On December 6, after delivering an address about Israeli-American relations at the Brookings Institution's Saban Forum, Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton was asked how she would deal simultaneously with the bloody dictatorship of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the terrorist menace of ISIS. After spending three minutes talking about Sunni insurgents and diplomacy with Russia, Clinton pivoted to a solution she has proposed for several disparate policy challenges across her decades in public life: censorship.
"We're going to have to have more support from our friends in the technology world to deny online space," Clinton warned, citing the deadly terrorist attack in San Bernardino four days earlier by a U.S.-born Muslim and his Pakistani wife. "Just as we have to destroy their would-be caliphate, we have to deny them online space."
But doesn't that go against the American cultural and constitutional tradition of free speech? Clinton anticipated the argument: "You're going to hear all of the usual complaints—you know, 'freedom of speech,' etc.," she said. "But if we truly are in a war against terrorism and we are truly looking for ways to shut off their funding, shut off the flow of foreign fighters, then we've got to shut off their means of communicating."
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You would think that a leading presidential candidate rolling her eyes at "freedom of speech" while advocating content-based takedown orders for U.S. media companies might generate a news cycle or two worth of raised eyebrows.
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Clinton has crusaded against not just "gangsta" rap (the scare quotes are hers), but also the "poison" spread by movies, television, and video games. Her record includes not just Gore-like Capitol Hill condemnations of content and agitation for parental warning labels, but also unconstitutional legislation mandating federal punishment for those who sell and market controversial entertainment.
She has consistently backed government intrusions into communications devices, from content-filtering V-chips on television sets to anti-encryption back doors on iPhones.
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"Why can't all of us—including the media—give parents more control over what their children see on TV, the movies, the Internet, and video games?"
For Clinton, parental "control" has translated into four types of policy initiatives: federal penalties (including, at times, prison sentences) for those who broadcast, sell, or market racy content to minors; mandates on communications equipment manufacturers; government-patrolled ratings systems; and requirements on broadcasters to produce more children's programming under threat of fines or license non-renewal.
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But Clinton and Lieberman were just getting started. In 2005, the duo teamed up with socially conservative Sens. Rick Santorum (R–Pa.) and Sam Brownback (R–Kan.) to introduce the Children and Media Research Advancement (CAMRA) Act, creating a $90 million federal research program to study the impact of media on childhood violence, obesity, and intellectual development. "I think it is as important a public health issue as any we can worry about with our children," Clinton told the Kaiser Family Foundation the week she introduced the bill.
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On September 14, 2012, Hillary Clinton, Obama, and Vice President Joe Biden attended an Andrews Air Force Base ceremony for the surviving family members of the four U.S. personnel killed in Benghazi. If what some of those family members say about that meeting is true, the likely Democratic presidential nominee uttered one of the most chillingly anti-speech sentences from an American politician since Richard Nixon.
Charles Woods, the father of slain CIA operative Tyrone Woods, jotted down notes from that day in his diary. The passage about Clinton reads like this: "I gave Hillary a hug and shook her hand. And she said we are going to have the filmmaker arrested who was responsible for the death of my son." Two weeks later, Nakoula was arrested by federal authorities on charges of violating probation, for which he served one year in prison.
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Much more:
http://reason.com/archives/2016/02/03/hail-to-the-censor/
