Free Speech Is Now The Second-Most Important Issue For Voters, And That's Very Bad News For Kamala

Free speech is the most fundamental right of every American. That is why free speech is enshrined as the first of the original 10 constitutional amendments. And for the first time in our lives, that right is in actual jeopardy.

Americans agree.

A new poll from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression found that free speech is now the second-most important issue for Americans in the upcoming election, trailing only "inflation and increasing costs."

Americans, 63 percent of whom say concerns over free speech are "very important" to them, ranked the issue ahead of health care, immigration, crime, and guns. And, yes, even more than "racial inequality."

On Thursday, Elon Musk called the finding a "major vibe shift!"

If free speech is actually on the minds of voters come Nov. 5, Kamala Harris will not win the election. It's that simple. For all the ills of the Republican Party, and there are many, the evidence is clear: the Democratic Party is the party of censorship. 

More specifically, government-pressured censorship.

Every recent example of government-pressured censorship traces back to the Democratic Party. Let us run through some of the more egregious cases:

Last month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the White House urged Facebook to remove posts about Covid that reflected poorly on the Biden-Harris administration. 

In 2022, Zuckerberg confessed to Joe Rogan that Meta suppressed the accurately reported Hunter Biden laptop story in response to false FBI warnings of incoming "Russian disinformation."

But it's not just Meta.

When Elon Musk purchased Twitter (known as X) in 2022, he provided reporters with internal communications that proved the extent to which former executives engaged in politically motivated censorship on behalf of, again, the Biden-Harris administration. The revelations – known as #TwitterFiles --included examples of shadow-banning, de-amplification, removing posts, and banning accounts.

Last November, the House Judiciary Committee filed a 103-page staff interim report detailing how government agencies pressured tech companies to dictate the information posted on social media prior to the 2020 presidential election.

The finding discovered "hundreds" of reports showing how the Department of Homeland Security, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Department of State, and Stanford University assisted in the creation of a secret "disinformation" group that asked social media companies to "censor true information, jokes, and political opinions."

Platforms like Facebook and Twitter acquiesced. To no surprise, the pressure campaign disproportionately resulted in the de-platforming of information disfavorable to, wait for it, Democrats.

The significance of what's happening here cannot be understated.

Conservative demonstrators who allege that the government pressured or colluded with social media platforms to censor right-leaning content under the guise of fighting misinformation protest outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, March 18, 2024, as the Court hears oral arguments in the case of Murthy v. Missouri. The case stems from a lawsuit brought by the Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri, who allege that government officials went too far in their efforts to get social media platforms to combat vaccine and election misinformation. (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

The First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring ordinary Americans. However, the government has found a workaround to the constitutional restriction by pressuring private tech companies to do censoring for them.

Tricky, tricky.

But also illegal.

By assisting in the government's subversion of the First Amendment, Facebook is acting not as a "private company" but as a "state actor." And as the Wall Street Journal explains, "state actors" can be sued for aiding and abetting in violations of the Constitution.

And the Democrat Party is complicit.

As per our column, free speech is on the ballot in 2024. Voting for Harris-Walz sends a direct message that Americans are fine with censorship. No American should ever be fine with censorship. 

Free speech is what allows us access to the truth. Without the truth, we are nothing more than ignorant NPCs (people who don't think for themselves) who march to the beat of our dear leaders.

Imagine if the only facts available were the "facts" that the people in charge made available. That was the case for much of the pandemic, when various credible voices were silenced for offering dissenting opinions.

Thereby, there's a valid argument that free speech should be the most important issue for voters. While the economy is crucial to our daily lives, free speech is what separates a free country from an autocracy.

On Nov. 5, you get to make a decision on censorship.