The big difference between liberals and progressives is that the former are committed to the rules that make civilization work, while the latter are committed to gaining power so that they can impose their ideas on everyone else. One of the rules that liberals (I’m using the word in its original sense) embrace is freedom of speech for everyone. They understand that no one has a perfect grasp of the truth and thus all people must be free to speak and debate. On the other hand, progressives see freedom of speech as an impediment to their plans and it must therefore be controlled.
We have been seeing the campaign to suppress speech that progressives dislike unfolding in the U.S., and now we have the disturbing case of Pavel Durov, arrested in France because the power-mad Macron government doesn’t like that he is not sufficiently cooperative with their efforts at controlling speech on his Telegram.
Jon Militmore writes about the Durov case in this AIER article:
Though French President Emmanuel Macron said the arrest wasn’t political and the nation remains “deeply committed” to free expression, Durov’s arrest looks very much like the latest development of what [law professor Jonathan] Turley described as the “global effort to control speech.”
Of course. Statists always claim that they are really for freedom — while they relentlessly chip away at it.
Militmore continues, “The right to free speech is indeed indispensable, but it appears that those who believe otherwise may have already found bigger fish than Facebook and X to act as their censorship surrogates — and perhaps more stringent methods.”
Americans of all political persuasions should be aghast at the notion that the government should engage in censorship, but many today seem to think that free speech is “dangerous” and must be brought under government control. You would also think a free press would want to get Kamala Harris to offer her views on preserving First Amendment freedoms.