Criticize Harris and Walz While You Still Can - One thing they haven't been able to hide is hostility to free speech.

It’s a curious thing that Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate 
Gov. Tim Walz (D., Minn.) are enjoying generally friendly media coverage even 
as they set modern campaign records for avoiding media scrutiny. Odder still 
is that while avoiding discussion of the policies they will employ to govern 
us, they’ve clearly expressed contempt for the bedrock liberty that allows 
all of us to criticize government policies.

Recently this column noted Ms. Harris’s history of hostility to free 
expression. Now we know that if voters give her the promotion she seeks, we 
can’t expect her vice president to serve as a moderating influence.

Writing for Reason, Robby Soave notes that at this week’s vice presidential 
debate, Gov. Tim Walz repeated his false claim that the U.S. Constitution’s 
First Amendment does not protect misinformation or “hate speech.” Mr. Soave 
writes of Mr. Walz:

     Walz defended his position by glibly asserting that it is 
     constitutionally impermissible to yell “fire in a crowded theater.” 
     This is an oft-expressed sentiment—and one that’s completely and 
     utterly false. It comes from the Supreme Court’s odious opinion in the 
     1919 case Schenk v. United States, in which the majority held that the 
     government could stop people from distributing leaflets opposing World 
     War I. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes likened such activism as akin to 
     yelling fire in a crowded theater; in other words, he believed that 
     raising doubts about the desirability of the U.S. participating in such 
     a global catastrophe was dangerous, and could be prohibited.

     Today we recognize that the right to criticize U.S. military policy and 
     oppose foreign wars is an essential component of the First Amendment. 
     And the Supreme Court agrees: Schenk was gradually overturned by 
     subsequent decisions. The right to engage in speech that the government 
     might deem reckless, dangerous, or hateful was explicitly affirmed in 
     the 2017 case Matal v. Tam, in which Justice Samuel Alito observed “the 
     proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the 
     freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate.’” It could not be more 
     simple: Hate speech is protected by the First Amendment.

     This shouldn’t be surprising; after all, if hate speech constituted 
     _unprotected_ speech, it would create all sorts of problems. What 
     counts as hateful speech is purely subjective. Religious people, for 
     instance, might find blasphemy to be hateful—but it’s sufficiently 
     obvious that the federal government cannot criminalize criticism of 
     religion. Similarly, political figures might determine that their 
     opponents running attack ads against them are examples of hateful 
     messaging. If censorship was allowed on this basis, there would be no 
     end in sight.

George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicki notes on X:

     It is ironic that Walz saying there’s no First Amendment protection 
     for “misinformation” is itself misinformation.

Mr. Walz would be the new junior partner in an enterprise that is already 
abusing foundational freedoms. George Washington University law professor 
Jonathan Turley writes in USA Today that “the Biden-Harris administration has 
proved to be the most anti-free speech administration in two centuries.” He 
adds:
     
     Harris has been an outspoken champion of censorship in an administration 
     that supports targeting disinformation, misinformation and 
     “malinformation.” That last category was defined by the Biden 
     administration as information “based on fact, but used out of context 
     to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”

One can not even freely say things that are true if Joe Biden and Kamala 
Harris think they are being presented out of context? The Biden-Harris 
administration justifies targeting such speech as part of what it calls 
“building resilience to foreign influence operations and disinformation.” But 
of course this was the bogus justification for abusing the national-security 
apparatus and turning it againstDonald Trump in two straight presidential-
election years—or is it three?

As for Mr. Walz, associating himself with abuse of the First Amendment was 
not the result of debate-night jitters. Mr. Turley notes:

     Recently, Walz went on MSNBC to support censoring disinformation and 
     declared, “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or 
     hate speech, and especially around our democracy.”

     That is entirely untrue and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of 
     the right called “indispensable” by the Supreme Court. Even after some 
     of us condemned his claim as ironically dangerous disinformation, Walz 
     continues to repeat it.

This is the moment for any citizens who want to criticize—with whatever 
context they choose to provide—a government intent on controlling speech.


--
"The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,"
        -- DoJ-certified imbecile Joe Biden