What Was the Message Shared by Charlie Kirk?

The liberty principle for this freedom Friday concerns freedom of speech. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution states, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” This amendment tells us that the government does not have power or authority to interfere with freedom of speech. It protects the right for Americans to express ideas and share information without interference from the government.

Yet, Charlie Kirk was shot last week because he said words that some people did not like. Those same people claim that words are the same as violence. They do not understand that words are words, and violent actions are violence.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025, is the first political assassination since those taking place in the 1960s – John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. Kirk’s assassination was traumatic for most Americans as well as people in other countries – particularly those who watched it happen. This assassination will be to high school students and college age young adults much like 9/11 or JFK’s assassination was for other generations. They will remember where they were when they learned of the assassination and what they were doing. Most of them will understand that Charlie Kirk was killed for his words of love, patriotism, and peace.

Since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, numerous politicians have amended how, when, and where they will express speech BECAUSE they are afraid that they will be assassinated. Some people believe that fear of expression of speech was the purpose behind the killing of Charlie Kirk. However, Kirk’s widow and other people believe that his assassination has only created a million more Charlie Kirks.

The message carried by Charlie Kirk, his widow, and Turning Point USA was all about patriotism and love of country, marriage and family, faith, and love of God. He was telling college age young adults to get married, have children, and go to church. Since this was his message, what sort of people would want to have him killed?

Why Was the U.S. Government Suppressing Speech and Press?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns suppression of speech and press by the U.S. government. According to an article by Gabe Kaminsky published in The Daily Signal, the Global Engagement Center (GEC) lost its congressional funding. The office was once housed within the State Department to “thwart disinformation and misinformation.” 

The GEC was founded in 2016 as a “product of an Obama-era executive order on counterterrorism,” but it “violated its mandate to work only overseas and devolved into a partisan enabler of speech suppression in the United States,” according to Kaminsky. Here is his explanation of how it happened.

Over the last two years, my investigative reporting in the Washington Examiner as well as that of Racket News journalist Matt Taibbi pulled back the curtain of the GEC’s ties to foreign and domestic nongovernmental organizations trying to defund news outlets they say peddle disinformation – including RealClear Politics.

My reporting showed that the GEC and the State Department-funded National Endowment for Democracy combined granted almost $1 million to the British Global Disinformation Index, which created a blacklist of U.S.-based websites that published content it determined to push adversarial narratives’ and the pressured advertisers to shut them down (think the Hunter Biden laptop story and COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis).

The GEC, moreover, was involved with the Election Integrity Partnership, a consortium of left-wing nonprofit groups, universities, and federal agencies that pressured Twitter and Facebook to remove GOP-aligned content in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election.

The GEC also bankrolled New York-based company NewsGuard, a “misinformation” tracker that, along with the Global Disinformation Index, has found itself at the center of a lawsuit brought by The Federalist, The Daily Wire, and the state of Texas against the GEC for allegedly funding an unconstitutional “censorship scheme” that suppressed voices on the right.

Taibbi, the former Rolling Stone writer, demonstrated that the GEC pressured social media platforms in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic to moderate extensive content, testifying to Congress in March 2023, “We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation ‘requests’ from every corner of government: the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CIA.”

In turn, these revelations and others culminated in a high-level pressure campaign in December that resulted in the GEC losing out on a one-year lifeline through a congressional spending package.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy joined President-elect Donald Trump in demanding that House Speaker Mike Johnson – who had initially brokered a controversial deal to allow the GEC to continue to receive more of your tax dollars – remove the pro-GEC provision. Once this powerful trio came out against more GEC funding, the nail was squarely in the coffin. It didn’t help Johnson that conservative lawmakers with clout in Trump World such as Dan Bishop, Trump’s pick for a high-ranking role at the Office of Management and Budget, fervently opposed the bill.

Soon, the bill was dead. And the GEC with it….

While the GEC is no more, the employees who helped lead the office over the years are being reassigned elsewhere in the U.S. government, likely within the State Department, the agency said in a recent court filing.

The GEC’s failure to win reauthorization is a further vindication of our reporting on its seemingly unlawful activities.

But make no mistake: We will be watching to see where the federal officials accused in court of facilitating “one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation” end up next on the taxpayers’ dime. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Who Is Jack Phillips?

