This Country Can’t Afford A SCOTUS Weak On Internet Censorship
The Biden administration attempted to distract the Supreme Court from the voluminous evidence of federal abuse of Americans speech rights during oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri Monday. It sounded like several justices followed the feds waving red flag.
The government may not use coercive threats to suppress speech, but it is entitled to speak for itself by informing, persuading, or criticizing private speakers, said Biden administration lawyer Brian Fletcher in his opening remarks. He and several justices asserted government speech prerogatives that would flip the Constitution upside down.
The government doesn t have constitutional rights. Constitutional rights belong to the people and restrain the government. The people s right to speak may not be abridged. Government officials speaking, in their official capacities, may certainly be abridged. Indeed, it often must be, precisely to restrict officials from abusing the state s monopoly on violence to bully citizens into serfdom.
It is obviously un-American and unconstitutional for the government to develop a hit list of citizens to mute in the public square through secret pressure on communications monopolies beholden to the government for their monopoly powers. There is simply no way it s protected speech for the feds to use intermediaries to silence anyone who disagrees with them on internet forums where the majority of the nation s political organizing and information dissemination occurs.
Joy Pullmann.