Free Speech, Always

What makes America great

My father, who took a somewhat jaundiced and cynical view of the United States, always retained a reverence for the Founding Fathers. He saw them as brilliant, flawed men who attempted a framework for a new nation that was, at once, remarkably innovative and forever retrograde. As a child, I was told that the best way to memorize the freedoms of the First Amendment was the acronym RASP: religion, assembly, speech, and the press. These slaveholders were still straining to uphold their Enlightenment values, and this amendment was their greatest flourish. In an era of monarchies and state religions, the Founders hoped to establish enduring freedoms that would, over the course of centuries, be a bulwark against tyranny. While the First Amendment has been, throughout the course of American history, repeatedly challenged and brutally violated—the Alien and Sedition Acts, Jim Crow, the Red Scares after World Wars I and II, the months and years following 9/11—it has, on the whole, preserved the fabric of the American republic. We are still a nation where one, as a citizen, can speak and write freely. I have never, for a single moment, been afraid when writing and reporting, and that is because of the First Amendment. That is the privilege of this country. I don’t take it lightly.

The First Amendment also inculcates a culture; as important as it is to legally protect speech, it’s equally vital to foster an environment, in the public and private terrain, where opinions and ideas can be freely exchanged. For the American left, this was never up for debate until the 2010s, when a culture of rank illiberalism took hold and the concept of free speech, for reasons that still greatly irk me, became coded as a right-wing value. Free speech neither belongs to the left nor the right, though it was the left, throughout the twentieth century, that understood why defending it mattered so much. The marginalized, always, need the First Amendment the most. Reactionary governments and private organs persecuted civil rights activists, gay rights activists, feminists, and socialists. If speech were ever truly criminalized in this country, these are the people who would immediately suffer. Just look across the pond to the United Kingdom, where a supposedly liberal government has designated a nonviolent pro-Palestine organization as terrorists and arrested those who even express public support for their work. I shudder to imagine what Donald Trump would do with such authority.

Now the Trump government is launching a direct, and very predictable, assault on the First Amendment. Since liberals, in the 2010s and early 2020s, abandoned the cause of free speech, championing social media censorship and public censure as a means of driving undesirable viewpoints out of the public square, conservatives enjoyed a long stretch as the supposed champions of free discourse. I believed this advocacy was hollow; Team Red and Team Blue can be equally contemptuous of free speech if they think the other side is somehow benefiting from it. With Trump returned to the White House, a resurgent right-wing has emerged to revive 2010s-style cancel culture for their own twisted ends. Last year, at the Republican National Convention, I witnessed this nascent woke right, and it doesn’t surprise me—if it still fills me with despair—that now it’s the Trump administration harassing, bullying, and even attempting to deport those who are either not sufficiently pro-Israel or not supportive of MAGA. Charlie Kirk’s assassination has led the Attorney General of the United States to declare that “hate” speech is not legally protected and the Vice President of the United States to urge employers to fire anyone who has, in his view, besmirched Kirk’s memory. Trump’s FCC bullied Disney into booting Jimmy Kimmel, temporarily, from the airwaves. I don’t care for Kimmel, but this was chilling. Luckily, the backlash was severe, Disney caved, and Kimmel returned. The culture of free speech won—for now.

