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Elites Demand More Spying And Censorship As We Fight For Freedom
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Elites Demand More Spying And Censorship As We Fight For Freedom

Celebrate Independence Day by watching our full London event

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Leighton Woodhouse
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Michael Shellenberger
Jul 04, 2023
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Almost 250 years ago today, the revolutionaries from the colonies that became the United States of America achieved their independence from the British crown. Fourteen years later, they drafted the Bill of Rights. First among the rights they enumerated was the right to free speech.

Today, that right is under attack from the very government that the revolutionaries created. A decade ago, we learned from the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden that the US security state has an almost incomprehensibly vast system of digital surveillance tracking every keystroke we make. Last December, the Twitter Files showed us that federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies collude with the tech companies that run the platforms upon which we live our digital lives to censor our speech, punish dissent and control the public discourse.

The founders anticipated precisely this threat. The entire point of the Constitution was to guard against the tendency of states, including democratic ones, to become tyrannies. In the United States, we can be grateful for their foresight and celebrate their wisdom on this Independence Day, and hope that it’s enough to defeat those within our government who wish to censor us and police our beliefs.

But the rest of the Western world is less fortunate.

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