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245 years ago, visionary men had the courage to found a nation consisting of a basic, sacred and fundamental principle: freedom. For decades, the libertarian dream of the Founding Fathers took shape in the North of America to create what would become a couple of decades later the most successful nation in the entire world. Clearly, we are talking about the United States.
Forged under clear principles established in the Constitution (such as the First and Second Amendments–which establish the most absolute freedom of expression, religious and political freedom, as well as the free bearing of arms–this nation abruptly grew economically because citizens understood their private and independent role, and the state did not cross the limits established by the constitutional designs.
This success story is about to collapse, as one of the two major parties in the American political system has decided that the time has come to question, and if possible, amend or even eliminate the first amendments to the Constitution: the same amendments that shaped the most powerful and successful society in the world.
Recently, part of the Democratic Party’s Hispanic Caucus threatened freedom of speech by pressuring the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) not to approve the sale of Radio Caracol Miami, one of the most widely tuned stations in South Florida, simply because the buyer, businessman Carlos Vasallo, is apparently closer to conservative ideology.
Rep. Darren Soto (D-FL) who sits on the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology stated that the FCC should not approve the sale of the radio station in the name of the “public good.”
“Radio waves are the people’s waves, and the FCC needs to scrutinize each sale to make sure it is in the public good, and it could be quite possible that this is not in the public good,” the congressman stated.
For any Venezuelan or Cuban, who for decades listened to Hugo Chavez or members of the Cuban Communist Party irrationally shout that “radio waves are the people’s waves”, and that therefore only the Government could dictate who used the radio spectrum and who did not, the similarities could not be more evident. It’s clear that by controlling the media you control public opinion, and if you do not allow people “supposedly” of contrary ideology to access the mass media, you are assassinating the First Amendment of the American Constitution.
But Soto was not alone. Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-FL), who also serves as chairman of the political action committee BOLDPAC, the political arm of the Hispanic Caucus, has also intervened to censor free speech in South Florida.
Unfortunately for lovers of the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution, what’s happening in South Florida is not an isolated event. It is no secret that Big Tech, led by Facebook and Twitter, has silenced conservative voices in the country, hiding news that reveal certain cases of corruption and scandals in characters of the Democratic Party and its affiliated media.
Big Tech and the media add fuel to the destruction of the Constitution
Recently, Twitter censored and deleted the account of James O’Keeffe, founder of Project Veritas, after posting a video in which one of CNN’s directors stated that they lied and made things up about Trump to try to delegitimize him and that they followed the same pattern with other members of the GOP. The CNN director even went so far as to admit that he was sure that it was through the efforts of his television plant that they were able to get Trump out of power.
The attempt to control the media and public opinion is not something new, it is no mystery that most of the major news networks in the country have become political arms of the Democratic Party, with The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, Telemundo and Univision, creating a uniform liberal narrative, supported in turn by Big Tech.
If to the absolute dominance that the blue party has over the American media and existing social networks, we add the latest attempt to prevent conservatives from accessing, buying or setting up their own radio stations, or even social networks, as is the case of Parler, (which was taken out of the game for deciding not to censor conservative voices), then we can assert that constitutional principles and democracy is at risk.
Founding Fathers’ republic dream at risk
Certainly, in recent years the First Amendment seems more a decorative aspect of the Constitution, than a basic principle to be respected in the country; and something similar could happen with the Second Amendment if the progressive plans to eliminate the second pillar of the American constitutional system are realized.
Finally, we cannot forget the parallel initiative pushed by a left-wing party group to pack the Supreme Court and increase the number of justices, just to impose on the nation’s highest legal court, people adhering to the progressive ideology.
If disrespecting and flouting the principles of the American Constitution, if censoring and eliminating dissident voices from the virtual mass communication spaces, if pretending to dominate the radio-electric space to submit it to the designs of the party, if hijacking the institutions to mold them to the whim of the Government, and if invoking a reform that allows disarming the citizens to leave them at the mercy of the Government does not warn us that something dangerous is happening, then probably the American public opinion has a long way to go in its senses of interpretation of authoritarianism.
Those of us who migrated to the land of liberties loving what it represents, and fleeing from totalitarian governments, know how the movie begins and ends, and the truth is that once the action has been filmed and with the primary actors in absolute control of the situation, one can only wait for a tragic ending. Unfortunately, many of us have been taught this by experience, and all we can do is desperately preach to try to prevent this tragic story from repeating itself elsewhere.
Emmanuel Rincón is a lawyer, writer, novelist and essayist. He has won several international literary awards. He is Editor-at-large at El American // Emmanuel Rincón es abogado, escritor, novelista y ensayista. Ganador de diversos premios literarios internacionales. Es editor-at-large en El American