Welcome to the show! I appreciate you tuning in. You're listening to Vote Your Conscience with Kevin Stolla. Before we get started, I just want to let you know we are on Instagram at underscore vote underscore your underscore conscience underscore and we are on every podcasting platform so we'd be happy to discuss any of the topics we go over on the episodes with you on social media in the comments or DMs and if you could leave us a review we'd
greatly appreciate that what you thought about the show. Now that we got that out of the way, on the last episode we went over my beliefs about basically both of the two main political parties the democrats and the republicans being authoritarian in my opinion so you know both sides keep calling each other authoritarian and I believe that both side is right in certain ways and that's why I'm promoting for us to try to get away from those two
parties and start voting for different parties you know third parties and independence and
trying to get some of those types of people into political power. On this episode I'm planning on going over some of the reasons that I think about that we're actually just going to cover one main issue which will be freedom of speech and basically what I keep hearing in the media lately is that you know democrats are against freedom of speech and then from the other side I hear that republicans are against freedom of speech so I kind of
agree on both points and I'm going to go over a little bit about both of that I believe that there's just hypocrites on both sides of these issues here and you know I'm trying to make my opinion unhippocritical and be able to actually analyze what's going on why you know people think freedom of speech is under attack from the democrats and why the democrats think that republicans are attacking freedom of speech so I'm just going to cover
a few issues about that today. What I'm hoping that this turns into over time I mean it won't be you know a series in a row as I do change topics based on what I'm feeling that week but I do want it to be kind of a series going over my disagreements on certain issues with both parties so with both the democrats and the republicans and you know over time get a broader view of why I think both parties push us towards authoritarianism or at least
larger governments more power for the government and less power to the average citizen so you know this will be the first of hopefully many different episodes that are covering different topics about republicans and democrats and this one like I said is just going to be over the issue of freedom of speech today because this has been you know a huge issue the past few years but specifically in congress very recently with the twitter files with Matt
Taiibie and Michael Schellenberger you know testifying in front of congress of what has been released from twitter basically since Elon Musk has taken over and you know what's going on with that a little bit you know that's not going to be the entire topic because I want to go over both parties and a whole lot of different attacks that I see on freedom of speech but so we'll get started with you know basically my point of there being hypocrites
on both sides so there has been many democrats that have been you know calling for censorship especially during covid but even beforehand you know democratic politicians but especially like I said during covid about different you know medical information and everything and there's now evidence you know through the twitter files that there was politicians democrats and it looks like republicans possibly as well directly talking to people at twitter
trying to get different you know views censored and even specific tweets so according to our constitution that would be you know completely illegal for our government officials to do that they have no right to infringe on our freedom of speech so you know the issue of twitter censoring some things on their platform is completely different than a government official or you know government agency which in the twitter files it's claimed that there
are FBI agents that are discussing censorship and censoring specific tweets and that would be the federal government directly censoring you know our freedom of speech so you know it is an important issue and I do see that this is kind of happening on both sides though so like I said you know I think both of these sides are hypocritical not just the politicians but people who follow the views and maybe they're not being hypocrites because maybe
they don't you know if they don't see the media channels that are coming from both sides so if they don't see a democrat leaning media personality and a republican leaning media personality or a left or right or conservative or liberal they might not even know what their side that they claim to be on is doing you know towards going against freedom of speech so you know one of the things maybe they're not hypocritical but they're just not informed
about it then you know everyone knows if you're someone who follows politics you know that on the republican side the democrats are saying that the republicans are trying to ban CRT critical race theory you know and different you know things like that promote trans or drag queens or something which some of the videos that I've seen for drag queens dancing in front of children is very strange and I don't think most parents or adults would
appreciate that but the parents in the videos seem completely fine I'm not going to specifically go into that today but so on the freedom of speech with the critical race theory you know the republicans trying to stop something like that in classrooms being discussed or taught I have a lot of views about that as well and we're going to cover that a little bit so we'll just get started with you know the republicans trying to ban CRT from classrooms so I don't
agree that any information should be censored from classrooms I do believe that there is age appropriate material to be taught at different grades but mostly my opinion is that if kids are able to ask questions about topics we should be giving them you know relatively honest answers maybe not the most in depth you know answers to different questions if it has to do with sexuality or whatever depending on how old they are but we should be able to
