Near the end of the CBS vice-presidential debate, the moderators brought up Trump's election denial and the January 6 riot, which the media then turned into the most noteworthy moment, because to them, January 6 is always the top issue. J.D. Vance wouldn't denounce his running mate's election denial, turning instead to how Democrats aren't great on Democracy.
"You guys attack us for not believing in democracy," said Vance. "The most sacred right under United States democracy is the First Amendment. You yourself has said there's no first amendment right to misinformation. Kamala Harris -- wants to use the power of government and big tech to silence people from speaking their minds. That's a threat to democracy there will long outlive this present moment."
Vance shouldn't have had to bring up Big Tech censorship on his own. CBS moderators should have. But Robby Soave at Reason wrote about "Tim Walz's Very Bad Answer on Social Media Censorship." The pro-Harris media didn't find it newsworthy that Walz responded by saying you can't yell fire in a crowded theater. Soave noted that "This is an oft-expressed sentiment—and one that's completely and utterly false."
But the "fact checkers" who police speech -- who suppress social-media posts for "misinformation" -- were not about to flag Walz for getting it wrong.
This error - a fairly significant one - was not noted in the fact checks published by @cnn @ddale8, @NBCNews or @CBSNews https://t.co/UaC1cszAqI
— Jonathan H. Adler (@jadler1969) October 3, 2024
This theatre-fire metaphor came in the 1919 case Schenk vs. United States, when the majority ruled the government could stop people from distributing leaflets opposing World War I. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes compared the anti-war activism as akin to yelling fire in a crowded theater. It's kind of amazing that today's leftists don't know their history, and how staunchly they would have railed against crushing anti-war speech.
Soave made the obvious point that the Left always ignores, that "hate speech" is a very subjective concept. Imagine if Donald Trump said speech insulting him was "hate speech," and was not protected speech.
Tim Walz doubles down on his claim that "misinformation and hate speech" aren't protected by the First Amendment. pic.twitter.com/cGeoWEJnF1
— Alpha News (@AlphaNewsMN) October 2, 2024
The Left cries "misinformation" about things they later were forced to concede were true, or least plausible. The Hunter Biden laptop turned out to be real. The lab-leak theory on the origins of Covid-19 also suddenly became more credible once Trump was defeated.
Misinformation and hate speech are absolutely protected by the First Amendment, however. And while the former is a relatively new category of expression facing explicit calls for censorship, the latter category—hate speech—has been exhaustively litigated before the Supreme Court.
....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.
Soave wrote Walz could have neutralized Vance's counter-attack by affirming that the federal government cannot and should not work to forcibly remove misinformation and hate speech from internet platforms. But Walz and the so-called saviors of democracy don't believe in that principle. "Worse than that, he clearly considers misinformation to be a form of expression that is beyond the realm of First Amendment protection."