My VIP for this week is Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado. He “has been targeted for refusing to make cakes celebrating same-sex marriage and transgender transitions,” according to Blaze News. The article continued: 

A Christian cake baker has finally defeated legal harassment from the LGBTQ+ movement after fighting in court for more than a decade.

Jack Philips was sued in 2012 for refusing to create a cake for a same-sex couple at his Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado and then later sued for refusing to create a cake celebrating a transgender transition. Attorneys for the Alliance Defending Freedom have defended Phillips for 12 years…

On Tuesday the Colorado Supreme Court dismissed the second lawsuit after saying that the attorney who filed the lawsuit did not follow the proper process to do so. Phillips won the first lawsuit in 2018 after a court found that officials acted with hostility against his faith.

Neither of the legal victories established Phillips’ constitutional right to free speech as a basis for dismissal.

The court’s decision leaves open the possibility that Phillips will be sued again. Until a court is willing to rule on a constitutional basis for free speech, Phillips and people who take a similar stand for freedom of religion and freedom of speech could face court cases. Kelsey Dallas at The Deseret News agreed with me. 

The Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in favor of Phillips left the door open for additional legal challenges, since it didn’t answer overarching questions about what should win out when religious freedom protections conflict with nondiscrimination protections for members of the LGBTQ community.

Instead, the ruling was focused on Colorado officials’ treatment of the Colorado baker. The court ruled 7-2 that officials had been unlawfully hostile about Phillips’ religious beliefs.

The Supreme Court again ruled in favor of a religious business owner in June 2023 in a case called 303 Creative. But that decision also didn’t fully resolve conflict over Phillips’ cakes, since it focused on business owners’ free speech rights and didn’t clearly define what types of products should be seen as expressive.

Nevertheless, Phillips’ attorney team felt that the 303 Creative ruling supported the Colorado baker’s position in the gender transition cake battle and kept fighting for that case to be dismissed, as it now has been.

Like the Supreme Court in 2018, the Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday did not address key questions about balancing LGBTQ rights with religious freedom.

If and when other cases such as that of Phillips or 303 Creative reaches the Supreme Court, I expect that the high court will eventually rule on the constitutionality of such cases. It seems reasonable to me that a freedom guaranteed by the Bill Rights carries more weight than a more recent “right.” However, I have no legal training and could be wrong!

Is Hate Speech or Misinformation Protected by the First Amendment?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday concerns the First Amendment guarantee of Freedom of Speech. Last week, Elon Musk and Donald Trump had a two-hour long discussion via X Spaces in which they discussed all kinds of information.

Prior to the actual conversation, Musk received a letter from Thierry Breton, European Union (EU) Internal Market Commissioner, a French citizen, and former CEO of France Telecom. Michael Barone (a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics) discussed the contents of the letter as well as its ramifications.

… The letter purports to remind Musk of the European Union’s Digital Services Act’s requirements of “all proportionate and effective mitigation measures” regarding “detrimental effects on civic discourse and public security.”

In other words, X must censor questions to and answers from an American presidential candidate and keep the EU informed of its censorship procedures.

What must be censored? “The amplification of content that promotes hatred, disorder, incitement to violence, or certain instances of disinformation.” Breton reminds Musk of “formal proceedings … already ongoing against X under the [Digital Services Act].”

Nice little digital company you’ve got there. Wouldn’t want anything to happen to it.

It would surprise America’s Founders not a little that the unelected head of a European multinational organization would feel entitled to demand the words of an American presidential candidate be censored and to be informed of the censorship tribunal’s procedures and decisions.

Some Americans, however, might not be surprised at all. They might think Breton is very much on the right track.

As one example, Barone used Washington Post reporter Cleve Wootson Jr’s question at a White House press briefing. Wootson wanted to know what the White House or Joe Biden was going to do about this “American issue.”

Another example used by Barone was the Team Biden enlisted “social media companies to suppress dissemination of The New York Post’s October 2020 story on Hunter Biden’s laptop.” One of the top players was Antony Blinken, who was then a Biden staff and is now Secretary of State. Blinken “organized the letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials or current CIA consultants charging that the laptop had ‘all the classic earmarks of a Russian intelligence operation.’” After Biden was inaugurated, we now know that Blinken’s letter was disinformation – “But it got him the secretary of state job for four years.”

