Obama and Other Democrats Are Destroying the First Amendment by Design

The Democrat Party is suppressing political dissent

The Democrat Party is conducting a full-scale attack on the First Amendment and on those who dissent from the Democrat Party line on any and all topics. Leading the charge is Barack Hussein Obama, with the minions in the Biden regime implementing anti-free-speech campaigns behind the scenes as feverishly as they can be divined.

In a speech given at Stanford University last year, Barack Obama declared himself to be a “First Amendment absolutist” while calling for social media regulations. The self-described constitutional law professor needs to reread the First Amendment, as well as the Federalist Papers, to understand how the latter recommendation completely contradicts his absolutist claim.

Let us examine the issue.

What is Free Speech in a Modern Context?

The First Amendment is crystal clear about the sanctity of free speech guarantees for all Americans (emphasis added): “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

If Obama truly believed himself to be a “First Amendment absolutist,” he would have remained silent on the professed need to regulate social media, which has become the modern-day equivalent of Revolutionary War-era broadsides that were used to “disseminate news, announce legislation, recruit and instruct troops, celebrate great events, or sway public opinion.” America’s Founders themselves employed broadsides to “get the word out” to their friends, neighbors, and others and helped shape our constitutional Republic.

There is another interesting parallel between those old broadsides and Twitter. As noted here: Broadsides “were typically considered ephemeral items to be discarded after their original use.” How better to describe the daily changing narratives, dialogs, debates, and individual tweets on Twitter? Except that old tweets – like old broadsides – frequently come back to haunt the originators when embarrassing truths subsequently emerge.

The Founders clearly did not want broadsides and other free speech to be curtailed or regulated in such a way as to diminish Americans’ ability to engage in dialog on just about any topic, especially political. What would they say about attempts to restrict speech via social media? For that matter, what would they say about the constitutionality of Section 230, which shields social media companies from lawsuits for content posted by third parties?

Over the years, the US Supreme Court has defined various free speech exceptions, including advocacy of the use of force in imminent actions (also referred to as “incitement to riot”; see Brandenburg vs Ohio, 1969), obscenity that violates contemporary community standards (Miller vs California, 1973), and threatening the president of the United States (under Title 18 Section 871, US Code).

However, none of these exceptions target a reduction in political speech, and any legal attempts to curtail political speech are judged by a strict scrutiny standard in order to provide the strongest possible protections.

What Obama Said

Here is what Barack Obama advocated at Stanford University in the way of social media regulation: “A regulatory structure, a smart one, needs to be in place, designed in consultation with tech companies, and experts and communities that are affected, including communities of color and others that sometimes are not well represented here in Silicon Valley, that will allow these companies to operate effectively while also slowing the spread of harmful content.”

These seem like altruistic words, especially if his intention is to conform to the commonly understood meaning of free speech rights guaranteed under the First Amendment, and that those rights would be upheld for all Americans regardless of their political persuasion. However, during his speech, Obama clearly telegraphed his true reasons for advocating government regulation of social media: “[I]f the vast majority of elected Republican officials keep insisting that there’s nothing wrong with saying an election was stolen without a shred of evidence, when they know better, this [regulating social media] isn’t going to work.”

In short, Obama seeks to use the force of government to ensure that social media regulations curtail the free speech rights of those who disagree with Democrat Party opinions, policies and objectives. And he would be perfectly happy to reinforce – and extend – the leftwing community standards already being used by social media companies to arbitrarily curtail political speech in exactly the same manner that the Chinese Communist Party uses to monitor and control Chinese citizens through the use of a social credit and control system.

Barack Obama, his factotum Joe “The Hologram” Biden, and other communists who comprise the modern Democrat Party – as well as their apparatchiks in federal agencies and stenographers in the media – do not believe in free speech for their political adversaries. Rest assured, they would love to successfully label America First patriots and other political adversaries – many of whom continue to support Donald Trump – as “insurrectionists” and use that label as justification for banning their speech on social media via “government regulations.” Suppression of dissent is precisely the Democrats’ political goal as they prolong their J6 star chamber farce.

