Category Archives: Free Speech

As bestselling authors from Jung Chang to Bernardine Evaristo prepare to gather in Abu Dhabi for the first Hay festival in the United Arab Emirates, leading figures have spoken out against the countrys compromised free speech. Stephen Fry - the festivals president has joined more than 40 public figures and organisations castigating its government for promoting a platform for freedom of expression, while keeping behind bars Emirati citizens and residents who shared their own views and opinions.

An open letter signed by Fry, Noam Chomsky, and a coalition of more than 40 NGOs including Amnesty and PEN International, is calling on the UAE to use the launch of the festivals Abu Dhabi branch which opens on Tuesday to demonstrate their respect for the right to freedom of expression by freeing all human rights defenders imprisoned for expressing themselves peacefully online.

The letter points out the disconnect behind the support shown for the festival by the UAEs ministry of tolerance in a country that does not tolerate dissenting voices.

Regrettably, the UAE government devotes more effort to concealing its human rights abuses than to addressing them and invests heavily in the funding and sponsorship of institutions, events and initiatives that are aimed at projecting a favourable image to the outside world, it says.

The authors and academics also emphasise their support for festival participants who decide to speak out against the UAE governments actions during their visits.

There has long been a strain between the UAE government and its human rights record, and the international cultural events held there. In 2018, authors including Antony Beevor and Frank Gardner pulled out of the Emirates Airlines festival of literature following the jailing of the British academic Matthew Hedges. The former UN human rights commissioner Mary Robinson pulled out the following year after an open letter, signed by authors including Fry, MPs and campaign groups, called for the release of the jailed Emirati activist Ahmed Mansoor. Mansoor is serving a 10-year prison sentence after being convicted of insulting the status and prestige of the UAE and its symbols including its leaders over his human rights campaigning. Mansoor is currently being held in solitary confinement, with no bed or books, and has only once been allowed outside for fresh air.

With authors set to appear at Hay festival Abu Dhabi including Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, a major advocate for human rights who has spoken out repeatedly against oppression, festival director Peter Florence said no subjects are off the table in Abu Dhabi.

Engagement is important to us. In Abu Dhabi, as in our other festivals, writers will host conversations and ask questions touching on the biggest issues of our times, including these questions of free speech. The programme is focused on Arabic-language writers, including many of our Beirut 39 novelists and poets, alongside anglophone and francophone writers who are writing about the Arab world, said Florence.

A spokeswoman for the Gulf Centre for Human Rights, a signatory to the letter, said the organisation decided not to ask authors to boycott Hay festival Abu Dhabi because the event could spotlight abuses.A spokeswoman for the International Campaign for Freedom in the UAE, another signatory, said the festival could provide a good platform for free expression in a country where even posting the wrong tweet can land you in jail.

It is a rare opportunity to draw attention to the UAEs systematic human rights violations [in situ] where, hopefully, the impact is the biggest, she said. It is important to note that the Hay festival is a private event - as opposed to the sham Tolerance Summit or the Emirates Airlines literature festival, which are solely designed to project a favourable image to the outside world. We did mention in our letter, however, that Hay Abu Dhabi is sponsored by the so-called ministry of tolerance, which we consider problematic and which we sincerely hope wont undermine Hays integrity.

The letter comes just as Sharjah, the third-largest city in the UAE, is set to be guest of honour at the London book fair in March, a decision that has raised eyebrows among some in the book world. All previous choices for the fairs market focus have been a country or huge regions spanning multiple countries, and never a single city.

In addition to Mansoor, the Hay letter also highlights cases including human rights lawyers Dr Mohammed Al-Roken and Dr Mohammed Al-Mansoori, both of whom have been detained since July 2012 serving 10-year sentences. Al-Roken had devoted his career to providing legal assistance to victims of human rights violations in the UAE.

With the worlds eyes on the Hay festival Abu Dhabi, we urge the Emirati government to consider using this opportunity to unconditionally release our jailed friends and colleagues, and in the interim, to at least allow prisoners of conscience to receive books and reading materials, to have regular visits with family, to be allowed outside their isolation cells to visit the canteen or go outside in the sun, the letter reads, saying that such a move would demonstrate that the Hay festival is an opportunity to back up [the UAE s] promise of tolerance.

