STICKS AND STONES

The war over words.

- BY LOUIS MENAND

In the debate over speech freedoms, we'd do well to remember that any standard we apply might be applied to us.

The United States is in a speech war. Normally, human beings fight over money or land or love, but that is not what is happening today. Today, people are fighting over words. People’s lives are being damaged and sometimes destroyed not for something they did but for something they said. We live in a society of doxing, trolling, cancelling, sanctioning, slandering, deplat-forming, defunding, persecuting, prosecuting, firing, and sometimes killing over the expression of an opinion. A big part of the craziness is that some of the people going to war over words are casting themselves as champions of free speech. It’s the people they are trying to silence, they claim, who are the enemies.

The lord of misrule here is the person you would expect. On January 20th, his first day back in office, Donald Trump issued an executive order titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” It accused the Biden Administration of chilling speech it disagreed with and announced that

It is the policy of the United States to:

(a) secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech;

(b) ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen;

(c) ensure that no taxpayer resources are used to engage in or facilitate any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen;

(d) identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to censorship of protected speech.