In September 2014, President Barack Obama delivered a speech to the people of Estonia at the Nordea Concert Hall in the nation's capital of Tallinn. In what the media dubbed an "ode to democracy," Obama declared that a free people—unlike the pro-Russian separatists who were then destabilizing the region in Ukraine—supported not just liberty but liberal values, such as free speech.
"We have to uphold a free press and freedom of speech—because, in the end, lies and misinformation are no match for the truth," Obama said, evoking a round of applause.
Obama's support for free speech was not new; like nearly every other president who had graced the Oval Office over the previous century, Obama throughout his presidency consistently voiced support for free speech, an idea enshrined and protected in the Constitution. (Not all of these presidents, particularly Woodrow Wilson and Richard Nixon, supported free speech in practice as much as rhetoric.)
Sadly, Obama's sentiments seem quaint in the Democratic Party today, as well as major media institutions. It has become conventional wisdom for many in the professional class that of course government and tech companies should regulate speech, and for the very reason Obama in 2014 disavowed: to protect people from "misinformation."
In fact, despite First Amendment protections that prohibit the federal government from abridging speech, a coordinated and concerted effort to regulate speech is well underway.
The Twitter Files dump has shown the extent to which the government and Twitter colluded in secret to suppress speech on a range of issues in recent years. Former Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi confirmed that Twitter executives hosted weekly meetings with DHS, FBI, and other intelligence officials to discuss and determine what "misinformation" should be stricken from the site. Among the stories Twitter removed was a New York Post article about Hunter Biden, the current president's son, that turned out to be accurate.
The primary reason this is happening is obvious: Support for free speech has collapsed on the political Left. A 2021 Pew Research Center poll showed that two-thirds of Democrats support the government taking steps to restrict speech. To rationalize their own illiberalism—after all, it's been the bad guys historically who have been the ones to suppress speech—progressives have caricatured political opponents as fascist, far right supervillains. Disagreements are decried as violence and differing opinions as misinformation, and both are seen as existential threats to democracy that require censorship.
When this collapse in free speech occurred is also obvious. Following Donald Trump's ascendancy to the presidency, Democrats became convinced that Trump's victory was the result of the Russians, who used a disinformation campaign to sabotage Hillary Clinton's presidential ambitions.
Since 2016, free speech is increasingly seen as a luxury we can no longer afford.
This is a far cry from the Democratic Party's own tradition. As recently as 2017, Joe Biden was defending free speech, reminding us that he was old enough to remember when it was liberals who "were shouted down when they spoke."
Yet today, most Democrats see policing speech as the duty of the federal government, despite the Constitution's clear language prohibiting such actions. Worse, most of them actively support the FBI and DHS's effort to work with companies like Twitter to root out "misinformation," even though it's unclear who actually authorized such actions.
The founders of our constitutional system died long before the world witnessed the worst human rights atrocities in history, but they understood the road to tyranny better than Americans today. "Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government," a 31-year old Benjamin Franklin declared in The Pennsylvania Gazette. "When this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins."
History has shown how right Franklin was. The number of dictators who "climbed to power on the ladder of free speech" only to suppress speech after attaining power is not easily counted.
None of this is to say that progressives are entirely wrong: Misinformation exists. Disinformation exists. Hate speech exists (even if a clear definition for it does not). Russian meddling exists.
But these threats are miniscule compared to the state working hand-in-hand with tech companies to "protect" Americans from misinformation and WrongThink. As the philosopher Ludwig von Mises once observed, adopting totalitarian methods is no way to fight totalitarianism.
Obama had it right when he spoke to the people of Estonia. Misinformation is no match for the truth, and free speech and a free press are essential to a free people.
Jon Miltimore is managing editor of FEE.org, the online portal of the Foundation for Economic Education. He is the author of the "The Take" on Substack.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