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As Hay festival opens in the UAE, authors condemn free speech abuses - The Guardian

Toby Young has done something, again, and we have to talk about it. Its simply astonishing how often that sentence has had to be pulled out over the past 20 years, isnt it? There is some singular power to Young that pulls your forehead like gravity towards the nearest wall, and here he is again, talking about free speech and here we are again. Talking about Toby Young. Just like he wants us to. Hes done it again. The Michael Jordan of Being Wrong on the Internet.

Anyway, heres what Youngs done: hes very solemnly announced he is the general secretary of the new Free Speech Union (FSU), a sort of grift-cum-movement. For 49.95 a year (24.95 for retirees and students, though I would pay a sizeable amount of money to observe the day-to-day workings of any student who wants to pay Young to defend them on the internet) Youngs union will protect you if you want to start shit online. All members will be defended by the FSU if they are penalised for exercising their legal right to free speech, the silver-member tier promises. If youre targeted by an outrage mob on social media, well mobilise an army of supporters.

In the opening video, Young paints a vision of an all-nations union of people who are just furious that online discourse demands a degree of empathy these days, saying: Nobody is safe from these witchfinder generals, which is why mavericks and dissenters of all stripes will be welcome in the Free Speech Union. The protection level offered to you is known as Sword & Shield, which and if youll allow me a moment to exercise my free speech by pointing this out isnt a million miles away from the 2018 Shield and Sword far-right festival in Ostritz, Germany, that celebrated Hitlers birthday. I mean Im sure thats a coincidence as free speech advocates will point out, lots of things have associations with swords and shields, even Pokmon maybe Toby Young just thinks that Pikachu had some legitimate ideas among the loathsome pika, pika rhetoric. Still, come on, guys. Lets please not attack Youngs right to coincidence. I just bought Twitter insurance off this man.

My real fear, though, is: what if this isnt a grift? What if Young is being serious? Because there are shades of Nigel Farages early Ukip mobilisation to this

Theres a structure payment system for membership in place, so Gold Members are offered regular meetings with the directors, which means for 250-a-year Young will Skype you once a month and agree with you that there are just too many genders. In many ways, I do think this is brilliant by Young. Hes taken the sheer trauma of the trial-by-Twitter blockbuster cancellation he suffered in January 2018 and turned it alchemy-like into gold. In arguably one of the biggest and most crippling Twitter cancels Ive ever seen, Young took a position on the board of the new Office for Students university regulator and ended up resigning from five of his jobs and stopping all charity work just because some vile trolls went online and found every one of the hundreds of tweets hed made about women on Newsnight having breasts and yeah, maybe eugenics isnt that bad after all. As a result hes licked his finger and held it to the air and realised theres a groundswell of sub-100 follower Twitter accounts who are mad they cant drop the N-word online and still keep their jobs about it, and hes figured out a way to make them pay him protection money to let them keep doing exactly what they are already and were keep going to do. If you pay 50 a year, Young will wade into your next 12 Twitter fights and reply well said when you defend your right to call your dog an outdatedly racist name. What a stunning, stunning scheme.

My real fear, though, is: what if this isnt a grift? What if Young is being serious? Because there are shades of Nigel Farages early Ukip mobilisation to this. We didnt take Ukip seriously at the start because it was just Robert Kilroy-Silk pouring excess energy from not being on TV any more into saying legitimate concerns a lot. But then, slowly, they started amassing support: Farage, who you thought was just a man who cared about two things and two things only beer that smells like eggs and white men who stand up to clap somehow became a quiet power player in the political realm. And then, oops, we all woke up and Brexit had happened. What if this is the next completely useless breath-wasting topic-dominator at the next election?

