The importance of protecting the right to lie

Uncle Walter caused the U.S. to lose a war she was winning

The Friday Letter / No. 481 / Feb. 25, 2022

On January 30, 1968, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops attacked South Vietnamese cities in the Tet Offensive – Tet being the Vietnamese new year. Although South Vietnamese and U.S. troops were taken by surprise, they fought back and delivered an overwhelming defeat of the communists. Here is how retired Lt. Col. Richard M. Swier describes the campaign at Liberty First:

“The reality on the ground was that Tet 1968 was a total and complete military disaster for the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong. Once the Tet Offensive began it became clear that U.S. and allied forces, using their military advantages in capabilities in their air supremacy, killed or captured tens of thousands of enemy Communist forces. Those of us who were on the ground saw us winning and winning big.”

A report at Military.com says that “As far as traditional military thought goes, the North Vietnamese were soundly beaten. Almost overnight, the tide turned against the communists. American and ARVN forces pushed them out of most major cities and towns. Within two weeks, an estimated 32,000 NVA troops had been killed . . . and the Americans and South Vietnam suffered only around 1,500 and 2,700 casualties, respectively.”

Walter Cronkite, touted as “America's most trusted man” and the Left's messiah, reported just the opposite. He told his huge CBS audience that we were defeated. Walter Cronkite lied to the American people, and Americans believed him. What might have been the beginning of the end of the war turned into a stalemate that dragged on another seven years.

For his “disinformation” – the Left's definition today of anything said or written that opposes the state – Cronkite was never censored, never “deplatformed,” never sent to the journalism re-education gulag.

“That he endured and prospered, essentially unscathed, until his death in 2009,” media critic Howard Kurtz wrote in a 2012 Newsweek piece, “reminded me of how impervious the monopoly media were in those days, largely shielded from the scrutiny they inflicted on everyone else.”

The lie that Cronkite and his media allies told cost the country thousands of additional lives between 1968 and 1975. But those lies, reprehensible as they were, are protected by the First Amendment. The Founders so believed in the God-granted right of free speech that they were willing to absorb almost any abuse of that right in order to protect it.

Not so today. And the scary part is that the younger generations appear not to see censorship as a problem. How often state-friendly and state-affiliated propagandists tell us that censorship is for our own good, to protect us from “misinformation,” speech that offends the rulers.

The state has powerful partners, as everyone knows. Listen to Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube, explaining why governments must pass laws to restrict “harmful” speech on social media platforms:

“We enforce the laws of the various jurisdictions around speech on what's considered safe or not safe. That actually has not been the controversial part. What has been the controversial part has been when there is content that would be deemed as harmful but yet is not illegal. An example of that, for example, would be Covid. . . .

“. . . There was a lot of pressure and concern about distributing misinformation that went against what was considered accepted medical knowledge. Our recommendation is if governments want to have more control over online speech is to pass laws to have that very cleanly and clearly defined so that we can implement it.”

Accepted medical knowledge is that which is manufactured and approved by the state, not by doctors and researchers.

See more of the interview at the Rubin Report.

Only in America

State-friendly media had an awkward problem when a Black Lives Matter warrior and self-styled gun-control fan tried to put a bullet through the head of Craig Greenberg, a candidate in the Democrat primary for mayor of Louisville. They couldn't ignore the story; it was too big. They did the next best thing: paper over its significance and blame Republicans.

Their first problem was how to explain away a gun-control freak who tried to assassinate Mr. Greenberg with a firearm. At The Federalist, Elle Reynolds reported on how the leftstream press played the story. The Las Vegas Sun assured readers that there is no known connection between the would-be assassin, Quintez Brown, 21, and any right-wing organization. This is comforting to know.

But the newspaper did help us learn that this affair was made possible by “increasingly violent rhetoric coming from extremist Republicans.” At ABC, news reader David Muir identified Mr. Brown as a “social justice activist” and the anti-police crime organization Black Lives Matter as a “community organization.” So was the Democrat Party's Ku Klux Klan.

Update: Black Lives Matter put up the $10,000 bail money, and Mr. Brown walked. Only in America.

Short takes on the news

In a new Trafalgar Group poll, 55.3 percent of 1080 U.S. respondents said they disapprove of PM Justin Trudeau's handling of the truckers who protested his vaccine mandate, 35.1 percent approving and 9.6 percent being unaware that the Trudeau government was confiscating fuel, seizing bank accounts and jailing protesting truckers. Among Democrats, 65.7 percent approve and only 17.1 percent disapprove.

Republican disapproval was overwhelming at 87.3 percent, with 8.1 percent approving and only 4.6 percent unaware. The most alarming finding for Democrats is that 74.4 percent of respondents with no party affiliation disapprove of Trudeau's actions.

How they voted

Forty-six Republican Senators signed a letter to Attorney General Garland warning him not to interfere with Durham's investigation of the FBI-Hillary Clinton Russian collusion hoax. The four who didn't sign were Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, Bill Cassidy, and Susan Collins. All four voted to convict Trump in his impeachment trial in 2020.

Romney and Senators Burr, Graham, and Inhofe earlier skipped a vote on Mike Lee's amendment that would have ended funding of Biden's federal CCP coronavirus vaccine mandates. The amendment failed as a result. See more on these two stories at Just the News.

Seventeen Republican Senators and 17 Democrats signed a letter to President Biden demanding that he increase the number of H-2B visas allowing foreign workers into the country to work in domestic blue collar jobs. Conservatives oppose the increase, citing 12 million unemployed Americans who want to work.

The Republicans are Kevin Cramer (N.D.), Mike Rounds and John Thune (S.D.), Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, (S.C.), James Risch (Idaho), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Roy Blunt (Mo.), Cynthia Lummis and John Barrasso (Wyo.), John Cornyn (Tex.), Mike Crapo (Idaho), Susan Collins (Maine), Pat Toomey (Pa), Roger Wicker (Miss.), Jerry Moran (Kan.), and Rand Paul (Ky.).

Election fraud update

Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said he expects to see the special investigator's report on fraud in the 2020 election by the end of the month. The aim, he told Jay Weber of radio station WISN, is not to overturn the result but to close loopholes in state law that allowed the fraud to occur. Ballotpedia reported Biden's margin over Trump was 20,608 votes.

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