be honest with the children and if there's the opinion of the critical race theorists and that there is a huge debate whether critical race theory is being taught or whatever and you know the New York Times 1619 project and all these different basically views on what happened in history and different perspectives of what should be done about it now I believe that all of these sides should be taught in our schools and I believe that parents have
the right to decide what's being taught to their kids and what schools they can put them in so you know in the public school system it's pretty touchy because it's a free education system basically I mean we all pay into it you know I pay property taxes in my area but you do have options of homeschooling or you know going to a charter school or private school and a lot of states do have vouchers to help people who don't have as much money to get
their kids into a school outside of the public school system as well but I do usually lean towards you know more information and debate is better you know even in one of my recent podcast I just discussed how we need to have more debates in classrooms so you know I don't think that people are so stupid and kids are so stupid that they won't be able to decipher these different things if these are topics that adults of all ages argue about then they
should be open to discussion for children to make up their own opinions on them as well I mean they're not going to be any worse off or better off based on their opinion than any adult who takes one side or the other on any of these topics so like with critical race theory if they teach that opinion in a classroom I mean that doesn't bother me as long as they're teaching other information as well so if that's one philosophy of you know what has happened
in the United States since you know the 1600s when slavery started and what has been going on between the races since then and racism and you know what happened throughout history we should be viewing it from all sides so you know I don't have a problem with that being in classrooms and I do think that that is a hypocritical thing for a republican or a conservative to be claiming to try to ban you know so I do think that that kind of goes
towards the freedom of speech issue and another one on the conservative side I always hear them talking about I mean Ben Shapiro at the Daily Warrior and basically everyone on the Daily Warrior you know agrees that pornography should be banned and you know that's a giant freedom of speech issue right there you know that's that's just like an authoritarian encroachment on our rights of what we get to do as adults so I know there's issues of children getting
access to pornography through the internet and everything like that but these are issues that you know adults need to resolve themselves not the government trying to censor the entire internet from any pornography and you know different dissenting views about it so I do see you know hypocrites on both sides of this but like I was saying I'll discuss a little bit about on the democratic side too I saw many democrats you know throughout the pandemic
they're calling for censorship of all sorts of views basically medical views and the craziest thing about this is that they don't have medical degrees so these people don't actually know what's right and they're cheering for you know the fact checkers on social media platforms and just trying to basically push one specific view which if you've followed you know the science on COVID for the past three years you know that it's changed a million times
and that new studies come out all the time about how effective masks are how effective the vaccines are how effective social distancing lockdown protocols you know all the things that were implemented throughout all of this time at the beginning you know a year later two years later three years later they're still you know not letting unvaccinated people come into our country and you know based on all of the information that we have what we
should have been doing is completely different than what we did based on new information so whether or not people know this at the time that's why I'm against censoring different views though because the main thing is we need to be able to have discussions about these things so on the left I saw people pushing this information you know extremely hard the same thing you know with all the disinformation misinformation so anti disinformation anti
misinformation campaigns trying to shut it down everywhere and politicians calling for this politicians shouldn't be calling for this they should say you know well check with the medical experts and make your own decisions about what you're going to be doing with your body and what we should be doing and they can make decisions based on what they think is best for their constituents because we put them in power you know here in Michigan
governor Whitmer was here so she was in power she made all these different mandates and localities made tons of mandates to I live in Oakland County and they had mandates on what you were allowed to do how you know if you had to wear a mask or not or whatever and I disagree with mandates I think adults in America should have freedom and be allowed to make their own choices about what establishments they want to go to if they're going to wear masks or
not if they're going to take vaccines or not but either way we had you know politicians making decisions now they can make decisions based on their own understanding of the information if they look at the medical criteria you know or the medical information that's coming out from the CDC the WHO the NIH you know whatever medical organizations if they follow some other doctors that have different opinions who you know and they're looking at medical
journals and they have experts on their team telling them what to do well yeah they can follow their own opinion we put them there so that they can make these types of decisions for us quickly and you know especially in emergency situations like that but my main problem is them blocking other views and calling for blocking other views so that there's only one specific narrative that is acceptable that's my main issue with the whole freedom
of speech problem our government is not supposed to be able to infringe on our freedom of speech and this is so that we can have debates and discussions and come to better conclusions because the main belief that I have is that the truth will only be found through discussions debates arguments delving into the topic not blocking someone's opinion that you oppose the only thing that happens if you block someone's opinion is that no other idea can possibly
