Shelly Aldean: If we can keep it

In 1787, at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens inquiring about what kind of government the delegates had created. According to tradition, Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

As a nation, we find ourselves today at a critical crossroad. With violent unrest in many of our major cities, with a diminishing level of trust in many of our once revered institutions and with the recent events that unfolded at our nation’s Capitol, we are, in many respects, a country in crisis.

As in the past, we are no longer a nation united by a common language, religious beliefs or cultural homogeneity. Although I strongly believe that our cultural diversity has enlightened our perspective of the world and enriched our nation as a whole, without a shared passion for our republic and a mutual declaration of allegiance to its underlying principles, we are in jeopardy of losing what our founders created.

In an article entitled “Perspectives on the Constitution,” Dr. Richard Beeman, a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, opined that while the Constitution is our most “powerful symbol of unity,” the racial climate in our country today is “marked too often by mutual mistrust and misunderstanding and a condition of desperate poverty within our inner cities that has left many young people so alienated that any standard definition of citizenship becomes meaningless… Perhaps just as alarming, tens of millions of Americans have been turned-off by the corrupting effects of money on the political system.”

As we fast forward to current events and the censoring of conservative speech by Big Tech oligarchs like Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter who recently colluded in their targeting of Parler, a refuge for conservative viewpoints, we see the irrefutable damage that monopolies can inflict on some of our most fundamental freedoms. Not unexpectedly, there are renewed calls for authorities to investigate these monolithic companies for anti-trust, civil rights and racketeering statute violations. Since Parler, which pitches itself as a “free speech” alternative to Twitter and Facebook, has become one of the fastest growing apps in the United States, blocking the social media site for allegedly not doing enough to screen incendiary speech has become a convenient excuse for destroying the competition.

People from across the political spectrum are also speaking out against the unprecedented move by Twitter to remove President Trump’s account while allowing members of Antifa to use the platform to organize protests and riots and for others to call for the hanging of Vice President Pence. Seeing this as a frightening portent of possible things to come, Senior Legislative Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union Kate Ruane decried this move insisting that “It should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions – especially when political realities make those decisions easier.”

To borrow a line from Thomas Paine, a man credited with helping to incite our country’s war against Great Britain, “These are the times that try men’s souls” – a feeling shared by many Americans today as they watch these unprecedented events unfold. Paine, who also famously observed that “When all other rights are taken away, the right of rebellion is made perfect,” would, if he were alive today, no doubt be the latest casualty of Big Tech censorship.

Shelly Aldean is a Carson City resident.