In a pre-election warning this week, Fox News legal expert Jonathan Turley said the present-day Democratic Party doesn’t seem to understand the purpose of the First Amendment, which is to the limit the power of government not the power of the people.
“They view speech as a privilege,” Turley, a George Washington University law professor, said this week. “It's like a driver's license that they think can be rescinded if you're reckless.”
Turley was reacting to free speech news from Brazil, where that country’s highest court upheld a ban on Elon Musk-owned X, formerly Twitter. The decision was hailed by Brazil’s socialist president, Lula da Silva, who has used his authority to clamp down on free speech and political opponents.
Turley’s comment on Fox News also came after the cable news channel played a clip of 2019 comments made by then-Senator Kamala Harris. In a CNN interview, which came after a Democratic primary debate, Harris defended her demand on stage that Twitter suspend then-President Trump’s account on the social media site.
Trump has “lost his privileges and it should be taken down,” Harris, citing Trump’s inflammatory comments about a government whistleblower, told CNN anchor Jake Tapper.
To his credit, Tapper mentioned a "slippery slope" in which anyone who writes about a whistleblower, or questions their credibility, could be punished for doing so.
"I think that is a fine conversation for a law school debate," Harris countered, "but that’s not what we’re talking about."
Staver: 'Hate speech' protected by Constitution
Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, made similar comments in a 2002 MSNBC interview about “misinformation” affecting voting and voting rights.
“I think we need to push back on this. There's no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech,” Walz said, “and especially around our democracy.”
Countering that comment, attorney Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel says protecting unpopular speech is the very reason for the First Amendment.
“There really is no such thing as hate speech that's outside the protection of the First Amendment,” Staver argues. “In fact, the more the speech actually makes your blood boil, the more it needs constitutional protection.”
That view of free speech and civil liberties from Staver, a religious rights attorney, was once the prevailing opinion of liberal Democrats. Going back several generations, Democrats have championed free expression and free speech guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution because, in their view, those freedoms were that challenging prevailing beliefs and pushing moral boundaries of the day.
“When I first joined the [Democratic] Party, I was 21,” Tulsi Gabbard, the former congresswoman and former Democrat, told Newsmax in a May interview. “And I saw a party that celebrated free speech.”
The modern-day Democratic Party, she said, is “weaponizing” the Justice Department, undermining the rule of law, and targeting their political opponents, especially Donald Trump.
Since that interview, now three months ago, Gabbard learned in August the Biden administration has put her name on “Quiet Skies,” the airline passenger tracking system used by the Transportation Security Administration.
A whistleblower, a federal air marshal, said she was put on the list one day after she criticized Harris and her gaffes (pictured at left) in a Fox News interview.
Gabbard has since endorsed Trump for president.
New York Times vs. Article I, Article II
Nicholas Fondacaro, of the Media Research Center, tells AFN he was alarmed by a New York Times article criticizing the U.S. Constitution. The article calls the Constitution “dangerous” because Article II, which describes the Electoral College, allowed Donald Trump to win the White House.
“Trump owes his political ascent to the Constitution, making him a beneficiary of a document that is essentially antidemocratic and, in this day and age, increasingly dysfunctional," wrote Jennifer Szalai, who is a book critic for the liberal Times.
Not done with criticizing the Electoral College allowing a Trump presidency, Szalai goes on to criticize the historic document for Article II, which covers Supreme Court nominations. Trump used that constitutional authority to appoint three justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. Those justices were confirmed by U.S. senators per Article I, the Times writer points out, even though those senators represent “just 44 percent of the population.”
The writer’s legal argument is nothing more than political gaslighting, Fondacaro says, because there wouldn’t be a Times article criticizing the Constitution if the justices had upheld Roe.
“They're the ones that are supposedly for protecting the institutions of America, right?” he says. “It's an utter hypocrisy.”
Back in the Fox News interview, Turley said Democrats are wrong when they say “democracy” is on the ballot November 5.
“Free speech is on the ballot, not democracy,” he told the audience. “Free speech is on the ballot.”