I do not celebrate tech platforms. By nature, I do not trust them, and I know, if ownership shifts or priorities evolve, writers like me will be systemically undercut and devalued. Facebook, Instagram, and X are all explicitly against the written word now; they are for image and video, and deeply suspicious of anyone who might operate outside their strictures. Substack has been an exception, and I am heartened by this. After Kimmel’s suspension, the founders declared they will not waver in their commitment to free speech and allowing writers like me (and those with deeply divergent viewpoints) to operate here. Several years ago, a moral panic, fueled by left-leaning mainstream media outlets and pundits, engulfed Substack because the founders refused heavy-handed content moderation. There was performative handwringing about a handful of “Nazi” accounts virtually no one read. Publications like the Atlantic and the New Yorker treated Substack as suspect because it was not actively purging dissident writers. Then, as now, Substack cited its commitment to free and open discourse. Certain liberals, sure they would own the future, scoffed. They believed suppression would work. At the minimum, they hoped to kneecap the far right. We know now deplatforming and speech suppression failed. Steve Bannon, Dan Bongino, and Nick Fuentes did not wither because they were banned from YouTube. Anti-vax sentiment didn’t vanish. Twitter suspended Trump’s account, and Trump went on to become president again. This is, for the left, is the best practical argument against such maneuvers. If a culture of free discourse cannot be cultivated and protected for its own sake, it at least can be defended on the grounds that the alternative is far worse. Conservatives, dissidents, and outright racists only flourished when the major tech platforms attempted to stifle them. Now, MAGA and Trump-aligned forces seek revenge. If Larry Ellison and Lachlan Murdoch purchase TikTok, they will probably seek to eradicate as much pro-Palestine content as possible from the platform. Republicans, devoid of principle, will cheer this on. They are glad hall monitors exist as long as they can walk the beat themselves.

For writers, artists, and intellectuals, it is inexcusable to not stand up for free speech and the First Amendment. This is the first value, and perhaps, when weighed against all the rest, the only one that is indispensable. I confess I was bewildered, in the last decade, as I saw liberals and leftists demean the concept of free speech in a misguided bid to either defeat the right or protect the marginalized. Their blitheness, in retrospect, was startling, and now I can only hope they are learning why they were so mistaken. Trump, at least, is a living, breathing example of why civil liberties matter in America and why they must be protected, always. Beyond partisan politics, there cannot be robust and meaningful intellectual conditions without a culture of free speech and expression. A creative soul cannot self-censor, nor can one who hopes to meet reality head-on and also dream of greater heights, in either the terrestrial or metaphysical realms. Artists must be free to roam, to uplift beauty but also confront ugliness. In a culture that threatens those who seek to push boundaries and rove beyond the horizon line, stagnation is the only result. The First Amendment itself is not a precondition to great art or intellectual ferment, but it has made the United States, for all its shortcomings, a nation with a grand tradition of dynamism. Americans are not afraid to speak out, take risks, and challenge the status quo. They are not terribly deferential or demure. Trump hopes to erode this culture entirely and make as many people into propagandists for his administration as is possible. There is no other kind of discourse Trump tolerates. Conservatives, many of them reverent of hierarchy and anal rule-followers at heart, are glad to take their cues from the MAGA king. Now St. Charlie joins the pantheon—speak ill of him and risk your livelihood. The MAGA schoolmarms will hunt you down and you will learn to valorize a man who made it his mission to relentlessly bully Muslims, the trans community, and anyone who did not subscribe to his particular lifestyle. You will learn that the greatest way to serve Jesus Christ, a humble man who gave himself over to the destitute and attached himself to no nation or political movement, is to helm a $350 million political organization that promotes the Republican Party and its president. To serve the Lord, you must splice clips of your debates with befuddled college students, and you must retreat, when the day is done, to your vast Arizona mansion. The Bible, I’ve been told, has much to say about beating the Democrats.

The hopeful note I have is that none of this, in the long run, will succeed. The First Amendment is battered and bruised but always prevails. The jingoism of the Bush years was beaten back, as was the anti-communist mania of the 1950s. For these incursions on free speech, Trump has far less organic support than the Bush-Cheney regime or the Cold Warriors. Americans were genuinely afraid of the Soviet Union. They were traumatized, too, after September 11th. The culture itself was oriented against free expression because there was a fear of mass death. Since taking office again, Trump has attempted to manufacture emergency after emergency, and if his slackening approval ratings are to be believed, Americans are not invested in him. The economy is sputtering, inflation persists, and healthcare premiums may spike next year. Firing a college professor for cracking wise about an assassination won’t change any of that. Trump cannot engineer the widespread worship of Kirk or make every American under 50 pro-Israel. He cannot make MAGA broadly popular. He can have the Republican Party, but not all of America. The nation—and the First Amendment—is far bigger than him, and it will outlast him.