“Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.” – Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
Years from now, historians will look back at things that changed the world they live in. At that time, one of the things that they will find inexplicable is it only a took two decades for big corporations to became an arm of the progressive world. When liberal corporations joined up with big government, their power over the people grew. They used this unholy marriage to empower liberal politics and suppress freedom of speech. The weapon they used was government-sponsored censorship.
On July 4, 2023, ruling in a lawsuit filed by the states of Missouri and Louisiana against the Biden administration, a district court judge issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the defendants and anyone “acting in concert with them” from communicating with social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing the removal, deletion, suppression, or the reduction of content containing protected free speech.” It also prohibited “collaborating, partnering, switch boarding, or jointly working with” non-government actors or agents for these purposes.
A federal court recently confirmed that the “government cannot use Big Tech as a tool to end-run the First Amendment.” The judge wrote that the case “arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech and the First Amendment since the founding of our republican nation.”
The Missouri v. Biden-Murthy decision mandates the Court to separate the wheat from the chaff regarding free speech. The Supreme Court now must sort out vital First Amendment issues that affect social platforms. They also must decide if they have the right to censor free speech under the F’CC’s section 230, which gives them the right to remove offensive material. Posts about politics only offend people of certain parties and are not indecent or immoral “only” under section 23O.
These acts of “coerced censorship” by social media platforms since early 2020 are now attributable to the federal government. This allows First Amendment free speech claims filed by Louisiana and Missouri, along with many individuals to proceed against officials like Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for violating their free speech.
Obviously, the First Amendment would mean little if government could simply use Big Tech to get around it. Our Constitution implicitly states it is a basic American right that government-directed censorship is un-American and unconstitutional. Obviously, Biden doesn’t know this.
“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing free speech.” – Ben Franklin
Starting with the election of Barack Obama, evidence has emerged regarding the alliance of Big Government and Big Tech working together to censor speech that they do not want the American people to see. Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites openly admitted that they would not allow the posting of any of Hunter Biden’s laptop scandal during the last presidential election.
Hunter Biden’s nefarious escapades were first revealed during the election when the New York Post revealed them to the public. Emails among Twitter executives revealed the extent to which the company worked to prevent Americans from seeing the Post news story just weeks before the 2020 election. The extent of the suppression was breathtaking. Indeed, the Twitter executives locked the Twitter account of the White House press secretary simply for mentioning this story.
Facebook was even worse. They openly admitted they would not publish the story or any related events to cover it up based on a general warning from the FBI about them spreading unproven news that was nothing more than propaganda to discredit Joe Biden and his family during an election.
Since Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were elected ,the marriage of big tech and government has been on an extended honeymoon. In 2021, Press-Secretary Jen Psaki stated the government is “in regular touch with social-media platforms” and they flag posts on social media they feel don’t reflect the opinions of the Biden-Harris Administration or posts they consider detrimental to their policies.
The parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Meta, disclosed that it has been in constant communication with numerous federal officials about content moderation on their platforms. This includes employees at the FDA, the U.S. the Election Assistance Commission, and the White House. Google and YouTube disclosed it had such communications with many federal officials.
Our nation was founded on the idea that protecting citizens’ speech from government censorship under the First Amendment would protect the people’s right to self-govern and the government could never rescind that guaranteed right. This assured the colonies that their new government could never control any information that empowered government over any legal U.S. citizens.
Americans deserve to know when their government is covertly trying to accomplish what the First Amendment prohibits. The disturbing truth is when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris don’t like what Americans are saying, they simply reach out to their allies at Big Tech companies to silence them.
“Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.” – Mark Twain
U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) recently introduced the Disclose Government Censorship Act, S.1672, which would end the secret government-directed speech suppression and censorship which the Biden White House engages in. This has been ruled in violation of the First Amendment, yet Senate Democrats led by Gary Peters (D-MI) blocked its passage. Hagerty’s legislation only seeks to end secret government speech suppression and viewpoint censorship by the Biden White House. But U.S. Sen. Gary Peters says the bill is too restricting and it could threaten national security if it passed?
Yet, Hagerty’s legislation contains appropriate exceptions to protect legitimate law enforcement or national security activity and preserve the confidentiality of those communications. The core of his legislation requires disclosure of “arbitrary government censorship efforts” to be ended ASAP.
Thomas Jefferson said, “Information is the currency of democracy.” Since the rise of the new progressive movement under Barack Obama, government has been in bed with big tech to insure that only the sugar coated progressive message reaches the people and is posted on social media.
Yet the health of a nation depends on open, candid, informed and uninformed individual debate.
Our government not only works for the people, it belongs to the people. To ensure this continues, the First Amendment prohibits the government from controlling what Americans can say or read.
The colonies demanded the 1st Amendment before they’d ratify the new Constitution. “Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there.” – Clare Booth Luce
This article was originally published at www.thecentersquare.com
