Tennessee Principal Forced On Leave After Promoting Free Speech

The raid on the U.S. Capitol Building had Libs up in arms demanding Trump be immediately impeached for the insurrection on the Capitol. They of course were just trying to demonize the president. But Liberals to this day still believe that the whole thing was orchestrated by Trump because that’s the narrative the MSM was pushing. So when Superintendent Joris Ray asked Principal Barton Thorne to talk on the matter, he was likely thinking that Thorton was a fellow liberal, who was going to tear apart Trump and talk about racial disparity or something. But Thorton instead decided to teach something important about the freedom of speech and how Libs were trouncing on it. Needless to say, his colleagues and Ray were not amused. Thorton was immediately put on administrative leave and is fighting to get his job back.

I do not get into religion and I do not get into politics with my students,” and “I am not a conspiracy theorist,” Thorne began, referring to the riot as “sedition.”

What concerns him is “what’s going on with Twitter and Facebook and Google and Apple, and their decision as private companies to filter and to decide what you can hear and know about.” It’s a mistake to think these tech companies simply took action against President Trump, Thorne said:

But think about totalitarian governments: think about North Korea, think about China, what makes those types of systems possible is the restriction and the elimination of the free exchange of ideas. And America, and in democracies, we talk about the marketplace of ideas. Well, what happens when the marketplace of ideas becomes a forced monopoly? What happens when you do not have dissenting opinions, when you do not have an exchange on competing ideas—how do you know if your ideas can stand on their own if there is no marketplace of ideas?

At this point he brought up the Branch Davidians, clarifying “I don’t have anything for or against the Branch Davidians or David Koresh,” their leader.

But Thorne warned that the federal government could one day come after his religious group if “a different group of people thinks that my religion is different, or funny, or should be brought into control, or should be filtered.”

Students should be aware that “the ideas that you value” maybe “shared by the people who are in power and filtering those people who are not in power” at this point in time, but it’s “just one election or one moment away from now that being flipped,” he said.

Social media platforms are “unilaterally” deciding what young people can and can’t hear, “outside of the elective process,” which “should be very chilling for you,” the principal continued. “[I]f they can do that to a minority—or if they can do that to a powerful voice, it doesn’t have to be a minority—what will stop them one day from
doing that to you?”

This is far more valuable than just repeating the lies that the MSM is pushing. We need educators like Thorton that are going to teach students about our rights. It’s just sad that his colleagues are all drinking the liberal Kool-aide. These kids should feel fortunate that they were given a real lesson as opposed to the garbage the rest of the principals likely taught that day.

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