In a Senate hearing that exposed the deep rifts within the GOP, Utah Senator Mitt Romney rebuked fellow Republican Senator Rand Paul’s proposal to restrict the government’s ability to use social media and tech behemoths to muzzle American voices.
During the hearing, Paul made a cogent argument for the sanctity of the First Amendment, reminding his colleagues that it was designed to restrain government interference in speech. “The First Amendment isn’t about protecting government workers,” Paul emphasized. “It’s about limitations on government involvement with speech.”
Paul continued to express his own grievances with tech giants like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, the latter of which he accused of biased and bigoted behavior for removing his speeches. He argued that these platforms should face consequences for their actions, particularly given evidence of government threats against them.
He referred to leaked documents that revealed government threats of Anti-Trust action against companies if they didn’t comply with takedown orders, as well as threats to revoke Section 230 protections – actions that, in his view, overstep governmental bounds.
While Paul’s call for government prohibition on such practices was met with applause from conservatives and free-speech advocates, Romney took an opposing stance. The Utah senator argued that government employees, from the president down, should retain the right to object to content they deem “wrong.” According to Romney, any restrictions on this right would be an affront to free speech.
This heated debate comes in the wake of a federal judge’s injunction against the Biden administration for its Orwellian attempts to control narratives by colluding with tech companies to suppress dissenting opinions. Unsurprisingly, this move was met with widespread disapproval from the establishment media. Clearly, the battle lines on the issue of free speech and censorship are being drawn, with conservatives standing firm in their commitment to protect constitutional rights against leftist incursion.