The public can expect more of the same if Vice President Kamala Harris is elected this fall. “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy,” Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., Harris’ vice presidential candidate, told MSNBC in 2022.

Liberals tried to excuse Walz on the grounds that he was talking about spreading false information about the dates and procedures of elections, and the First Amendment does not preclude remedies for fraud and libel. But the decision-makers in such cases are supposed to be neutral courts, not partisan officials.

But it is long-settled constitutional law that the First Amendment does indeed prohibit censorship of what partisan officials may believe, sincerely or self-servingly, is hate speech or misinformation. On the contrary, the remedy for bad speech, as Thomas Jefferson advised people more than 200 years ago, is more and better speech.

And no one should be reassured that Walz actually does understand the First Amendment by his campaign cries of “mind your own damn business” directed against, among other things, banning books. But the only reference to banning books in recent political discourse has been the law of Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., barring sexually explicit books in school libraries from kindergarten to fourth grade.

 

Is the SPLC Being Used to Restrict Freedom of Speech?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday is freedom of speech, a right guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech….” The problem is that it is not Congress who is trying to destroy freedom of speech. According to Tyler O’Neil in an article in The Daily Signal, it is possible that the Biden administration is conspiring to limit the right of Americans to speak freely.

President Joe Biden’s White House has hosted staff and leadership of the Southern Poverty Law Center at least 11 times, and congressional Republicans want answers about whether the Department of Education has used the SPLC to demonize concerned parents. Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., Chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, sent a letter Monday to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona demanding all communications between his department and the SPLC, as well as all internal documents regarding the SPLC.

The Southern Poverty Law Center [SPLC] is notorious for branding mainstream conservative and Christian organizations as “hate groups” and placing them on a

“hate map” with Ku Klux Klan chapters.

“The SPLC has a track record of labeling anything or anyone they disagree with as ‘hate’ or ‘hate groups,’ which ironically cheapens real hate they claim to want to root out,” Comer told The Daily Signal this week in a written statement….

“These false labels and claims have been used in the private sector as a basis to discriminate against certain groups and we need to know if the Biden administration is relying on them as well,” Comer added. “I wrote to Secretary of Education Cardona to understand how extensively federal employees are using biased information that discriminates against Americans for their First Amendment protected political opinions.”

“The First Amendment is not a suggestion, and the Oversight Committee will continue to hold the Biden administration accountable for ignoring the Constitution to further a political agenda,” Comer concluded.

In his letter to Cardona, Commer announces that his committee “is investigating the extent to which the Southern Poverty Law Center influences federal employees performing their duties on behalf of taxpayers as well as input from federal officials that could affect SPLC decisions to designate groups.”

Comer requests information to further the investigation.

As I wrote in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC has leveraged its track record of suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy to develop the “hate map” it uses to smear enemies and raise money. Earlier this year, the SPLC placed parental rights organizations on the map, branding them “anti-student inclusion antigovernment extremist groups.”

In 2012, a terrorist used the SPLC’s map to target the Family Research Council for a mass shooting in Washington, DC. The SPLC condemned the attack but kept the conservative organization on its map….

Comer’s letter notes that “the SPLC has weaponized its designation of ‘hate group’ to target conservative persons, organizations, and non-profits who hold opposing viewpoints or policy positions. In 2019, a federal judge concluded that the SPLC’s ‘hate group’ label does not ‘depend upon objective data or evidence’ and described the designation as ‘an entirely subjective inquiry.’ Despite this subjective slant, SPLC’s labels have been used in the private sector as a basis for decisions to exclude partnerships with certain groups.”

Comer’s letter also notes that the SPLC added parental rights groups to the “hate map” only a few years after the Biden administration and the Department of Justice acquiesced to demands of the National School Boards Association to investigate parents and parents’ rights activists who had chosen to speak up at school board meetings throughout the country.”

“The committee is concerned and seeks to understand the extent of engagements, influence, and the impact of SPLC within your department as well as any steps you may be taking to mitigate against it,” Comer writes to the education secretary. “The American people have a right to know how extensively federal employees are utilizing or disseminating flawed and subjective information that effectively discriminates against them for their First Amendment protected political views.”

