I have previously written columns about the rising generation of censors in our country. After years of being told that free speech is harmful and dangerous, many young people are virtual speech phobics — demanding that opposing views be silenced as “triggering” or even forms of violence. Now a Pew poll shows just how much ground we have lost, including the emergence of the Democratic Party as a virulent anti-free speech party. Pew found that “Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are much more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to support the U.S. government taking steps to restrict false information online (70% vs. 39%).”
I was raised in a politically active Democratic family in Chicago. Free speech was viewed as one of the defining values of the party and championed across campuses in the country. That changed dramatically in the course of the last ten years as many liberal politicians and professors called for opposing voices to be banned or canceled. I no longer recognize the party as it pushes for censorship and speech regulation.
The result is reflected in the poll which shows that “Just over half of Americans (55%) support the U.S. government taking steps to restrict false information online, even if it limits people from freely publishing or accessing information.”
What is particularly chilling is that this poll is occurring after the disclosure of biased censorship efforts by the government and corporations, including the suppression of views that were later found to be legitimate. That includes the banning or cancelling of scientists who raised concerns over Covid-19 that are now considered valid from the lab theory to the efficacy of masks to natural immunities. It also includes the suppression of political stories like the Hunter Biden laptop.
The growing support for censorship may reflect the echo chambered media environment. Many people watch and read news that continues to downplay or entirely omit reports on biased censorship. President Biden even charged that companies who refused to censor opposing views on social media were “killing people.” Others have denounced free speech as “a white man’s obsession.” New York democrats called for limiting speech as a way of protecting democracy. Indeed, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich has declared free speech is “tyranny.”
Many journalists have joined politicians and professors in decrying the dangers of free speech. Some falsely claim that hate speech is not protected under the First Amendment. Others panicked at the notion of free speech protections being restored at Twitter. On CNN, speech limits were called a “harm-reduction model” for the media.
The result left free speech values in free fall in our country. We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West. The European crackdown on free speech has now reached our shores and there are a growing number of citizens calling on the government to limit their right to free expression. It is a form of constitutional immolation by citizens who have never known true authoritarian government.
The Pew poll shows how dire this struggle has become. Despite our long history of free speech protection, every generation can renew or rescind that support. This is a crisis of faith that we cannot ignore. Justice Louis Brandeis once warned that “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
I want to know who the 39% of republicans that support censorship are? WTF!
The headline of this column should have been:
“Pew: Thirty-Nine Percent of Republicans and Republican-Leaning Independents Support Speech Limits”
Which shows how far the Republican party has declined. No wonder the country is screwed up. The only out is to vote against anti-constitution RINOs at every opportunity. When they start talking about pork for your community, tell them to go to hell.
Democrats are the evil party, Republicans are the stupid party according to Sam Francis.
Everyone knows that in 1960, most of us would have been in the opposite party.
Most Republicans today would have been Democrats. Most Democrats today would have been Lincoln Republicans. The two parties switched places after the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Today’s Republicans are the polar opposite of Reagan, Eisenhower and Teddy Roosevelt on most issues. Republicans top issue was once supporting NATO and were considered the former Soviet Union to be the evil empire. Trump embraces Putin over his own American security and intelligence agencies.
Maybe stop with the labels and name-calling, debate the actual issues! Party labels mean nothing!
Hate to inform you of this, but party labels are practically everything. The reason Democrats in PA could vote for one brain-addled candidate and another who was literally dead, is that they vote not for candidates but for the party.
The idea that the parties switched places in 1964 is very much without foundation. It’s more complicated than that, as you say.
C VA
Your are conflating a bunch of different stuff. Trumps foreign policy was full demonstrated with the Abrahms Accords.., Simply, peace through trade. It is a mutual assured destruction of you go to war against a trading partner. It also humanizes, the foe, if you have found common language through trade, it is easier to open dialog on other subjects.
I have been on the Right since highschool. I discovered that through American History and Civics classes. Following the constitution it is clear the Federal govt has no power to fund any social safety nets.
From those simple discoveries I have never wavered.
@churchvilleva
I agree with you regarding party labels and will go a step further. The traditional terms of liberal and conservative also mean very little.
What have ‘conservatives’ actually conserved? Couldn’t ‘conserve’ a traditional definition of marriage or stop illegal immigration.
The question should be are you a nationalist or a globalist?
antonio
Not long ago we had conservative democrats and liberal republicans. The news from the MSM was also presented that way.
The “parties” got along because of that. There were 2x sets of 50% crossover between the parties.
Now conservative means strictly a republican and liberal means strictly a demoncrat.
Since my entire life has been the marxist communist woke iterations of the “liberal” demonrcats taking over the entire society, of course “conservatives” didn’t conserve. When California conservatives voted against gay marraige in a binding resolution, the marxwokers ignored it, a famous hero married up some same sex libs anyway in defiance, openly.
As to your last statement, republicans and conservatives are considered nationalists and demoncrat wokesters global communists, so guess which way that is heading, for sure.
Yeah.
PS It has been shown and proven exactly 1 dixiecrat switched sides and became a republican, the challenge has been out there to refute that.
