Barack Obama, Elena Kagan & the Attack on Free Speech

President Barack Obama lamented the spread of technology and information this weekend as a “pressure” on our democracy.

And with iPods and iPads; and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it’s putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy.”

That’s laughable coming from a guy whose meteoric rise from junior Senator to the White House was largely helped by the 24 hour news cycle and a campaign that mastered new media opportunities.  But its not the first time he has used a commencement speech to warn that information and differing views are a threat to our democracy.

In a blunt caution to political friend and foe, President Barack Obama said Saturday that partisan rants and name-calling under the guise of legitimate discourse pose a serious danger to America’s democracy, and may incite “extreme elements” to violence.

Its not “information” Obama fears is a threat to our democracy, its his inability to control that information and censor what he disagrees with.  In just a few years from candidate to President, Barack Obama has amassed a lengthy history of trying to stifle free speech.

• Candidate Obama encouraged his supporters to “get in [the] face” of anyone who disagreed with him during the 2008 Presidential campaign.
• The Obama White House encouraged your friends and neighbors to turn you in if you disagreed with ObamaCare.  They also seek to keep track of how you get on the internet, how much you pay for it, and what your IP address is (so they can track your online movements).
• President Obama actively supports the concept of “localism” which is nothing more than a contemporary rewrite of the Fairness Doctrine aimed directly at conservative talk radio.  Localism would force privately owned radio stations to provide  equal time for leftist ideology or risk losing their broadcast license.
• The Obama Administration attacked the First Amendment, attempting to silence any input on stimulus and Recovery Act projects from outside groups and individuals.
• After losing the Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission in front of the Supreme Court, President Obama used the State of the Union to wrongly chastise the Supreme Court for ruling that domestic corporations and individuals alike have First Amendment rights.
• Under President Obama, the Justice Department is “cracking down on investigative reporting without regard for the First Amendment“.
• The Obama Administration also led a public fight against FoxNews, denying the network pool access to one interview, avoiding its Sunday show and publicly attacking its credibility.
• Obama’s FCC seeks to regulate and control online traffic, bringing the same censors who fined CBS over Janet Jackson’s nipple slip to your broadband internet connection.

And now President Obama has nominated Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, who barred military recruiters from Harvard, argued against free speech in front of the Supreme Court, and wrote that religious organizations should be prevented from working on public projects.  As if those weren’t worrisome enough, Elena Kagan also published a paper in which she supported the “redistribution of speech“.

“The answer to this question involves viewing the Buckley principle [that government cannot balance between competing speakers] as an evidentiary tool designed to aid in the search for improper motive,” Kagan wrote. “The Buckley principle emerges not from the view that redistribution of speech opportunities is itself an illegitimate end, but from the view that governmental actions justified as redistributive devices often (though not always) stem partly from hostility or sympathy toward ideas or, even more commonly, from self-interest.”

Kagan notes, however, that such “redistribution of speech” is not “itself an illegitimate end,” but that government may not restrict it to protect incumbent politicians or because it dislikes a particular speaker or a particular message.

She argued that government can restrict speech if it believes that speech might cause harm, either directly or by inciting others to do harm.  [emphasis added]

Laws that only incidentally affect speech are constitutional, Kagan said, because the government’s motive in enacting them is not the restriction of First Amendment freedom but the prohibition of some other – unprotected – activity.

If “government can restrict speech if it believes that speech might cause harm, either directly or by inciting others to do harm” do we need to worry about our first amendment rights being violated?  One only has to consider the past few weeks.

• Liberal elites and an onslaught of media and Hollywood voices all derided the Tea Party as dangerous, racist and a threat to national security.
• Conservative voices like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin were said to be “potentially seditious“.
• Former President Clinton warned that right wing pundits were dangerous, comparing them to Timothy McVeigh.
• School administrators sent a group of high school students home because their American Flag t-shirts might incite violence.

You don’t need to connect the dots, they’ve done it for you.  President Obama has already shown a disregard for the First Amendment.  Couple that with the left wing talking point that opposing views are considered dangerous speech and the nomination of a woman to the highest court in the land who believes dangerous speech can be censored by the government.  What remains are a people on the verge of losing their liberty and speech that will be considerably less free.