Many have promoted the fallacy that freedom of speech in America is not absolute. The truth is the opposite.
Free speech is absolute, or it would not be in the Bill of Rights.
Some repeat the tired talking point that "You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater" as a pretext to ban protected speech. Right now, there is a nefarious effort to silence dissent and to narrow the opportunities for Americans to use social media to communicate. The American people should embrace freedom for people to express various opinions – even odious ones.
A 1919 decision is where the "Fire in a Crowded Theater" talking point was invented. Jonathan Turley wrote at Fox News on June 25 that Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's quote about fire was a “paraphrasing of his decision in Schenck v. United States (that) continues to be used today as a rationalization for censorship and limits on free speech.” The real heroes of free speech were not members of the Supreme Court but the “anarchists, unionists, communists, feminists and others who risked everything to fight for their right to speak.” Our nation has a history of cracking down on free speech values, and Turley concludes that we are now in “the most dangerous anti-free speech period in our history.”
That should send chills down the spines of all Americans.
The starting point for any debate over free speech is to understand why we have a Bill of Rights in the first place. Our Founders wanted to recognize pre-existing rights that a powerful federal government could not take away. The right to speak freely was one of those natural, God-given rights recognized, not given to us, by the Constitution. It is important to note that the Bill of Rights is not negotiable.
One way people communicate these days is through social media. One company that has joined the expanding number of social media companies to provide another outlet for political discourse is BitChute. This video-hosting social media company was created as an alternative to more mainstream outlets like YouTube and Rumble. The company is now under attack from competitors who want to eliminate competition in a way that will narrow opportunities for free speech.
Eliminating competitors through deceitful means will curtail speech. Markets need to be contestable to maximize consumer welfare. Legacy platforms and Big Tech need to have their power checked by competition from other free speech platforms. Without competition and alternative platforms that successfully exist, deplatforming and shadow-banning would be much more prevalent. Free speech platforms that contain good—and even abhorrent—content are a public good because they confirm the right of all Americans to express opinions that are not popular with the government.
Free speech should be a mainstream value. The right to free speech is not conditional, and it does not matter if it is not popular with the government or offends a private special interest. Influential public and private institutions should be leaders in protecting freedom of speech. Sadly, that is not the case, and many institutions decry so-called "hate speech" and "misinformation" with broad definitions of those terms that have become a pretext to stop people from expressing views that some bullies deem incorrect and insensitive.
Differing opinions and the fact we tolerate them make America great. Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, writing in The Washington Post on August 2, made the case that we need leaders who encourage "input from all sides.” Dimon explained that “Eisenhower made a point to have lunch or dinner with opposition leaders, including those he disagreed with, and listen to their views” because “we need to begin treating opposing views, complaints and critiques as opportunities to find common ground and make us better.” That is why we must embrace emerging platforms like BitChute instead of shunning them.
Our nation has rarely been as deeply divided as we are today. Emerging free speech platforms exist today to prove that we are a free nation that tolerates differing opinions. If competitors, or government at the behest of competitors, are allowed to intimidate social media companies like BitChute out of the public square, our nation will suffer, and Americans' right to free speech will suffer yet another defeat.
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