Forum Post: "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
Posted 1 year ago on June 8, 2012, 2:40 p.m. EST by LeoYo
(2202)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
"all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
Declaration of Independence 1776
.
"Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going downhill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion."
Thomas Jefferson (Notes on the State of Virginia) 1781
.
"Experience has taught us, that men will not adopt and carry into execution measures the best calculated for their own good, without the intervention of a coercive power."
George Washington in a letter to John Jay dated August 1, 1786
.
"In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other."
Benjamin Franklin in his address to the Constitutional Convention dated September 17, 1787
.
"Those who contend for a simple democracy, or a pure republic, actuated by the sense of the majority, and operating within narrow limits, assume or suppose a case which is altogether fictitious. They found their reasoning on the idea, that the people composing the Society, enjoy not only an equality of political rights; but that they have all precisely the same interests, and the same feelings in every respect. Were this in reality the case, their reasoning would be conclusive. The interest of the majority would be that of the minority also; the decisions could only turn on mere opinion concerning the good of the whole, of which the major voice would be the safest criterion; and within a small sphere, this voice could be most easily collected, and the public affairs most accurately managed."
"We know however that no Society ever did or can consist of so homogeneous a mass of Citizens. In the savage State indeed, an approach is made towards it; but in that State little or no Government is necessary. In all civilized Societies, distinctions are various and unavoidable. A distinction of property results from that very protection which a free Government gives to unequal faculties of acquiring it. There will be rich and poor; creditors and debtors; a landed interest, a monied interest, a mercantile interest, a manufacturing interest. These classes may again be subdivided according to the different productions of different situations & soils, & according to different branches of commerce, and of manufactures. In addition to these natural distinctions, artificial ones will be founded, on accidental differences in political, religious or other opinions, or an attachment to the persons of leading individuals. However erroneous or ridiculous these grounds of dissention and faction, may appear to the enlightened Statesman, or the benevolent philosopher, the bulk of mankind who are neither Statesmen nor Philosophers, will continue to view them in a different light."
"Divide et impera, the reprobated axiom of tyranny, is under certain qualifications, the only policy, by which a republic can be administered on just principles."
A few selected thoughts of James Madison from a letter written to Thomas Jefferson dated October 24, 1787
.
"If, then, control of the people over the organs of their government be the measure of their republicanism, and I confess I know no other measure, it must be agreed that our governments have much less of republicanism than ought to have been expected; in other words, that the people have less regular control over their agents, than their rights and their interests require."
Thomas Jefferson in a letter to John Taylor dated May 28, 1816.
.
"Hamilton’s financial system had then past. It had two objects. First as a puzzle, to exclude popular understanding and inquiry. Secondly, as a machine for the corruption of the legislature; for he avowed the opinion that man could be governed by one of two motives only, force or interest: force he observed, in this country, was out of the question; and the interests therefore of the members must be laid hold of, to keep the legislature in unison with the Executive. And with grief and shame it must be acknowledged that his machine was not without effect. That even in this, the birth of our government, some members were found sordid enough to bend their duty to their interests, and to look after personal, rather than public good."
Thomas Jefferson in "Anas" dated February 4, 1818
.
In the beginning...
The Founding Fathers, on September 12, 1787, had voted against a national Bill of Rights (that later had to be insisted upon as a consideration by certain state legislatures for the ratification of the Constitution and didn't protect people at the state level until the 14th Amendment).
During and after the Constitutional Convention, legislation for the People to recall their federal representatives had been denied.
In 1791, the Whiskey Tax had been passed favoring eastern big business while burdening western small business resulting in rebellion.
In 1798, the Alien and Sedition Acts had been passed and only enforced against critics of the Federalist Party.
Consider the form of government that the Founders had instituted in contrast to a form of government similar to a Democratic Congress http://occupywallst.org/forum/amendment-for-a-democratic-congress/ that the Founders (including James Madison) would have been opposed to simply for being a democracy. Also consider the actual democracy that has existed in Switzerland since 1848 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_Switzerland that the United States Congress has never considered for the American people.
