President Obama's Legacy: The Trashing of Free Speech

[Commentary] No administration in memory has more thoroughly undermined freedom of speech and of the press than that of President Barack Obama. From the White House itself, as well as the independent and executive branch agencies, have come a steady stream of policies, initiatives, and pronunciamentos that have threatened or compromised both of these constitutional rights. Indeed, the Administration’s example has inspired like-minded actions outside of the White House. For example, those Democratic members of Congress who actively encouraged IRS action against conservative nonprofit organizations before Lois Lerner turned to the task. And the 16 state attorneys general, Democrats all, who have recently embarked on a campaign designed to silence people who are skeptical of the evidence of anthropogenic global warming and/or its effects and remediation. But it’s the example of the Administration itself that is most notable. Who could forget the performance of then-UN ambassador Susan Rice who, five days after the Benghazi attack that took the life of the American ambassador, went on national TV and blamed the attacks on an anti-Islam video shown on YouTube?

In 2016, the United States is a country riven by deep political and cultural divides, which is perhaps why we are seeing things today that even a short time ago would have seemed preposterously illiberal and outside the country’s revered traditions. Things like the growth and nurturing of identity politics and a grievance culture, and the imposition, especially on campuses, of a virulent form of political correctness, are both a symbol and a cause of our national angst. It is in this state of affairs that the most precious thing we have in our national heritage is the Bill of Rights, and the First Amendment especially. If, as some people fear, things in the USA go from bad to worse, history will not treat kindly those people who have not honored that plain truth.

[Maines is president of The Media Institute.]