Free Speech Has No Political Party
Neither Democrats nor Republicans will always defend our right to free expression
I appeared on Undercurrents with Undercurrent’s Emily Jashinsky to discuss the Trump administration’s recent crackdowns on campus protesters.
I made the point that while conduct can be sanctioned — vandalism or violence should be responded to by university or police authorities — speech is not an appropriate matter for the federal government to regulate.
That goes for the Biden administration leaning on social media firms to hew to a certain line on COVID-19 and it goes for the Trump administration seeking to punish “antisemitism,” which of course is defined in such a broad way that all manner of banal foreign policy debate is scooped up in the definition.
We can’t count on either political party to consistently defend freedom of speech because it’s not a core principle for the parties or their major constituents. They have political objectives — like enforcing the public health community’s views or mollifying Likud-aligned political donors — and those take precedence over any expansive view of the First Amendment.
Free speech, as always, has to be defended by civic-minded citizens. We can file lawsuits, we can argue vigorously to defend free speech norms, and we can refuse to become censors even when it might benefit our own pet cause (this would be a nice lesson for Bari Weiss).
Watch my interview with Jashinsky below: