Thinking for Ourselves. Refutation

It is very difficult for the U.S. government to feed us what we should think because we live in the "Land of the Free, Home of the Brave". One of the greatest beauties of living in the good old US of A is the First Amendment...45 words, 5 freedoms. Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to assemble and petition. Because of those freedoms we get to experience a libertarian/Social Responsibility model of free expression. There are four types of free expression.

Authoritarian:   Media is a private enterprise owned and operated by the government.  This type of media control is justified as "The common good" for its citizens. Russia and Zimbabwe are examples of Authoritarian "free expression".

Communist:  Government press only.  The news is defined as what is important to and by the government. Communist free expression ensures "stability".  China and North Korea are examples of Communist "free expression".

Libertarian:  Has the highest degree of freedom.  There are no restrictions on media.  The consumer must research and determine what is true or false.

Social Responsibility aka The Forth State:  This functions as an "unofficial branch of the government".   Because the media is privately owned and is independent from the government it can "watch" over the system and report to the citizens. This way information is relayed to the citizens and, under the system of checks and balances the citizens can decide what is true or false. All of this reporting (because it is privately owned) does so with out the government dictating what should be reported.  U.S. uses Libertarian and Social Responsibility (The Fourth State) as their model of free expression.

The example given in class was arguing that the government/media  in Russia or Ukraine could not be trusted on a reported conflict between the two countries.  Each country was reporting that the other was to blame for the conflict, reporting one point of view thus escalating the issue.  While the example is valid because those countries freedom of expression operate under Authoritarian, it is a fallacy to assume all governments control what the public have access to.  Both countries controlled what they wanted the citizens to see and think.

Under a libertarian and social responsibility model of free expression both sides of any given conflict will be reported, thus allowing the citizens to decide what is true or false.  Because we have the freedoms we do it is extremely difficult (borderline impossible) "to get what the government would have us think".

But what about those that live under the authoritarian model how can they know the truth?  Where there is a will there is a way...to find the truth!  Russia and Ukraine both block and blacklist URLs that they feel will cause "harm" to the people of their society.  Some of the blacklisted sites like child pornography really could cause harm, but what about political truth?  IF..and I mean IF, the people of Russia and Ukraine really wanted to gain access to blacklisted sites containing what is really happening in the world they could use Opera Software desktop browser.  "Blocked Russian opposition site recommends Opera to outwit blacklist" is an article that gives an overview of the conflict that was given as the example in class.  However, this article also gives great information on how people can obtain access to blocked sites that are promoting the truth.  Because Opera uses Norwegian-based servers it circumnavigates the blacklisted sites.  There are other software browsers they could use as well, all using servers outside of the internet censorship.   Basically they can search the internet freely because they are using a server that uses a libertarian or social responsibility model, no restrictions, which means access to the truth.

The internet is so big there is no way to censor it all.  There will always be a way to find what your are looking for, true or false.  Those that live under an authoritarian/communist model of free expression have unbiased options that will allow them the opportunity to think for themselves.