Do Americans Have Freedom of Speech?

            The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday is the First Amendment right to freedom of speech. The freedom to say or write whatever we choose is guaranteed to all Americans, yet this right has been curtailed by various individuals, groups, or companies in the United States. In many of the cases, taxpayer funds are used to pay for limiting the right to share thoughts and feelings freely. Jack Denton wrote the following in his article on this topic: 

Woke academics and Democratic Party loyalists are using taxpayer dollars to police the internet and suppress the voices of Biden administration critics. 

In the 2020 election cycle, the deep state and Silicon Valley worked tirelessly to limit the reach of conservatives on social media platforms. Today, the departments of Homeland Security and State are supporting the same cabal’s efforts to police social media platforms during the midterm election campaign. 

In early September, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in his state, released emails that indicate collaboration between President Joe Biden’s executive branch and Silicon Valley to censor Americans online. The emails show that more than 45 officials at various federal agencies and numerous White House staffers are in regular conversation with social media companies about removing “undesirable” content from their platforms—content coming from the administration’s political opposition.

But a private sector progressive operatives group is also pitching in, funded by millions of dollars in grants from DHS and the State Department. The group—the Election Integrity Partnership—has a proven record of limiting the reach of conservative voices on social media platforms. 

On Sept. 30, Just the News released a report documenting how the Election Integrity Partnership, a private consortium, worked throughout the 2020 election cycle to flag social media accounts or posts that allegedly propagated misinformation. Working tirelessly, the group focused on posts from “right-leaning blue-check influencers” and flagged more than 4,800 URLs that were shared more than 22 million times on Twitter.

The group’s politically charged work was funded through federal grants. The constitutionality of this public-private partnership is questionable. But this hasn’t stopped the Election Integrity Partnership from raking in millions in additional grant money since the 2020 election. 

Now, flush with federal cash and equipped with improved methods of censorship, the Election Integrity Partnership is wreaking havoc with conservatives’ use of social media in the 2022 midterms. 

Denton has much more in his article. However, we can see from the above information that taxpayers’ funds are being used to keep essential information from them. Even worse, members of the Biden administration and employees of government agencies are working with private companies to control the information that Americans see.

This behavior borders on being unconstitutional because the First Amendment forbids the federal government from prohibiting the ability for Americans to communicate with each other. The Fourteenth Amendment extended this prohibition to state and local governments. I know that conservative views are being suppressed because the page views for my blog dropped to one-fourth the number before Joe Biden was inaugurated as POTUS.

The Founders wanted Americans to have full opportunity to study political information and to make informed decisions. Democrats and leftist organizations do everything in their power to take this freedom away from Americans. They take these actions to affect elections and to retain power. Free speech is essential to maintaining freedom and liberty. This behavior is one more sign that our American way of life is in danger of being overthrown.