Joining other tech giants, Amazon (AMZN) delivered on its threat to block the social media platform Parler from its servers.
The screenshot above shows what appeared when I tried to access my Parler account this morning.
We are living on the leading edge of a great wave of censorship and it should terrify all who treasure their freedoms.
Along with the inherent right to bear arms, the freedom to express thoughts with which others disagree is foundational to decent societies.
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
George Orwell
Censorship is tyranny.
And the fact that this censorship is driven from the private sector makes it no less tyrannical than if the government were blocking the speech.
“Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.”
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Our nation’s founders recognized not only the human right to free speech but also the danger of restricting it.
“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
George Washington
Sadly for America, the tyrannical blocking of speech by the big tech companies–e.g., Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, etc.–is tantamount to begging for government legislators and bureaucrats to strangle the life out of those companies through onerous regulations.
Big tech is signing its own death warrant.
And I say, “Good riddance!”