We like to refer to our elected officials as being our public servants yet Thomas Jefferson had plainly referred to them as being our rulers. Under the form of government agreed upon by the Founding Fathers, the electing body must obey the laws of the elected body. The electing body cannot create laws for itself. The electing body cannot revoke the laws of the elected body and the most that the electing body can do to affect the members of the elected body who choose not to represent the interests of the electing body is to continue electing members to the elected body. We are obliged to abide by their decisions but they are in no way obliged to abide by our public interests. So, who is truly the servant? ("None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.") In short, while people talk of fascism as a growing danger to American freedom, the Founding Father republicanism of restricting the people to a representative democracy had been detrimental to American freedom from the start. What just and selfless cause in the interests of liberty could a group of men have had in establishing themselves (or their class) above the collective will and revocation of the people? As they had plainly known, a non-initiative representative democracy is a restrained democracy, an imposition upon the political freedom of the American people, denying them the status of being a sovereign people.
.
So, in the beginning, in what way had America been a free country?
If America hadn't been a free country at that time, then, at what point in history did America become a free country?
I like that quote. I used to believe America was a free country. Then I joined the military and learned how disgustingly false that assumption was. I guess we've all made mistakes.
What particularly brought you to that realization?
Once you're in the military, you're no longer a human being. You're a disposable piece of government property, and you're treated as such. Just another part of the machine, your value is determined by rank. Rank is a way to show how indoctrinated one is to the militaristic core values and for how long.
But there wasn't any single particular thing that brought me to that realization. It was more of a snowball effect, and connecting the dots.
GI = Government issue.
My Dad ran a close risk of facing courts martial in WWII when he was on a two day furlough in Hawaii and got severely sunburned - damaging Government property.
Wow, I want to say it's surprising that they go as far as a court martial for sunburns. But it's to be expected I guess. If someone doesn't like you all they have to do is find something in military misconduct code that could apply and nail you with it.
The reasoning was sabotage. Taking military resources out of operation in a time of war. You were very much considered property - war material. I doubt if much has changed in this regard to military personnel.
Through the federal income tax, a person's labor becomes the property of the government or more precisely, of the Federal Reserve bankers to receive our tax payments http://occupywallst.org/forum/free-democracy-amendment/#comment-752291.
I have seen this post before and admit I have not yet stopped in to take a really good look yet - but just skimming through right now it looks to contain a lot of good food for thought and discussion. I am not in a particularly good place with my health at the moment and this provides obstructions to my ability to contribute in a meaningful way at the moment. I look forward to getting more in depth with the post though as these are things that need fleshing-out.
dk is lying
Well, even though I agree with your assessment, lack of freedom in the military isn't quite the same as a lack of freedom in the counrty a military serves. In fact, short of illegal abuses, a certain lack of military freedom is expected in facilitating the discipline required for soldiers to protect their country. Was there something made known to you in the military that affected your perspective of freedom in general American society?
Well no, there was nothing I had discovered through "being on the inside" that changed my perspective of freedom in American Society. But the experience as a whole presented me with the ability see our society from a different angle once I'd finished serving. Something along the lines of: everyone is supposed to be in a certain place in order for the system to function properly.
And maybe it wasn't necessarily the military, I'm sure there were other factors
Now Make Me Do It: The Mythical Apathy of the Electorate
http://my.firedoglake.com/mymarkx/2012/10/19/now-make-me-do-it-the-mythical-apathy-of-the-electorate/#
By: mymarkx Friday October 19, 2012 10:52 pm
Many liberals and progressives, not to mention conservatives and wingnuts, bemoan the apathy of the electorate. It isn’t enough to just vote, they insist, once you elect somebody you have to actively force them to represent you, and they cite Franklin D. Roosevelt who said, “I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it.” The problem, they claim, isn’t with the system or with our representatives, but with us for not being organized and active enough to make our representatives represent us. Many elected representatives claim that they would like to represent their constituents, but, like FDR, they can’t unless they are made to.
If true, this would reflect poorly on us as a people. We have a basically good system, and some good representatives, but we are just too lazy and apathetic to make our representatives represent us.
