuracy and transparency very seriously, and @Poynter is smearing us by putting us on an unreliable news database https://t.co/j1frl70V5H
— Katrina Trinko (@KatrinaTrinko) May 2, 2019
– We should all now remember @Poynter has exposed itself as an agent of the left, but considering its a media organization we already knew that.
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) May 3, 2019
end quotes
So much then for the veracity or lack thereof of POLITIFACT.
It’s a horse**** lash-up, plain and simple.
In Atlas Shrugged, after John Galt is taken prisoner by the “government,” Dagny Taggert and the strikers rescue him in an armed confrontation with guards.
Well, to me the writer missed the point when you 1st signed up for a Facebook account. The insidious and ridiculous questions. The invasions of privacy. For what ? To make Zuckerburger a wealthy gossip columnist ? I don’t think so. In the midst of the initial signup procedure many years ago I realized Zuckerburger was a control freak direct marketing invasive schmuck and right then decided I didn’t want to join his shit show. You can always walk away. There is life after facelessbook. Just sayin….It’s as difficult to walk away from Facelessbook as one finds it difficult walking away from serving in Viet Nam.
FRIENDS, COUNTRYMEN, and FELLOW-CITIZENS, As long as the liberty of the press continues unviolated, and the people have the right of expressing and publishing their sentiments upon every public measure, it is next to impossible to enslave a free nation.
The state of society must be very corrupt and base indeed, when the people in possession of such a monitor as the press, can be induced to exchange the heavenborn blessings of liberty for the galling chains of despotism.
Men of an aspiring and tyrannical disposition, sensible of this truth, have ever been inimical to the press, and have considered the shackling of it, as the first step towards the accomplishment of their hateful domination, and the entire suppression of all liberty of public discussion, as necessary to its support.
– Centinel II, Centinel, October 24, 1787
This whole thing is absurd, like something straight out of National Lampoon, or Tales of the Ultimate Bizarre.
Does anyone think there are people in America today who are actually stupid enough to believe that Patrick Henry said “give me liberty or give me death, not give me free college, free healthcare, free housing, and make my neighbors pay for it.”
And the answer is apparently BIG BROTHER FACEBOOK the THOUGHT POLICE thinks so, if they had to resort to both “mechanical and human” means to determine whether the quote “give me liberty or give me death, not give me free college, free healthcare, free housing, and make my neighbors pay for it” is true or false.