On Wednesday, May 19, I read and then posted to my Facebook page an excerpt from J.B. Shurk's American Thinker article, "An Election Heist Too Big to Fail," and quoted the essay's fourth paragraph in the body of my post.  Within minutes, I received a notice from a nameless censor at Facebook that my post "violated their community standard of coordinating harm and promoting crime" and therefore was banned from Facebook.

That censorship notice also contained the warning that if I persisted, my account would be subject to being restricted.  As with many who have also faced this same thing, there was no means afforded me to challenge this most arbitrary decree.  The image below has all the substantive information I got from Facebook:

I challenge anyone to read J.B. Shurk's entire article objectively, and not just the excerpt I posted, to see if there is anything remotely resembling "coordinating of harm and promoting crime."

I am a conservative who cherishes America and all the good it stands for and has done, making it a beacon of freedom to the rest of the world.  The idea that there are some who will arbitrarily censor ideas and freedom of information is loathsome to the outstanding principles on which this country was founded.

Facebook's act goes beyond the mere legal technicality that a private corporation can get away with censorship denied the government when it comes to my freely voicing my opinion.  As a boy, I learned what all Americans were once taught, which is the great principle separating right from wrong. Facebook's censorship of what amounts to its political disagreement with my discourse violates what is right.

Some might wonder why it has taken a week for me to react to this.  Well, I wrote to my state and congressional representatives (both of whom are Republicans) a "Houston, we have a problem" letter and was waiting for their replies.  One has yet to reply; the other, adding insult to injury, basically told me, "This is your problem, not mine."  I believe that Republican elected officials should take a stand for their constituents, especially on this issue of censorship.  I pluralize "constituents," given that my example hardly stands alone.  There has been a plague of leftist censorship affecting far too many Americans.

The highly disappointing stance from the Republican officials for whom I voted contrasts sharply with Florida governor Ron DeSantis.  Review this quote taken from the news about the signing of Bill 7072 from Governor DeSantis's site:

"This session, we took action to ensure that 'We the People' — real Floridians across the Sunshine State — are guaranteed protection against the Silicon Valley elites," said Governor Ron DeSantis. "Many in our state have experienced censorship and other tyrannical behavior firsthand in Cuba and Venezuela. If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable."

"What we've been seeing across the U.S. is an effort to silence, intimidate, and wipe out dissenting voices by the leftist media and big corporations. Today, by signing SB 7072 into law, Florida is taking back the virtual public square as a place where information and ideas can flow freely. Many of our constituents know the dangers of being silenced or have been silenced themselves under communist rule. Thankfully in Florida we have a Governor that fights against big tech oligarchs that contrive, manipulate, and censor if you voice views that run contrary to their radical leftist narrative," Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nuñez said."

What are Pennsylvanian's chances of seeing such a protective bill even proposed, much less enacted, given the disappointing Pontius Pilate treatment from Republicans who ought to be taking a strong stand against social media censorship?  As I wrote back to the office of the representative who at least replied to my obvious request for support, "you might as well be a Democrat."

Then there is this.  In the New York Post, Sohrab Ahmari, in an essay pointedly titled "Facebook's lab-leak censors owe The Post, and America, an apology," provides us with a fuller look at how Facebook and its censoring create another kind of risk:

Think about it: If you were Xi Jinping, and you wanted to deploy an information-control operation over the origins of COVID-19, you couldn't have done better than to just let Facebook, working in conjunction with America's bottom-feeding "fact-checking" industry, do its thing.

Ahmari's conclusion is a worthy one:

Enough is enough. Facebook and the other Big Tech giants are irreformable. Only political action — in the form of removing the special status that allows them to act like publishers without any of a traditional publisher's liabilities — can save us from this private tyranny.

When will we stop putting up with this plague of censorship from the left and return this great land to normalcy, principle, and honor, a place in which the marketplace of ideas is fully open?

Ed Lasso is a pseudonym.

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