Our Rivers, Our Country

Louis Conte, Health Freedom Editor, The Kennedy Beacon

America is a river.

Our flowing waters are ideas and innovations moving ever forward through the dynamic spirit of the people.

Like a river, America can have moments where it is churning, disruptive and chaotic.

And it can be a wondrously creative force.

The fuel that energizes us, that pushes our national river, is freedom of speech. It is the most essential freedom because it provides the energy that drives innovation and new ideas. It allows those ideas to be debated openly, argued and evaluated. As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says, the best ideas emerge from “the cauldron of debate.”

Our nation is still coming to grips with the pandemic and everything our government did in response. The internet censorship of those who questioned federal action has been a bitter reminder that once the government takes power from the people, it refuses to give it back.

The pandemic is over, but censorship continues.

The power the government seized and wielded during the pandemic must have been intoxicating. It must have been thrilling for those calling the shots to see our nation’s public health establishment and the legacy media singing in unison — on TV, radio, billboards – about the need to “mask up,” to stay six feet apart from each other, to submit to mandatory vaccines. To hell with the right to freedom of assembly! Do what we tell you to do or be censored, ridiculed, out of a job. 

The choir is at it again. Almost in unison, we are hearing the political elites, Democrats mostly, clamoring for the government to expand its icy censorial grip. Kennedy recently posted this video on X featuring CNN’s Michael Smerconish looking astonished as Hillary Clinton expresses fear of losing “total control,” if internet content is not reigned in. As our colleagues at American Values 2024 put it, “Hillary Clinton warns that without ‘content moderation’, aka censorship, ‘we lose total control.’ Team Kamala Harris is promising a broad censorship agenda in her first term. Believe their promises.” 

In another recent report, posted by Straight Arrow News, former Secretary of State John Kerry calls the First Amendment a 'major block’ in holding the media ‘accountable.’ His point of view is supported by U.S. Representative Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, among others.

What do Americans really think about this? Some feel that censorship is justified. For those folks, I suspect Harris will be their choice. But for the rest of us, please consider this before you cast your vote: a Harris White House will mean the censorship industrial complex will continue, unchecked, as explained by The Kennedy Beacon’s Adam Garrie earlier this week, following reports of leaked documents from the Center for Countering Digital Hate. 

I believe that many Americans, like me, are losing (or have lost) their trust in the legacy media and the medical establishment. I believe Americans, like me, are sick of the thought police, the guardians of digital content, the blatant censors, and the fear-mongering pharmaceutical titans— each certified and dignified as “experts” by The New York Times, CNN, and the rest of the DNC-aligned media.

Kennedy reminds us that we have a choice. He has noted that the censorship industrial complex is not really about restraining disinformation. It is, rather, used to stifle open debate, to stop its flow, to conceal and cancel truths.

A river that is dumped on by big polluters becomes sick and dies. 

Kennedy helped start the Riverkeeper Alliance to restore many of our nation’s rivers to health. Now he wants to work with Donald Trump to make Americans healthy again. To accomplish that, we must fight to safeguard freedom of speech. It is our river of ideas – our nation’s life’s blood.

It is also what makes us Americans.