His letter requests that the agency hand over “all communications between the Department of Education and the Southern Poverty Law Center, its representatives, or other outside entities pertaining to SPLC,” along with all of the department’s internal communications pertaining to the SPLC, its “hate map,” and its “antigovernment group” designation of any parental rights groups as ‘antigovernment groups’ or its placement of any parental rights groups on its ‘hate map.’” …

It sounds like the Department of Education is trying to make an end run around Congress. They know that Congress will not pass a law to infringe on Americans’ right to speak their thoughts freely, and they also know that POTUS cannot take the action by an executive order. So, their only path is to go around Congress.

What Is Freedom of Speech?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday concerns the First Amendment guarantee to free speech: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech….” I noticed that the amendment does not tell us what is meant by speech, free speech, or if all types of speech are protected.

L. S. Vygotsky (1896-1934), a Russian theorist, recognized that our human ancestors used tools in their efforts to master their environment and to survive. He proposed that humans also created “psychological tools” with which to master their own behavior (William Crain, Theories of Development, 2016). Some of the first tools were notched sticks and knotted ropes when they needed to remember how many of whatever there were. They later made other mental tools, such as maps to return to a certain place or to plan future moves.

Vygotsky called the human-made tools signs. Some of the most important signs used by human beings are speech, writing, and numbering systems. Speech serves numerous functions as it helps us to communicate. Words symbolize things and events, and speech helps us to share past experiences and to plan for future events. Writing and numbering systems help us to keep permanent records of information.

This means that we should first recognize that speech is a way for us to communicate our thoughts and feelings to other people, to share our experiences, and to plan for the future. The First Amendment guarantees that the government shall not abridge our right to speak freely. This means that the government cannot restrict, hinder, or restrain our ability to put our thoughts and feelings into words.

Lawyers.com defines freedom of speech as something more than words coming out of a mouth. 

As humans, we have many different ways of expressing our thoughts, opinions, and beliefs. While the text of the First Amendment refers to “freedom of speech,” courts have recognized that this right includes many different kinds of expression, including

:

·         Spoken and written words, including social media posts and comments,

·         Theater, dance, visual art, movies, TV shows, videos, and video games,

·         Actions that convey a message (known as “symbolic speech”) like burning a flag,

·         Clothes that express an opinion or demonstrate faith, from T-shirts with slogans to religious headscarves,

·         Signing a petition, and

·         Money, in the form of independent spending related to political campaigns (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010)).

History.com explains that freedom of speech is “the right to express opinions without government restraint.” It is “a democratic ideal that dates back to ancient Greece” where free speech was pioneered as a democratic principle. The site continues by explaining that freedom of speech in the United States is guaranteed, but it can be limited. “In a series of landmark cases, the U.S. Supreme Court over the years has helped to define what types of speech are – and aren’t – protected under U.S. law.” According to this site, the following speech is not protected:  

·       Obscene material such as child pornography,

·         Plagiarism of copyrighted material,            

·         Defamation (libel and slander), and

·         True threats.                                                                                                                                               

This brings us to the vote on the privileged resolution in the U.S. Houseof Representatives to censure Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan’s 12^th District on Tuesday night. The measure passed the House by a vote of 234 yeas to 188 nays. Twenty-two (22) Democrats voted for the resolution, four (4) Republicans voted against it, four (4) members voted present, and seven (7) members did not vote. 

Tlaib was censured for her statements criticizing Israel for its response to the terrorist attack by Hamas on October 7. In the attack, people of all ages from infants to elderly were killed in a gruesome manner by the terrorists. Tlaib was also criticized because she appeared at rallies hosted by anti-Israel groups, such as Jewish Voices for Peace, in Washington, D.C.

In addition, Tlaib was censured for using the statement “From the river to the sea.” This is a statement used by Muslims, terrorists, and others that means death to all Jews. Tlaib claimed in a tweet that it is “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate.” However, Tlaib’s words and actions served to bring out anger and hate against Jews.

