Does Error Have Rights? The Campaign for the Right to be Wrong

Many Liberals and Conservatives Believe Error Has No Rights

Copyright ©2025 by Independent History and Research • RevisionistHistory.org

On September 15 Attorney General Pam Bondi stated on a podcast hosted by conservative commentator Katie Miller:

“There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech. And there’s no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie (Kirk). We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”

Bondi’s unconstitutional threat was later employed to suggest that celebrity Jimmy Kimmel committed a hate crime with his nationally televised attribution of the murder of Mr. Kirk to the Republican movement: “We hit some new lows over the weekend, with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

The Trump Administration’s War on “Error”

President Trump’s Federal Communications Commissioner, Brendan Carr opined that the ABC television network was risking regulatory consequences if it didn’t act against what the FCC viewed as Kimmel’s “irresponsible speech.” Mr. Carr betrays his incomprehension of the free speech guarantees of the First Amendment.

The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act of 1994 is a federal law which curbs protests at abortion clinics. Mr. Trump’s Department of Justice has repurposed the FACE Act to protect synagogues from protests by applying it to demonstrators. In line with this new tactic, the Department of Justice has filed a civil lawsuit under the FACE Act against pro-Palestinian activists involved in a November 2024 protest in front of the Congregation Ohr Torah synagogue in West Orange, New Jersey.

Since the right of the people to peaceably assemble is inviolable, to sustain this unconstitutional move, protests in defense of Palestinian civilians are often mischaracterized as violent. The New Jersey synagogue demonstration was in part violent, but the violence may have come from opponents of the protest. Police reports state that Dr. Moshe Glick was arrested for allegedly beating a pro-Palestinian protester over the head with a metal flashlight in front of the synagogue. The Essex County Prosecutor’s Office has charged him with aggravated assault. His defense team is said to be confident the charge will be dismissed. The Trump administration has made no move to protect critics of Israeli genocide from assault.

Through a combination of executive actions, revocations of the visas of international students, threats to federal funding for universities, and aggressive “enforcement” of anti-Semitism definitions that conflate criticism of Israeli killings of Arabs with hate speech, the Trump administration has implemented policies that suppress the First Amendment right of students who protest the genocide in Gaza. In Trump’s eyes they are wrong, and thus they have no rights the president is bound to respect.

Moreover, President Trump has required universities receiving federal funds to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which outlaws “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” and bans the “drawing of comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” The imposition of the Zionist IHRA’s chauvinist and highly partisan “definitions” is clearly an unconstitutional violation of civil liberty. According to Trump and the IHRA, vociferous critics of Israeli racism and mass murder are in error, therefore, college administrations must silence them or forfeit Federal government funding.

The Left’s War on “Error”

In 2023 the Office on Genocide Prevention of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization issued guidelines for policy makers, “Addressing Hate Speech.” Though cloaked in the bland jargon of feel-good liberal platitudes, UNESCO’s marching orders to the West’s ruling class are a chilling manifesto for censorship and thought repression by a powerful world body concerning what is perceived to be error on matters of conspiracy theory and gender, to name but two categories.

In defining “Disinformation” consider what UNESCO terms ‘Key terminology’: “False or wrong information or content deliberately created to deceive or give an inaccurate understanding of an issue.”

Wrong information which gives an inaccurate understanding is a hate crime? In that case the majority of editors and reporters for the legacy media are guilty and ought to face prosecution. Deciding what constitutes “wrong” thoughts or news that is “inaccurate” are broad categories vulnerable to the imposition of arbitrary or ideologically-driven criteria for justifying interdiction of political, religious or financial rivals.

In the U.N. document, reminiscent of the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board during Joe Biden’s presidency, headed by “disinformation expert” Nina Jankowicz, UNESCO intends to guide our Overlords in deciding which humans should have their liberty curbed when they express “error.” UNESCO decrees:

“Hate speech, as detailed throughout this guide, can create unsafe and inequitable living and learning environments…Addressing hate speech through education means strengthening the capacity of education systems, including institutions and educators, to provide safe and inclusive, hate-free learning environments that are respectful of human rights and supportive of diverse cultures, beliefs and racial, religious, sexual and gender identities.

“…Such approaches are in line with UNESCO’s work on global citizenship education…involving strategies to educate learners…in ways that highlight…the role of hate speech in violent extremist narratives and the potential of hateful propaganda to fuel violence…Hate speech does, in fact, limit the freedom of expression of those targeted when they do not feel safe to express themselves freely in environments where they face hateful language or narratives; this is true of both offline educational environments and the online sphere. Addressing hate speech is therefore in itself an act to support freedom of expression.

“…Hate speech is exacerbated by the rise of populist nationalism and xenophobia…when politicians, religious leaders…produce and circulate …racist and xenophobic ideas or conspiracy theories.…those living at the ‘intersection’ of different identities bear the brunt and the heaviest burden in the face of hateful dehumanization, discrimination…When a…person of color also belongs to an indigenous group and presents as transgender and/or non-binary, for example, it is unfortunately one of the strongest predictors of that person being the target, recipient and/or subject of sustained and widespread hateful communication…lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and queer (or questioning) people…have suffered the multiple psychological wounds.

“…Behavioral choices are deeply rooted in social and gender norms. Successful school-based programs that address gender stereotypes have encouraged young men to critically examine social norms and gender inequalities…Some of those programs focus particularly on the dismantling of traditional constructions of masculinity…‘The Breaking the Man Code’ program, implemented by the Australian social enterprise Tomorrow Man, includes two-hour experimental workshops where adolescent boys examine the risks associated with negative norms of masculinity and try to make a break with them.