get in so if any new information is ever discovered and you were incorrect well it doesn't matter because there's no information there that opinion was blocked the information was blocked no one gets to see that so now people will be operating on incorrect information and you know when they're saying the science I mean the the science is always changing in reality if you look over scientific history people have been incorrect even the most brilliant
scientists most of them have been incorrect about all sorts of different theories and our theories and understandings of all sorts of different sciences including virology and physics and at basically any topic in science our opinions have been changed many times over the past couple centuries and new information comes out all the time I mean the science on our nutrition is is so crazy it changes like on a weekly basis you know with bananas being
good for you and then bananas being bad for you and you should eat you know one apple maybe you should eat two apples you should eat butter or you should eat margarine or trans fats and saturated fats they change that kind of stuff all the time because there's so many different studies and what we found with nutrition mostly I only know this because I'm interested in nutrition and fitness as well but there's so much difference you know
in variation between our bodies individual humans bodies that these foods they react completely differently to depending on you know the person that you are your activities that you do throughout your day even some things for you know race and gender have impacts on what we should be eating so you know even basic things like that we don't have any like 100% conclusive evidence that won't change ever and we know 100% there should always
be debate open and allowed especially in science science science is one of the main issues where we are supposed to have debate there's not supposed to be any moral judgments there it's all supposed to be based off of objective data so that's one of my things where I think that you know the Democrats are hypocrites because they're yelling about the Republicans I'm trying to censor different things for you know LGBTQ rights and like I said critical
race theory type stuff and you know I mean pornography whatever you know the conservatives are always trying to push against something like that as well and the Democrats are doing the same thing in a completely different direction trying to you know block everyone else's views and there's a lot of Democrats that push towards you know getting religion out of education and everything like that it's the same thing you're just blocking a
different viewpoint that's why I believe we should have all of the viewpoints open for discussion in front of our children and be able to discuss them like adults so I believe that would have led to a much better you know education environment and less confusion because you're giving children the ability to choose what side they're going to choose on one topic what their beliefs are going to be I mean it takes a long time to develop what one person's
beliefs are and even into adulthood we're all having debates and discussions about what our beliefs are what we believe the accurate information or what the truth is and if we can't even come to conclusions to you know agree 100% on these issues how are we supposed to present this data to children as absolute fact so that's one of my main problems is that people think that they're so completely right that they're willing to ban the other
sides ideas because they think they're wrong so that means it's bad to have that idea out there but you know this will lead me into my next topic basically here which is you know the fact checkers they just lead to laziness so if you believe that the people on Facebook whatever organization they use to fact check people and then the same goes for Instagram Twitter you know any platform that has fact checkers verifying information and opinions
whether it's on COVID or whether it's on this politician said this or whatever I mean they're getting you know even parody accounts that they have fact checks all over them I mean just just leave it alone it's a joke account who cares these you know this like this entire thing where everyone's trying to get their view through 100% so that the other view can be blocked this just makes people lazy because they don't have to decipher
the information if they trust the fact checkers then that's it you look at a post it says fact check misinformation fact check misleading information you don't even have to go read the article if you already believe that you know Politico or whatever fact checking organization any of the platforms that you're on are using if you're already gonna believe them that's it your thinking is done you don't need to think about that topic that information is
misleading no reason to analyze it or look into that for myself so this just makes people lazy and we already know that the fact checks aren't all correct and most of them aren't even based on something that can be 100% correct or not they're based on all sorts of arbitrary views so my main thing on that I don't believe that these organizations censoring or blocking accounts kicking people off banning people putting fact checks up is an infringement on
our freedom of speech these organizations aren't the government with like the Twitter files out the government asking any of these organizations to censor any data information that's completely illegal and against our Constitution that's obvious and I don't understand how those those hearings have been pretty wild if you watch them because you would think that people who are obliged to follow the US Constitution you know when they get elected
you think that there would be a big consensus in the Congress here on that's that's just incorrect we're not allowed to go and ban disinformation or misinformation or any types of political views or even scientific perspectives that's not their job to do and it is illegal it's an infringement on our rights as American citizens to do so so when Twitter does it if Twitter wants to ban all conservative viewpoints I don't care that doesn't matter they're
a they're their own company they're a private organization they can do that if they want people should you know be basing their decisions on what platforms to use based on what they do and I believe an open you know a more free less censored you know Twitter or Instagram or you know if there was a new platform or whatever you know truth social apparently they do the same thing you know that's Trump's different social media platform that they have
