[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 129 (Wednesday, July 22, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4364-S4365]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              FREE SPEECH

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, on a final matter, since the spring, 
our Nation has engaged in important conversations about racial justice 
in policing.
  Most people understand that continuing our Nation's tremendous 
progress toward justice does not mean battling against American 
principles or American history. Progress means fulfilling our values, 
not attacking them.
  Yet a group of radicals have latched onto this moment to say we 
should repudiate our country itself. We have watched as mobs have 
dragged statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant through the dirt. 
And, in parallel, inside many elite institutions, self-styled 
intellectuals say we should similarly discard the basic principles they 
fought for.
  One of the key pillars of our Nation is the rule of law. In a 
civilized society, the same laws need to apply to everyone. The times 
our Nation has fallen short on this score, particularly for all the 
years when Black Americans were completely denied the equal protections 
of law, it has been to our great shame. This has been central to the 
cause of civil rights. There is a reason the 14th amendment insists on 
``the equal protection of the laws.''
  Yet, in recent months, local leaders have violated this basic tenet. 
As riots rocked major cities, we saw politicians decline to act. They 
seem to fear far-left critique more than looting and chaos. And we saw 
the uneven application of other rules, like when mayors cheered on mass 
demonstrations but continued to prohibit religious gatherings. That is 
the rule of law in jeopardy. Of course, the last example is also a 
First Amendment issue. And the freedom of expression itself is another 
principle that has come under threat.
  As I said a few weeks back, this goes deeper than just constitutional 
law. America has always prized the spirit of the First Amendment. We 
citizens must want to protect an open, civil discourse--a true 
marketplace of ideas. But, lately, the political left has embraced 
something totally different.
  Today's far left is not interested in winning debates with better 
arguments. They prefer to shut down debate all together. They don't try 
to win the contest. They just harangue the referees to stop the game. 
If they don't like an op-ed, they want it unpublished. If they don't 
like a tweet, they want to track down the author and get them fired. If 
they don't like a tenured professor, they throw around Orwellian 
accusations that his or her ideas make them feel unsafe.
  This hostile culture is getting results. According to one brand-new 
survey, it is only the far-left Americans who do not feel compelled to 
self-censor their views because of a hostile climate. Everyone but the 
left feels the threat.
  And 50 percent of self-identified strong liberals say that simply 
contributing to the Republican Presidential candidate ought to be a 
fireable offense for a business leader. Let me say that again. Fifty 
percent of self-identified strong liberals say that simply contributing 
to the Republican Presidential candidate ought to be a fireable offense 
for a business leader. In this country?
  We recently saw the New York Times apologize for publishing a 
straightforward policy argument from a U.S. Senator. Since, an 
editorial staffer resigned from the paper because even center-left 
opinions were not liberal enough and led to her constant harassment. 
That was a recent editorial staffer resigning from the New York Times 
because her center-left opinions were not liberal enough and led to her 
constant harassment at the times. You see, the safe spaces only go in 
one direction.
  On elite campuses such as Princeton, we see faculty turning on their 
tenured colleagues and even administrators weighing in to chastise 
people with unpopular views.
  We see online platforms such as Facebook threatening to ban political 
advertising altogether, chilling our democracy, because far-left 
employees and outside pressure groups berate them for letting the very 
speakers use their platform.
  Even at a time when there is significant appetite in Congress to take 
a second look at the legal protections afforded to those supposedly 
neutral platforms, they still contemplate giving an angry minority of 
agitators a veto over Americans' political speech.
  The author Salman Rushdie, who was himself threatened with death for 
controversial speech, once said this:

       Two things form the bedrock of any open society--freedom of 
     expression and rule of law. If you don't have those things, 
     you don't have a free country.

  Free expression and the rule of law--exactly the two things we have 
seen eroded in recent months.
  Rushdie recently signed an open letter with other intellectuals--many 
liberals--sounding the alarm on this cultural poison. ``Editors are 
fired,'' they wrote, ``books are withdrawn . . . journalists are barred 
from writing on certain topics . . . professors are investigated . . . 
steadily narrow[ing] the

[[Page S4365]]

boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal.''
  Well, you can guess what happened next. The grievance industrial 
complex came after the letter itself. The authors were accused of 
advancing bigotry and the cycle of nonsense started all over again.
  The United States of America needs free speech. We need free 
expression. And all of us, from all perspectives, need the courage to 
speak up and defend it

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