The year is 2024, and the Amazon is literally on fire, and Jeremy Clarkson is on his third month of a Balls To Eco stunt that sees him endless revving a Hummer in the middle of Trafalgar Square, and while we should all be worrying frantically about reversing the temperature of the sea, instead were having, night after night, endless ITV debates about Youngs right to tweet: Cor, knockers. We can laugh at the Free Speech Union now before anyone from the Free Speech Union kicks off at me about that, please check your own Statement of Values (We take no position on the validity of others opinions, political or otherwise, whether expressed in speech, writing, performance, or in another form), which says you legally cant have a go at me, ever but, in five years time, when Young is somehow deputy leader of the Conservative party and Free Spexit is in full swing, thats when well look back on today and go: ah, shit. Its happened again. Toby Young has done us again.

One of the personal joys in my life as a writer is entirely fake news, a particular niche of lifestyle reportage that is always led off some PR firm advertising something and surveying about 16 people to get the answer they want before dressing it up as a viable statistic. This week The Times went all in on just under half the flights taken by men aged 20 to 45 in 2019 were for stag dos (succinctly debunked in this very satisfying thread) before suggesting that, to reverse the irreversible carbon impact on the ozone layer, drunk men should simply stag at home, perhaps in Cumbria, or something.

On one hand, I do love the constant othering of the environment problem ah, I thought, gently, reading the news, thank goodness me and the recycling I tell myself I should do but dont ultimately do is not responsible for the environment thing. Its lads who are the problem. And on the other hand, which also agrees with the first hand, Im absolutely on board with outlawing stag parties abroad on false pretenses. Stag parties are always the same and theres really nothing you can get from flying to Latvia that you cant just get on a big night out at home. I can sleep in a room with no curtains and five bunkbeds at home. I can convince a bouncer in broken English that, nah, my mates alright mate, he puked on his shoes to feel better not worse, at home. I can go spend exactly one day too many in the company of six men called Gareth and, whenever conversation falls silent, spunk 30 on a tray of shots at home.

If Toby Young had his stag party at home, maybe people would have come to it. In this instance, I say: let the fake news stand. Sure, stag parties are killing the oceans. Go with it. Fine.

Joel Golby is the author of Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant

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Say what you want about Toby Young no, really, hell defend your right to say it - The Guardian

In this episode, Laura interviews author and Yale historian Greg Grandin about his new book The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America. They explore how America's foundational myth of progress has given way to protectionism. Will opposition to the wall finally force us to reckon with the white supremacist conquest the frontier myth has always but thinly veiled? And what can we do to replace destructive myths with productive truths?

The Laura Flanders Show leads the field in new economy media, reporting on the social critics, artists, activists, and entrepreneurs who are building tomorrows world today. While mainstream media looks for ways the world is falling apart, The LF Show brings us stories that will piece it back together better.

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Free Speech TV FSTV Greg Grandin Laura Flanders The Laura Flanders Show

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The Laura Flanders Show Trump's Wall and The End of the American Frontier Trump's Wall and - Free Speech TV

OpinionIn a mature, civilised, multi-ethnic society, no one has the right to say exactly what they want

Tuesday, 25th February 2020, 5:15 pm

A friend of mine, a successful man of the world, once gave me some very good advice. Organisations are very often precisely the opposite of what their name suggests. So always be careful if an establishment with professional in its title (only amateurs would say such a thing), or a company calls itself international (you may find, for example, that its coverage extends only to the wider Stevenage area.

As a result, I have always been suspicious of anybody using the word freedom to describe itself witness the Freedom Party. I had a similar reaction to the advent of the Free Speech Union, the journalist Toby Youngs latest venture.

Exactly whose freedoms are Young and his friends seeking to protect? Is it principally those who demand the freedom to say things that offend others? As Trevor Phillips put it so well on the radio the other morning, when Young is involved, it is tempting to think that this is an opportunity to defend right-wing nut jobs, but that would be to diminish a largely well-intentioned enterprise, which has identified an increasingly problematic aspect of civil society.

i's opinion newsletter: talking points from today

'Consider an oratorical free-for-all, where all manner of crackpot rhetoric or hateful speech could be defended on the grounds of an inalienable human right'

Toby Young has a formidable gift for self-promotion, and has a vested interest in the subject he has been defenestrated from public positions because of statements that were deemed beyond the pale. However, this shouldnt be an impediment to our taking his position seriously. What all his activity brings to the fore is a hugely important question, one that has never been properly answered. Is freedom of speech an indivisible human right, without limits? In other words, is Youngs right to say what he likes about Claudia Winklemans breasts (which he has done) the same as Tommy Robinsons right to say that Muslims should f*** off out of the UK?

