The First Amendment of the United States Constitution claims the right to freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition. However, the United States has had issues with censorship for hundreds of years. Recently, there have been debates on both sides of the political spectrum on whether or not Americans truly have the right to speak their mind. If both our current and recent administrations advocate for protecting freedom of speech but rescind their approval and limit the right later on, to whom does freedom of speech really apply?
Politicians should remember that the general consensus regarding free speech limitations should be when people are endangered, and not when they or their party feels that limitations are convenient. Defunding or censoring media deemed ‘biased’ goes against the First Amendment, and limitations of free speech indicate an authoritarian government, no matter which political party initiates the limitations.
According to the White House, freedom of speech from the First Amendment is “essential to the success of our republic,” and the American people should be able to “speak freely in the public square without Government interference”. However, less than four months after the White House’s statement about protecting freedom of speech, they announced that they will repress the freedom, “[ensuring] that Federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage.” This led to the defunding of NPR and PBS months later.The hypocrisy of this encapsulates just how far the United States has backtracked in terms of giving its citizens freedom and not swaying towards a dictatorship. It is “freedom of speech for all”, until someone’s opinion differs from the masses. That should never be the case, especially in a country whose First Amendment says that its people should have the right to say what they please. Because the First Amendment does not list exceptions for freedom of speech, the government’s censorship of speaking on certain political figures adds to the hypocrisy.
Following the assassination of conservative political commentator Charlie Kirk, United States Attorney General Pam Bondi said to The Kate Miller Podcast, “There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie in our society”. For a prominent political figure to make up exceptions for freedom of speech that does not exist in the amendment shows that they actually disagree with what President Trump said about preserving freedom of speech. The current administration is not the only administration that has limited freedom of speech, with our past administration also censoring what Americans could say.
According to the Judiciary House Committee Republicans, the Biden Administration “targeted” satire, true information, books and social media. This includes Big Tech companies changing their content moderation policies after former President Biden took office and the censoring of satirical COVID-19 content on Facebook in July of 2021. However, the United States Constitution does not list any of what the government defined as being limited as against freedom of speech rights. If freedom of press is a “pillar of democracy”, according to the former president, such limitations would not have occurred, especially because the amendment does not state differences in ideology as a reason to censor the media.
With both the country’s past and current administrations barring the right to a freedom of speech when the amendment did not call for it, it is clear to see a trend in governments limiting the right when it is convenient for them.
All in all, the right to freedom of speech reflects a commonly debated subject in American politics. While political figures from both sides say that they agree with the right to an unlimited freedom of speech with the unspoken exception of dangerous speech, they often backtrack and limit media that disagrees with the ideas of their political parties, which the First Amendment does not call for. It is imperative that Americans have the right to say what they want without penalties as long as it does not threaten the safety of others. This exists as a suggestion by the Constitution, yet Americans still face issues with censorship. The first step to a true agreement on whether or not Americans should have the right to a freedom of speech would be for both parties to acknowledge the discrepancies between advocating for the freedom and truly allowing it.
