Kamuiru/Krumsieg
Free speech has always been a hotly contested topic in America. However, with the rise of the internet and media polarization, our First Amendment right to free speech is more important than ever. The problem of harmful online speech is real and measurable. A landmark 2018 MIT study published in Science found that false information is 70% more likely to be shared online than the truth, reaching 1,500 people six times faster than accurate content. Extremism, violent rhetoric, and misinformation are defining challenges of the digital age, and the Kamuiru/Krumsieg ticket takes these issues seriously. However, granting the government the power to define and restrict harmful speech creates a danger far greater than the one it claims to solve.
The desire to protect society from dangerous rhetoric is understandable, but handing the government the power to define harmful speech is a cure worse than the disease. In 1933, the German government, seeking to protect its citizens from destabilizing ideas, founded the Reich Chamber of Culture, granting the state authority to determine what speech was acceptable in the press, radio, film, and art. While their intentions were well-placed, the result was the most devastating propaganda regime in human history, culminating in genocide.
No government given the power to define acceptable speech has ever stopped at the original justification. The Supreme Court recognized this danger in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), establishing that even inflammatory speech is constitutionally protected unless both intended and likely to produce imminent lawless action. No administration should ever hold permanent authority over what Americans are allowed to say.
Others say the real threat to free expression is not the government but corporations, and that new policies should guarantee equal access to online platforms. Large tech companies do hold significant power over public discourse. However, restricting companies’ ability to censor, while allowing government regulation, simply trades one gatekeeper for another. The Supreme Court addressed this directly in Moody v. NetChoice (2024), recognizing that attempts to regulate how platforms curate content raise serious First Amendment issues, which we can already see taking hold of Western democracies. According to a Freedom House report citing data from The Times of London, over 12,000 people were arrested in the UK in 2023 for social media posts under communications laws, more than double the 2017 figure, with some arrests targeting speech protected under international human rights standards. Any policy that carves out exceptions for government oversight places the definition of acceptable speech in the hands of whoever holds office.
The Kamuiru/Krumsieg ticket believes that open discourse, not government restriction, is the answer to harmful speech. In 1919, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes argued,“The best test of truth is the power of thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.” The internet is the greatest counterspeech platform in human history. Censorship will never eliminate the problem. Speech may only be restricted when it is both intended and likely to produce imminent lawless action, as established in Brandenburg v. Ohio, a precedent that leaves the vast majority of online expression, however offensive, fully protected.
Protecting the First Amendment is seldom gratis. Open discourse carries real risk, and the Kamuiru/Krumsieg ticket does not pretend otherwise. But as Justice Robert Jackson wrote in 1943, if there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion. Americans have upheld that principle since our nation's founding, and the Kamuiru/Krumsieg ticket believes it must continue to guide American policy in the digital age.