Free speech under siege in Colorado as well as in Brazil

(The Daily Signal) – The legendary rocker Joe Walsh once sang, “The Rocky Mountain way is better than the way we had.” But in Colorado, unfortunately, the Rocky Mountain way now more closely resembles censorship in Brazil than liberty in America.

More than 100 international free speech advocates, including five former U.S. attorneys general, joined an open letter to the Brazilian Congress last month condemning Brazil’s severe censorship, which includes suspension of the social media platform X.

While some may look on with mawkish curiosity at foreign intrigue they deem irrelevant to life in America, others may view Brazil’s authoritarian impulse through a lens of gratitude that it couldn’t happen here. Both are wrong.

One need only look to the state of Colorado to find an American example of governing authorities who seek to silence speech with which they disagree and compel reiteration of their preferred message.

More on that a bit later.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who owns X, has been engaged in a dispute with Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes that stems from de Moraes’ demands that Musk’s social media platform censor messages he disfavors.

On Aug. 30, de Moraes officially suspended X nationwide in Brazil. He also froze the bank accounts of Starlink, a subsidiary of Musk’s aerospace company SpaceX that provides internet access via satellite.

In his order, de Moraes said X presents a “real danger” of “negatively influencing the electorate in 2024, with massive misinformation, with the aim of unbalancing the electoral result, based on hate campaigns in the digital age, to favor extremist populist groups.”

Besides the former attorneys general, signers of the Sept. 12 letter to Brazilian lawmakers include three members of the United Kingdom’s House of Lords, The Daily Wire’s Megan Basham, bestselling author Rod Dreher, podcaster Tammy Peterson, Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon, X “Spaces” host Mario Nawfal, former Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and leading academics such as Princeton University’s Robert P. George.

Sifting through de Moraes’ parade of red herrings reveals that he and others in power in Brazil fear that allowing access to certain speech on X might lead to an electoral result they wouldn’t like.

As international pressure builds against Brazil’s scurrilous attacks on Musk, X, and the fundamental human right to free speech, many Americans are awakening to the rising global tide of censorship at home.

Now, back to Colorado, where current state law invades the sanctity of the counselor-patient relationship. For patients who desire to live according to their true identity as image-bearers of God, created biologically male or female, the state has declared that any message other than so-called gender-affirming care will put a mental health care professional’s license at risk.

Colorado’s “pro-choice” legislators, who frequently pontificate that the issue of abortion should be left to women and their doctors, also banned doctors from offering women progesterone to counter the effects of the abortion pill.

Thankfully, legal challenges to this Colorado law are underway, but the chilling message from the Legislature is clear: The only state-approved choice once an abortion pill is taken is the one that results in the death of an unborn child. And that’s the only choice about which women can be trusted with information.

Government as gatekeeper to information in Colorado isn’t limited to the state. Local school officials decided that parents didn’t need to know their daughter would be required to share a room on an overnight field trip with a male who identified as female. Apparently, the parents couldn’t be trusted to make the “right” decision for their child. Much better to leave it to the “experts,” of course.

Colorado is also home to Lorie Smith and Jack Phillips.

Smith, who witnessed the now decadelong persecution of Phillips, a Christian baker and self-described cake artist, at the hands of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Smith took that body to the U.S. Supreme Court, where she won the most significant victory for free speech in many years.

Smith, a graphic artist, won for herself and other artists across the nation the Supreme Court’s recognition that coerced speech and censorship are two sides of the same unconstitutional coin. Phillips now waits to see if the Colorado Supreme Court will affirm this same principle for him.

At the heart of the matter in Brazil and Colorado is the widening gulf between the governing and the governed. It is a tempestuous sea of mistrust.

Government officials assume the role of arbiters of truth and the authority to decide what information the masses should have at their disposal. It is a story that has played out on the world stage many times and one that rarely has ended well for the common man or freedom.

America, owing to its extraordinary constitutional protections for the God-given rights of the individual, has been an exception to the general rule of history for nearly two and half centuries.

As Walsh would put it, “Life’s been good.” To remain so requires vigilance in defense of liberty at home as exemplary leadership for the world.