I’m a big fan of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I like the restrictions on government power that are being enforced, and I like the restrictions on government power that I wish were being enforced.
And I think we have to be very vigilant against politicians who want to erode our constitutional freedoms, which is the message of this video about the 1st Amendment from John Stossel.
My view on the issue is very straightforward.
There are people who engage in disgusting, inaccurate, and dishonest speech. But restricting odious speech – or any other type of speech – is not the proper role of government.
To understand the importance of free speech, especially in a historical context, I urge everyone to read this article by Jay Cost of the American Enterprise Institute.
For purposes of today’s column, I’m going to focus on how governments continue to attack free speech.
This was a problem during the Biden Administration, as noted in this 2023 column in the Wall Street Journal by Philip Hamburger and Jenin Younes.
Court-ordered discovery in Missouri v. Biden has already revealed that the White House strong-armed platforms into more censorship than they considered justified—prompting the judge to declare that the administration had made “arguably the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” The new documents go further, showing that the administration drove much of Meta’s censorship. …At the government’s behest, Facebook also adopted a policy of removing posts discussing the lab-leak theory. …The company’s vice president in charge of content policy responded that “we were under pressure from the administration and others to do more” and continued with regret: “we shouldn’t have done that.” The First Amendment prohibits the government from “abridging the freedom of speech.” Supreme Court doctrine makes clear that government can’t constitutionally evade the amendment by working through private companies. The newly released documents paint a clear picture of an administration run
And it remains a problem under the Trump Administration, as explained by Steven Greenhut in this column for Reason.
Trump continues his attacks on free speech through a variety of disreputable strategies. Multiple lawsuits he’s filed against media operations are “chilling attempts to convert Trump’s complaints about press coverage into causes of action are legally baseless and blatantly unconstitutional,” notes Reason‘s Jacob Sullum. He used as an example Trump’s recent social-media post after MSNBC cancelled a TV show: “Fake News is an UNPARDONABLE SIN! The whole corrupt operation is nothing more than an illegal arm of the Democrat Party. They should be forced to pay vast sums of money for the damage they’ve done to our Country.” …Trump’s interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, …threatened criminal investigations of members of Congress and the media who have criticized Elon Musk and his team of DOGE budget-cutters.
The problem is even worse overseas.
The British government’s actions are particularly disturbing. Here is some of what Charles Cooke wrote in National Review about his native country.
In England, …the police deliberately arrested a man who was flying in from the United States because he had expressed views on Twitter that the British government does not like. England — not North Korea, or Russia, or China. England — the land of John Stuart Mill and Thomas Paine and Monty Python. For tweets on transgender issues. Tweets — not threats of imminent violence, or a credible vow to blow up the airport upon arrival. …Since I moved to the United States in 2011, I have been chronicling the increasingly illiberal attitude to free expression that has been adopted in my country of birth. But this one, I will confess, surprised even me. …This one was egregious on an entirely new scale.
Now let’s shift to Germany.
Here are some excerpts from a column in Reason by J.D. Tuccille.
…members of the AfD aren’t alone in being targeted for voicing disapproved ideas; across Germany, the U.K., …declining respect for liberal norms is breeding censorship and arrests for offending politicians. …Putting the main opposition party under an “extremist” designation subject to surveillance is a frightening step for a democracy. …David Bendels, an AfD-associated editor, was sentenced to seven months’ probation for posting a mocking meme of former German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser holding a sign digitally altered to say the German equivalent of “I hate freedom of speech.” …Faeser has a censorious reputation; she banned Compact magazine as “extremist” just last summer. …nationalist “extremists” aren’t the only targets of Germany’s censors. …Last November, a Bavarian man was investigated for referring online to then- Deputy Chancellor Robert Habeck with a pun that roughly translates as “idiot.” Police raided the home of a Hamburg man for calling a local politician a “pimmel” (dick). …And Irish protesters in Germany were forbidden to speak in Gaelic because police wouldn’t be able to tell if they were saying verboten things.
And here are some passages from a report in the Washington Post by Terrence McCoy and Marina Dias about Brazilian tyranny.
“I make jokes about everything and everyone,” the comedian Leo Lins said during his set in mid-2022. “What show could be more inclusive? I even hired a sign language interpreter just to be able to offend the deaf-mute.” By the end of his act, which quickly went viral and has collected more than 3 million views on YouTube, Lins had made fun of Black and Indigenous people, obese people, elderly people, gay people, Jews, northeastern Brazilians, evangelicals, disabled people and those with HIV. Now he faces eight years and three months in prison. …The decision, which the comedian plans to appeal, marks the latest effort by the Brazilian judiciary to place limits on freedom of expression, especially on social media. In recent years, the country’s Supreme Court has repeatedly moved to block and remove the online accounts of people it alleged were spreading misinformation that could endanger Brazilian democracy. …Prosecutors have opened thousands of criminal cases; penalties have been stiffened.
Since I agree with the analysis from Tuccille and Cooke, I don’t have much to add, other than there’s no way to trust governments. If politicians and bureaucrats get the power to restrict truly odious speech, they inevitably will use that power to restrict speech that is disliked by the establishment.
Indeed, people from all parts of the political spectrum should contemplate my Fifth Theorem of Government before deciding they want government to control and limit speech.