What really happened is the demoncrats kept evolving criminally, and LBJ was an initiator of using the blacks as a weapon and for votes, as his infamous quote proves. Once USSR fell, the growing hippy movement from the 60’s with the assassinations and MIC post WW2 and “lost faith” and then the Ted Kennedy immigration act 64’65’ moved the USA from 90% white to 50/50 we have now. That CORRUPTION of importing communists from all over the world instead of white european base stock changed the demoncrat party to the traitors they are now.
The Republican party is still screaming and kicking away and dopes not want the Trump proletariat as party of the country club. They haven’t really changed, democrats have.
If most everyone switched, as you falsely claim, then party labels would mean something, would mean almost everything.
I have listened to the entire Republican Party claim they are Reagan for many years. So that point you made is toast as well.
The USSR is much different than Russia, and with your TDS foolishness, one can easily say, as Trump, you ask one question:
Am I colluding with Russia and won the election with Putin’s total support ?
A. security and intelligence agencies YES!
A. Putin and Russia HAHAHAHA no !
Trump sides with the people telling the truth. Wow, what a defective character, huh.
Did you have a single clear thought before posting that entire pile of garbage ?
“Maybe stop with the labels . . .”
You mean like this one? — “Today’s Republicans are . . .”
You don’t look in the mirror much, do you?
In case no one has noticed:
The Left’s current push is to re-brand itself, kind of like Bud Light. To achieve that, it’s propaganda is: We’re all the same.
Yet, you’re still a democrat?
Democrats have run camden NJ for 60 years….public employees got RICH….5% of Camden high school students are at grade level
Democrats NEED AN UNDER CLASS!
Democrats NEED AN UNDER CLASS!
Beggars are easier to control
Democrats are Fascists…that is clear!
Dems HUNGER for total power, to harm society with Drugs, Insanity, Suicide, Illegals, Crime, against Free Speech!
USSR Redshirts,
German Brownshirts,
Italy Blackshirts,
China Redshirts,
Globalists/US Democrats Rainbowshirts
SAME FASCISM!
Germans were GOOD people…well till..you know!
The overwhelming threat to our democratic republic is the Democrat Party. They are against any speech that they disagree with, they have been actively working to censor political opponents, they have created and pushed through their lapdog media the unproven and thoroughly discredited Trump-Russian conspiracy theory, they actively seek to jail the leading opposition candidate, they have weaponized the Justice Department including the FBI as well as the IRS, they seek to stack the Supreme Court, they pushed trillions of dollars into the economy creating inflation that hurts low income people the most, the Biden Administration routinely lies to the public, the DNC won’t allow candidate debates, they claim “no one is above the law” while at the same time not charging Hillary Clinton, not pursuing charges against Biden for classified documents found in multiple unsecured personal locations, and attempting to get Hunter Biden off without the jail sentence any other major tax avoider and gun application liar has suffered, and on and on.
They know exactly what they are doing. It’s Marxism and by extension communism done culturally. Take a listen to James Lindsay, he breaks it down, every first and last detail. We can’t cure what we don’t understand. Now we know, no excuses. America’s time to rise or fall. I’m with you Patriots.
Your mask is your muzzle. Your vaxx is your top & bottom surgery.
Great article and it’s wrong when either party does it.
Maybe a large root cause is “Divisive Leaders” that place winning elections over the the nation’s interests? Pitting our fellow Americans against one another is not leadership and harms the nation.
Before we take away citizen’s guaranteed First Amendment rights, maybe our leaders need to practice “Civility”. Maybe our leaders need to restricted on dividing us? One can debate an issue without attacking the person who said it.
Average citizens of opposing political parities actually get along pretty well. Politicians running for election are the non-leaders dividing us – which creates support for censoring the other party.
George Washington even warned that political parties (never designed into the American system) could destroy the United States, if used to divide us.
I hate polls; however, there are some polls that can and do so trends and this one is clear and has been very very obvious for the last 10+ years. There is a trend in the USA to limit speech and if that trend is not put down we will loose our Liberty.
Disagree all you like but it really is just that simple.
It is a myth that modern Democrats were for free speech. They were for THEIR speech, but not the speech of anyone else, particularly those who opposed them. It started at least in the 60s when LBJ was president and Leftists started banning anything with the word “nigger,” a word that goes back hundreds of years and is merely a lazy way of saying negro. Civil rights activists started hollering about pejoratives including Pollack, Diego, Spic, Wop, Raghead, Jap, Gook, and other terms directed at particular ethnic groups. Of course, they didn’t see anything wrong with Anglo, Redneck and White Trash. I remember my folks buying Niggerhead Oysters – that logo was banned by the Johnson Administration. That started the ball rolling and now anything Leftists don’t like is banned, even if it is protected by the First Amendment. Democrats went ballistic over Texas Governor Rick Perry’s family having leased land for hunting at landmark called Niggerhead. Nope, this is not new with Democrats. They’ve been doing it all along. It’s just that now they’re aiming it at the Internet.
If you’re looking around to see where Fascism and Authoritarianism is emerging from, always look Left.
