Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz failed to meet expectations during Tuesday’s Vice Presidential Debate. He also doubled down on a Harris policy position that, if enacted, would radically affect Americans.
While it’s no secret Democrats have become increasingly totalitarian in their views on what should be considered protected free speech, Walz solidified the Harris campaign’s position on the matter while trying to pull a “gotcha” moment on vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance at Tuesday’s debate.
During a back and forth about the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Walz told Vance: “You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater. That’s the test, that’s the Supreme Court test.” Walz’s mischaracterization of the 1919 U.S. Supreme Court opinion from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in Schenck v. United States is not only blatantly wrong but a terrifying look into the Harris campaign’s views on the First Amendment in America.
Tim Walz doubled down on his statement that the First Amendment is not absolute, says he’d criminalize “hate speech,” whatever that means.
— Libby Emmons (@libbyemmons) October 2, 2024
Holmes’s opinion was that “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” The word “falsely” is an important context that Walz left out of his deranged rant. In fact, if someone truly believed a fire was breaking out in a crowded theater, whether real or not, they have a Constitutionally protected right to sound the alarm. The intent is essential. (ROOKE: Four Horsemen Of Harris’s Campaign Apocalypse Have Arrived)
The issue is that Democrats like Walz and Vice President Kamala Harris use the expression “fire in a crowded theater” to excuse the suppression of a wide variety of speech protected under the First Amendment. Anything Democrats consider “hate speech,” “misinformation” or “disinformation” is grounds for censorship in their view.
Schenck v. United States set a bad precedent, but the Supreme Court later clarified what level of speech is lawfully allowed under the First Amendment. Almost as quickly as it was decided, the Justices, including Holmes, realized that the “clear and present danger” bar for protecting free speech destroys American liberty. Just eight months after the Schenck decision, Holmes’s opinion in a similar case (Abrams v. United States) stated, “But, as against dangers peculiar to war, as against others, the principle of the right to free speech is always the same. It is only the present danger of immediate evil or an intent to bring it about that warrants Congress in setting a limit to the expression of opinion where private rights are not concerned. Congress certainly cannot forbid all effort to change the mind of the country.”
2019. Senator Kamala Harris says that Trump should not be allowed to use Twitter.
“The privilege of using words in that way should probably be taken from him.”
She then oddly refers to herself as President. This is a deranged person who craves power. pic.twitter.com/18PQ6D0zCh
— MAZE (@mazemoore) September 6, 2024
The Supreme Court finally ended the Schenck test in the 1969 case, Brandenburg v. Ohio, in which the Justices held, “A state may not forbid speech advocating the use of force or unlawful conduct unless this advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” Again, the intent matters, and words people/the government find distasteful do not necessarily indicate an intent to incite violence or lawless action. Americans do have the right to speak ill of the government, warn against its policies and argue to peacefully obstruct its laws we feel are unjust. (ROOKE: Democrats’ ‘New Masculinity’ Will Keep Turning Away Critical Voting Bloc)
Still, it is clear Walz and Harris are among the many Democrats who take in the 1919 Supreme Court opinion while ignoring the later clarifications. In a December 2022 interview on The Reid Out, Walz said that “misinformation” or “hate speech” was not protected.
“Years ago, it was the little things — telling people to vote the day after the election. And you know, we kind of brushed them off. Now we know it’s intimidation at the ballot box. It’s undermining the idea that mail-in-ballots aren’t legal. I think we need to push back on this. There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, especially around our democracy,” Walz said.
Harris told members of the NAACP at its 64th Annual Freedom Fund Dinner in 2019 that if she were elected, her administration would use the power of the U.S. Department of Justice to force social media companies to censor Americans’ free speech. (ROOKE: Trump Sends Clearest Message Yet To Catholics With St. Michael Post)
“We will put the Department of Justice of the United States back in the business of justice. We will double the civil rights division and direct law enforcement to counter this extremism. We will hold social media platforms accountable for the hate infiltrating their platforms because they have a responsibility to help fight against this threat to our democracy. And if you profit off of hate. If you act as a megaphone for misinformation or cyberwarfare. If you don’t police your platforms. We are going to hold you accountable as a community,” Harris promised.
Elon Musk, RFK Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard are raising concerns of free speech under Kamala Harris.
In 2019, Harris vowed to use the DOJ and law enforcement to ‘hold social media platforms responsible’ for ‘misinformation’ as part of the ‘fight against this threat to our Democracy’ pic.twitter.com/3XwD8lcoQb
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) September 5, 2024
As soon as the Biden-Harris administration came to power, they immediately opened backdoor communications with social media companies to secretly pressure them to censor Americans. Now we know that without a shadow of a doubt that should Harris and Walz win in November, Americans’ free speech rights will be infringed, not by accident but as a policy decision.
This article was originally published at dailycaller.com
