OPINION:
During recent oral arguments before the Supreme Court in Murthy v. Missouri, attorneys representing petitioners Missouri and Louisiana claimed that the federal government had violated First Amendment protections by pressuring social media companies to censor conservative criticisms of Biden administration policies (“Supreme Court faces decision on feds strong-arming social media,” web, March 14).
Astonishingly, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson voiced concern that a ruling favorable to the plaintiffs would “hamstring the government,” demonstrating the import of the First Amendment, but ironically stumbling backward into the wrong conclusion.
Our Founders were well schooled in the sordid history of government. They understood — particularly from their experience with the British Parliament — that history is replete with tyrannical governments that have repressed liberties, ignored citizens’ aspirations and crushed political dissent. The Founders were determined to avoid this by constructing a Constitution that restricted government to specifically delineated and limited authority, and which contained unambiguous language and ironclad guarantees designed to “hamstring” (e.g., forbid) government from suppressing or otherwise interfering in the free expression of ideas, speech and political dissent.
Justice Jackson was predestined to arrive at the wrong conclusion because she, like her compatriots on the political left, embrace an ideology that confers on government the moral responsibility and authority to “guide” the citizenry into becoming a better society. In this way of thinking, deliberately hamstringing that effort is just plain craziness.
But Justice Jackson has gotten it backward: In the American constitutional republic, “We the People” possess the moral responsibility and authority to guide the government, not the other way around.
We will know by summer whether the Supreme Court gets it right or stumbles backward with Justice Jackson.
KEN BECKERT
Abingdon, Maryland
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