This is all a lie. Let me give you an example. Back during the Bush administration a lot of people wanted to see Bush and Cheney impeached. In one district the desire for impeachment was so high that activists were able to collect signatures from more than 80% of the residents asking their representative, John Olver, to support impeachment. But when he was formally presented with the petition, his response was, “Spare me! I’m well aware that the overwhelming majority of my constituents want me to support impeachment. I will not.” His response would have been the same if the petition had signatures from 100% of his constituents. It wasn’t that people were too apathetic to care, or too lazy to try to make him represent them, it was that our Constitution never gave people the power to exercise their will through their elected representatives. As both the Bush and Obama administrations made clear, our government does not allow public opinion to influence policy decisions. We are not a democracy or a republic. In the United States power is vested in the hands of the government, not in the hands of the people.
In both a democracy and a republic, by definition, supreme power over government is vested in the hands of the people. In a democracy, the people exercise their power directly by voting on budgets, policy issues, and other matters of import, but in a republic the people exercise their power indirectly through their elected officials. In the United States we have no such power. We can ask our representatives to represent us, we can protest if they don’t, but we have no way to make them do our will because we have no power over them. Once they are elected, they are free to represent us, if they wish, or they can, if they choose, represent their big campaign donors, their personal ideologies, the interests of a foreign country, or anything else they want. We can petition until we turn blue and protest until we get ourselves shot, but we have no way to sway them. Sure we can wait until their terms of office, the only time they’re supposed to represent us, are over, and then try to elect somebody else who can’t be held accountable, but while our representatives are in office, while they are supposed to be representing us, we cannot make them do so.
Of course we can ask Congress to impeach them, but Congress doesn’t like to impeach its own Members. If one Member was impeached, other Members might be subject to impeachment in revenge, so that’s a can of worms they prefer not to open. Sometimes they threaten impeachment, or even begin impeachment proceedings, but they don’t impeach. There have been impeachments of some district judges, but no sitting President, Supreme Court Justice, or Member of Congress has ever been impeached: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_in_the_United_States
If your representatives appears to be representing you, it is because they chose to or their big donors told them to, not because you made them do it. You have no power to make them do anything. When you vote, you are not voting for representatives, you are voting for petty tyrants who may or may not represent you and over whom you have no power whatsoever. Once their term of office is over and they are no longer representing you, you cannot bring back to life the dead from the wars they funded with your taxpayer dollars or renounce the debts they incurred that your granchildren will still be paying . The damage they do while in office can be irreparable and you have no control over them while they’re in office. You can try to elect somebody else, somebody who tells smoother lies, but you will have no real power over them either.
Of course with corporate money even in local politics, gerrymandered districts, easily hacked and totally unverifiable central tabulators, you can never know for sure that your vote for a new representative was counted at all, no less counted for the candidate you tried to vote for.
Yet approximately 50% of the electorate vote anyway, hoping against hope that their vote might be counted and that they might be represented. The other half of us know better.
In a democratic form of government, a vote is the most precious right of all because it is the way that people exercise their power over government, either directly or through their representatives.
We do not have a democratic form of government in the United States. The Constitution gave us a plutocracy where we have no power over government to exercise.
So don’t berate yourself and your neighbors for not making your representatives do their jobs. You can’t. The 39 plutocrats who wrote the Constitution, the wealthy elite 1% of their time, made sure that you wouldn’t have that power, as they didn’t trust the “mob and rabble” of democracy and wanted those who owned the country, people like themselves, to always rule the country.
You’re not apathetic. You’ve been had.
That was the best explanation I've ever seen on this forum. Hammer, meet nail head.
Congressmen Pocan and Ellison Introduce "Right to Vote" Constitutional Amendment
Saturday, 18 May 2013 11:25 By Brendan Fischer, PRWatch | Report
http://truth-out.org/news/item/16450-congressmen-pocan-and-ellison-introduce-right-to-vote-constitutional-amendment
"The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected," wrote Thomas Paine in 1795.
