“You’re under arrest for felonious free speech”

How we learned to stop worrying and love censorship.

There’s always been an urge to censor. Freedom of speech is essential to democracy. These facts form the core reason James Madison of Virginia wrote the First Amendment.

Recently there’s been a surge in censorship, and demands for more censorship from politicians, academia, large social media companies, governments including the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. The New York Times just complained about the First Amendment protecting freedom of speech, which would be a laff line if irony weren’t dead.

What’s making so many people and organizations insist that only favored speech be heard? First let’s look some examples.

Photo by Freddy Kearney on Unsplash

Disagreements no longer are disagreements, they are “misinformation” and “hate speech” that must be suppressed. The First Amendment that protects speech must be evil, so evil!

Headline from the New York Times in July: THE FIRST AMENDMENT IS OUT OF CONTROL. Because of the First Amendment, people are allowed to say things that cause raised eyebrows at Ivy League sherry hours. The horror!

Last month 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said at the World Economic Forum – slogan Where the Elite Meet, which looks classier in Latin, Ubi elit Meet -- "Our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to hammer [dissent] out of existence." Kerry was not praising the First Amendment for protecting unfashionable views, he was calling this is a problem.

Presidential candidate Kamala Harris recently said Donald Trump should lose his free speech “privilege.” Harris is a graduate of the University of California College of Law, where she must have cut class on the day the instructor taught that the First Amendment is a right, not a privilege.

There is a huge difference between a right and a privilege. The whole point of rights is that they cannot be taken away. Harris wants to take away of the rights of those she doesn’t like.

Trump in turn says that because he is a former president, comedians should be forbidden to mock him. Trump asserts people who burn the American flag should go to prison. It is crystal clear from the Constitution, and from jurisprudence, that burning the flag is political expression protected by the First Amendment.

Surely high school geography teacher and veep candidate Tim Walz will stand up for our rights! Whoops, he won’t.