The following leftist groups signed a letter urging President Biden to form task force to combat “disinformation”: Pen America, Voto Latino, Common Cause, Center for Democracy and Technology, Access Now, SimplySecure, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Center for American Progress, Free Press.

To call this ironic is a massive understatement. Pen is a writers’ group that fought for blacklisted writers during the McCarthy era. And whatever Free Press is, it surely isn’t for a free press. Apparently it’s wrong to blacklist leftist writers, but quite all right to kick conservative writers off social media. And better still, it’s quite all right to kick conservative media site Parler off its server and off the Apple store. And when Parler was reestablished, to crash it – as of this writing it’s been down for three days. A coincidence?

So what do these enemies of “disinformation” want? Who decides what is information and what is “disinformation”? Four centuries ago, was Galileo spreading “disinformation” when he described the motions of the planets around the sun? The authorities thought he was. And what the authorities think is all that matters in a totalitarian regime.

What will we call this new government agency that decides what we can see, hear, and read? We could call it the Ministry of Truth, as Orwell wrote in his all-too-accurate “1984.” Or we could call it the Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, as the Nazis did. Perhaps the director of the agency could even have a portrait of Dr. Goebbels on his office wall. And if that’s a bit much, a portrait of Stalin would do nicely. That charming, warm smile, that engaging, friendly personality will set the tone of the agency.

Those who seek to control information aren’t merely control freaks – they are relentless enemies of freedom. Our Founders knew that. They made freedom of the press the first of the Bill of Rights. It’s long past time we remembered it.

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