Yet contrary to popular belief, there is no affirmative right to vote in the U.S. Constitution. This gap in our founding document has provided an opening for the wave of voter suppression measures that swept the country in recent years, and before that, the poll taxes and Jim Crow restrictions that disenfranchised millions. This week, two Congressmen -- both from states at the epicenter of today's voting rights struggles -- are seeking to fix that.
“The right to vote is too important to be left unprotected,” said Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, who is co-sponsoring an amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing the right to vote.
“Even though the right to vote is the most-mentioned right in the Constitution," added Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, the bill's other sponsor, "legislatures across the country have been trying to deny that right to millions of Americans, including in my home state of Minnesota. It’s time we made it clear once and for all: every citizen in the United States has a fundamental right to vote.”
U.S. Constitution Does Not Protect Voting Rights
Under the U.S. Constitution, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments ensure the vote cannot be denied on the basis of race, the Nineteenth prohibits discrimination based on gender, the Twenty-fourth outlaws the poll tax, and the Twenty-sixth Amendment extends voting to age 18. When the U.S. Constitution was ratified, the franchise was limited to white, property-owning men, and these amendments have edged the document closer to its democratic aspirations.
But beyond those amendments -- and a few federal statutes, like the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which might be neutered by the Supreme Court this term -- the right to vote is mostly a matter of state law. And states in recent years have hardly been careful about protecting access to the ballot box.
After Republicans gained new statehouse majorities in the 2010 elections, a majority of states introduced proposals to enact restrictions on the right to vote. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, 25 laws and 2 executive actions passed in 19 states between 2011 and 2012 to impose strict ID restrictions, or shorten early voting, or limit registration drives, among other measures. More restrictive bills have been proposed in 2013.
Wisconsin's Constitution Includes Express Voting Protections
Pocan's state, Wisconsin, passed one of the strictest voter ID laws in the country in 2011 after Governor Scott Walker and a GOP-dominated legislature took power. The law threatened to disenfranchise more than 300,000 voters who did not have the required forms of ID, primarily people of color, students, and the elderly. (Like many of the restrictive voter ID laws proposed since 2011, the bill tracked a "model" Voter ID Act from the American Legislative Exchange Council). But just months after Wisconsin's law was enacted, a state court struck down the law based on the Wisconsin Constitution's protections for voting rights.
"Every United States citizen age 18 or older who is a resident of an election district in this state is a qualified elector of that district," the Wisconsin Constitution reads.
Four years earlier, in 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court found that Indiana's relatively similar voter ID law did not violate the U.S. Constitution -- which unlike the Wisconsin Constitution, does not expressly safeguard the right to vote.
Pocan and Ellison are seeking to ensure that citizens across the country can share the voting rights protections that have (so far) been enjoyed by Wisconsin residents.
Pocan: "Our country is at its strongest when everyone participates" The Pocan/Ellison proposal, if approved by Congress and ratified by two-thirds of state legislatures, would affirmatively guarantee the right to vote, prohibiting not only restrictive ID measures, but also new limits on early voting, and measures to crack down on registration drives or same day registration, and other voter suppression efforts.
The proposed amendment language is simple, yet broad:
SECTION 1: Every citizen of the United States, who is of legal voting age, shall have the fundamental right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides.
SECTION 2: Congress shall have the power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation.
“At a time when there are far too many efforts to disenfranchise Americans, a voting rights amendment would positively affirm our founding principle that our country is at its strongest when everyone participates," Pocan said Monday at a press conference in the Wisconsin Capital.
"As the world’s leading democracy, we must demand of ourselves what we demand of others—a guaranteed right to vote for all.”
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license.
Lifting the Veil of Mirage Democracy in the United States
Wednesday, 13 February 2013 00:00 By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers , Truthout | News Analysis
http://truth-out.org/news/item/14489-lifting-the-veil-of-mirage-democracy-in-the-united-states
We live in a mirage democracy," Zeese and Flowers assert, as they trace the history and describe the institutions of a not-so-robust US democracy.
"Democracy" demokratia = demos+kratia; or democracy = people+power.
