It pains me to say this, but today, I must stand with the Republicans, in a way. Ken Derow, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania Saying no to undignified speech So, tolerating the evident excesses of extreme views on social media is a price we must bear in a free society that is dedicated to the overarching principle of free speech. That could be the first step in creating a “thought police” to judge if our words are legally tolerable to others that is the province of autocracies, not democracies. You can’t legislate decency, and creating legal barriers to disseminating vile rhetoric might be a slippery slope. As long as we are a democratic society in which freedom of speech is our most hallowed right and privilege, this is just an unfortunate byproduct that we must live with. But it is those of us who create these messages of hate and mendacity who really are to blame. These social media do provide a fertile ground for amplifying these ideas. But they are no more guilty of complicity in spreading these memes than a radio was in spreading rock ’n’ roll music described as evil by many in the 1950s.īy one means or another, ideas will get out, and if a receptive audience is found, they will flourish. There is no question that these platforms - which empower anonymity - are breeding grounds for virtually unbridled hate, lies and conspiracy theories. In Congress, and among a wide swath of the public, there are well-intentioned debates about whether social media platforms should be constrained. Peter Stern, Driftwood, Texas Reining in social media It’s been a wild ride for four years, and the special-interest pundits of D.C. I will be very sorry to see Trump leave the White House. With Joe Biden coming into the presidency, we will return to D.C. Whether you like Trump, he is the only president in decades to fight special interests openly and to rock legislators in D.C. It is why most of us voted for him in the first place. President Donald Trump is 100% correct that Congress is a disgusting swamp of special interests. Is it a surprise to anyone that the House and Senate provided a pseudo COVID bill, providing little relief to Americans?
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