from the suicide-squad dept
We really should have two major parties committed to upholding the Constitution. But at the moment we seem to have none. Because not only have the Republicans been captured by the corrupt fascism of Trump but, instead of standing against the grotesque assault on our democracy Trump has been perpetrating non-stop since January 20, Democrats keep trying to join in.
The latest inexcusable abdications of their duty to uphold the Constitution involve conspiring with Trump to tear up what’s left of the First Amendment with the Take It Down Act. Trump and his supporters may pay lip service to how much they hate jawboning, but this bill is a celebration of it, using government pressure on intermediaries as a means of inflicting as much censorship on online speech as their shriveled autocratic hearts desire. They may wrap their craven agenda in the idea that this law would help the most vulnerable, but only the most gormless would be foolish enough to believe that its power would be so limited when the text itself makes clear how rife it is for abuse. Yet there are Democrats—like Senator Amy Klobuchar, who has never met a First Amendment-violating bill she didn’t like—who are for some reason lining up with Melania “I don’t care” Trump to make sure its abusers might soon have that power.
If we are to get through this constitutional crisis it will be only because of the citizen discourse that the Internet enables. While traditional mass media fails us, the Internet allows us to share ideas and information without it. Laws like the Take It Down Act attack our ability to speak online by forcing the platforms we need to do it to turn against our speech in order to protect themselves. As does the dumber than dumb proposal by outgoing-Senator Dick Durbin, who wants his final gift to America to be to destroy the one law that makes discourse on the Internet possible: Section 230.
It’s time to repeal Section 230. We must be able to take social media companies to court for addicting kids and enabling drug trafficking on their platforms.
— Senator Dick Durbin (@durbin.senate.gov) March 6, 2025 at 5:40 PM
While it is technically true that Durbin hasn’t yet announced that he won’t run again, if this legally illiterate idea is his idea of good governance, then good riddance. Not only does he—a lawmaker!—not understand what Section 230 does—provide a practical defense against online censorship via jawboning pressure—but with his enthusiastic call for its destruction he is keen to use what leverage and influence he gains from his office to usher in everything that the law is a bulwark against: the fascism that Trump and his brethren would like America to surrender to by making it so that it will be all but impossible to speak out against it online.
Even in the best of times it is still political malpractice to push for any of these censorial policy agendas, including the other similar attempts that have recently surfaced. But these are not the best of times. These are the worst of times. Our democracy is under attack and it will take every American using every bit of power they possess to push back on it. The only thing to be done right now is to stand against it.
The nation is desperate for its elected officials tasked with protecting our democracy to finally get busy doing it, and if it won’t be Republicans then it must be Democrats who rise to the occasion. Yet here are Democrats not only persisting with normal order in the face of an imminent and unprecedented threat against our democracy but using it to increase the danger. Even if prioritizing collegiality over the direct action Trump and DOGE’s assault on our democratic institutions calls for could be justified as a means of dulling the edge of the worst through back channels, it is a shocking betrayal of public trust to use their position to sharpen it.
Because instead of leading the way to save our nation far too many Democrats are using the power and privilege they were entrusted with to undermine free speech, the last tool that the people themselves have to wield against tyranny. It makes these Democrats worse than useless in the fight to save our Constitutional order; it makes them accomplices in its dismantling.
Filed Under: amy klobuchar, democrats, dick durbin, free speech, internet, section 230, take it down act
