Now the Left cares about free speech again

Because there is a silver lining for most things in life, maybe there is also one for ABC's craven (if brief) suspension, under thuggish government pressure, of Jimmy Kimmel's late-night talk show.

- Bret Stephens

To wit: Now the Left is once again all but unanimous in wanting to defend free speech.

That hasn't always been the case in recent years. It wasn't the case when, a day before Kimmel's suspension, Amy Klobuchar called on Congress to prevent violence like Charlie Kirk's murder by cracking down on speech online. "I'm not for censorship, but I do think that more has to be done online," said the Democratic senator from Minnesota. Sentences that begin "I'm not for censorship, but ... " are usually calls for censorship.

It wasn't the case this spring when Democrats in the Colorado legislature sought to criminalise some speech that "misgendered" or "deadnamed" transgender children, including custody threats to parents who refused to use their child's preferred pronouns.

It wasn't the case in 2023 when a RealClear Opinion Research poll found that three-quarters of Democrats believe government has a responsibility to limit "hateful" or inaccurate social media posts, as compared with roughly half of Republicans.

It wasn't the case when, in 2021, MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski asked, with clear relish, whether social media companies shouldn't be "open to lawsuits" for publishing what she and the government deemed to be "misinformation" on the Covid vaccines.