Today’s Democrats, led by Kamala Harris, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, are not just tiptoeing around the edges of censorship; they’re creating an Orwellian nightmare where the state is being called upon to regulate speech and to determine what is fit to be heard in the public square.
The Media Research Center took a stroll down memory lane to measure the seismic shift in attitudes toward the First Amendment for Harris and the other Democratic nominees of the 21st century, including Biden, Hillary Clinton, Obama, John Kerry and Al Gore.
According to the MRC study, each of these six candidates previously stood for free speech rights. Now, they claim that constitutionally protected speech is a threat to democracy. Their tortuous logic is inexplicable, but their previous quotes have not yet been whitewashed by the Left’s ever-faithful tech behemoth, Google.
In 2006, Gore scolded the Bush administration for allegedly trying to “silence dissenting views” by censoring information “inconsistent with its stated ideological goals.” Fast forward to 2023, and Gore suggests social media algorithms should be “banned,” calling them the “digital equivalent of AR-15s.”
In 2011, Clinton vowed to protect free speech “with the force of law.” But just last month, she said that Americans should be “criminally charged” for spreading what she dubbed “propaganda.” She later warned, “[i]f they don’t moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control.”
In 2015, Obama affirmed that government propaganda “runs contrary to everything we believe.” Yet, in 2022, Obama called on Americans to “pick a side” regarding whether social media companies should be forced to censor Americans.
In 2015, Kerry rebuked censorship, affirming that “freedom must win out over censorship.” A year earlier, he condemned the very acts committed by his own party today: “Imagine if I couldn’t talk to you today simply because my government had shut down or censored the internet.” But now Kerry unashamedly attacks the First Amendment “as a major block.”
In 2017, Biden passionately defended free speech rights for all: “[W]e hurt ourselves badly when we don’t allow the speech to take place. … The First Amendment is one of the defining features of who we are in the Bill of Rights. And to shut it down in the name of what is appropriate is simply wrong.” In that same year, Harris similarly tweeted, “The free and open internet is a cornerstone of our society and must be protected at all costs.”
But like their predecessors, Biden and Harris have flip-flopped, deciding instead that the best way to combat ideas they dislike is not through debate, but through deletion. In the guise of combatting mis- and dis-information, they created the largest censorship regime in U.S. history, spanning 10 federal departments and six additional regulatory agencies.
For example, the State and Homeland Security Departments have partnered repeatedly to censor conservatives in the media. The Pentagon has also used our tax dollars to bludgeon advertisers, cajoling them not to work with conservative media outlets.
Independent agencies are at it, too. The Federal Communications Commission is punishing free-speech advocate Elon Musk while rewarding anti-free speech zealot George Soros. And the National Science Foundation is competing with the Energy Department to be the wizard behind the censorship curtain.
This isn’t about mis-information; it’s about power. Democratic leaders have traded the mantle of freedom for the chains of control, embracing the tech titans as partners and enforcers of their narrative. Once heralded as the new public square, social media platforms have become a digital dungeon where speech is policed not by law, but by algorithm.
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While elites in the Democratic Party play the role of speech censors, conservatives have joined with traditional Democrats in a coalition to protect speech rights. This coalition is led mostly by former Democrats, including Donald Trump, Elon Musk and two former presidential candidates, Robert F. Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard.
Trump’s running mate JD Vance articulated the correct perspective on speech in the vice presidential debate: “I believe we actually do have a threat to democracy in this country, but unfortunately, it’s not the threat to democracy that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz want to talk about: It is the threat of censorship.”
Vance is sounding a wake-up call that resonates like the siren many of us heard as school children during nuclear-war fallout drills. We’re not just at risk of losing an argument; we’re at risk of losing America.
The next president of the United States will take the oath of office, swearing to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The media must do their job and ask each of the candidates whether they can take this oath, without snickering and crossing fingers.
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L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center.
Dan Schneider is the vice president of Media Research Center’s Free Speech America.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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