For what may be the first time in modern U.S. history, there is a serious question about the survival of the First Amendment. From college campuses to federal agencies, the once universally accepted support for unfettered free speech (with the usual exceptions of calls for immediate violence, or creating a presently hazardous situation) is being questioned. Opposition political organizations, writers and commentators are feeling the chill.
One example: Campus Reform Recently described a disturbing incident at Wesleyan college, where the Student Assembly voted unanimously to cut funding for Argus, the student newspaper, following its printing of an article critical of the radical Black Lives Matter organization.
The problem is not confined to academia. Indeed, far more serious are the actions of the White House, which has sought to place Federal Communications Commission regulators in newsrooms, and has used the Internal Revenue Service to attack organizations opposed to the President.
Presidential contender Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) believes that even greater threats both to free speech and entrepreneurship are in the offing, thanks to attempts to regulate the internet. In a Washington Post op-ed, Cruz stated that “the threats from Washington to stifle freedom, entrepreneurship and creativity online have never been greater. Washington politicians want … more and more control over our speech.”
In a statement reported in the Blaze, Cruz worried that “the threats to free speech, under big government statists, have never been greater … I think we cannot overstate these threats.”
Civil libertarians are worried that the President’s move to transfer control of the internet to an international organization influenced by Russia, China and other totalitarian states will lead to censorship. In May, outgoing House Speaker John Boehner, quoted in Newsmax, stated “Overzealous government bureaucrats should keep their hands off the Internet… three [commissioners] appointed by President Obama approved a secret plan to put the federal government in control of the Internet.”
A number of the special order viagra online speakers who said something at this function were Mr. Drugs are combined so that there are few overlapping generic sildenafil india side effects, to make the treatment more tolerable. The doctor usa viagra store diagnoses and treats various conditions and oftentimes on a routine basis. Numerous men experience it while the time of buy viagra 100mg stress. Government assaults on free speech and the conduct of free elections are not restricted to Washington. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who has had to fight off recall petitions spurred by Democrats angered over his tough stance against government unions have used a secretive state process known as “John Doe” investigations to essentially harass his campaign. Under the bizarre legal weapon, citizens are compelled to produce evidence for what may be specious reasons at the discretion of prosecutors, and are forbidden to speak publicly about the process.
Legislators have enacted legislation reforming the practice, according to Madison.com. The reform law limits use of the process “to the most severe felonies and some violent crimes, meaning campaign finance and ethics violations could no longer be subject to a John Doe. Prosecutors have used John Doe provisions to investigate Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign twice.” Despite intensive investigations, no serious violations have been found in Walkers’ campaigns, leading to the well-founded belief that the process was used solely to intimidate the Governor’s supporters.
A further incursion into the extent of free speech protections comes from the growing support for laws that would prohibit so-called “Hate Speech.” A Yougov.com study notes that “ research shows that many Americans support making it a criminal offense to make public statements which would stir up hatred against particular groups of people. Americans narrowly support (41%) rather than oppose (37%) criminalizing hate speech.”
The problem, of course, is in defining what hate speech is. Is a statement, such as that in the student newspaper Argus, criticizing the radical Black Lives Matter organization, hate speech? Would a statement opposed to allowing large numbers of essentially un-vetted Syrian refugees into the U.S. be hate speech? Experience with this type of legislation in other nations has proven to result in serious infringements on free speech.
Mark Steyn, a Canadian who has been critical of Islamic extremists, has been subjected to three complaints of “hate speech” in his country. In a National Review article he wrote: “the Canadian establishment seems to think it entirely natural that the Canadian state should be in the business of lifetime publication bans, just as the Dutch establishment thinks it entirely natural that the Dutch state should put elected leaders of parliamentary opposition parties on trial for their political platforms, and the French establishment thinks it appropriate for the French state to put novelists on trial for sentiments expressed by fictional characters. Across almost all the Western world apart from America, the state grows ever more comfortable with micro-regulating public discourse—and, in fact, not-so-public discourse: Lars Hedegaard, head of the Danish Free Press Society, has been tried, been acquitted, had his acquittal overruled, and been convicted of ‘racism’ for some remarks about Islam’s treatment of women made (so he thought) in private but taped and released to the world… Note that legal concept: not ‘illegal’ or ‘hateful,’ but merely ‘disparaging.’
Taken individually, any of these areas, FCC overreach, internet regulation, academic suppression of student speech, IRS intimidation, or the banning of undefined hate speech, presents a worrisome threat to free speech. Taken as a whole, it must be seen as a wholescale assault on the most basic of American, indeed, human rights, that must be taken very seriously.