<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">On Mon, Dec 23, 2019 at 2:02 AM John Grigg via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:</span><br></div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr"><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">
<div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>"<i>I  began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not  force, but secrecy ... censorship.<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">"</span> </i></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">I think that is basically true because tyranny can not survive the truth and over the long term a Free Press is self correcting and tends to move in that general direction. That's why if I had my way I'd get rid of the libel laws, all libel laws. But Trump wants to expand the libel laws to include any criticism of the President but of course retaining the right of a President to say </font></span><font size="4">Barack Obama<span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> was not born in the USA or that a US Senator's father killed John Kennedy:</span></font></div><div class="gmail_quote"><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_quote"><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4"><a href="https://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/02/donald-trump-libel-laws-219866">We're going to 'open up' libel laws</a> </font></span></div><div class="gmail_quote"><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_quote"><span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">And Trump said members of Congress who didn't applaud during his State Of The Union Speech were guilty of treason, the dictator of North Korea would agree with him completely:</font></span></div><div><br></div><div><font size="4"><a href="https://qz.com/1198950/trump-calls-democrats-treasonous-in-ohio-for-not-applauding-the-state-of-the-union/">Trump calls not applauding his State of the Union “treason”</a></font></div><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">John K Clark</font></div></div></div>