 In keeping with the topic of this post, I must ask a question: Did Tlaib cross the line when she made her statements and participated in the protests? She probably did not if she were a regular citizen. Even though Tlaib is a Palestinian-American with family living in Gaza, she is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives where she is held to a higher standard. Her words and actions were not appropriate for the position she holds. Her colleagues in the House did not infringe on Tlaib’s freedom of speech. They merely told her by their vote that her statements and actions were not appropriate for a member of the House.                                                                     

As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I often hear counsel from leaders to represent the Church of Jesus Christ well. If I were to cross the line into saying words or taking actions that would be embarrassing to the Church of Jesus Christ or its leaders, I could be censured – given a warning, having some privileges withdrawn, or losing my membership. I am to be a good representative of Jesus Christ and should speak and act as one. This is the same expectation of Tlaib – to speak and act as a member of the House of Representatives should.

What Does Free Speech Mean?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday concerns freedom of speech, particularly censorship by big tech platforms. Paul Sacca at The Blaze reported that the Supreme Court agreed to accept “a landmark free speech case that could have major ramifications for censorship by big tech platforms.” The Supreme Court is hearing a decision made by a lower court that favored the Biden administration. 

“At this time in the history of our country, what the Court has done, I fear, will be seen by some as giving the Government a green light to use heavy-handed tactics to skew the presentation of views on the medium that increasingly dominates the dissemination of news,” Alito wrote in a 5-page opinion. “That is most unfortunate.”

The case, known as Murthy v. Missouri, according to CBS News, “stems from a suit brought by five social media users and the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana. They alleged a host of federal agencies and officials coerced social media companies to suppress speech on their platforms in violation of the First Amendment.” The following came from the Supreme Court on Friday:

This application concerns an unprecedented injunction installing the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana as the superintendent of the Executive Branch’s communications with and about social-media platforms – including senior White House officials’ speech addressing some of the most salient public issues of the day. The lower courts held that federal officials had transformed the private platforms’ content-moderation decisions into state action and violated the First Amendment by urging platforms to remove COVID-19 misinformation, highlighting the risk of disinformation from foreign actors, and responding to the platforms’ inquiries about matters of public health. The courts then entered a sweeping preliminary injunction governing thousands of federal officials’ and employees’ speech concerning any content posted on any social media platform by anyone. That injunction flouts bedrock principles of Article III, the First Amendment, and equity….

The case notes that “two lower courts found to be a ‘coordinated campaign’ by high-level federal officials to suppress the expression of disfavored views on important public issues.”

The case claims that “popular social media companies had either blocked their use of the companies’ platforms or had downgraded their posts on a host of controversial subjects, including ‘the COVID-19 lab leak theory, pandemic lockdowns, vaccine side effects, election fraud, and the Hunter Biden laptop story.’”

The case accuses federal government officials of being the ones who were “pulling the strings,” meaning that these officials “coerced, threatened, and pressured [the] social media platforms to censor [them].”

The Court of Appeals found “the district court was correct in its assessment – ‘unrelenting pressure’ from certain government officials likely ‘had the intended result of suppressing millions of protected free speech postings by American citizens.’”

 

Are You Guilty of Trying to Take Away Freedom of Speech?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns the First Amendment’s guaranteed right to freedom of speech. There was a big win for freedom of speech recently, and it deserves to be celebrated. According to Mary Margaret Olohan at The Daily Signal, the was a “resounding victory for freedom of speech in Vermont. She wrote the following about the case.

A Vermont school district punished a father and his daughter for speaking out against a biological male in the girls’ locker room. Now, The Daily Signal has learned, the district has settled with the Allen Family in what its legal team is hailing as a “resounding victory.” That settlement requires that the Vermont School Boards Insurance Trust pay $125,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees and costs to Travis Allen and Jessica Allen, on behalf of their daughter, Blake Allen, and their attorneys with the Alliance Defending Freedom. Under the settlement, the district will reinstate Travis Allen, the father, as middle school soccer coach, and will scrub any records of discipline against Travis Allen and daughter Blake from school records.

Further, the settlement requires the Orange Southwest School District Board and school officials named in the Allens’ lawsuit to remove any content posted online by the school related to the locker room business as well as from the bulletin board or boards at Randolph Union Middle/High School displaying “love and support” messages to the trans-identifying student….

In their lawsuit filed in October, the Allens said that they “were punished for expressing their view on a matter of profound public concern: whether a teenage male who ‘identifies’ as female should be permitted to change in a girls’ locker room, regardless of the discomfort experienced by the girls in that room.”

