First Amendment rights have always been among the most zealously guarded prerogatives of Americans citizens and organizations. This unmatched adherence to freedom has set the United States apart from the rest of the world, including other democracies.
But over the past several years, this keystone right has come under significant attack. It can be seen in President Obama’s influencing of the Federal Communications Commission to attempt to place monitors in news rooms, and his transfer of control of the internet to an international body not devoted to free speech. It can be observed in his rather embarrassing attacks on news outlets that disagree with his policies.
A description of the President’s initial reaction to contrary opinion was described in 2009 by Spectator magazine:
“The Obama Administration declared war on the minority of media outlets that do not worship the political left’s newest false idol immediately after Obama was sworn in. Three days into his presidency Obama warned Congressional Republicans against listening to radio host Rush Limbaugh…Then the White House launched a jihad against Fox News Channel and its hosts by first boycotting appearances on the cable channel and then second, by engaging in name-calling and leveling baseless allegations.
“More recently, the White House brazenly attempted to marginalize Fox News Channel by enlisting the support of the heretofore compliant news media. Fortunately, competing news outlets found the backbone — if only temporarily — to put the kibosh on Obama’s attempts to blacklist FNC from the White House press pool.”
The Washington Post has reported that FCC member Ajit Pai revealed that the National Science Foundation underwrote a project, dubbed “Truthy” which sought to focus on people using Twitter to express non-left wing ideas.
The Obama White House continued in its anti-free speech viewpoint. In 2012, Jonathon Turley described an unusual executive order:
“President Obama has issued an alarming executive order that would allow the government to crackdown of U.S. citizens and other individuals who ‘indirectly’ oppose U.S.-backed Yemeni President, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. Hadi was the right-hand man to the prior dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh and won an ‘election’ composed only of himself. We, of course, immediately embraced Hadi and the Obama Administration is now threatening anyone who opposes him, including our own citizens…The executive order…gives the Treasury Department authority to freeze the U.S.-based assets of anyone who ‘obstructs’ the political transition in Yemen, including U.S. citizens who are ‘engaged in acts that directly or indirectly threaten the peace, security or stability of Yemen, such as acts that obstruct the implementation of the Nov. 23, 2011, agreement between the Government of Yemen and those in opposition to it, which provides for a peaceful transition of power . . . or that obstruct the political process in Yemen.’ One Obama official is quoted as saying that the order is meant to deter people opposing the regime to ‘make clear to those who are even thinking of spoiling the transition’ to think again. . . .That would be called a chilling effect designed to deter opponents of the regime.
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“One of the greatest threats posed by this order is that it places such actions in the the administrative law process on the agency level. Citizens are given fewer protections in that process and agencies given absurd levels of deference by federal courts. Various organizations have complained about that process in being detailed as aiders or abettors of terrorism. Glenn Greenwald has an article below discussing the new order.”
The President is not alone in his actions. As Hans A. von Spakovsky and Elizabeth Slattery wrote in a Heritage article, “Frustrated with the Supreme Court’s consistent defense of political speech protected by the First Amendment, the Left is driving a movement to amend the Constitution to allow Congress to limit fundraising and spending on political speech. Supporters of this amendment claim that restricting the amount of money that may be spent on political speech and activity is not the same as limiting speech, but as the Supreme Court has recognized, bans on spending are indeed bans on speech. Limiting spending on political communication necessarily affects the quantity and quality of that speech. Rather than ‘level the playing field,’this constitutional amendment would protect incumbents and violate a fundamental right of Americans.”
“Progressive” Local governments have gotten into the act, as well, as described by Reason magazine In Houston, when religious leaders protested what they perceived to be an overbroad ordinance concerning gays and local businesses, they protested. In response, Mayor Aniise Parker subpoenaed five local pastors, demanding they turn over their sermons.
College campuses have been the most direct in their assault on free speech. Non-left wing students are ostracized and intimidated. Non-leftist guest lecturers requested by students are pressured to back out of speaking engagements. Student political speech activity has been restricted to so-called “free speech zones.” Reason describes these acts as “a seething hostility to out-group ideas that greets even mild heterodoxy with histrionic outrage and demands that invited speakers be dis-invited posthaste.”
Journalist Caroline Glick echoes that. “The fact is that the attempts of leftist activists on campuses to silence non-leftist dissenters regarding Israel and a host of other issues is simply an extreme version of what is increasingly becoming standard operating procedure for leftist activists throughout the US. Rather than participating in a battle of ideas with their ideological opponents on the Right, increasingly, leftist activists, groups and policy-makers seek to silence their opponents through slander, intimidation and misrepresentation of their own agenda.”
Perhaps the most important analysis of the attempt to silence non-leftist speech comes not from a conservative, but from a journalist closely associated with liberal politics. Kirsten Powers served in the Clinton Administration and was a fixture in Democrat politics in New York. In her new book, “The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech,” she provides one the most bluntly honest and hard-hitting analyses of this problem to date.
“This intolerance,” she writes, “is not a passive matter of opinion. It’s an aggressive, illiberal impulse to silence people. This conduct has become an existential threat to those who hold orthodox religious beliefs… increasingly I hear from people across the political spectrum who are fearful not only of expressing their views, but also as to where all of this is heading. I’ve followed this trend closely as a columnist with growing concern. It’s become clear that the attempts—too often successful—to silence dissent from the liberal worldview isn’t isolated outbursts. They are part of a bigger story.”