Donald Trump shows here that he is a very, very frightening candidate: he would restrict the freedom of speech as part of some attempt to deal with the jihad threat: in other words, he would have us give up our freedom in exchange for security. I don’t believe that we have to cease to be a free republic in order to meet this threat, but Trump is just the sort of shoot-from-the-hip blowhard demagogue who could administer the coup de grace to a system of freedom that is already staggering under body blows given to it for nearly seven years by Barack Obama.
Trump showed in his reaction to our free speech event in Garland, Texas that he didn’t understand the importance of the freedom of speech as a bulwark against tyranny. Many of his supporters, however, charged that my opposition to him on that score was personal, rather than based on principle. This, however, shows that Trump really has no idea why the freedom of speech matters, and would discard it like an unwanted tie.
Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Donald Trump — all foes of the freedom of speech. Perilous times.
“Donald Trump thinks he can call Bill Gates to ‘close up’ the internet,” by Nick Statt, The Verge, December 7, 2015:
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump just said the US should consider “closing up” the internet to curb radical extremism. Trump, a man that routinely claims everyone in charge of the US is stupid, believes that as president he could just call up Bill Gates to help him shut off the internet. Trump floated the idea at a campaign rally at the USS Yorktown in South Carolina tonight as a way to stop ISIS “jihadists” from recruiting Americans to commit acts of domestic terrorism. The idea is so dumb it almost has us, too, at a loss for words.
“We’re losing a lot of people because of the internet,” Trump said. “We have to see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that internet up in some ways. Somebody will say, ‘Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’ These are foolish people.”…