Free Speech is Essential to Democracy

Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. The United States enshrined the right to freedom of expression in the Bill of Rights, but it took nearly 200 hundred years to expand its limits.

Free speech in the US today is increasingly under pressure from the government, which intervenes in online speech under the auspices of combatting misinformation.

Increasing government censorship — even if well intentioned — is dangerous for democracies because it stifles debate, leading to worse policy outcomes.

It is worth reexamining how we got to where we are today, and what is at stake.

History of Free Speech in US

In 1798, the US was close to war with France. The Federalist party was suspicious of Democratic-Republican criticism of their policies and feared that non-citizens living in the US would side with the French in a war. Under these conditions, Congress passed the Sedition Act which made it illegal to criticize the US government. The law was used to convict Democratic-Republicans, including newspapermen. These convictions were soon reversed when Thomas Jefferson, a free speech proponent and Democratic-Republican, was elected president in 1801 and pardoned all those convicted.

History repeated itself when over a hundred years later the US Congress passed the Espionage Act of 1917 to prevent protesters’ efforts to interfere with the World War I effort, including dissenting speech. In the 1919 case Schneck v. United States, Schneck was convicted for passing newsletters opposing the military draft. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes upheld this conviction, noting that free speech was not absolute and could be curtailed when it presented a “clear and present danger.” Justice Holmes created here the famous litmus test of yelling “fire” in a theater.

Then, something changed. Over the next 50 years, over multiple cases, justices began articulating a vision of more expansive free speech rights.

In 1969 a more expansive view of free speech became precedent. In Brandenburg v. Ohio, a Ku Klux Klan leader was convicted under the Ohio Criminal Syndicalism law for insinuating criminal action at a Klan meeting. The Supreme Court reversed the decision and struck down the law, arguing that free speech was to be protected unless it was directed toward or producing imminent lawless.

Free Speech Today

In a reversal of over 200 years of expanding free speech rights, today speech is marked by increasing government intervention.

During the COVID pandemic the US government sought to suppress “misinformation” through active intervention in social media content moderation, as documented in a 2024 US House Judiciary report.

But the US made vast errors in prosecuting the virus that would have benefited from more debate.

For example, the US advocated for broad lockdowns and disparaged the Great Barrington Declaration which favored more focused protection. A later study published by John Hopkins in 2022 found that, “lockdowns… had little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality,” but they, “… imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted… lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.” A study following the pandemic found that excess mortality rates in the US were among the highest of wealthy countries.

Democracy is messy, and free speech inevitably leads to misinformation. But the government refereeing what is truth is arguably worse because it stifles debate, leading to worse policy outcomes. It is worth heeding the words of Thomas Jefferson:

“Our citizens may be deceived for awhile, and have been deceived; but as long as the presses can be protected, we may trust to them for light."