On Wednesday’s broadcast of Newsmax TV’s “The Record,” Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz stated that the Biden White House pressuring Meta to censor content is “very dangerous” and “There should be more trust” in the American people because “The First Amendment is an amendment of trust in the American people.”
Dershowitz said, “Well, it’s a very dangerous issue when mega companies like X or Facebook get together with the government and they try to circumvent the First Amendment because the First Amendment only applies to government. But when the government puts pressure on a mega platform like Facebook, that amounts, in effect, to government censorship. So, I think that’s going to be another major issue in the years to come, the relationship between government pressure and private companies that really are more like public utilities than they are like private companies. We’re going to see changes in the law going forward.”
He added, “I think that Jefferson and Madison and Hamilton would be appalled at the combination of giant corporations and the government making decisions about what we should be able to believe. There should be more trust. The First Amendment is an amendment of trust in the American people. We may be wrong, we may get it wrong, but it’s better to trust the people individually than to put that power in the government or big corporations.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett