{"id":21374,"date":"2025-02-19T15:45:47","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T20:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=21374"},"modified":"2025-02-19T15:50:58","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T20:50:58","slug":"sacrificing-truth-on-leviathans-altar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/19\/sacrificing-truth-on-leviathans-altar\/","title":{"rendered":"Sacrificing Truth on Leviathan\u2019s Altar"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sacrifice by seekwithin https:\/\/www.deviantart.com\/seekwithin\/art\/sacrifice-961966191<\/p><\/div>\n

Sacrificing Truth on Leviathan\u2019s Altar<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/h1>\n

by James Bovard, February 19, 2025<\/p>\n

Last Sunday, 60 Minutes<\/em><\/a> featured tyrannical German prosecutors boasting about persecuting private citizens who made comments that officialdom disapproved. Three prosecutors explained how the government was entitled to launch pre-dawn raids and lock up individuals who criticized politicians, complained about immigrant crime waves, or otherwise crossed the latest revised boundary lines of acceptable thoughts.<\/p>\n

In a craven slant that would have cheered any mid-twentieth century European dictator, 60 Minutes<\/em> glorified the crackdown: \u201cGermany is trying to bring some civility to the world wide web by policing it in a way most Americans could never imagine in an effort to protect discourse.\u201d Nothing \u201cprotects discourse\u201d like a jackboot kick aside the head of someone who insulted a German politician on Facebook, right? Mocking German leaders is punished like heresy was punished 500 years ago\u2014though no one has been publicly torched yet.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Do the priggish German prosecutors realize that they are the latest incarnation of nineteenth-century German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel? Hegel declared: \u201cMen are as foolish as to forget, in their enthusiasm for liberty of conscience and political freedom, the truth which lies in power.\u201d Hegel bluntly equated government and truth: \u201cFor Truth is the Unity of the universal and subjective Will; and the Universal is to be found in the State, in its laws, its universal and rational arrangements.\u201d Hegel probably did more to propel modern totalitarianism than perhaps any other philosopher.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, many Americans favor the US government becoming a Ministry of Truth like the German government. Fifty-five percent of American adults support government suppression of \u201cfalse information,\u201d according to a 2023 poll. But other polls show that only 20 percent trust the government to do the right thing most of the time. So why would people trust dishonest officials to forcibly eradicate \u201cfalse information\u201d? Did some people skip logic class, or what? A September 2023 poll revealed that almost half of Democrats believed that free speech should be legal \u201conly under certain circumstances\u201d\u2014perhaps only when a rascally Republican is president?<\/p>\n

Hegelian notions of \u201cGovernment = Truth\u201d propelled censorship here in recent years<\/strong>. Three years ago, Americans learned they lived under a Disinformation Governance Board with a ditzy Disinformation Czar who boasted of graduating from Bryn Mawr University. A public backlash led to the board\u2019s termination but federal censors quickly and secretly resumed their sway over the internet.<\/p>\n

Though American censors rarely invoke Hegel, their schemes tacitly presume that political power is divine, if not in origin, at least in its effect.<\/strong> The Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), created in 2018, has relied on \u201ccensorship by surrogate,\u201d subcontracting the destruction of freedom. CISA partnered with federal grantees to form the Election Integrity Partnership a hundred days before the 2020 presidential election. That project, along with the efforts of other federal agencies, created an \u201cunrelenting pressure\u201d with \u201cthe intended result of suppressing millions of protected free speech postings by American citizens,\u201d according to a 2023 ruling by Federal Judge Terry Doughty.<\/p>\n

What standard did CISA use to determine whether Americans should be muzzled? CISA settled controversies by contacting government employees and \u201capparently always assumed the government official was a reliable source,\u201d Judge Doughty noted. Any assertion by officialdom could suffice to justify suppression of comments or posts by private citizens. But when did government I.D. badges become the Oracle of Delphi<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

During the 2020 presidential election campaign, CISA established a \u201cRumor Control\u201d webpage to deal with threats to the election\u2014including rumors that the feds were censoring Americans. CISA targeted for suppression assertions by Americans such as \u201cmail-in voting is insecure\u201d\u2014despite the long history of absentee ballot fraud. Biden won the presidency in part thanks to Democrats exploiting the covid pandemic to open the floodgates to unverified mail-in ballots. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) declared, \u201cTwitter was basically an FBI<\/a> subsidiary before Elon Musk took it over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Censors act as if truth and lies are both self-evident. But as an investigative journalist hounding federal agencies<\/strong>, I have seen how government minimizes disclosures of its outrageous conduct. On April 19, 1993, 80 people died in a massive fire during an FBI tank assault on the home of the Branch Davidians. On that day, the FBI was adamant that they had nothing to do with the fire and also claimed to possess audiotapes proving the Davidians intentionally committed mass suicide. They never disclosed that proof. But anyone who suggested that the FBI was connected to the fatal fire was derided as an anti-government nut case, if not a public menace. A Los Angeles Times<\/em> book reviewer practically blamed my criticism of the feds on Waco and other cases for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. But year by year, the FBI\u2019s Waco storyline fell apart. Six years after the fire, a private investigator found proof that the FBI fired pyrotechnic grenades at the Davidians\u2019 home before the fire, obliterating the FBI cover-up.<\/p>\n

The same pattern of delayed disclosures or leaks annihilated the US government\u2019s credibility on the epidemic of Gulf War syndrome cases in the 1990s, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the glorious triumph for democracy and women\u2019s rights after the US invaded Afghanistan. The \u201ctrickle down\u201d version of truth was also stark in the notorious Duke Lacrosse case. With his persistent, savvy analysis and investigations, Mises editor Bill Anderson heroically helped<\/a> vanquish a media and prosecutorial lynch mob.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, in Germany, and at least sporadically in the United States, \u201ctruth\u201d is whatever the government proclaims. \u201cDisinformation\u201d is whatever contradicts the latest government pronouncements. It is irrelevant how many false statements politicians or bureaucrats make. Government retains a monopoly on truth and on the right to deceive.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Recent censorship schemes vivify how democracy is being turned into a parody: voters choose politicians who then dictate what citizens are permitted to think and say<\/strong>. Censors destroy freedom of thought as well as freedom of speech. Censorship seeks to force each person to live in mental isolation, with no sparks for their thoughts from fellow citizens. Shortly before Hegel\u2019s rise to prominence, German philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote, \u201cThe external power that deprives man of the freedom to communicate his thoughts publicly, deprives him at the same time of his freedom to think.\u201d By barricading individuals from each other, censors create millions of intellectual Robinson Crusoes, stranded on islands and trying to figure out everything for themselves. Prohibiting citizens from sharing facts of government abuses spawns a bastardized form of sovereign immunity<\/strong>. It minimizes opposition to political power grabs\u2014often until it is too late to resist.<\/p>\n

Other European nations are as bad or worse than Germany. Britain is notorious for raiding the homes and arresting anyone who makes allegations about immigrants and crime. According to Irish Senator Pauline O\u2019Reilly, government must \u201crestrict freedoms for the common good\u201d when \u201ca person\u2019s views on other people\u2019s identities\u201d makes them \u201cinsecure.\u201d Can I demand that government censor anyone who makes me insecure about my identity by mocking my vintage railroad engineer cap?<\/strong> By vastly expanding the definition of \u201chate speech,\u201d politicians justify suppressing any views they disapprove.<\/p>\n

Faith in officialdom to decree truth and punish error exemplifies growing political illiteracy.<\/strong> In earlier eras, Americans were renowned for heartily disdaining politicians who rose to power by making endless bogus promises.<\/p>\n

Why would any prudent person expect bureaucrats to deliver \u201cthe truth, and nothing but the truth\u201d like FEMA officials coming to the rescue after a flood? If the government can\u2019t be trusted for reliable mail delivery, why in Hades would anyone trust government to judge and safeguard any thoughts citizens choose to share? Do people honestly expect that turning politicians into censors will evoke their inner sainthood? How can freedom of speech or any other freedom survive if so many people fall for so much BS from Washington?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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