The Rise and Fall of Free Speech

At the age of 77, much of what is read in history books is my lived experience. I can remember President Eisenhower’s second win as my family and I watched it on our black-and-white TV set in our living room in our North Dakota farmhouse, a TV that was about half the size of a refrigerator. I remember that President Eisenhower was worried about the military industrial complex and I actually listened to that speech. I remember when Nixon lost in 1960. I remember exactly where I was on November 22, 1963 when President Kennedy was shot in Dallas. I remember the advent of Medicare.

I watched the Watergate trials. I actually felt sorry for Nixon because he was probably doing what everybody else had done before. I remember gasoline for 16 cents a gallon and I remember working 15 hours a day when I was 14 and 15 years old for $5 a day. I bought my first car for $50, a 54 Ford Crown Vic two door hardtop.

I remember Sputnik and the Russians putting the monkey into space. In grade school we had something called a Weekly Reader, which kept us pretty much informed about news. I remember fallout shelters and the Bay of Pigs. I remember thinking that the Warren Commission information was a cover-up.

I especially remember our Weekly Reader telling us that the people in Russia did not have free speech. In Russia, the newspapers told journalists what to report, and that they could be punished for not reporting the “truth” according to the Soviet Government. The name of the paper was Pravda, the Russian word meaning “truth” or “justice.” It was the name of the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from in 1918 to 1991. Pravda published materials to persuade readers to think a certain way according to government-controlled propaganda. Back in the late 50s we were not told that we had our own censorship. Nobody could have predicted when or how bad censorship in the U.S. could get. Certainly, nobody could have predicted the levels to which it would be seen over the last four years.

Not every nation has a free-speech clause, so we should not take ours for granted. The free-speech clause of the first amendment protects freedom of speech, including the right to express oneself through publication.

There are three clauses in the first amendment, and the first one is freedom of speech.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

In August 2022 I did a podcast called, “Midwives can be the best of both worlds.” It’s been on YouTube for over two years. My podcasts are also on Spotify. Recently I received the following message from Spotify:

Our automatic review process found an episode that may be in violation of our content policies <https://support.spotifyforpodcasters.com/hc/articles/360043931011-Spotify-s-policy-on-submitting-music-via-Spotify-for-Podcasters>. As a result, we’ve removed:
*Episode Title*: Rural Doc Alan Podcast Midwives and Natural Child Birth Episode 22
*Show*: Rural Doc Alan Podcast
*Format*: video
*URI*: [Substack won’d print the URI]

By the way, the title of the podcast is incorrect.

Why this podcast should become offensive to someone after more than two years is hard to figure out. I can only surmise that a reader found the podcast after its being up for more than two years, and found something in it objectionable and complained to Spotify. The person evidently did not complain to YouTube because the podcast is still available on YouTube. In keeping with true censorship, we don’t know why it was removed, and neither did we know who wanted it removed and of course what was so offensive about the podcast that it needed to be removed. There was no option for rebuttal or defense. Maybe this was an AI complaint and no one really filed an objection. Who knows.

I went through the article to see what somebody might have thought was offensive, but I could find nothing. There was certainly no pornography, no obscenity, nothing defamatory, and no personal attacks, So, I’m left wondering exactly what part of the podcast offended someone. And why is this process so mysterious that I don’t get to know anything at all about my imaginary offence?

In my more than 4 decades of health care with over 6000 live births, no maternal mortality and decades without any serious maternal illness, I practiced without an axe to grind. Since I was independent, I didn’t have a large healthcare system herding low risk patients into my practice. Many Medicaid patients, who are usually higher risk for many reasons, came to see me. I neither complained nor judged them, but I understand that sometimes there was a lot of work to providing the necessary care to get good results.

I employed certified midwives, NPs, PAs, MDs and MD/PhDs along with nurses, lab techs and sonographers. While I did not employ lay midwives, I was always available to help them when they ran into problems with patients which required hospitalization. I had no reason to denigrate them, but my obstetrical associates in the hospitals I delivered in made it very plain they did not approve when I accepted a lay midwife's patient into my care at the hospital. I built my practice and my life on the principle that all comers were equal, and in the care I provided, I didn’t get to like or respect some more than others.

So, with my title, “Midwives are the best of both worlds,” I meant it. There are, however, differences between so-called certified midwives and lay midwives. Certified midwives have at least a master’s degree and sometimes a PhD in midwifery. Lay midwives, on the other hand, are trained the way doctors were trained over 100 years ago, by working under an established doctor or in this case an established midwife.

Certified midwives can have hospital privileges while lay midwives can’t. This is what I think I said that tripped the sensors. “Certified midwives are part of the hospital machinery.” There are many differences between certified midwives and lay midwives. I have no bones to pick with either variety, although some of my peers didn’t like my nonjudgmental attitude.

But of course, since I was censored by Spotify without being given any reason, this is a guess. This is a small incident of censorship but it certainly shows that censorship is alive and well in our country. Of course, if I had the prerogative to censor willy-nilly, there is much I would censor about MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, and Vanity Fair for publishing all kinds of biased information and carrying that bias to extremes by labeling anything they disagree with as misinformation or worse. As Imed Bouchrika reports:

"When some people have already formed beliefs in their minds, these tend to stick and it goes for various topics. Even when faced with facts and logical reasoning, they would persistently push on with their beliefs. In fact, social media was weaponized due to this behavior, with a number of PR firms driving narratives that highlight propaganda rather than facts."

Vanity Fair recently published an article by Gabriel Sherman titled “They’re Scared Shitless": The Threat of Political Violence Informing Trump’s Grip on Congress.”

“With the president smashing norm after norm, even lawmakers within his party have feared for their personal safety, and at least one has told confidants that it has swayed his decision making.”

One thing we've learned from the propaganda and misrepresented scientific studies in the last four years is that logic does not change a person's beliefs. This Vanity Fair article won't persuade anyone to change their thinking, but to me the content is just aggravating, like flies buzzing around our heads. In reality, both sides are accusing the other of the same allegations, fear of retaliation for voting one way or the other.

About 50 years ago, Julian Jaynes, a psychologist, wrote The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. In this book he suggests that as long as tribes remained relatively small, the bicameral right and left brain consciousness did not disappear in humans until tribes grew larger in size. In larger groups of people, inner voices of guidance were replaced with guidance from a leader outside personal consciousness. And these leaders controlled the crowd, so to speak, with fear. What does this have to do with censorship? When people are controlled by fear, it is very difficult to change their thoughts.

If the journalists like Gabriel Sherman really thought President Trump were so dangerous, they wouldn’t dare write a piece like this. The fact that Gabriel Sherman and others do write these hit-pieces, indicates that Trump is not the threat they pretend him to be. I will always remain in defense of real free speech. And at the same time, I recognize that changing the minds of those people controlled by fear mongering will never admit to re-seeing reality. This would require allowing those with different opinions to express their thoughts without being accused of lies and misinformation.