The "greatest democracy on Earth" is how the United States is portrayed to its people and the world. The hallowed words "We the people" and "Of, by and for the people" echo in the minds of Americans to characterize the United States. But do they accurately describe the "democracy" we have?
In reality, a constant conflict that has existed throughout US history, indeed throughout the history of democratic states, is present between the elites and the people. Justice Louis Brandeis said it well when he stated, "We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
Over the past 40 years, income inequality in the United States has exploded from its lowest level in 1978 . What kind of democracy exists under these circumstances? And is real democracy possible for a global empire? How does nation-state democracy exist within the new globalized economy that serves transnational corporations?
A New Vocabulary for "Democracy"
A new vocabulary is developing to describe the current state of democracy in the United States. We begin with some key words and phrases.
Managed Democracy: A governmental system that includes widespread voter franchise and competitive elections, but the elections are managed so that no matter what candidate(s) are elected, the elites win. The role of citizens in government is to choose between two pre-selected candidates, neither of whom will represent the people's interests and both of whom will represent the elites' interests. Chris Hedges refers to this as "political theater."
Polyarchy: A term highlighted by Cliff DuRand, author of "Recreating Democracy in a Globalized State," that is very similar to managed democracy. He calls it a low-intensity democracy that veils the rule of elites and allows citizens to think they are participating in power through contested elections that do not change the elite power structure.
Inverted Totalitarianism: Classical totalitarianism is the model of Hitler or Mussolini, an all-powerful government led by a charismatic leader that partners with business interests in a security state. Inverted totalitarianism is a similar marriage of government and business, but the measures employed to maintain this relationship are more subtle. It is the coming of age of corporate power, maintained through a security state working in tandem with corporate propaganda that permeates influential institutions such as the media, education, popular culture and evangelical religion.
Globalized State: This is a government that serves the interests of transnational capital devoid of any real connection to the people of the nation. The globalized state rules through economic structures such as trade agreements, the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization and through international military actions.
Capitalism: An economic system based on private ownership of capital, goods and the means of production. Goods and services are produced for profit. It is an inherently unequal system. In feudalism, political power and the economy were united in the noble class. Under capitalism, there is a separation of political and economic power, which gives people the impression of participation.
Neoliberalism: The dominant economic ideology of the last three decades which insists upon an extreme separation of government and capital so that the market can operate "freely." The market operates only in the interests of individuals without allegiance to the collective society. Government exists solely to provide basics such as standards for weights and measures, laws and courts to protect property and infrastructure for the market. Neoliberalism welcomes state intervention only when that intervention is to corporate advantage as in trade agreements, bailouts or corporate welfare. Under neoliberalism, state resources and public programs are decreasingly funded and increasingly privatized. DuRand states that neoliberalism is the "default position of capitalism to which it reverts unless restrained by popular struggles."
Neofeudalism: This is the reconfiguration of political and economic systems to create an empowered tiny oligarchic elite class. Chris Hedges points to the structure described by George Orwell in "1984" in which there is an inner party (2 to 4 percent) of corporate and political managers, an outer party (12 to 14 percent) that consists of managers, the security state and the propaganda arm, and the rest of the population exists as "proles."
The Birth of US "Democracy"
The United States celebrates the founding of the country and the so-called "Founding Fathers" as the birth of democracy, but the real democracy movement occurred before the American Revolution. In fact, it was the founding fathers, a group of propertied elites, slave holders, noted lawyers and wealthy merchants, who created a system designed to prevent a truly democratic state.
In the pre-Revolutionary period, the American democracy movement involved small farmers, laborers, artisans, shopkeepers, seamen, women, African slaves and native Indians who revolted against the grievances of the day. There existed abolitionists who opposed slavery and slaves who rebelled against plantation owners. Disputes over taxes, ordinances, and land titles and of being ruled over by a royal governor, who represented a distant British government or a corporate monopoly like the British East India Company, were sources of democratic revolt.
