When Free Speech Dies, The Killing Begins

By Neenah Payne

Most Americans – even avid followers of good alt media sites – may not realize how fragile the hold on our freedoms and national sovereignty is now. Patrick Wood is issuing a wake-up call each Tuesday in his one-hour ZOOM calls which began on January 16. Subscribe at citizensforfreespeech.org to participate in the calls on January 30 and February 6 at 4:00PM Pacific, 5:00PM Mountain, 6:00PM Central, 7:00PM Eastern.

Patrick Wood: Let’s Talk Free Speech Now! discusses the January 16 Zoom. Forty people registered and 33 participated. Zoom Call January 23: Let’s Talk Free Speech! shows the critical importance of free speech now. Wood held his second Zoom call on Tuesday, January 23 for which 120 people registered and 40 participated. Wood again quoted Belgian psychiatrist, Mattias Desmet, author of The Psychology of Totalitarianism, who warned, “When free speech goes, that’s when the killing begins”.

This is the video of Zoom Call #2.

Now is the time for Americans and people around the world to get informed and stand up! Because of the WHO Pandemic Treaty looming in May, we may not have that chance next year – or even later this year. That’s how urgent this situation is now! See WHO Pandemic Treaty Will Enslave Humanity!

ZOOM Call Entrance and Exit Polls

Wood recorded the Zoom call and conducted a quick Entrance Poll near the start of the call to see the group’s level of commitment to free speech and showed the results of the Poll. He also conducted an Exit Poll to see how much people felt they had gotten out of the experience. Wood cannot see individual responses. He explained how to save the Chat List which had a lot of valuable information.

The Indispensable Right of Free Speech

Wood recommended an article on free speech by Jonathan Turley who is a Constitutional lawyer and a law professor at George Washington University where he holds the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Chair of Public Interest Law. Turley has written, litigated, and testified on congressional oversight and the First Amendment for decades. Turley writes in The Hill about the dangers of censorship measures called for by Congress, academics, writers, and activists. He is the author of The Indispensable Right of Free Speech in an Age of Rage which will be published in June and can be pre-ordered on Amazon now.

Amazon Description

A timely, revelatory look at freedom of speech—our most basic right and the one that protects all the others.

Free speech is a human right, and the free expression of thought is at the very essence of being human. The United States was founded on this premise, and the First Amendment remains the single greatest constitutional commitment to the right of free expression in history. Yet there is a systemic effort to bar opposing viewpoints on subjects ranging from racial discrimination to police abuse, from climate change to gender equity. These measures are reinforced by the public’s anger and rage; flash mobs appear today with the slightest provocation. We all lash out against anyone or anything that stands against our preferred certainty.

The Indispensable Right places the current attacks on free speech in their proper historical, legal, and political context. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights were not only written for times like these, but in a time like this. This country was born in an age of rage and for 250 years we have periodically lost sight of the value of free expression. The history of the struggle for free speech is the story of extraordinary people—nonconformists who refuse to yield to abusive authority—and here is a mosaic of vivid characters and controversies.

Jonathan Turley takes you through the figures and failures that have shaped us and then shows the unique dangers of our current moment. The alliance of academic, media, and corporate interests with the government’s traditional wish to control speech has put us on an almost irresistible path toward censorship. The Indispensable Right reminds us that we remain a nation grappling with the implications of free expression and with the limits of our tolerance for the speech of others. For rather than a political crisis, this is a crisis of faith.