“…Establishing the need to combat hate speech as a matter of national and global priority requires acknowledgement of the fact that countering hate speech effectively is a matter not only of compliance and enforcement by means of legal restrictions or codes of conduct, but also of incorporating that goal into broader school and community initiatives to address the roots of racism…”

Conservatives will view with alarm the extent to which UNESCO skews the perimeters of what constitutes hate speech toward that which questions dogmas associated with “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and queer” ideology.

Furthermore, the United Nations demonizes populists as hateful xenophobes when they advocate for the integrity of their nation’s borders, while independents from all sides of the political spectrum become hate crime suspects when they promote “conspiracy theories” (investigations of crimes by members of the ruling classes). One is also seemingly guilty of hate speech when one defends patriarchy against UNESCO’s social engineering — the “dismantling of traditional constructions of masculinity.”

The Many Religious Models of Intellectual Tyranny

UNESCO’s error-has-no-rights philosophy should generate no smug sense of superiority among Conservatives. After all, the principle stemmed from vestiges of the Scribal and Pharisaic priesthoods which gradually gained a foothold in the Church, and later in some of the Protestant ecclesia.

University of St. Andrew’s Divinity Prof. Samuel Rutherford’s 1649 volume justifying the persecution of “papists, heretics and sectarians.”

To be credible the received opinion which asserts that the Reformation was a departure from the Inquisition must exclude the revisionist record of the Protestant inquisition visited upon Catholics by the regime of Queen Elizabeth I, as well as in the Protestant citadel of Geneva, Switzerland and by top-tier Reformers such as John Calvin, John Knox, and Samuel Rutherford, author of the hefty heretic-hunter’s tome, A Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience.

Knox, a disciple of Calvin, justified anti-Catholic violence, including the 1546 murder of Cardinal David Beaton (which Knox greeted with what he termed “gleeful levity”). His 1558 book First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women targeted Catholic queens such as Mary I of England, calling for their overthrow by any means necessary. Knox played a significant part in drafting the 1560 Scottish Confession of Faith, supporting parliamentary acts that banned the Catholic Latin Mass, with penalties up to death for a third “offense.”

No Liberty of Conscience in Freemasonry

The remedy for these outrages is America’s founding principle of liberty of conscience, yet Catholic theologians supportive of the pre-Vatican II Church often paint that bedrock freedom in occult colors, mistakenly drawing parallels between liberty of conscience and Freemasonry.

One of the most challenging advancements of this thesis was penned by Rev. Fr. Dominic Bourmaud in his One Hundred Years of Modernism: A Genealogy of the Principles of the Second Vatican Council (2006). On p. 316 we read, “Pluralism is a system…It is the smiling face of anti-dogmatism, which is the very substance of Masonic sectarianism. For ‘pluralism’ means systematic and obligatory plurality in matters of dogma and hence the destruction of dogma…Founding liberty of thought and religious liberty upon pluralism is therefore an absurdity.”

Au contraire. Freemasonry is a rigid dogmatic system which conceals its fanatical certainties behind a facade of toleration and liberty. It demands the absolute obedience of its members. Should a Mason reveal Masonry’s true face he is subject to execution. In America among the dissidents who Freemasons murdered were Daniel Rees (in Pennsylvania in 1738), William Morgan (New York, 1826), and Joseph Smith (in Illinois in 1844). There have been manifold masonic assassinations. These three are the most notorious and undeniable.

Freemasonry suffers no contradiction of its dogmatic belief in the necessity of the rebuilding of the temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, or of the excellence of the Kabbalah for decrypting the mysteries of existence and creation itself, a precept which was covertly embraced by the popes of the Renaissance (cf. The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome). Freemasonry arose from the magical thinking of papally protected and sponsored “Catholic” philosophers such as Pico della Mirandola and Johannes Reuchlin. Their weltanschauung spawned the Rosicrucian movement and in turn Masonry.

The attempt to taint freedom of thought with an occult provenance has led many Christians to cling tightly to inquisitorial suppression of dissent in abhorrence of the “devil’s party” — secret society subversion. The conflation of the freedom of conscience which Jesus permitted His followers (John 6:66-67), with the Mystery of Iniquity is one of the ingenious tricks in the devil’s bag.

When our God-given reason is encumbered by demands that we capitulate to unscriptural teachings and a man-made authority held to be superior to the voice of the Holy Spirit within us, the diabolic reigns over thrones and principalities, and Salus animarum suprema lex est ends up negated.

Freedom of conscience is the gift of the true Church. It was transmitted to us by the New Testament’s model of sainthood, St. Paul. The apostle was anointed, consecrated and foreordained by no man on earth — directly from the Holy Spirit: “Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.” (Galatians 1:1).

Where is it written that only the Apostle Paul lived this direct contact with God’s grace?

This royal priesthood (I Peter 2:9) was experienced by the disciples at Pentecost (Acts 2), by St. John in Revelation, and St. Francis of Assisi, as well as by countless believers in the course of our daily lives. It can’t be merchandised or placed under Pharaoh’s rod, hence Churchianity has no investment in it.

Even the most cunning scripture-twisters can’t explain away the radical actuality that Paul didn’t ask permission of the church in Jerusalem before he pursued his ministry: “But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to^[ me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone; nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me…” (Galatians 1:15-17).

There are many religious examples of intellectual tyranny. Some of these dictatorships pay lip service to Paul’s Holy Spirit initiation and then deny it by constructing a labyrinthine bureaucracy of power and money where the “Road to Damascus” is lost in the brambles of an officialdom overseen by “holy people” who are in actuality coffin-riding apparatchiks.

Before enumerating the authentic position of the Founding Fathers and their antecedents in opposition to these models, we will survey three:

Talmudic law, papal infallibility, and the early Protestant synodal template.