Pushing free speech – where?

An appeals court has reversed a lower court ruling that a Wisconsin mother defamed a teacher of her children, and the school district, in a social media post in 2022. Calling her “Woke” and sarcastically a “White savior” because of what was being taught and noting that the teacher was also the school’s DEI coordinator was just an opinion and vague enough to not merit a charge of defamation.

Scarlett Johnson, the mom, said the lawsuit was intended to intimidate her and others, especially members of the Wisconsin chapter of Moms for Liberty. We would tend to agree, given that it has taken three years to get to this point.

Although Mrs. Johnson was aided by volunteers, donors, and the MFL organization, most Americans do not have the financial wherewithall to fight such a protracted legal battle. And have to give up, or suffer even more. There is no doubt that just in recent memory, there are thousands of Americans who have chosen not to speak out on matters like this for fear of just this sort of thing.

It is not just government-run schools and DEI advocates and the like who try to intimidate and even punish people for speaking out.

In the same news page was a headline about how a court has (at least temporarily) reinstated a professor at the University of South Dakota for calling Charlie Kirk a Nazi. The professor posted the remark about Kirk just hours after Kirk’s murder. Hundreds of alumni and students and South Dakota voters immediately screamed loudly about the professor’s posting online, and with support of the state board of regents and the governor himself, the professor was suspended and the process to fire him started.

Conservative Republicans in South Dakota seem to be no different (when it comes to free speech issues) than so-called Progressive Democrats in Wisconsin. This is of course not limited to the Midwest: we can find hundreds of examples in the last decade of such onflicts. Are there differences? Certainly, as far as employment, position, location, and many other things.

But to lovers of liberty, this all seems to be rather inconsequential. We either have our God-given right to speak freely protected across the board, or we do not. Both of the old political parties (and their affiliates and adherents) claim to respect and stand for the First Amendment’s protection of free speech (in all its forms) but their actions demonstrate otherwise.

In the Fifty States, where more and more States seem equally divided between the two old parties (at least as far as those voting and active), the two resemble each other more and more in their positions and their tactics. For both of them, free speech is essentially a political football. A weapon to be used against their opponents.

Our concern, as lovers of liberty, is that the two political wings which together run DC and reach more and more into our daily lives, will come to a political compromise on free speech. One that will take the worse from both sides. A situation in which their bought-and-paid-for judges will give both sides what they want: a muzzle on Americans’ speaking out against any of them. And for anything that they dislike.

Pushing free speech into the realm of “protection” only if no one is offended, nobody says anything that might be construed as mean or nasty or contradicting the pronouncements of those in power.

Your thoughts, dear reader?

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