And this is where the fault lines lie in Youngs argument. In a mature, civilised, multi-ethnic society, with huge disparities of opportunity and power, no one has the right to say exactly what they want. This is not about freedom, its about respect, something that social media, and Twitter in particular, has done much to erode. We do need people to police public discourse in order to protect minorities and the disadvantaged, and, actually, I would rather they were academics, professionals and public officials than Toby Young and David Starkey (one of his named supporters, who even Piers Morgan once called a racist idiot).

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I wouldnt disagree with Young that serious institutions are now on a hair-trigger when it comes to sanctioning anything that is perceived to be offensive. The banning of mainstream speakers on university campuses because of their unorthodox views is clearly a nonsense. But consider an oratorical free-for-all, where all manner of crackpot rhetoric or hateful speech could be defended on the grounds of an inalienable human right. If you want to see what that looks like, log on to Twitter at any time.

I would suggest that the Free Speech Union will not be much of a union, either. Free speech means very different things to different people, and Young will have difficulty protecting his noble vision from the ideological outcasts, trolls and, yes, the nutjobs of the right and the left.

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Toby Young's 'Free Speech Union' is illogical - and more to the point, it won't work - inews

Bernie Sanders has been notified that Russia is trying to help him win the Democratic primary, a report which has thrown both the right and parts of the left into disarray. David Pakman responds to both the news of Russia's involvement in helping Sanders in the Democratic primary as well as the reaction to it.

The David Pakman Show is a news and political talk program, known for its controversial interviews with political and religious extremists, liberal and conservative politicians, and other guests.

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2020 Bernie Sanders David Pakman Democratic Primary Russia The David Pakman Show

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Bernie Notified That Russia Trying to Help Him Win - Free Speech TV

From art galleriesand the BBCto Brexit and climate change,you can't be right unless you're Left

One of the things that comes with being privileged and well educated is a certain sense of arrogance in the validity of one's views. And among the many advantages of living in a democracy is the absolute freedom to express them.

Which is all very well, so long as you're on the right, or in this case the Left, side of the fence. Alas, from where Im standing, the only place most Conservatives feel they can be honest with their ideologies today is behind the screen at a polling station.

From politicians to actors, there is seemingly no limit to the sort of thing you can say in public so long as youre not a Tory. On the contrary, when Labour MP David Lammy was called out last year for equating members of the European Research Group to Nazis and proponents of apartheid, he reflected that his remarks "werent strong enough.

A month later, when comedian Jo Brand was responding on BBC Radio 4 to news that a protester had hurled a milkshake at Nigel Farage, she quipped: "Why bother when you could get some battery acid?" It ruffled a few feathers but was largely taken exactly in the spirit which it was meant: as a joke.

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Free speech is everything for my generation - but only if you're Left-wing - Telegraph.co.uk

When early drafts of the fundamental right to freedom of speech were put before the Constituent Assembly, members protested that the right was riddled with so many exceptions that the exceptions have eaten up the right altogether.

The framers of the Constitution drew from the example of the Irish Constitution by providing specific subjects on which the state could make law to restrict the freedom of speech. This was markedly different from the US Constitution, under which the freedom of speech was not mottled with exceptions, and was absolute, at least on the face of it.

There was a lively debate before the Constituent Assembly on what the permissible exceptions should be. Eventually, when the Constitution came into force on January 26 ,1950, the only grounds on which the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression could be restricted were libel, slander, defamation, contempt of court or any other matter which offends against decency or morality or undermines the security of or tends to overthrow the state. Notable exceptions which found themselves in earlier drafts but got dropped in the end, were sedition, public order, class hatred and blasphemy.

Only a few months into the republic, the newly minted fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a) was put to test. The restrictions under Article 19(2) were invoked by three state governments to clamp down on select publications.

In Bihar, the government cracked down on a provocative political pamphlet. The high court rejected the states contention and that view was upheld by the Supreme Court in State of Bihar v Shailabala Devi.

In Madras, the state banned Crossroads, a communist weekly published by Romesh Thapar who was famously critical of many of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehrus policies. The Supreme Court struck down the ban and the law under which it was issued, holding that nothing short of a threat to overthrow the state could justify a restriction on the freedom of speech under Article 19(1) (a). A breach of order of a purely local significance could not meet the test. This was followed in Brij Bhushans case, where the court struck down a pre-censorship order on the Organiser, a weekly run by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

Upset by the rulings, Nehru wrote to the then law minister BR Ambedkar, expressing a need to amend the Constitution to contain subversive activities. But on the floor of Parliament, Nehru justified the need for an amendment, not on a political ground but a moral one.

This was curious given that the occasion for the amendment was the three unfavourable rulings. Taking the moral high ground he said, It has become a matter of the deepest distress to me to see from day to day some of these news sheets which are full of vulgarity and indecency and falsehood day after day not injuring me or this House much , but poisoning the mind of the younger generation, degrading their mental integrity and moral standards.

In a speech which acquires special relevance in times of rampant and reckless fake news about seven decades later, he complained that from the way untruth is bandied about and falsehood thrown about it has become quite impossible to distinguish what is true and what is false.

The first amendment to the Constitution in 1951 expanded the exceptions to the freedom of speech to eight from what were originally four. Public order, security of the state, incitement to an offence and friendly relations with foreign states were the new insertions. One redeeming feature was that the subjects of restriction were prefixed with the word reasonable.

In 1963, a new ground was added: in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India. But despite the increased subjects of curtailment, seven decades of working the Constitution tell us that the enumeration of specific subjects in Article 19(2) on which the freedom of speech could be restricted, actually kept a check on excessive inroads into the freedom of speech. The addition of the word, reasonable helped to reign in the restrictions, even on the eight permissible grounds. Each restriction was required to meet the test of proportionality. The enumeration of restrictions, once condemned as eating up the right altogether, have emerged, somewhat paradoxically, as its protector.

In the landmark judgment Shreya Singhal v Union of India, comparing Article 19(1)(a) with its American counterpart, Justice Rohinton F Nariman held that while under the Indian Constitution, the right could be curtailed only on the eight grounds specified under Article 19(2), the American Constitution was not constrained by such limitations and the restrictions could travel beyond, so long as there was a clear and present danger to a competing right. The belief that the freedom of speech under the American Constitution was absolute was therefore, a misnomer.

Article 19(2) is organic enough to take care of challenges that might not have been envisaged so many years ago. At the forefront of civil liberties in recent times, is the right to privacy. Now recognised as a fundamental right, privacy concerns need to be balanced with the freedom of speech. Article 19(2) does not specifically mention privacy. But it does mention decency and morality as exceptions to free speech, and these exceptions are not limited to affording protection only against obscenity they are broad enough to make space for privacy, an important moral value in any decent civilised society.

In Kaushal Kishor v Union of India, the Supreme Court, usually a staunch and steadfast guardian of the freedom of speech from the early days of the republic, decided to refer to a bench of five judges the question of whether the freedom of speech could be curtailed on grounds beyond those specified in Article 19(2), and whether Article 21, which has been stretched to include everything from the right to sleep to the right to a toilet can be invoked to introduce further curbs on the freedom of speech.

While the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 in its many resplendent avatars, is vital, so is the freedom of speech and expression. We, in India chose to adopt the Irish template and consciously departed from the American one. The framers of our Constitution were careful to minimise the restrictions in Article 19(2), while seeking to ensure that all the social values which need to be protected from reckless speech found place in Article 19(2). Articles 19(1)(a) and 19(2) strike a good balance between protecting both free speech and other competing rights. There are grave dangers in opening a back door for inroads into Article 19(1)(a), particularly through a right as elastic as Article 21. Article 19(2) draws a Laxman Rekha and it is important, in the interests of free speech to stay well within that threshold.

( Madhavi Goradia Divan is Additional Solicitor General of India)

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Safeguarding free speech from threats is important |Opinion - Hindustan Times

Children can sense when things are amiss, even if they cant explain exactly why, and in that class, ... [+] there was a dreary and stifling atmosphere as we painted propaganda poster boards with long anti-communist slogans and images.

