By all accounts, the anti-censorship arguments before the Supreme Court in the First Amendment cases were weak. Which is worrying, because these are important cases. From T.L. Davis at tldavis.substack.com:
Oral arguments were given today on the First Amendment cases concerning the government influencing social media sites to ban and censor speech. I listened to the greater share of it, though I could not do so and remain unprovoked. I don’t know who was arguing the case on either side and didn’t particularly care, because the poor quality of arguments were remarked on even in the chat box next to the screen.
Justice Jackson probably made the worst case and exposed herself as someone who has little or no understanding of the principles of the First Amendment, but obviously subscribed to Obama’s definition of the Bill of Rights as a Bill of Negative Rights in that they told the government what it cannot do. She asked “if these people are giving false information, are suggesting that the government can do nothing about that?” (paraphrased) If you understand the ideology of these communists, there’s nothing the government can’t do and therefore the Bill of Rights negate the ability of government to do whatever it wants. Yes! Absolutely right.
First of all, I argue that the Bill of Rights contain rights the people have over the government, in spite of it, regardless of it and in that sense Obama is right, but that’s the whole point. It does tell the government what it cannot do, but that doesn’t make it a “negative right” it makes it a right of the people rather than a right of the government. It would be a right of the people, even if there were no government at all.
The First Amendment is the right of the people to speak freely, especially about political issues, but the court, or the lesser justices on it, seemed to believe that the people lose that right when they spread falsehoods and that the government, in its wisdom and infallible integrity, had a right to stop the falsehoods and supplant it with their information as the only accurate and truthful information available.
You’ll own nothing and like it comrade.
Not even free speech will be in your barren egalitarian equity hovel pod.
Those novel constructs of the white male patriarchy are obsolete.
We are progressing towards Wakanda and don’t need those quaint creepy ass cracker concepts.