Free Speech

Dictating content under the threat of government reprisal is censorship, and censorship always involves a violation of property rights.

Americans are grappling with the horrific assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Their real source of anger is the loss of yet another bureaucratic entitlement program, reminiscent of their hysterics amid DOGE cuts earlier this year. From the public airwaves to USAID to DEI contracts, the deep state and its media mouthpieces have enjoyed a long-standing structural advantage thanks to the largess of the taxpayer. 

Government officials need not act directly to censor speech.

Networks and local affiliates try to avoid programming that might strike FCC regulators as misleading, tasteless, or shocking. The FCC has never disavowed its authority over content, and the sword of Damocles still hangs over every licensee.

President Trump and others in his administration can and have pushed back against speech they disagree with and speech they believe to be false. That is their right, so long as their counterspeech does not cross the line to threats of government power.

From universities to legacy media to Antifa to Black Lives Matter to Big Pharma, Kirk fought the most influential cartels in our midst. They noticed.

The pursuit of truth depends on open debate.

The Supreme Court will uphold as well-established the First Amendment right to engage in ideological ad boycotts. The question is whether the Trump administration will succeed in bulldozing this as a practical matter before it reaches the high court. 

No civil rights law on the books requires “viewpoint diversity” in university admissions or hiring or creates a protected class of students or faculty based on ideological views.

Nowhere in the Constitution does it say Congress should fund a national media.

If the government is able to prove that his actions went beyond First Amendment protected speech, the courts may well resolve the issue in favor of the government.

Defunding NPR and PBS and all government-sponsored media isn’t just about saving taxpayers money, and it’s certainly not about placating Elon Musk.

What stood out above all else was the way free speech on X worked to ferret out the real story, while actually driving forward the mainstream press to correct its errors and get the story right.

The majority opinion here has found a way to codify this new form of censorship that threatens the whole idea of free speech itself. 

The case offers direct parallels to the censorship of Covid-related information. The Biden White House repeatedly worked through third parties – including Meta, Twitter, and Google – to censor disfavored information.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in Murthy v. Missouri concerning whether the government can force or nudge private companies to censor users on behalf of regime priorities.

The case against the government here is that it cannot do through third parties such as social media platforms what it is forbidden from doing directly by virtue of the First Amendment. The case in question is popularly known as Missouri v. Biden, and there is much at stake with its results.

Were I not invited to speak in defense of Israel, none of these issues would have been raised.

Leftists who have been on the forefront in denying free speech rights to those deemed politically incorrect have now begun to champion the First Amendment in defense of those who advocate the killing of Jews.

The First Amendment gives anti-Israel protesters the right to be immoral.  It gives them the right to lie and to reflect antisemitic bigotry. The First Amendment, though, also gives us the right, indeed the responsibility, to call out this immorality, mendacity, and double standard.

The decision reaffirmed what the Supreme Court called the “bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment” in 1989: “that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”

The White House, the FBI, and the CDC violated the First Amendment by encouraging and coercing social media companies to suppress free speech. 

The moral argument for defunding the CBC is the principle that people should not be forced to fund things they disagree with.

Crushing freedom of speech is an assault on the mind, and thus on life itself.

What people used to say about the CCP role in the management of TikTok applies fully in the US today with all the main tech companies.

Those who support a culture of reason should be rooting for Elon Musk’s Twitter to succeed.

Facebook’s vice president has admitted fact-checkers are not necessarily objective, and the company even acknowledged recently in a lawsuit that fact-check tags are “opinion,” not factual assertions.