In this age of social media, governments around the world, and especially our own, are struggling with how to respond to the onslaught of speech that runs counter to their policies. Some governments may be acting in good faith and thinking seriously about how to deal with the truly evil things that come online.
But when it comes to Biden administration officials, who do they think is the real threat to “democracy,” and what specific viewpoints are they targeting?You have to wonder what their true intentions are. I know. They’re casting a very wide net to try to deal with what’s really bad, but they’re scooping up legitimate speech in the process. And that happens to be legitimate speech, they just don’t agree with it.
If there is no option to abuse freedom, then it is not true freedom.
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue an important First Amendment decision this term. Oral argument in Marcy vs. Missouri That was two weeks ago. This incident includes Biden administration puts pressure on social media companies To block opposing views from the White House on topics such as the origins of COVID-19, masks, vaccines, lockdowns, Hunter Biden’s laptop, climate change, mail-in voting, and election integrity. The Biden administration sought to censor free speech even though social media companies knew the suppressed misinformation was true.
In addition to the White House, the FBI, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency all engaged in this pressure campaign against social media companies.according to Court preparation document submitted According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, “a variety of government officials became involved in social media platforms’ moderation policies, effectively rewriting the platforms’ policies from within.”
It seems clear that the Biden administration violated the First Amendment by interfering with content moderation decisions made by private companies, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded last year. . But the Biden administration appealed the case to the Supreme Court after officials argued: their Freedom of speech was being violated. bile!
During oral argument, at least one Supreme Court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, seems to agree with Team Biden. “My biggest concern is that your views on the First Amendment are seriously holding the government back,” she said. She feared it would limit the government’s response to “threatening situations”.
If you think about it, “binding” the government is kind of the point of the First Amendment. The government cannot prohibit freedom of speech. period. As interpreted over time by the Supreme Court, this applies generally, with very limited exceptions such as defamation, genuine threats, and fraud.
Furthermore, there is no emergency exemption clause in the Constitution. As Mr. Jackson puts it, even if the nation is in some kind of “threatening situation,” the speech must be allowed unless it falls under one of the Supreme Court’s very narrow exceptions. Otherwise, what’s to stop the president from declaring something like a national climate emergency and censoring speech that fails to stir up concerns about climate change?
The Constitution was written by people who were absolutely opposed to unlimited government power. From early progressives to Justice Jackson, the left has always been convinced of the opposite. That means that good government experts will be able to sift through speech and correctly judge bad speech, and that Americans will need authorities to sift through and separate misinformation from disinformation. That’s from the “good speeches” you are allowed to participate in.
To properly protect and preserve this important First Amendment, we must put up with a lot of truly evil garbage. People say, write, and promote the worst things. They are abusing this amazing freedom we have. That’s just the reality. Citizens often easily agree on what kinds of speech are horrible, but then the marketplace of ideas pushes that awful speech to the side. But to keep this market truly open, we need to deal with a constant barrage of things we don’t agree with.
The solution to trash shouldn’t be worse than the trash itself. As Ketanji Brown Jackson puts it, the First Amendment is not conditioned on “threatening circumstances.” The First Amendment contemplates such a situation. If there is no option to abuse freedom, then it is not true freedom. Don’t let the Biden administration convince you otherwise in this important Supreme Court case.
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