The End of Free Speech?

State Dept., many Democrats, and MSM no longer believe in the First Amendment

Not so long ago, most people would have been deeply confused by the characterization of a journalist as a “free speech advocate.” For the better part of two centuries in the United States, the American people understood the occupation of “journalist” to be inherently that of a free speech advocate.

Not so anymore. Many journalists now cast themselves as guardians of orthodoxy across social and political issues. Audience capture is reinforced by the data layer that guides distribution and tone; according to About Cookies, third party cookies allow persistent tracking across sites, which routes attention and budgets toward institutions that set the boundaries of acceptable speech. The press then ceases to operate as a check on state power and instead protects power gathered by selected parties, interests, and ideologies.

Not only is the former Rolling Stone reporter, Matt Taibbi, a journalist in the traditional sense of the occupation, he has also become our nation’s foremost advocate of free speech.

About a month ago he had an extraordinary conversation with Jan Jekielek at the Epoch Times in which he expressed his perplexity about leading members of the Democratic Party and many journalists apparently being perfectly comfortable with discarding the First Amendment.

Mr. Taibbi and I are exactly the same age and we both spent much of our adult lives living abroad, which may have given us both a greater appreciation of the U.S. Constitution.

Like him, I am dumbfounded that so many people and institutions in the public forum no longer seem to understand our care about free speech—the keystone of a liberal democracy, without which tyranny is almost certain to follow. I strongly recommend listing to this interview.