Chris Bray on the foundation of the US Republican Party (aka the “GOP”) and the fight for freedom of speech then and now:
In 1854, Whig Party members disgusted by their party’s weak opposition to the westward expansion of slavery founded the Republican Party. Two years later, the new party ran its first presidential candidate, John C. Fremont, behind the slogan that appears at the bottom of these campaign rally-song lyrics:
Free Speech, Free Press, Free Soil, Free Men, Fremont!
The reason free speech and a free press were in there as political premises in 1856, as contested values a new political party was fighting for …
Okay, hold on a minute. In 2022, we’re a little baffled that we’re fighting for free speech. An army of sniveling shitweasels insists that we need guardrails around our discourse to prevent extremism, and Twitter employees gasp and sob as some horrible monster threatens to use their platform to let people just say stuff.
Stop trying to let people speak freely, you Nazis!
The whole thing is so baffling because we feel like the other side is trying to win the game as we amble out of the locker room and get on the team bus to head back to the hotel, like, game’s over, folks, we won an hour ago. Aren’t these long-settled questions? How is it that people are trying to drive us back against the powerful course of the American free speech tradition?
And one argument I’d like to offer, if Robert Reich will allow me to make it HITLER HITLER HITLER this content should me moderated out of existence to protect democracy, is that the argument we’re hearing right now is very much one of the American traditions regarding political speech. We buried it for a long time, but it’s real, it has been quite powerful, and it’s back.
Max Fucking Boot, my God.
