Keeping Perspective on July 4th

As you may have seen, a federal judge in Louisiana has issued a sweeping injunction prohibiting all manner of communications between the Biden administration and social media companies which seek to tamp down on misinformation and conspiracies. In the first paragraph of a sprawling opinion, Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee with a history of indulging the most extreme right-wing Republican theories, characterized the allegations as "arguably involv[ing] the most massive attack against free speech in United States' history."

Since it is the Fourth of July, I feel compelled to observe that we used to have in this nation laws which prohibited teaching Black people how to read. These prohibitions existed side-by-side with laws forbidding anti-slavery advocacy. I daresay that such laws represent a more "massive" assault on free speech than government efforts to convince social media outlets not to promote dangerous misinformation in the heart of a deadly pandemic (or, for that matter, seeking to persuade media outlets not to publish classified material they come to possess -- notwithstanding their clear First Amendment right to do so under the Pentagon Papers precedent. Which is to say, government tries to convince media actors not to publish things all the time, and absent actual coercion it is of no First Amendment concern).

The little King Georges who now dot the federal judiciary would do well to learn a little history (if such history can still lawfully be taught in Louisiana) and keep a sense of perspective.