“In objecting to a male being in the room while the girls are changing, Travis and Blake each made comments underscoring that the trans-identifying student is in fact a male, including by using male pronouns,” said the lawsuit, … “Indeed, their view of the student’s maleness was foundational to their opinions on appropriate use of the locker room.”

“Yet, their remarks were too much for Defendants’ transgender orthodoxy – Travis was deemed to have ‘misgendered’ the student, while Blake was found guilty of ‘harassment’ and ‘bullying’ – so Defendants disciplined both of them.” …

Several of Blake’s fellow female students who spoke with The Daily Signal said they asked the student to leave, but said the student did not immediately do so. The girls said that the student stood in the corner and looked at them while they were changing, causing them to feel uncomfortable.

We should celebrate this settlement as a huge victory. Every American has the right to speak as they please as long as they do not slander another person – or yell “FIRE!” in a crowded theater.

 

Is Freedom of Speech in Danger?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday is the First Amendment freedom of speech. It is a fundamental right in America to say whatever we like or to refrain from saying something that we do not choose to say.

A freedom of speech case is currently at the Supreme Court where the justices recently heard the oral arguments in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis case. This case is Lorie Smith, a graphic designer in Colorado, who refused to create websites with messages that conflict with her Christian faith beliefs – such as gay wedding celebrations.

David Harsanyi at The Daily Signal recently published an article about this case. He wrote that the case “gives the Supreme Court the opportunity to strengthen the right to free expression” and “fix its useless decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.” According to Harsanyi, the Court ruled in that case that “the government can level debilitating fines against Christian businesses” IF “bureaucrats didn’t openly convey any animus toward their victims.” His article continued: 

David Cole, national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which has come a long way since defending the Nazis of Skokie on neutral principle grounds, wrote an op-ed published Monday in The New York Times. Its headline before being edited post-publication: “The First Amendment Is Not a License to discriminate.”

Why? Because otherwise, “interior decorators, landscape architects, tattoo parlors, sign painters and beauty salons, among countless other businesses whose services contain some expressive element, would all be free to hang out signs refusing to serve Muslims, women, the disabled, African Americans or any other group.”

Who Is Lorie Smith?

My VIP for this week is Lorie Smith, a graphic and website designer from Colorado. Her case, 303 Creative vs. Colorado, was heard today by the U.S. Supreme Court. The case is against her, but it is also against all Americans. According to Mary Margaret Olohan at The Daily Signal, Smith said the following: 

I am a graphic and website designer from Colorado. I want to create and design for weddings. And I want to do that consistent with my faith.

But the state of Colorado is censoring and compelling my speech and forcing me to create custom artwork, custom expression, that goes against the core of who I am and what I believe. So the court heard the case today. I’m hopeful that the Supreme Court will stand to protect everyone’s right to create and speak consistent with their own beliefs.

After the hearing, Smith reported that she was feeling “incredible, I’m just so grateful for this opportunity.” She continued, “My hope and prayer is that the court will protect everyone’s right to speak freely, whether your views are similar to mine on marriage or perhaps different, the right to speak freely is guaranteed to each of us, and I am hoping the court protects that right.”

Alliance Defending Freedom represented Smith, and the president of the organization is Kristen Waggoner, who made the following statement: She said that Smith’s case “involves whether all of us have the right of free speech. Colorado has taken the position that it can compel all kinds of artists and speakers to say things they don’t believe. That includes Lorie.” Waggoner continued, “I hope the court issues a broad decision that protects all speakers. Many states have public accommodation laws and some states have up to 20 different categories in those laws. They’re sweeping, and a number of government officials are using them to compel people to say things that they just don’t believe.”

According to Waggoner, the case not only threatens the personal rights of Americans, but it is “actually a threat to the principle of fundamental government and allowing authoritarian governments to tell people what ideas are worthy of celebration.”

Colorado seems to be intent on suing artists who want to practice according to their religious beliefs. A few years ago, there was a case between Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips and the State of Colorado because Phillips declined to create a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding due to his religious beliefs. His case went to the Supreme Court also, and he won the case – only to be taken to sued again as soon as the first case was settled.

Phillips claimed that Smith’s case, Phillips’ case, and other similar battles are “about the government’s responsibility to respect the right of each of us.

