Many, perhaps most, of you check in regularly at American Thinker. If so, you may have seen the following notice:
It is news to almost nobody who reads American Thinker that a political witch hunt is underway. Parties in and out of government are looking for excuses to suppress and destroy voices that oppose the left.
Because AT lacks the ability to monitor comments in real time, and because our position that comments are a forum, not something that we publish, is being called into question, we can no longer publish comments.
We take this action with a heavy heart.
I assume that this decision was probably occasioned by threat and/or intimidation from Leftist internet vigilantes, rather than any government agency. No doubt they seized on irresponsible comments by the usual keyboard kommando types who lack a clue about the limits of the 1st Amendment. It's a sad day for the country when the free exchange of ideas is curtailed in this way--it's a victory for the forces of repression.
UPDATE: Andrea Widburg has an important article at American Thinker about a young man who lost a job, in his telling, because a third party (the National Hockey League) objected to his employer (Private Jet Services) hiring someone who had worked for the Trump campaign. Obviously this type of activity relates to freedom of speech as well as association. Yes, this happened in the public realm, so government action wasn't involved, but coordinated campaigns to curtail speech and association are highly threatening to a free society when they are backed up by Big Data methods and capabilities. Constitutional considerations based in the age of the pamphlet and the printing press become small consolation and dubious safeguards, since a vibrant Public Square must be the basis for our freedoms. Political monopolies over the Public Square can be nearly as dangerous as government action:
The public sector purge is beginning
Read it all. Here is Widburg's conclusion:
