In their
desperation to stay afloat, U.S.
President Biden and the Canadian ruling elite
speak about the need to
protect "a free and independent media." At the
"Democracy Summit" Biden convoked on December
9-10 in Washington, DC,
he claimed a free and independent media is the
"bedrock of democracy,"
which guarantees that the public
stays informed and "how governments are held
accountable." All of it
merely serves to provide a justification for the
use of ever more
executive police powers to keep media which owe
their allegiance to the presidency in place and
suppress the voices of
others they cannot control.
Accountability
is one of the most important concerns being
raised by people in Canada,
the U.S. and all over the world as people
contend with the reality that
there are no means to
hold governments said to be representative to
account. In the U.S., the
president cannot be charged with war crimes or
crimes against humanity.
Even current efforts to charge the
government with genocide have to first be
accepted as legitimate by the
existing courts whose existence has the same
source as the presidency
and the system itself. So too in Canada, the
Prime Minister can issue endless apologies for
crimes committed against
Indigenous peoples in the past without any means
to hold him to account
for the recurrence of such crimes in the
present. The role of the high courts is to
interpret and defend the
Constitution which is not an instrument of the
people but of the ruling
class.
Meanwhile, the people are divided by
inciting passions based on
false ideological beliefs and notions of
conscience, rights and speech
defined in the past which no longer apply to the
conditions today.
Against the promotion of false
ideological beliefs to divide the
people, divert them and make sure their movement
for empowerment cannot
coalesce, the Communist Party of Canada
(Marxist-Leninist) will continue to pay
first-rate attention to
providing a modern definition of freedom of
speech and involve people
in forming their own political opinion.
Speech is a human
quality. Freedom of speech exists to the extent
that people fight for it. It is always being
limited, such as through
limits imposed on rights in the name of security
and opposition to hate speech, or in the form of
free speech zones at
demonstrations as one example. We have to look
at these things by
connecting them to the human right to
conscience,
which does not know a social system. Today a lot
is spoken about
conscience by civil libertarians as well as by
what are called the
extreme right-wing and the liberal left. They do
not
know that conscience does not recognize any
social system or that
rights are inviolable by virtue of their holder
being human, whatever
the social system. We cannot recognize these
rights
and act on the necessity for change without
freedom of speech. The
Canadian Constitution has the notion of
reasonable limits to protect
rights. The U.S. Constitution gives rights as a
way
to have the popular will oppose the coercive
machine of government. It
stipulates that Congress is to make no laws
against these rights,
against public opinion. However, the idea that
rights
can be given, taken away and forfeited remains.
Today,
once again, in contention with competitors on
the world
scale, we see the U.S. imperialists' final
recourse to settle all the
problems facing the democracy and U.S. hegemony
around the world with the threat that the U.S.
President has the power
to launch nuclear weapons. It is not just an
issue of nuclear weapons
being one technique of warfare. It is a way of
wiping out freedom of speech, or at least
claiming that it can be done.
On that basis, secrecy, espionage and treason
are established and the
demand is to express loyalty to a
Commander-in-Chief or head of state instead of
having fidelity to the
ensemble of human relations and what they
reveal.
When
we speak of freedom of speech, we do so by
keeping in mind not
only culture in ideological and social form but
material form as well.
The conditions reveal the necessity for
modern definitions to affirm rights by having
fidelity to the ensemble
of human relations, the relations between humans
and humans and humans
and nature, which reveal the need for
people's empowerment and permit us to delineate
and embark on the path
which advances this aim.
Articles in this issue of TML
Monthly also take up these issues.
This article was published in
Volume 52 Number 1 - January 9, 2022
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2022/Articles/M520015.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
