Joe Biden Yells A Dumb Anti-Free Speech Trope In An Uncrowded Congress
Remember that precedent that never existed and isn't good law anyway?
Joe Biden has never been a particularly big free speech supporter. For years, as a Senator, he consistently sided with the entertainment industry in their never-ending quest to have the government help attack free speech on the internet via aggressive and oppressive copyright laws. Throughout his campaign he railed against protected speech online that he disliked. And last night, during his first full address to Congress, he trotted out the very dangerous “fire in a crowded theater” trope:
He did it in a very dumb way too. In talking about his push for gun control, he pushed back against the idea that things like background checks and certain limitations on firearms would violate the 2nd Amendment… using the trope about the 1st Amendment:
In other words, the main function of using the “fire in a crowded theater” line, including in Biden’s speech last night, is to say “I’m not going to explain to you why what I want to do is Constitutional, because I can just say the Constitution doesn’t limit everything that I’d want to do.” It’s not only a meaningless statement in that it avoids the important heavy lifting of explaining why what you want to do isn’t unconstitutional, but it brushes that very issue under the rug and says “let’s not explore the issue of Constitutionality, because we can ignore it.”
And doing that while at the very same time effectively defending the jailing of someone for protesting war is shameful and certainly un-Presidential.
For what it’s worth, it appears that the “fire in a crowded theater” line was a stupid improvisation from Biden. It did not appear in the transcript the White House released prior to the speech:
https://abovethelaw.com/2021/04/joe-biden-yells-a-dumb-anti-free-speech-trope-in-an-uncrowded-congress/