Fortunately, Tucker Carlson has done a bang-up job in exposing the J6 hoax as nothing but a political hit-job perpetrated by the Uniparty against President Trump and his base. And the Twitter disclosures have further exposed the Democrats’ plot to implement 1984-style social controls over all political narratives in the US.

Elon Musk to the Rescue

Just as Donald Trump raised public awareness to the reality of legacy media politicization, so also is Elon Musk doing the same for Twitter, the current “big dog” of social media. The sheer panic exhibited by Twitter Blue-Checkers, cultural figures, Democrat activists, media pundits, and garden variety elected Democrats in response to Musk’s acquisition of Twitter is a big red flag that – in addition to the revelations made by Matt Taiibi, Bari Weiss, Michael Shellenberger, and others about the unholy alliance between Big Tech, the FBI, and the Democrat Party – Musk will eventually open the books on Twitter’s community standards and algorithms that suppress political content that disagrees with leftwing Democrat orthodoxy.

Jonathan Turley has further exposed the latest Democrat-sponsored conspiracy to censor conservatives and suppress narratives that deviate from the “accepted Democrat Party line. Here are a couple of excerpts from his article:

In the 17th release of the “Twitter Files,” journalist Matt Taibbi disclosed that the U.S. government is funding a group that has supported the censorship of dissenting viewpoints on social media, including those of U.S. citizens.

That may sound familiar. Just a few weeks ago, I wrote here that the congressionally created, federally funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) had supported the British-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI). The index was widely ridiculed for targeting ten conservative and libertarian sites as the most dangerous sources of disinformation; it sought to persuade advertisers to withdraw support for those sites, while listing their most liberal counterparts as among the most trustworthy.

….

[M]any congressional Democrats continue to oppose efforts to investigate government censorship efforts, unleashing a type of Red Scare 2.0 by accusing critics of supporting insurrectionists or being “Putin lovers.” 

….

The latest Twitter Files release suggests the Biden administration may have seeded various groups to help it censor by surrogate. We still have no idea how extensive the federal funding and support for censorship has been.

We can be sure that the Biden regime has been hard at work in “diversifying” their censorship approach – as diversification is a big deal for them, ideologically speaking (pun intended). Throw in a lot of dark money from leftwing billionaires, and you have full-scale onslaught (conspiracy?) against the First Amendment by the enemies of freedom in our midst! These enemies within are the domestic enemies from which the US Constitution must be protected, as those who have taken US military oaths know full well.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

The Founders would doubtless be against efforts to curtail free speech on social media platforms. And they would probably see Section 230 for what it really is, too. While shielding social media companies from lawsuits for third party content, the law also enables social media companies to curtail political speech under their own so-called “community standards.” The result? Voices that dissent from leftwing and Democrat orthodoxy are suppressed, shadow-banned, suspended, and ultimately de-platformed, thereby curtailing political speech that they arbitrarily deem to be “unwanted.”

Consider this exercise derived from Obama’s Stanford University speech that illustrates the problem. Would Obama deign to revise and extend his above remarks claiming the 2020 election “was stolen without a shred of evidence” after he views the documentary, 2000 Mules, which provided indisputable video and cell phone-tracking evidence of an illicit ballot-trafficking network that was in operation during the election?

By advocating government regulation of social media, self-declared “First Amendment absolutist” Barack Obama and virtually all other Democrats these days actually seek to curtail the dissent of their political adversaries, not expand free speech rights guaranteed under the US Constitution to all US citizens. If they truly supported free speech, they would advocate modifications to Section 230 that would preclude social media companies from violating the rights of Americans, thereby expanding their free speech rights, not censoring and suppressing their opinions.

And if Obama was true to his absolutist claim, he would repeat the words of Evelyn Beatrice Hall (pseudonym: Stephen G. Tallentyre) from the 1906 novel, Friends of Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but defend to the death your right to say it.” That he never speaks these words says it all.

Don’t count on it because Obama and the Democrats are communists, not altruists, and they could care about your constitutionally guaranteed right of free speech.

The end.