You may be surprised that a growing number of high-profile politicians, publications and legal experts are lining up in support of handing radical Islamists a huge victory over the American people.
Concerns over the Islamic State’s use of social media to recruit Westerners to its extremist ranks have led to widespread calls for the federal government to step in with new restrictions on constitutional free speech. And though you might expect such an un-American idea to have little mainstream support, people likes Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and the editors of The New York Times are doing their best to scare Americans into giving up certain 1st Amendment rights.
Trump and Clinton have both called on tech-industry leaders to more actively target and disconnect Internet properties tied to extremist ideologies.
“We need to put the great disrupters at work at disrupting ISIS,” Clinton said during a recent speaking engagement.
The former first lady went on to suggest that complaints about possible violations of freedom of speech should be ignored when it comes to deny Internet resources to “the most effective recruiter in the world.”
“You are going to hear all the familiar complaints: ‘freedom of speech,’” she said.
Trump’s message has been similar.
“We’re losing a lot of people because of the Internet,” he recently said.
Trump continued: “We have to see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening.
“We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some ways. Somebody will say, ‘Oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’ These are foolish people.”
As presidential candidates go, GOP hopeful Rand Paul is the only one warning of the possible consequences of rapidly rethinking free speech protections because of ISIS’s Internet activities.
“The question is: How do we keep America safe from terrorism? Trump says we ought to close that Internet thing,” Paul said. “The question really is: What does he mean by that? Like they do in North Korea? Like they do in China?”
Well, sort of– at least according to legal experts given a platform to tout new free speech regulations in the pages of The New York Times.
The Times highlights the ideas of University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner, who believes the Internet should be censored to protect the most “naïve” people using the Internet.
From the report:
Mr. Posner supported urging companies like Facebook and YouTube to crack down on propaganda by the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS or ISIL, but said that could never be fully effective. He proposed, in addition, passing a law to deter potential consumers from viewing dangerous sites. While the law would apply to all Internet users, his goal, admittedly limited, is to head off the radicalization of those he described as “naïve people” who research the Islamic State out of curiosity, “rather than sophisticated terrorists.”
His proposal would make it illegal to go onto websites that glorify the Islamic State or support its recruitment, or to distribute links to such sites. He would impose graduated penalties, starting with a warning letter, then fines or prison for repeat offenders, to convey that “looking at ISIS-related websites, like looking at websites that display child pornography, is strictly forbidden.”
Of course, having the government decide what online information can lead “naïve people” to extremist ideologies is far more complicated than inking out laws that prohibit child pornography.
So it’s really up to Americans to decide whether they trust state-sanctioned censors to focus only on scrubbing the Web of Islamic extremist content without allowing their own personal political beliefs to expand the scope of censorship or government scrutiny.
Unfortunately for people like Trump, Clinton and Posner, there’s more than enough evidence that it isn’t possible.
Does the name Lois Lerner ring any bells?
The post Americans can’t let radical Islam threaten free speech appeared first on Personal Liberty®.
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