The Democratic Party: America’s Fascist Party of the 21st Century.
Quite obviously it hasn’t just been in the past ten years that Democrats and Democrat-leaning people have abhored free speech. Robert Reich, Joe Biden, Clintons, Obamas, and so forth have been Democrats for many decades. The seeds were within the party for a long time waiting for germination. They often disguised their antifree speech sentiments in euphemisms like “civility” or “inclusion”, but what was always implied was suppressing speech and ideas they couldn’t counter easily.
When this question is put to people it is always in the form of “… taking steps to restrict false information online, even if it limits people from freely publishing or accessing information.” It’s a wrong question as it contains a compound proposition. They are primed by proposition one that the information is false a priori. Thus people who can’t put two links together to start a chain of logic will naturally think proposition two is valid — information should be limited. It doesn’t help that Democrats are by nature structured to distrust anything “big” except big government — the party has, for 200 years, suffered occasional outbreaks of fascistic behavior.
Every advancement of science began with a widely believed but false idea that in time and with reason and evidence became modified to something more nearly the full truth. Thus, what these opponents of free speech are advocating, unwittingly perhaps, is abandoning true progress and killing science.
And thus do we, slowly, inexorably, devolve into an imitation of the Soviet Union replete with thought and speech controls, centralized planning, governmental agendas intruding into all walks of life. If only we had some historical example of how this works out….
The Democrats are always talking about saving our Democracy but 70% Of them want to put duct tape over your mouth. How will these defenders of Democracy enforce their idea? What will the eventual punishment be if you continue to disobey the new hate speech laws? Given the course of history it doesn’t take much imagination to envision a chain of prisons to house those who refuse to comply. This isn’t just about not allowing you to speak on social media. It’s about not allowing you to speak in all of society on any venue be it print or visual. Rest assured, there are a group of people who believe that due to their superiority that they have a right to control what you see and hear. By remaining naive you author your own obituary.
It’s an admitted fact by Democrats that speech must be censored like in Russia, China, and other Communist countries. The American idea is under attack by the enemy within.
I’m against censorship but I am in favor of seeing fewer comments from “Anonymous” and more comments from people like Upstate Farmer.
There are many great commenters here and that helps overcome the “heckler’s veto” attempts being made by the contrarians/paid partisans like “Anonymous”. We recently lost a guy named Svelaz who used to comment 200 times a day and my guess is that he has been reincarnated as “Anonymous”. Same writing style, same need to be different and same addiction to his own voice.
HullBobby,
Thank you for the compliment!
It has been raining since O-Dark-Thirty and radar shows a whole lot of green and yellow heading my way, so you might see a bit more comments from me today.
The one upside if there can be one, is ATS and the like give us insight into their beliefs, their thought process and into what a wokesim leftist mind looks like . . . as obscene and grotesque as that may be.
Anyone with a degree of common sense knows pornography should not be in elementary school libraries. Anyone with a degree of common sense knows gender studies for 6 year olds is . . . obscene, disgusting and just plain wrong. Anyone with a degree of common sense knows teaching children CRT, separating children into oppressed and oppressors groups fuels hate and division. History can be taught in context at the age appropriate level. Anyone with a degree of common sense knows chemical castration, the removal of healthy body organs of teens is wrong. If someone truly feels they are “trans” at least go through puberty and when you are 18 years of age to figure it out before doing something that drastic and irreversible. Anyone with a degree of common sense can see the weaponization of the government, the two tiered justice system and the corruption of this Biden admin. Anyone with a degree of common sense knows the Green New Deal is a pipe dream. Anyone with a degree of common sense knows the economy is not going great. We see it at the pump and the grocery check out.
So, while our leftist friends continue to spread misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies, at least we can see it for what it is when they do.
What I have noticed is how the left will twist a comment and fact check it to be true or false depending on their objective
For example, you state teaching children crt….
How often does the left scream that no one is teaching crt to kids. Technically, that is true but what IS being taught are ideals based on crt so the left and media are able to claim crt is not being taught
Also, Gigi the loon tried another approach in a different post demanding proof the joe Biden set up 20 shell companies and tried to use snopes to back her claim. Nobody said it was joy himself who set up shells and that snopes rated a claim as false but they were rating a specific claim, not that there wasn’t any evidence
It’s funny how the left simultaneously claims the 1023 form is unverified while also claiming the allegations have been debunked
Thanks, Hullbobby.. agree! also.. agree that ‘Svelaz’ is now the ‘Anonymous’ from the Darkside…
The fact of the matter is, yes, it’s a shame that the government is attacking our rights, that’s why they hate GOD, America, the American dream, the constitution, rich, nuclear family, mutilating kids genders, can’t define what a real woman is XX chromosomes, ban gas cars, gas stoves, these people are out of control with there stupidity & even an animal acts better than some of these people who want to loot & burn down cities, human traffic kids into slavery, these people need to be held accountable for their actions, if they are found guilty by judge or jury execute them no plea bargains, same if you rape, kill, the victim. Put GOD back in USA, maybe GOD will save some of us from eternal death.