“We hold that it is substantially likely that social media companies — even the biggest ones — are private actors whose rights the First Amendment protects” –11th Circuit Court of Appeals: NetChoice, LLC v. Attorney General [1]
This will be succinct. The USA Constitution’s preamble’s first words are “We the People”
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America”
There is no ‘we the people & the oligarchs, shareholders, one percent’ and whatever future what-have-you entities such as the propaganda arm of USAID underwriting color revolution.
In the governing of political lies, are ‘private’ corporate parties allowed to decide whose & which lies they’ll feed you, and what truths ‘the people’ must be protected from, under the ‘protected’ rubric of free speech? According to the democratic principles of modern empire, given example of failed attempt to penalize political lies, the clear answer is yes:
“The notion that the government, rather than the people, may be the final arbiter of truth in political debate is fundamentally at odds with the [free speech protecting] First Amendment” -Rickert vs the State of Washington [2]
In the aforementioned case, the hypocritical (equal to Huxley’s ‘war is peace’) legalese translated into common sense speech would read: ‘Because it would be too dangerous for the government to motivate truth (allow prosecutions or lawsuits concerning false statements), the voter base should purchase crystal balls to determine whether, how and when they’re being lied to.’
It follows, our judiciary hands this ‘right to lie to the people’ to the non-living-legal-entity called the corporation:
“A corporation is simply a form of organization used by human beings to achieve desired ends. An established body of law specifies the rights and obligations of the people (including shareholders, officers, and employees) who are associated with a corporation in one way or another. When rights, whether constitutional or statutory, are extended to corporations, the purpose is to protect the rights of these people” -Citizens United [3]
Or, in short other words, democracy ‘protects’ the ‘rights’ of, example given, war mongering corporate profiteers to purchase and shape reality via mass media.
We will come back to ‘free speech’, but meanwhile, when & how did this ‘legalized corruption’ usurping our constitution’s ‘the people’ begin? This following, directly related, ‘color of law’ (pretense of constitutional authority) matter of government immunity from suit, has consumed the American constitution from our republic’s inception.
To understand the American founding era argument between the Federalists (lobby for empowered central government) and the anti-Federalists (lobby for dis-empowered central government) was never resolved, rather the Federalists (essentially today’s corporate America) have played dirty ever since, one only need examine the history of the 11th Amendment and the associated, patently fraudulent, idea the USA has rightfully asserted the doctrine of Sovereign Immunity:
“The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State” -11th Amendment to the United States Constitution
In short other words, no person shall be empowered to, for reasons of upcoming example given, sue the state of Georgia via a Federal court in South Carolina. There is nothing more than this in the language of the 11th Amendment. You need to sue Georgia? Initiate the lawsuit against Georgia in Georgia’s state courts. The federal option is taken away. There is nothing else there. Nada. Zip. Zero.
What had happened, is a contractor from South Carolina was owed a Revolutionary War debt by the State of Georgia, which didn’t want to pay up. The Supreme Court had ruled there was no such thing as state sovereign immunity, in the case of Chisholm v Georgia.
“Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 419 (1793), is considered the first United States Supreme Court case of significance and impact. Since the case was argued prior to the establishment of judicial review by Marbury v. Madison (1803), there was little available legal precedent (particularly in U.S. law). The Court, in a 4-1 decision, ruled in favor of Alexander Chisholm, a citizen of South Carolina, stating that states did not enjoy sovereign immunity from suits made by citizens of other states in federal court” (bold RTW) [4]
Nearly all of the states freaked out at the prospect of having to pay up on their war debts in courts they had no control over (likely motivated from an underlying corrupted jurisdictional issue or matter of ability to influence outcomes) and the 11th Amendment was passed, posthaste, with consequence that should defy belief:
“To this day, Chisholm stands as one of only a handful of Supreme Court rulings that have been overturned by constitutional amendment. Even more important, the Supreme Court has built on the repudiation of Chisholm to hold that the Eleventh Amendment exemplifies a sovereign-immunity principle that sweeps well beyond the amendment’s text” (bold RTW) [5]
No matter the 11th Amendment is narrow & specific to jurisdiction (limits initiating suits against states to the state court system of the state being sued), and doesn’t so much as mention Sovereign Immunity, the legendary English Common Law expert William Blackstone’s Sovereign Immunity doctrine is reinstated in the former colonies:
“The King moreover is not only incapable of doing wrong, but even of thinking wrong; he can never mean to do an improper thing: in him is no folly or weakness.” [6]
Only now, it is no longer the ‘King’ can act with impunity, but the institutions of government in the United States:
“we have understood the Eleventh Amendment to stand not so much for what it says, but for the presupposition of our constitutional structure which it confirms: that the States entered the federal system with their sovereignty intact…” –Blatchford v. Native Village of Noatak (1991), Antonin Scalia writing for the Supreme Court of the United States (bold RTW) [7]
And there you have it, from the early days of the Supreme Court saying sovereignty of the state over citizens (i.e. citizens cannot sue the state, or what became known as sovereign immunity) is a non existent thing in USA constitutional law, to the several states’ legislatures passing the 11th Amendment which doesn’t so much as mention Sovereign Immunity, to escape war debt cases being decided in courts outside the jurisdiction of the state being sued, to the modern Supreme Court stating the language of our constitution’s 11th Amendment absolutely does not mean what it actually says, but instead means what they want it to say, with states (and the USA federal government) consequently able to decide when, how, and even whether they can be sued in matters of manipulating information, political speech, and a plethora of other things; essentially deciding ‘we will extend ‘the King’s prerogative‘ as far as we please, and we will use the 11th Amendment to absurdly assert what amounts to a claim the King’s Sovereign Immunity (impunity) was never a point of the American Revolution.’
This, my friends, is the short of it; the history of ‘legally principled behaviors’ (that’s irony) ultimately leading to ‘color of law’ (a pretense of lawful authority) run amok, supplanting the constitution and now so far removed from the actual ‘original intent’ that, example given, in matters of ‘free speech’, so called ‘equally privileged’ citizens (oligarchs, actually) like Elon Musk (twitter shares acquisition), Bill Gates (foundation) George Soros (foundation) and Mark Zuckerberg (meta) can ‘regulate speech’ (read: buy, produce, reject and/or otherwise disseminate false or undermine true information) as ‘protected’ private corporate entities no matter:
Twitter is a publicly traded, but ‘protected private’ entity (whether Musk takes it private or not), when disseminating and/or deciding which political lies passed off as ‘truths’ should shape entire cultures’ perceptions. Soros ‘Open Society’ foundation can do the same, ditto Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, all empowered to manipulate or shape reality, simply due to the power of their ‘incorporated’ wealth possessing a citizen’s so-called ‘protected constitutional rights’ when it comes to the employ of political lies via mass media. Toss in the military-industrial complex & corporate owned press, add fascist corporate lobbies along the lines of ‘The Federalist Society’, include government social engineering projects (e.g. CIA via USAID) and you see the result; propaganda serving a world-wide havoc threatening World War Three.
‘All men are created equal’ methinks is just another political lie of empire. It is a lie, and can only be a lie, that, or the very idea should expose the lie of American ‘exceptionalism.’ You can’t have it both ways. Moreover, any American with a current passport can read these ‘exceptional’ lies in the visa pages like counting sheep going to sleep.
That’s it.
[1] https://archive.li/zCBtG from https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/post/2994/11th-circuit-fla-law-on-social-media-unconstitutional
[2] https://archive.li/XyDli from http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/PROJECTS/FTRIALS/conlaw/rickertvwash.html
[3] https://archive.li/APvK6 from https://h2o.law.harvard.edu/text_blocks/7743
[4] https://archive.li/ignjs from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chisholm_v._Georgia
[5] https://archive.li/BcwMF from https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/government-politics/chisholm-v-georgia-1793/
[6] Note: the 11th Amendment came into force in early 1795, the British legal principle ‘sovereign immunity’ is not entered into the record of (wrongly applied in) American law until 1812. https://archive.li/DNYlZ from https://www.legalserviceindia.com/legal/article-6646-rex-non-potest-peccare-doctrine-of-sovereign-immunity.html
[7] https://archive.li/7qC90 from https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/89-1782.ZO.html
Ronald Thomas West taught American Constitutional Law as a layman (for English credit) at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany, Summer semester 2008.
Ronald Thomas West 