A vast censorship regime has smothered America's digital marketplace of ideas, squelching free speech on vital policy issues. Its supporters regard its benefits as morally and politically beyond question. They contend it's carried out by private social media platforms, not governmental authorities.
In Free Speech and Turbulent Freedom, Michael J. Glennon offers a timely and incisive response. The censors are short-sighted, he argues. Quibbling over outdated distinctions misses the real threat—which is the fusion of public and private power into a modern-day cartel able to overleap longstanding constitutional safeguards. American democracy, he argues, rests on a decentralized marketplace of ideas independent of the government. In crisp, trenchant terms, Glennon shows how concrete practical concerns justify protecting admittedly harmful online speech—even speech that advocates violence or embraces hatred or apparent falsehood.
To safely self-correct, democracy requires open channels of political communication. Glennon calls on the courts to unblock those channels—to measure such speech against enduring First Amendment precepts rather than pliable international norms—and to protect the speech interests not merely of the government and Big Tech, but of all participants in the marketplace of ideas.