Facebook's algorithm bans a passage from the Declaration of Independence

Remember earlier this month when Facebook's algorithm banned a passage from the Declaration of Independence? Jim Goad looks into it at Taki's Magazine.

On July 2, Facebook’s indefatigable legions of Hate Robots censored a post as “hate speech” because it dared to contain a passage from the Declaration of Independence:

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

The three words everyone zeroed in on were “merciless Indian savages.” The only thing inaccurate in the term “merciless Indian savages” is the word “Indian,” but facts don’t matter in an era where moral outrage is forever on the warpath.



According to Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker:

Contra leftist anthropologists who celebrate the noble savage, quantitative body-counts—such as the proportion of prehistoric skeletons with axemarks and embedded arrowheads or the proportion of men in a contemporary foraging tribe who die at the hands of other men—suggest that pre-state societies were far more violent than our own.

Read more here.

“About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful."

At American Digest Gerard brings us a speech by Calvin Coolidge on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Because it is by Coolidge, it is short and very much on point!

“with firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

In American Thinker, Scott S. Powell writes,

The Diary of Nathaniel Snowden recounts the testimony of an eyewitness observer, who by chance encountered George Washington alone on his knees praying loudly in the snowy woods of Valley Forge. Snowden’s account of Washington’s prayer at that dark hour of the revolutionary struggle depicts him as beseeching “God’s deliverance of aid for the cause of the country, humanity and the world.” Indeed, Washington placed everything on the line for the cause as did the 56 signatories of the Declaration of Independence, citing in the last sentence of that document that “with firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

...America now faces the greatest scandal of abuse of power in its history. And while times have changed in that regard, principles have not. May this July 4th be a special time, hopefully a turning point, for Americans to demand the prosecution of corruption in government and also to renew their appreciation of accountable and limited government.

Read more here.

Let's ban it!

Democrats have had it!

The Democratic Party (“The Party”) today added the Declaration of Independence to its Index of Prohibited Books, joining The Bible (anti-gender fluidity), the Adventures of Tom Sawyer (the “N” word) and anything written by Stephen King (too scary).

“For too long we have tolerated this document” said Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez.

Read more here.

What might happen

This post by Manhattan Infidel on the Declaration of Independence is very thought-provoking. I am sorry I missed it last week.

Independence, or dependence?

Ann Voskamp writes,

Straight up — the guy just liked the frame.

Four bucks.

That’s all this guy had to dig out of wallet at that flew market in Adamstown, Pennsylvania that morning in 1989 to buy one old, odd picture frame.

He handed over the four dollars and frankly, didn’t care one wit about the painting.

It was just a dismal little country scene dabbed across a grimy, torn canvas with a signature he couldn’t even make out — it was only the gilded and ornate frame that caught his eye.

The flea market seller took his four bucks — with absolutely no idea. With not the faintest idea that the frame and painting — were not at all what you’d think.

When the guy got home? The crudely-made frame pathetically fell apart in his hands. Unsalvageable.

Great — four bucks wasted on a bunch of garbage.

But when the unsalvageable frame fell apart in this hands, fell away from the torn canvas?

There, between the slashed canvas and the wood backing of the crumbled frame — was this crisp, folded up piece of paper, the size of a business envelope.

He unfolded it slow. Ran his finger across the inked calligraphy.

It couldn’t be what it read — or was it?

When a friend who collected historical memorabilia dropped by, he took out that crisp piece of paper, unfolded it slow, for him to take a look at it. Laughed a bit when his friend shook his head, mouth agape.

“Well —- what do you think?”

“Get it appraised.”

Turns out?

That folded up piece of paper, one-tenth of an inch thick, that had fallen out between a torn canvas and a falling-apart frame? Was printed by John Dunlap. On July 4th, 1776.

Turns out that it’s one of only 500 copies of the first printing of — the Declaration of Independence.

Turns out only 23 copies are known to still exist, only of which a mere two were privately owned — and then this one.

A flea market find.

...Turns out?

You can have in your possession an actual declaration of freedom — and not actually value it.

You can hold in your hands something valuable enough that it could change everything about your life — and you could send it right out of your life.

...It’s time to check behind the cheap frame of things — because it turns out:

A life of faith may not be what what you think — or what most people live.

It’s infinitely more.

...The greatest freedom we have is the freedom to come right to God at any time.

There under the bloom of fireworks, you can feel it —

the love of Christ exploding a heart —

the way a people can live a declaration of independence from all else and breathe the freedom of dependence in the One who explodes grace across all our skies.

Read more here.

"Free and independent states"

Scott Ott reads our Declaration of Independence here.

"With a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."

Our future leaders

Does our government enjoy the consent of the governed?

Glenn Reynolds asks in USA Today,

Does our government now have, as its principal function, the protection of people's rights? Or is it more of a giant wealth-transfer machine, benefiting the connected at the expense of the outsiders? And, most important, does our government enjoy the consent of the governed? (According to a 2014 Rasmussen poll, only 21% think so.) What would the drafters of the declaration say?

Read more here.

The writing of the Declaration of Independence

L.C. Rees writes at Chicago Boyz a piece entitled, How to improve a historic document via committee.It's about the Declaration of Independence, how it was originally drafted by Thomas Jefferson, how it was improved by a committee of five (John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman) and to the final changes made by the Continental Congress as a committee of the whole. Read it here.

Our birthright!

Open Blogger writes at Ace of Spades about the Declaration of Independence, which he posts for us to read.

That document was written 239 years ago by an assembly of the brightest human minds ever joined for one purpose in the history of mankind. Those men accepted the challenge presented by an uncontrolled aristocracy seeking to rule over all people, as had been the case throughout history, and calmly and clearly destroyed the idea of an oligarchy. What a brilliant victory for mankind, for liberty, for freedom for self expression.

Unfortunately you and I are living in the era of Revolution 2: The Oligarchy Strikes Back. Make no mistake, the oligarchy has struck back, hard. Most of the freedoms guaranteed to We The People by the follow up document to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, have been abandoned or overturned. King kills rule of law. Obergefell killed the 1st Amendment. Roe invented imaginary new “rights” somehow magically hidden in “penumbras and emanations". Wickard basically gives the Federal Government leave to do anything it wants under the guise of “regulating commerce”. Plyler v. Doe dilutes the birthright of Americans, rendering it meaningless. The list goes on. A small cadre of elites, both elected and unelected, has managed to almost completely gut the rights that we are born with. They have succeeded because we have been too busy to notice, or too lazy, or too afraid. The majority of us, Nock's “Mass Man” (what we call LIVs today), have been complicit in their own enslavement. All of this has already come to pass. It is done. Over. Finished.

Except for one tiny thing......

The birthright. Your birthright. My birthright. OUR BIRTHRIGHT.

They. Can. Not. Take. Our. Birthright. Away.

Read more here.