Enright/McCollum
With the rise of digital platforms, online rhetoric has sparked discussions on censorship and the ramifications for the American people’s freedoms. While the First Amendment was written in a time when digital platforms did not exist, the right to our freedom of expression should not be limited because new outlets of speech are available. In 2025, 79% of Americans conceded that they think the United States has gone too far in limiting free speech. Evident suppression of free speech has taken place online in recent years, with recent administrations pressuring online platforms to censor information on vaccines, COVID-19, and controversial political issues. The Enright/McCollum ticket acknowledges that while policy proposals and restrictions on extreme and hateful rhetoric are noble approaches to hosting online speech, these approaches fail to recognize that censorship over any type of speech crosses constitutional boundaries, and the ramifications of new policies, even with the intent to grant more freedom to online forums, ultimately grant the government more power over online discourse.
As a result, the Enright/McCollum ticket aligns with the Perseverance Party and realizes that even though risks of hateful and extreme discourse are present, the risks associated with governmental intervention are much worse. This is a constitutional concern, and to address this, we reject censorship, as well as policy-based alternatives. This press release addresses the negative ramifications of censorship and the underlying failure in policy reforms, showing that the First Amendment is not merely a relic of the past but a foundational freedom upon which a nation can truly live in liberty. The pursuit to protect our most fundamental constitutional right should be the priority, even at the risk of extreme or hateful online rhetoric.
Policy-based approaches are wise in intent, but ultimately, they fuel governmental authority because of enforcement and oversight controls needed to carry out these new policies. While regulations would prevent corporations from limiting online speech, in order to create these laws, centralized intervention would be necessary. A slippery slope is likely when federal authority is used. Even well-intentioned regulation expands central authority over time. Government involvement in free speech threatens constitutional safeguards, proving policy-driven solutions to be contradictory in their honorable attempts to maintain liberty. On the other end of the spectrum, establishing restrictions on speech in any digital forum grants federal authority significant power over the speech Americans are allowed to exercise. We have seen over the decades that attempts to limit speech on digital spaces are generally considered unconstitutional (Reno v. ACLU), (Ashcroft v. ACLU), because speech, no matter the context in which it is presented, is protected under the First Amendment. The detrimental effects of censorship are that what constitutes “harmful” speech is subjective; any attempt to limit what is “harmful” restricts subjective opinion, which in turn allows constitutional boundaries to be overstepped.
The Enright/McCollum ticket believes that intervention by the government is never the answer and cannot be trusted to regulate the American people’s speech. While risks of extreme and offensive content present a valid concern, attempts to regulate these come at the expense of our constitutional freedoms. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The only security of all is in a free press.” Once a government is able to decide what speech is too dangerous to be spoken, we lose our security in maintaining our free expression. We firmly stand that the First Amendment should be recognized as a vital foundational principle. Within a digital age, Americans have a larger outlet to express their beliefs, opinions, and ideas; we cannot allow free expression to be dimmed even in the most modern outlets.