As a free speech fundamentalist, I’m not seeing much of value on offer from either Democrats or Republicans in this year’s presidential election. While I’m not especially surprised, I am somewhat unsettled by just how open both campaigns are about their desire to suppress speech that reflects negatively on either their ideas or on their candidates as people, sometimes while cosplaying as “free speech” supporters.

I’m not unsettled because I want to shout “fire” in a crowded theater (unless there IS a fire), or use racial slurs, or convince you that bad actors with space lasers are controlling the weather, or whatever.

Nor is it that I want to hear other people doing those particular things, although I do — because it tells me who those people are and that I shouldn’t trust them with anything, especially political power.

It’s because I’ve read George Orwell’s most popular work, 1984.

“The purpose of Newspeak,” Orwell wrote in that novel’s appendix, “was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc [the single party ruling his fictional country of Oceania], but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that …  a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.”

Attempts to control language are attempts to control your mind, and censorship is the oldest tool of that trade.

It’s all good and well to inveigh against “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “hate speech.” But usually when a politician does so, he or she has plans to censor particular words, thoughts, and ideas, either cynically in a raw grab for power or naively in the false belief that Bad Thoughts can be banished by force of law.

I call that belief false because history says it’s never ENTIRELY successful. Even the world’s most totalitarian regimes have always failed to keep their subjects’ minds in a state of continuing pristine belief, mentally (or even vocally) toeing the regime’s line on every subject. But even partial success in such a project costs innocent people their freedoms and their lives.

Forbidding you to say X is an attempt to keep me from hearing X, and  to stop both of us from thinking, or acting on, X. Even if X is untrue, that’s a conclusion we’re entitled to reach for ourselves on the basis of open expression and debate. Reaching it for us forcibly and without the ability to appeal isn’t a job we should ever entrust to government.

A little bit of censorship, even for the “best” reasons, is like being a little bit pregnant — there’s no such thing. We’re free to speak our minds, or we aren’t. Any supposed “in between” spot depends entirely on whether those in power agree with what we think … and that’s not freedom.

If a politician wants to tell you what you may or may not say, that politician isn’t your friend.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On October 7, the US Supreme Court rejected an appeal from X — formerly Twitter — concerning, among other issues, the use of  “nondisclosure orders” when prosecutors serve search warrants. In this specific case, the prosecutor was special counsel Jack Smith, the target was former president Donald Trump, and the warrant was for Trump’s Twitter account.

Smith received the warrant on January 17, 2023, but even now, more than two years later, the public has only seen redacted versions of the court proceedings around Twitter’s initial refusal to comply with it (the company was fined $350,000) and the nondisclosure order.

Secret court hearings, secret warrants, nondisclosure orders, and continuing secrecy around all those things are evil.

Yes, even if the target is a political figure you may dislike.

Yes, even if making warrants available to the public upon their issuance might make it harder for prosecutors to do their jobs.

If I considered the US Constitution a workable blueprint for a just society, rather than a paper wall that government actors punch through or set on fire whenever its provisions prove inconvenient, I’d support the following change to the Fourth Amendment (my addition in brackets):

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. [All such warrants shall be posted to a public-facing website prior to execution, where they shall remain publicly available in perpetuity, and published to the Federal Register within one working day of execution.]”

If the purpose of the “justice system” is indeed justice, the operation of that system must be transparent to the public its agents claim to represent and protect.

Even a fully transparent system wouldn’t necessarily be secure against incompetence, abuse, and corruption.

But power to conduct work allegedly “for the public” in secret guarantees not just more incompetence, abuse, and corruption, but the ability to hide that incompetence, abuse, and corruption.

Nondisclosure orders in particular are unconstitutional on their face: They violate the First Amendment’s prohibition on abridging their targets’ freedom of speech.

That fact Trumps (pun intended) prosecutorial convenience and even investigative efficacy. Neither those targeted by the state, nor the general public, should tolerate the state acting with forcible secrecy against anyone.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Another natural disaster, another round of complaints about “price-gouging.” Per Business Insider, South Carolina’s attorney general reported 142 “price-gouging” complaints in the early aftermath of Hurricane Helene, while North Carolina’s AG claimed 64. Those numbers will  multiply as electricity and phone service gets restored in the hardest-hit areas.

One South Carolina example from the Business Insider story:  “[S]tores that have been putting out cases of bottled water for sale, but ringing up customers for each bottle individually.”

That is, charging the same price per bottle as previously — hardly “price gouging” — but without the usual discount for bulk “by the case” purchasing.

Or: Using normal, non-discounted, pricing to ration water so everybody can get at least some water, instead of a few customers taking home cases and other customers going without.

Even in cases of actual price increases (instead of temporarily ending bulk discounts), that’s the main effect so-called “price-gouging” has. Yes, you pay more for what you need … but you actually GET what you need for $2, instead of NOT getting what you need for $1.

Not, mind you, that sellers are “price-gouging” solely out of the goodness of their hearts. As Adam Smith pointed out centuries ago, “it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.”

What serves the self-interest of long-term, reputable merchants? Customer satisfaction.

Your grocer was glad to sell you food last week. He wants to sell you food next week. He’ll do his best to sell you food this week.

If the roads are blocked and the supply is limited, he’d rather charge more and have more customers get at least some what they’re looking for than charge less and have more customers see a “closed, everything’s gone” sign when they show up hungry and thirsty after difficult treks over storm-ravaged roads.

“Price-gouging” isn’t, as some people pretend, a case of market failure. It’s markets doing their job, in the face of dire circumstances, getting goods to the people who need them.

If the circumstances weren’t dire, “price-gouging” would be a terrible idea … and an impossible one, since competition from down the street would clean the “price-gouger’s” clock.

Yes, non-profit “mutual aid” is a beautiful thing. But when supplies are short, “price-gouging” is the next best thing, offering you an option other than praying to FEMA and hoping for the best.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.