What Is at Stake in the 303 Creative v. Elenis Case?

Lorie Smith is a Christian graphic artist who owns 303 Creative. She designs custom websites and loves to use her talents to help others. Her decision to create custom wedding websites that are consistent with her Christian beliefs got her in legal trouble in Colorado. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case 303 Creative v. Elenis on Monday.

The issue at stake is whether an artist has the legal ability to decide how they will use their skills and talents. An artist should have the right to determine which issues they will support. However, the State of Colorado and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

According to Lathan Watts at The Daily Signal, Smith decides what she will custom-design “based on her beliefs, the message being requested, and her own expertise.” She creates only custom designs, and each design “must be consistent with her faith.” Smith is like other artists in that she does not “promote every message requested.” As examples, “she can’t create art that promotes certain political messages or casinos. She also can’t design anything that is un-American, degrades people who identify as LGBT, or disrespects someone’s faith.”

Colorado is seeking to force Smith and all other artists “to forfeit their right to free speech as a cost of doing business.”         

As specious as that claim is, its tenuous link to credulity is further weakened by the fact that the state only imposes this Faustian bargain on those who disagree with the state’s current preferred message on marriage. Its position is clear: Speak the state’s message or don’t speak at all.

Suppression of viewpoints that conflict with the government’s is what characterizes every tyrannical regime.

Coerced speech and censorship are two sides of the same unconstitutional coin. Even in the darkest times of American history, when Jim Crow laws were enforced and state governments attempted to crush the civil rights movement, freedom of speech exercised peacefully in marches and protests eventually pierced hearts and prompted the American conscience to finally live up to its promise “that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.”

The 303 Creative v. Elenis case is an excellent opportunity for the Supreme Court to remember its promise made at the time of the Obergefell v. Hodges decision. The promise was that those who disagreed would not lose the right to speak consistent with their beliefs that marriage is between a husband and wife.

After all, this case transcends the marriage issue. It’s about whether the government can purge people (and their ideas) from the marketplace simply because the government doesn’t like their beliefs. We are right to expect and demand that government treat people equally under the law by protecting everyone’s right to free speech.

If Smith wins the case at the Supreme Court, all Americans will win with her. If she loses, we all lose. According to Watts, the question “What kind of country do we strive to be?” is at the heart of this case. 

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.

Why Should We Reject Indoctrination for Our Children?

            The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday concerns freedom of speech, particularly the freedom to NOT have certain words forced upon our children. From the experience of numerous people, we can only assume that the LGBT movement is much like the critical race theory (CRT) movement in that they want to force our children to learn information that is opposed by parents. In other words, both movements want to indoctrinate the children and by making parents irrelevant or an obstacle to their goal. Tim Graham explained it as follows. 

Just like the cause of critical race theory, the parents are not simply irrelevant; they are seen as an impediment to essential progress.

The other words [transgender, cisgender, nonbinary, and consent from a previous paragraph] sound ridiculous in a science class. They are at war with science. They are at war with common sense. And they are at war with religious Americans who feel that God made the human race male and female, not some unscientific blur.

The LGBT lobby does not believe in democracy or debate. They believe that all dissent is “hate speech,” and any opposition to their treacherous goals leads to youth suicide and emotional torture. They fight dirty, always assuming the worst of their opponents and always engaging in character assassination.

They can count on their staunchest allies for support – from Hollywood’s cultural shapers and the “news” media.

            Graham claims that proof of his statement is “in the way journalists have mangled and maligned a bill in Florida to prevent teachers from pushing their gender-bending ideology on children in kindergarten through the third grade.” They refer to the legislature as the “don’t say gay” bill despite the fact that the bill does not say what they say that it says. Graham said that such people do not consider an abortion at nine months to be “horrific,” but “failing to suggest to children that they might be gender fluid is a tragedy.”           

            After citing several news stories [from “CBS Evening News,” ABC’s “The View,” and ABC’s “World News Tonight,” Graham emphasized what was left out of the news articles.

Notice that no one says that parents can’t teach their young children at home about the birds and the bees, or, in this case, how birds can be bees, if that’s how they want to identify themselves. It’s mandatory that all children in schools be taught one ideology.      

