A new poll from Pew Research shows that a growing number of Americans, mostly people on the left, no longer support First Amendment protections for free speech.
This is not surprising if you have been paying attention to what has been happening on college campuses for the last several years. Progressive students today think nothing of shouting down campus speakers with whom they disagree.
This type of thinking has now bled over into our national politics as Democrats regularly seek to silence their opponents.
Alex Berenson writes at Substack:
The scariest poll you’ll see this summer
A majority of Americans – and an overwhelming number of Democrats – no longer support First Amendment protections for free speech.
The government should restrict “false” information online, even if doing so blocks people from “publishing or accessing information,” 55 percent of Americans said in a large poll released Thursday. Only 42 percent disagreed.
The antipathy to free speech represents a sea change in attitudes in just five years. It is driven by a powerful new hostility to First Amendment rights on the left.
In an identically worded poll five years ago, Democrats and Republicans favored free speech online by roughly 3 to 2 margins. Today, Republicans still favor the First Amendment by about that much. But Democrats have turned against it by even more.
The support for government suppression of “false” speech clearly violates the First Amendment, which does not distinguish between “false” and legal speech, or online or traditional platforms for speech and debate.
How could we expect anything different when Democrats see Adam Schiff as a leader?
Democrat Adam Schiff is mad that certain online platforms aren’t censoring free speech as much as he thinks they shouldpic.twitter.com/gT15PdoRkW
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 26, 2023
That’s just one example. There are many more just like it.
We cannot allow the left to destroy our God-given rights.
