Civil Liberties

So far the First Amendment has protected Americans from repressive hate-speech laws common in the UK and Western Europe, but the culture of censorship still thrives here. It owes much to the decades-long work of progressives who developed influential theories elevating the ‘rights’ of offended listeners over the right to speak, and the right of the unoffended to hear.

But you can’t copyright an idea, and activists on the right have long been adept at using progressive theories of censorship to restrict the speech progressives would protect. (Censorship has always been a bipartisan vice.) Thirty years ago, right-wingers parroted anti-porn feminists in their campaigns against sex education and information about reproductive choice. Today right-wing parent groups invoke offended-listener theories to remove books they don’t like from public schools and libraries.