I know that when I was a student, I would have been a nightmare for an indoctrinator. I would have fiercely spoken up with opposing arguments. That makes it seem obvious why the LGBT lobby thinks it’s so important to push their garbage on grade-school children, before they can offer the withering critique it deserves.

            This brings us back to the counsel from child-rearing specialists who have for many years encouraged parents to teach their children about sex from infancy. Parents are urged to use correct words to define the various parts of the body and to not shy away from questions asked by children.

            One word of caution is that parents should not assume that a two- or three-year-old child is ready to learn the complete story about babies and how they are made. Nor are they ready to hear how men can be women and vice versa. Our children come to us in innocence, and they should be allowed to remain innocent and pure for as long as possible.

What Is the Lesson Being Taught by Vilifying Joe Rogan?

            The cancel culture in America has gotten out of line and has been for years. Conservatives have been cancelled and made “unpersons” for numerous years. Since Whoopi Goldberg made her statement about the holocaust not being about race and was suspended for two weeks, the Left has noticed that cancel culture is a bad idea. However, the Left operates on the principle that conservatives deserve to be cancelled, but liberals do not. In fact, people do not have to be conservatives to deserve to be cancelled. They just have to fail to toe the liberal line.

Case in point is Joe Rogan, whose great sin was “misinformation” about COVID-19. I do not listen to him, but Rogan does podcasts with millions of listeners. Liberals, such as rocker Neil Young and CNN’s Brian Stelter, say that Spotify should cancel Rogan’s contract for having diverse voices on his program. They state that conservatives – and Jews – should accept Whoopi Goldberg’s apology for saying that the holocaust was not about race, but they refuse to accept Rogan’s statement that he would have guests with more diverse opinions about COVID-19. They simply continue to Rogan’s hole deeper by digging for his statements from past podcasts. The latest complaint is that Rogan said too many racist things many years ago.

Ben Shapiro thinks that the charge of “misinformation” is “rather vague” considering all that we have been told about the coronavirus over the past three years by public health officials. He listed the following statements given by public health authorities: “lockdowns were effective, cloth masks worked, masking of children was necessary, vaccines prevented transmission, natural immunity was inferior to vaccine immunity, and the virus could not have originated with a Chinese lab leak.” We know that all these statements have been reversed. Are they “misinformation”? However, the problem is much bigger than Rogan or “misinformation,” according to Shapiro. 

When Spotify didn’t deplatform Rogan over that charge, the rationale for his demanded deplatforming morphed: Now Rogan was a racist for saying the N-word while quoting rap lyrics years ago. After a left-wing activist group promoted a compendium video of Rogan using such language, Rogan apologized again.

But apologies aren’t the point. No one actually thinks Rogan is a racist. For the radical left, you either become a tool in their arsenal or you become an object lesson. And Rogan has now become an object lesson.

He has become an object lesson for two main reasons. First, Rogan has steadfastly refused to toe the party line with regard to President Joe Biden; ire broke out against Rogan in 2020 for the crime of noting that Biden appeared “mentally compromised” in the middle of an election that the media had declared a turning point in the future of democracy.

Second, Rogan has hosted guests who do not simply repeat the nostrums of the left on a wide variety of issues. That’s why the left has demanded that Spotify remove old episodes of his show entirely: Alternative voices must not be herd, and Rogan has the unfortunate habit of talking to such voices for hours at a time and letting them say their piece.

            Shapiro found “several takeaways from the Rogan dust-up.” “First, corporate overlords are absolutely gutless…. Second, the media are not interested in freedom of speech as a principle. They’re interested in freedom of speech for themselves and no one else…. Third, apologizing to insincere radical-left alligators is always a mistake. Their goal is not a conversation. Their goal is destruction….”

            In conclusion, Shapiro stated, “Rogan will survive all of this.” Spotify may pay “him a bag of cash to leave, and he takes his audience and goes elsewhere, tanking Spotify’s stock price on his way out the door.” Shapiro said that this is what Spotify deserves. However, the lesson is not meant for Rogan. It “will be learned by those who don’t have Rogan’s audience: Shut up or face the whirlwind. And most will shut up.”

            The freedom to speak as we wish as Americans is in danger. Cancel culture comes for anyone who speaks anything other than the Democrat Party line. Questions or diverse opinions are unwanted. Just shut up or repeat the party line – sounds like communism to me.