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The Limits of ‘Free Speech’

The Limits of ‘Free Speech’
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) arrives to the Hyatt Regency hotel on Capitol Hill in Washington on Nov. 12, 2020. Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images
Josh Hammer
|Updated:
Commentary

When embattled freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) took to the U.S. House floor Thursday morning in advance of a chamberwide vote to possibly strip her of all committee assignments, she spoke through a face mask embroidered with that most iconic of all American rallying cries: “FREE SPEECH.” Greene thus followed in the footsteps of many others on the right who respond to a domineering and increasingly illiberal ruling class with rote proceduralist appeals to free speech and open discourse—whether in the context of media/academia-driven “cancel culture,” ideologically homogenizing Big Tech censorship or elsewhere.

Josh Hammer
Josh Hammer
Author
Josh Hammer is opinion editor of Newsweek, a research fellow with the Edmund Burke Foundation, counsel and policy advisor for the Internet Accountability Project, a syndicated columnist through Creators, and a contributing editor for Anchoring Truths. A frequent pundit and essayist on political, legal, and cultural issues, Hammer is a constitutional attorney by training. He hosts “The Josh Hammer Show,” a Newsweek podcast, and co-hosts the Edmund Burke Foundation's “NatCon Squad” podcast. Hammer is a college campus speaker through Intercollegiate Studies Institute and Young America's Foundation, as well as a law school campus speaker through the Federalist Society. Prior to Newsweek and The Daily Wire, where he was an editor, Hammer worked at a large law firm and clerked for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Hammer has also served as a John Marshall Fellow with the Claremont Institute and a fellow with the James Wilson Institute. Hammer graduated from Duke University, where he majored in economics, and from the University of Chicago Law School. He lives in Florida, but remains an active member of the State Bar of Texas.
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