there and they have all sorts of other ones that came out you know since Twitter and Instagram have been censoring but so on those platforms I don't care if they ban different people you're not obligated to be on there but I do I do think that it makes people more lazy and when it is very one-sided you know it does cause a problem in our society but just because it causes a problem doesn't mean it's an infringement on your rights so everything
that causes a problem isn't an infringement and isn't illegal okay so there's a big difference between things that cause problems and things that are illegal or against your rights because the point of our Constitution wasn't just to make us safe and happy and live in a perfect peaceful world the point was for individuals to have the freedom to make their own decisions in their lives to speak their minds to discuss ideas how they want to carry weapons you know
for the Second Amendment to not get searched by you know any random government official the government doesn't just get authority over your body over your home over your family over your education over your speech over what weapons you own and these things were put in place to protect our rights not to make society peaceful happy easy to live in or anything like that so this is a thing that's been completely forgotten because we do live
in a time where resources are so much more abundant than they were when the Constitution was created and you know this goes into completely different area here into you know what human rights actually are but what people are pushing for you know the human rights to medical treatment and housing and clothes food whatever I mean these did not used to be rights because there was no way everyone could have access to them there was famines that we didn't know how
to deal with you know even into the 1900s so no one was able to provide this so of course it wasn't a right to receive food so back when the Constitution was created there would have been no right to health care or food there wasn't enough doctors that they could just come treat you there wasn't hospitals everywhere so we live in a way different more abundant world where the the actual idea of rights has completely changed but that's the same
thing these people who are pushing to censor everything and censor views that oppose theirs they're not trying to you know have a have an actual discussion about these things they just think something's bad and they want to get rid of it so we don't have to talk about it and they think that will make the world a better place I completely disagree because then most people don't understand how to even argue against the other point and when they
do encounter a person with a different viewpoint in real life it turns very frustrating and you know not violent but you know conflicting immediately very quickly because they don't understand why the other person has a different view when Twitter blocked all of the persons you know other viewpoints so they didn't even know these people out here had these viewpoints they've never encountered it before they've never thought about it they just have their
viewpoint in their group's viewpoint that they follow and hear and then when they encounter it in real life you know it's a huge issue people don't know how to discuss and debate these ideas because they've just tried to censor them so the censoring like I said from these media organizations that's their right to do so I mean they're a private business if Twitter you know doesn't want conservative viewpoints or liberal viewpoints on their
platform that's up to them I mean you can make a completely conservative Twitter if you want and not allow any you know type of liberal viewpoints on there and that's that's fine if that's your platform and that's your rules that's completely fine I mean Twitter allows hardcore porn on their website I mean you can just be scrolling through and there's just people fucking right there you know in the feed so you're looking through politics
that doesn't happen on Facebook Facebook doesn't allow pornography they don't allow hardcore pornography and they don't allow nudity at all on Facebook Instagram allows like partial nudity so they have all these different rules and that's their right as that organization they can make it whatever they want they can make it kid friendly they can make it a completely you know adult website if they want to and I'm completely fine with that I'm not fine
with the government trying to get involved in blocking everything and I also disagree with you know the platform's ideologies about why they're doing it and banning you know different dissenting medical opinions during COVID and then you know different viewpoints about the LGBTQ community because we should be having these discussions we should be having discussions about race about you know sexuality about different medical information and not
having lay people at Twitter Facebook Instagram they're blocking the viewpoints based on their own politics you know and ideologies so that's mostly what I wanted to cover today you know the social media platforms censorship you know blocking accounts and then it's just this whole idea that you know both sides are pushing towards authoritarianism so in my opinion both sides are trying to block certain portions of freedom of speech what I want is more freedom
I want more you know rights for the individuals in this country so this is why even on the last episode I had to I discussed that both parties are authoritarian in my opinion and they keep doing this they they constantly push these little bills here and there block CRT here censor medical disinformation here and it all sounds good for their constituents whenever they get these laws through they never pull back and we've been slowly heading
into an authoritarian state where the government has more and more power the government has the power to tell you to stay in your home and cover your face and you know they didn't get to this point but they tried to with forcing you to inject something into your body so you know 200 years ago that would have been absurd for people in our country to think that they would have been able to do anything like that and people can use the guise of an emergency
