McCarthy: "Do We Have Freedom of Speech, Really?"
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/10/do-we-have-freedom-of-speech-really/
Put more concretely, the Justice Department may acknowledge, as Garland’s memo grudgingly does, that the Constitution protects debate and dissent. But if the DOJ simultaneously warns, as Garland’s memo indignantly does, that the FBI is going to be investigating those who engage in debate and dissent against the progressive government’s favored class — school administrators who are executing the indoctrination mission — then in what authentic sense do we have free speech?
Sure, the outcome of the FBI’s investigative process is likely to be that no federal charges are filed. After all, if the Justice Department were foolish enough to go to the extreme of actually indicting dissenters, it would expose the fatal flaws that a) the First Amendment prevents courts from allowing speech to be the subject of a criminal conviction and b) the federal government lacks statutory jurisdiction to bring an incitement case unless the resulting violent acts would violate federal law (which is rare — threats of violence, when they occur, are overwhelmingly concerns of state and local law).
But it will never come to actual in-court prosecution. The abuse will be confined to the investigative process. Coupled with Garland’s saber-rattling, that is more than enough to suppress dissent. The citizen is warned that he is being scrutinized by the federal government in all its comparative might. For exercising his supposed right to protest, the citizen will be harmed in a hundred different ways by the fact of an FBI probe — the anxiety of potential prosecution, the often prohibitive expense of retaining counsel, the loss of business opportunities because of the specter of prosecution, the loss of social ties as friends and associates abandon the citizen lest Leviathan sees them as fellow conspirators.
Today’s progressives say you have free speech . . . as long as it is not incitement. But then they redefine incitement to entail not just violence the speaker intends but violence to which hypersensitive progressives are “triggered,” even if violence was the last thing the speaker wanted. They reduce “free speech” to a protection only against criminal conviction, not against the intimidating law-enforcement process. And as they marginalize dissent, they excuse, even lionize, the mob.
Free speech is still inscribed in America’s Constitution. That does not mean it is still quintessentially American. We need it to be.
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Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
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