Recent years have posed serious challenges to liberal democracy. Democratic movements been stifled in countries like Russia and China as well as western countries where the rise of authoritarian regimes was, just a short time ago, unthinkable.

Whats the solution? For me, a robust liberal education is crucial, the bedrock of democracy.

To explain, until the age of fourteen, I lived in South Korea, in Seoul. Most of my memories from those early years are warm and genial: my older sister helping me style my hair with barrettes; eating persimmons after dinner in our dining room; birthday parties at my grandparents house across the Han River in Bu-am dong.

But, in those years, South Korea was far from the stable, liberal, and relatively wealthy democracy it is today, and there are less positive memories too. Among them, I recall sitting in school in a type of art and crafts time, making propaganda for the military-led government.

Children can sense when things are amiss, even if they cant explain exactly why, and in that class, there was a dreary and stifling atmosphere as we painted propaganda poster boards with long anti-communist slogans and images.

Looking back, my unease grew out of the education Id gotten at home. My father encouraged us kids to debate complex issues openly even at a young age. And even though the topics sometimes flew over our heads, my siblings and I gleaned from our father the importance and value of argument, free expression and open inquiry.

Ive been thinking a lot about my early experiences as Ive read about the protests in Hong Kong. I have been struck, in particular, by the role civics education has played in the conflict. Specifically, a course called Liberal Studies, which has been blamed for fueling the energy of the young protesters.

The course dates from 1992 when Hong Kong was still under British control. The course became compulsory in 2009, and many teachers argue that it raises awareness of social issues, supports civic engagement and promotes critical thinking. In the course, teachers are given free rein to facilitate discussions about difficult issues like the governments 1989 crackdown on protesters at Tienanmen Square.

Critics blame the course for the recent protests, and many have called for a complete elimination of the civics class. The Communist Partys newspaper, The Peoples Daily, has gone so far as to call Hong Kongs education system a disease and said teachers have treated the classroom as the sowing ground for a political perspective.

In response to the protests, some have called for more patriotic education that is, propaganda to instill more loyalty in Hong Kong students to mainland China. This has been the approach under president Xi Jinping in China, and mainland schools have recently redoubled efforts at ideological education.

Not surprisingly, I support the need for strong civics courses in Hong Kong. But just as important, I believe the battle over education in Hong Kong and China should be a lesson to us all because our freedoms depend on education. What we learn in school about free speech and open thought matters for the future of nations.

The course in Hong Kong shows the value of civics instruction that supports free speech and critical thinking. According to the New York Times, many students speak proudly about how liberal studies helped them understand the complex bill that set off the protests. The bill, which would have allowed extraditions to the mainland, has since been suspended but has not been formally withdrawn from legislative agendas.

Democracies are, of course, far from perfect, and too often democratic countries dont live up to their ideals. But the freedom to criticize those institutions and the opportunity to show how ideals have been betrayed is what makes progress possible.

Practically speaking, we need to do more to make education a tool for renewing democracy. This means a commitment to media literacy to ensure our students have the tools to seek out and analyze information. It also means a commitment to critical thinking, so that students can think through complicated topics and truly debate current events.

I was lucky. My father instilled the value of free expression and critical thinking in me during difficult times. Nations now need to do the same, and Hong Kong shows us the way.

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The Exercise Of Free Thought In Hong Kong And At Home - Forbes

TEN YEARS AGO, the Supreme Court overturned portions of a federal law that empowered government to dictate how Americans who were not connected to any candidates and political parties could practice their inherent right of free expression. It was one of the greatest free speech decisions in American history.

The case of Citizens United revolved around state efforts to ban a conservative nonprofit group from showing a critical documentary it produced of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton right before the 2008 Democratic primary elections. At the time, the McCain-Feingold Act made it illegal for corporations and labor unions to engage in "electioneering communication" one month before a primary or two months before the general election.

Or, in other words, the law, written by politicians who function without restrictions on speech -- and applauded by much of a mass media that functions without restrictions on speech -- prohibited Americans from pooling their resources and engaging in the most vital form of expression at the most important time, in the days leading up to an election.

