Free Speech

there is always more to say

N.S. Lyons, who writes the The Upheaval, is a Game A Galaxy Brain worth reading. He is not a provocateur or a troll, seems authentic and sincere with a high degree of integrity, although he is an pseudonymous writer. Lots of people I follow also follow Lyons - Tom Morgan, Ali Beiner and Andrew Sullivan to name just a few.

I am an average and ordinary Metamodern Wannabe and today I feel this very strong urge to write in response to Vance’s Real Message to Europe: Give Up the Information War and GTFO by Lyons. Also, I am a Canadian, which gives me distance from an American perspective. I am a retired Baby Boomer and I am curious about the year in which Lyons was born, important context.

The first sentence reveals a bias, but I too have bias.

The political elite of Europe and the Anglosphere appeared shocked by J.D. Vance’s wonderfully blunt speech in Munich last month.

I thought the speech was alarmingly blunt.

Vance delivered multiple messages with his speech, the broadest and most historic of which was that the era of “post-national” globalist liberalism is over.

I agree with this assessment and consider it a step backwards. I am currently observing a rising, nationalist Canadian spirit in myself. But still first and foremost, I prefer to see myself as an inhabitant of The Earth which we all share. It seems obvious to me that there are many issues which are global not national. In my opinion, in the years ahead we will all be paying the price for our inability to work together for the collective good of all.

This intended system of thought-control would later grow into the censorship industrial complex that was partially revealed following Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. But a big obstacle initially stood in the way: the U.S. Constitution and its protection of free speech. The public might be receiving the “wrong” information on the internet, but “our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence,” as John Kerry lamented in a speech to the World Economic Forum.

For refernece…

First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Lyons, like many Americans, holds the US Constitution as sacred. I see it as the best constitution ever created. But it has some flaws, perhaps even fatal flaws, and is probably nearing the end of its useful life.

The inability to mitigate the harm that can and does result from unrestricted free speech is a serious problem for the United States.

To lecture Europeans from the perspective of the US constitution is American arrogance that, as a Canadian, I am quite familiar with.

The Canadian approach makes far more sense to me.

AI Overview

Canada's hate speech laws are in the Criminal Code and include offenses like inciting hatred and promoting genocide. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects freedom of speech, but there are limits.

Lyons seems to argue that the right to free speech is so important that all harmful and misinformation must be allowed.

But Lyons is not metamodern. Free speech or no free speech. BOTH free speech AND no free speech, in context.

And as I read Game A Galaxy Brains, I sense simplicity and I sense the absence of an appreciation for complexity so evident in metamodern thought.

Lyons writes,

In short, the transatlantic alliance has for years been waging a hybrid information war on the American public (among other nations). Above all, the objective of this politics by other means was to stop the rise of Donald Trump and the populism he represents. But that war failed; now Trump is back and, as Vance warned the political and military leaders assembled in Munich, “there is a new sheriff in town” in Washington. Much as they risk being abandoned and left standing alone holding the bag in Ukraine, the allies of former president Joe Biden across the pond have been left stranded in the digital trenches of America’s cold civil war, still combatants on what’s now distinctly the losing side. Vance was politely informing them that their cyber-soldiers had better pack up and leave the conflict zone immediately.

Stopping the rise of Donald Trump and the populism he represents was important and the failure to succeed in that objective is a tragedy.

While Lyons rails against the elites, a stance that I share, there is more to the story.

Trump's Dept of Defense BLOCKED MY SHOW

Donald Trump's Department of Defense appears to have blocked The David Pakman Show

The Trump-Vance-Musk team are suppressing free speech at this very moment.

And while Lyons clearly sees how others are captured by narratives, he fails to see that he himself has also been so captured, as have we all. It is all stories all the way down. But this too is a story for another time.