Colonial governments were structured for the elites and only those with substantial property ownership had any right to participate. Sheldon Wolin, in Democracy Inc. describes the rise of a "fugitive democracy" in this period. There were spontaneous protests, assemblies, petitions, tarring and feathering of government officials, burning effigies of officials, surrounding courthouses and removing government officials from office and storming jails to free their own. Committees of correspondence were formed to coordinate actions with counterparts in other colonies. This democracy movement was born out of necessity, out of the struggle for survival against deep-seated grievances and was improvisational rather than institutionalized.
Ray Raphael in The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord describes colonists in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, filling the courthouse to prevent British judges from entering. And, in Worcester, 4,622 militiamen from 37 surrounding communities lined Main Street as crown-appointed officials walked the gauntlet, reciting their resignations 30 times each, "so all could hear." Raphael reports that these common people were intensely democratic, disavowing all leadership. In fact, "when they elected representatives, they did so on a day-to-day basis."
Wolin writes that in the period from 1760 until the Constitutional Convention, there was intense political interest that formed an "American demos" that "began to establish a foothold and to find institutional expression, if not full realization. State constitutions were amended by provisions that broadened voting rights, abolished property qualifications for office, and in one case, instituted women's suffrage. There were also efforts to ease debtor laws, even to abolish slavery." It was these attacks on property that prompted several "outstanding politicians" (also known as the founding fathers) to "organize a counter-revolution aimed at institutionalizing a counterforce to challenge the prevailing decentralized system of thirteen sovereign states in which some state legislatures were controlled by 'popular' forces."
These outstanding politicians were some of the wealthiest property owners in the United States, slave holders, well-known lawyers and merchants. James Madison, credited as being the "father" of the Constitution, wrote in The Federalist Papers #10: "Democracies have ever been . . . incompatible with . . . the rights of property . . . [because it would threaten] the unequal distribution of property." The founders were concerned with "the excess of democracy" as one delegate to the convention said. The new Constitution put property rights ahead of human rights.
The "founders" proposed a new system of national power that discouraged the "American demos," removed people from the councils of government and reduced the power of states. The Constitution favored elite rule and protection of property. It established a republic in which courts protected minority rights and property rights from majority sentiment, and government power was limited.
Only the House of Representatives would be directly elected by the people, at least the limited group of six percent of the white, male property-owning population that was allowed to vote. Wolin writes, "The Constitution of the Founders compressed the political role of citizen into an act of 'choosing' and designed it to minimize the direct expression of a popular will." The president was not directly elected, but rather citizens voted for electors who chose the president in the Electoral College. Senators were selected by state legislators, and judges were appointed by the president. It created a representative, not participatory or direct, democracy. The "right to vote" is not even mentioned in the Constitution.
While people were declared "sovereign," they were, in fact, "precluded from governing." "From the beginning," Cliff Durand writes, the country "was designed to be undemocratic." The role of the people was limited to choosing from among the political elite the representatives who would rule them. This managed democracy or polyarchy is far removed from the people power of real democracy. As Durand writes, "Democracy means people's power, not the legitimizing of elite rule."
Freedom is an ideal we need to work towards with the rights secured by the constitution.
There is a missing concept. Free speech. It played a bigger role than history records from 1776. There was competition for what was to be included in the Declaration of Independence and the constitution.
The right to alter or abolish must be exercised with informed unity. Therein is where the greater meanings of free speech needed to be placed but there were elements that did not want it.
If the greater meanings of free speech were held by the people, it would be much harder to dominate them and nullify any part of the coming contract. Those meanings include a respect for understanding. Without knowledge, that doesn't happen. If the greater meaning of free speech had been included, people would have NEVER allowed the dumbing down documented by the Reese commission, a basic conspiracy.
If the greater meaning of free speech had been a part of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitutions Bill of Rights, citizens would never have allowed media to take over social communications.
The greater meaning of free speech is found in an understanding between people. From the understanding can come; forgiveness, tolerance, acceptance, respect, trust, friendship and love, protecting life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That philosophical doctrine comes from the same place as the concept of the 13 United States as demonstrated by Chief Canasatego to Benjamin Franklin in 1744.
http://federationmsta.org/algonquin.html
http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/NAPSnEoD7586.html
http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/NAPSnEoD95.html