"By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others," Justice Anthony Kennedy would write for the majority, "the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker's voice."

Right after the decision, President Barack Obama famously rebuked the Justices during his State of the Union for upholding the First Amendment, arguing that the Supreme Court had "reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign corporations -- to spend without limit in our elections."

Not a word of what he said was true.

First of all, the court hadn't overturned a century of law (though the age of the law bears absolutely no relevance to its constitutionality). Citizens United reversed portions of a law, less than a decade old, that forbade Americans from contributing as much as they wanted directly to the funding of speech. Corporations would still be banned from donating directly to candidates, as they had been since 1907.

Moreover, those corporations, typically unwilling to pick partisan sides for reasons of self-preservation, are still responsible for only a fraction of all political spending, averaging around 1% or less since 2010. Top 200 corporations spend almost nothing on campaigns.

Conversely, since 2010, there's been an explosion in grassroots political activism on both right and left. As Bradley A. Smith points out in The Wall Street Journal, small-dollar donors are more in demand than ever. Bernie Sanders lives on them, and Donald Trump raised more money from donors who gave less than $200 than any candidate in history.

Nothing in Citizens United, of course, made it legal for foreigners to participate in American elections. It is still illegal for anyone running for office to solicit, accept or receive help from foreign nationals.

Obama, like many progressives, would ratchet up the scaremongering over anonymous political speech. Over the past couple of decades, our political class has convinced large swaths of the electorate that private citizens have a civic responsibility to publicly attach their names to every political donation. They do not. As the often-cited 1995 Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission says: "Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority."

It is true, though, that since the Citizens United decision, streaming services have been able to produce and play documentaries about political candidates like Trump without answering to a government entity. Publishing companies, especially smaller ones, can now print books about political figures without being policed by the state. And you can contribute as much money you want to any independent group that shares your values. As it should be. The very notion that anyone should be restricted from airing his or her views is fundamentally un-American.

Then again, even if the floodgates had opened for "special interests" -- a euphemism for causes that Democrats dislike -- and even if there had been a massive spike in corporate spending on speech, and even if secretive corporate entities started producing documentaries that disparaged favored political candidates and released them days before an election, it still wouldn't matter.

The principle of free expression isn't contingent on correct outcomes, it is a free-standing, inherent right protected by the Constitution. That principle holds whether people of free will are too lazy or too gullible to resist alleged misinformation. The proper way to push back against rhetoric you don't like is to rebut it.

Or not. It should be up to you.

David Harsanyi is a senior writer at National Review and the author of the book "First Freedom: A Ride Through America's Enduring History With the Gun."

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David Harsanyi: Happy anniversary to Citizens United | Columnists - The Union Leader

Joe Biden doesnt sound very moderate when he says there is no room for compromise on transgender equality.

It is the civil rights issue of our time, he tweeted last week, elevating it above womens equality, racial equality, and even climate justice, an issue he once told us was an existential threat.

The tweet was rather baffling, other than as an exercise in identity pandering.

Maybe Biden thought he could win over a segment of the 0.3 percent transgender voters who are irate that Bernie Sanders accepted an endorsement from libertarian podcaster and pronoun purist Joe Rogan.

But, by trying to outwoke Sanders on gender fluidity, Biden is empowering a tyrannical micro-minority determined to overturn biological reality and crush dissent.

Exhibit A is Denver Post columnist Jon Caldara, fired for writing that there are only two sexes, identified by an XX or XY chromosome.

They is singular and up is down, wrote Caldara in a Jan. 7 column criticizing The Associated Press Stylebook, the language-usage bible for reporters, which has decreed that gender is no longer binary and that they can be used as a singular pronoun.

Two weeks later, he slammed a Colorado law which requires controversial sex-education content in schools.

Democrats dont want education transparency when it comes to their mandate to convince your kid that there are more than two sexes, even if its against your wishes, he wrote.

This was the last straw for his editors. After writing a weekly column for four years, he was shown the door.