or you know some you know heart wrenching issue that some people they feel you know about the LGBTQ community they feel about you know critical race theory so they think you need to just smash your opponents and you know get legislation to block these people but those are laws those are laws on the books they are unlikely to be repealed so that's my main issue is that any little power that you give the government someone else is going to be
in that position one day do you want them to have that power over you to ban certain things from classrooms to ban certain things from social media platforms to tell you what you can think what you can put in your body you know anything like that so you don't have to be hypocritical you can be against people's opinions and viewpoints and you can even fight against them and you can teach your own kids and you can try and push in your community
what you believe is right that's what I think you should do but the government shouldn't be doing that the government doesn't need to enforce all these policies about what you should say what you should wear what you can do what what are your medical choices for you that's not the government's job that's our job to figure out and we can figure it out the government's job is to organize things so that our society can function more smoothly
their job is organization and then one more step above that would be protections with the military other than that you know we as communities can deal with these issues ourselves we shouldn't be getting our orders from some top down system from the federal government so that's my opinion on you know basically freedom of speech I mean I guess I'm pretty close to what you would call like a freedom of speech absolutist the only thing that I
would say that you shouldn't be able to say you know without getting into legal issues would be literally calling for violence or specifically targeting someone with violence you know there is harassment issues obviously if you you know mail a letter to someone's house every single day you know just to bother them and yeah there should be legal action someone can take to get that to stop but other than situations like that these are things
that everyone has the right to their own opinion and to make their own decisions and the government doesn't get to just tell us what to do on these types of things so this is going to be a you know huge issue over the next few years we'll see what happens with the Twitter files and you know we'll see what happens with the social media platforms because I think you know most of the people that I've talked to at least they think that the fact checkers
are a joke I mean it's just completely ridiculous that every other post you got a fact check on it about something I mean just let me read the post and make a decision it's it's a literal it's a tweet you know it's a post on Instagram who cares leave us alone let us make up our own decisions you know these people they don't think we can be trusted with our own opinions you know and have our own volition so I'm completely against that I think that the people in America
are smart enough to make their own decisions and that we need the freedom to do so in order to move forward that's all the time I really have for today I did have a couple other things I wanted to go over which I'm sure we'll you know discuss in later episodes but like I always say you know these are just my opinions and everyone else is going to have an opinion on all these different topics as well and one of the things that we need to keep in mind
is just like me I mean I want my community to be thriving I want my community to be healthy I want my neighbors to be happy I don't want them to you know be like broke poor unhealthy not having access to you know resources that they need I want them to be doing well too so whether or not my views align with theirs that's not really the most important part the most important part is do I care about them do they care about me and when we're
having these discussions with each other most of the time you're not talking to a politician you're talking to your friend or your neighbor or your cousin or something you know someone in your family and your group around you they don't even have the power to change these things they're one tiny vote you know they get one tiny vote and most of them probably don't even vote most people don't even vote in their local elections and only half of
the people vote in the presidential election so you know they're probably barely having any effect about this and people are getting so upset you know that they're yelling at their cousin their uncle their friend over these different issues when they're not really making this entire issue how it is it's the politicians so when we're discussing these with our friends and family you know just keep in mind most of these people have your best
interests at heart they have their own interests at heart their family their friends their community they don't want their neighborhood to go up in flames they want it to be a beautiful neighborhood everyone wants to live in a beautiful neighborhood not a third world country that's broken down or something so you know I just try to tell people to keep that in mind when we're having political discussions because I want to quash the division in this country and point us
towards the the actual threat which are the people that are in power they're in power in the you know highest political positions and they're in power in the largest corporations with the most power they have the most you know monetary influence but instead I see people that are arguing with each other and they're blaming all of the other citizens that really don't even have that much of a say in it we're just voting for the leaders
so instead of aiming you know our dissent towards the actual people that have the power you know we're we're creating division amongst ourselves amongst the people that live right next to us and that probably care about our community way more than any politician so I'll leave you guys like I always do with the message of unity and us trying to come together to do something to change this country so that we can get to a better place you know
my belief is that we can start voting for third parties and start voting with our dollars you know to get some better corporations and better politicians in power so you know that's just my opinion we all have an opinion on how to get there and I'm hoping that we can all work together for a better future so just remember when you're having a political conversation try and treat the other person with as much respect as possible and have some compassion
and just remember to always vote your conscience.