April Fools! Learn Liberty is back in charge, and everything the Department of Careful Communications (DCC) said about censoring and redacting our content is moot.
Learn Liberty believes that the most effective way to challenge assumptions and refine ideas in a free society is to engage in respectful but frank dialogue—conversations in which we are open to the perspectives of others, no matter how much we might disagree. You can learn more about how free speech can shape a society here.
Effective April 1, 2016, the Department of Careful Communications (DCC) has taken temporary control of all Learn Liberty’s online activities. The DCC vows to protect you, the viewing public, from hurtful, offensive opinions, and also to refocus Learn Liberty as one of America’s preeminent advocacy organizations for the proper regulation of speech.
Perhaps the most harmful of all Learn Liberty’s activities was its viral Speak Freely campaign, which pressured college students into expressing their own “controversial” opinions on camera.
These potentially triggering and traumatizing videos will be censored, as the DCC is unwilling to risk letting a student in a Speak Freely video say something that could offend one of their peers.
The removal of these offensive videos is only Phase 1 of the DCC’s  six-phase plan to ensure that  Learn Liberty is a safe space for every single American.
Phase 1. Removing Unsafe Content
The DCC will begin with the redaction of all offensive content from LearnLiberty.org. To report controversial or anti-government articles and videos, please place a comment at the bottom of this blog post.
Phase 2: Countering Free-Speech Extremism
The DCC will monitor the social media accounts of all Learn Liberty followers in order to ensure the restriction of offensive content and the promotion of careful communication. Penalties for irresponsible social media posts by Learn Liberty followers against the regulation of speech may include fines up to $500 and jail time up to 30 days.
You may hear some free-speech extremists argue that the DCC’s lawful actions constitute an infringement on their rights. The DCC encourages you to block and report such people. The concerns of these extremists are unfounded. Every American is still fully within his or her rights to have incorrect opinions, and even to express them freely and very quietly in the comfort of his or her own home, so long as no children under the age of 29 are present.
The DCC has determined that the extremists in question favor total, unregulated verbal anarchy.
Phase 3. Reeducating Learn Liberty Staff
Through their hundreds of videos on economics, politics, and philosophy released since 2011, Learn Liberty has jeopardized the intellectual comfort and safety of an entire generation. Therefore, the DCC has already begun to retrain the staff in careful communication techniques that follow DCC-approved talking points.
College students are fragile, impressionable adolescents, not yet ready for the challenge and anxiety of forming their own opinions or hearing other students express theirs. That is why it is so important for the Learn Liberty staff to learn how to tell students exactly which ideas are DCC-approved and which are offensive.
Phase 4: Learn Liberty Trauma Hotline
Our telephone hotline will connect young people who have been traumatized by Learn Liberty’s unregulated videos with our trained psychiatric professionals. If you or someone you know feels marginalized or victimized by seeing such intolerant radicals as Steve Horwitz or Deirdre McCloskey claim that freedom is important to civil society, please call our hotline: (202) 640-6169.
The DCC has an intellectual-comfort emergency response team ready to go in your area to render assistance and assure you that everyone who disagrees with you is, indeed, a fascist.
Phase 5: New Video — “Regulating Speech the Constitutional Way”
In this phase, the reeducated Learn Liberty staff will begin creating videos in line with their new mandate to promote the proper regulation of speech to a “hip” young audience.
Here’s a sneak peek at the script from the first video, which Professor Elizabeth Price Foley will voluntarily narrate. Failure to do so on her part will result in six months of jail.
The Constitution was written for a simpler time, before the invention of fully automatic communication devices. Smartphones and Twitter accounts have turned every citizen into a super-communicator with the power to offend at will. Certainly, the Founders never contemplated the danger of YouTube videos as devices of mass radicalization. New technologies demand new laws to regulate them.
Furthermore, the right to free speech was intended by the Founders as a collective right, to be used only by government-trained and -licensed citizen brigades with safe thoughts. In that light, the DCC and our reeducated Learn Liberty staff represent the best traditions of American democracy.
Phase 6: A Careful Communication App
Finally, Learn Liberty staff will assist the DCC in creating a useful app called DCSeeU, which you can download to your own smartphone. This app will monitor all your electronic communications and protect your friends, classmates, and family members from offensive or controversial statements by conveniently pre-censoring your emails and social media posts.
In the event that you accidentally says something controversial out loud—for instance, during a classroom discussion—your phone will emit a high-pitched alarm to warn everyone nearby to cover their ears and wait for any new thoughts to dissipate.
Careful communication is everyone’s responsibility. Together with your support, we can ensure an online environment safe from the sort of reckless opinionating that could cause uncomfortable critical thinking or even unplanned social change.
Some of the measures needed to make Learn Liberty a safe space may seem extreme to some dissenters. However, the only way to ensure that every American is protected from hearing offensive opinions is to place us all under the constant supervision of a government bureaucracy such as the DCC.