Caldara is no social conservative. He supports-same sex marriage and doesnt like Donald Trump. But, like Rogan, he is a libertarian who objects to compelled speech and inaccurate pronouns.

So, it doesnt matter how the Denver Post tries to spin it, his firing is an attack on free speech by the very institution entrusted to defend it.

The paper has been opaque about its reasons, alluding only to disrespectful language in an editors note last week. But any fair reader of the statements of biological reality which Caldara reposted on social media would be hard pressed to find disrespect. Clearly, his editors thought his words were fine when they published them.

But the Denver Post is a shadow of its former self. Under the oppressive ownership of a hedge fund, it lacks the institutional courage required to stand against the transgender bullying which attacks any expression deviating from gender fluid orthodoxy.

The papers disintegrating backbone follows the decline of a free press all over the country, as Google and Facebook siphon away news revenue, and fake news muscles in.

Alden Global Capital took control of the Denver Post in 2010 and runs it through its subsidiary, Digital First Media, which has bought up some of the biggest newspaper chains in the country, including the McClatchy and Gannett organizations. It controls dozens of newspapers, from California to Massachusetts, and has stripped them to the bone.

Its no scoop to understand that hedge funds with an appetite for extracting remnant value from failing newspapers have no interest in freedom of speech or the constitutional value of the Fourth Estate, let alone the importance of objective truth.

And the last thing woke capital wants is to be targeted by transgender activists. No special interest group is more relentless in crushing dissent around the world, using character assassination as a weapon.

When you have no commitment to free speech, surrender to bullies is the logical path of least resistance.

This may also explain Joe Bidens trans-virtue signaling last week, to counter suspicions about his Catholic background and past cordiality toward Mike Pence.

But, if the leading moderate of the Democratic presidential field is promising to make transgender ideology his human-rights priority, we should understand what that means, for womens sports, for schools, for prisons, for the military, for language.

If there is to be no compromise on transgender rights, then the rights of women and girls will have to be sacrificed.

Does Biden not care, for instance, about the right of biological females to compete in team sports on a level playing field, rather than against transgender athletes with all the natural physiological advantages that come from being born male?

How about the right of girls to preserve their modesty in single-sex locker rooms? Or the right of students not to be confused in sex-ed classes by radical gender theory which disputes the biological reality of two sexes.

Like every other minority, transgender people should be protected from discrimination, as our laws demand. But if you take him at his word, what Biden is advocating is the forceful restructuring of society according to the irrational demands of a subsection of a tiny minority. Its no way to win an election.

Boys death avoidable

The twitter feed of Thomas Valvas mother makes for sinister reading now that we know her accusations of abuse ended with the 8-year-olds death allegedly at the hands of his cop father.

New York City police Officer Michael Valva and his fiance, Angela Pollina, have been charged with second-degree murder over the autistic boys death, after he was forced to sleep outside in in a freezing garage.

But if anyone had listened to the boys Polish-born mother, he might still be alive.

For two years, Justyna Zubko-Valva has been posting heartrending videos and credible evidence of harm to her three sons on twitter.

She even posted letters from teachers saying the boys were starving and filthy.

Why were her complaints to authorities unanswered? Something is very wrong with a child-welfare system which ignores a mothers fears.

Your excuses dont fool anyone, Eric

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams doesnt fool anyone when he says his Martin Luther King Day rant about gentrification wasnt a racial slur against white people.

The crowd only started cheering when he said: Go back to Iowa! You go back to Ohio! New York City belongs to the people that was here and made New York City what it is.

It was a dog whistle about majority white states, and he disgraced his office when he chose to stoke division rather than promote healing at a time when New York is suffering from a plague of anti-Semitic attacks. Some perpetrators have tried to justify their hate crimes using the same excuse, that they are being alienated from old neighborhoods.

I tried to give Adams a chance last week to explain, but he dodged requests for an interview.

I never once mentioned race, he finally said in an e-mail through a spokesman yesterday.

Cleveland, Ohio, for example, is majority-black. I have always felt gentrification is not about race, but attitude.

Unconvincing from a wannabe mayor of this melting pot.

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Joe Biden's bias comes through in trying to outwoke competition: Devine - New York Post