Kerby Anderson
I’m not inclined to talk about legislation in other countries, but it is worth looking at proposed new hate speech legislation in Ireland so we can avoid the same mistake in this country. Kristen Waggoner of Alliance Defending Freedom wrote about this last month in Newsweek.
The context is something I’ve talked about on radio. The stabbing of children and others in Dublin by an Algerian resident sparked protests. Instead of addressing the issue of immigration, the government focused on the actions of the protesters as an excuse to criminalize free speech.
What is so surprising is the fact that this “hate speech” bill provides no definition of hate. In previous commentaries, I’ve documented that the word “hate” is a very difficult word to define in the law. We have seen this in previous attempts in this country to implement hate crime legislation.
This bill goes much further according to Kristen Waggoner. “As drafted, the law would allow police near-blanket authority to search and possibly find materials that are ‘hateful,’ rifling through text messages, emails, and personal effects to find prosecutable content.” She adds that the thought of police “raiding homes to seize devices and banned literature invokes thoughts of the novel 1984 and the darker moments of the last century.”
One of the supporters of the bill is a member of the Green Party. She defended the proposed legislation by arguing: “We are restricting freedom, but we’re doing it for the common good.” Yes, we have heard that before from totalitarians. It reminded me of the famous quote by C.S. Lewis: “Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”
What is happening in Europe can come to America unless we work diligently to protect free speech.

Kerby Anderson
If you write or speak about controversial issues, it is likely you will be banned from social media. Big Tech employees accuse the offender of misinformation or disinformation, even when that may not be the case.
YouTube (owned by Alphabet/Google), Facebook and Instagram (both owned by Meta), Twitter (now called X), and other platforms have banned politicians, doctors, and scientists. This has given Big Tech the ability to censor speech and put them into a position of deciding what is true and what is false.
Carol Roth, in her new book, reminds us that these bans are often permanent, with no pathway to redemption. She contrasts that with people who break the law. After they have served their time in prison, they are released. But with social media, there rarely is a path to get back on a platform.
Some have been successful. Journalist Alex Berenson was critical of COVID responses and information. When he posted accurate information about vaccine clinical trials, he received an eleven-month “permanent ban”. It wasn’t permanent because he sued Twitter and finally received a statement from Twitter that acknowledged his tweets should not have led to his suspension.
Sometimes you are banned with no justification. Journalist Miles Cheong said he was permanently banned from PayPal without an explicit reason and told he could not withdraw the money in his account for months.
In the past, we didn’t allow the phone service to decide if you could make a phone call. Carol Roth points to the Communications Act of 1934 which guaranteed phone service for all potential customers. The legislation wasn’t necessary when other phone services were available, and it wasn’t a monopoly.
But isn’t Big Tech essentially a monopoly? That’s why Congress needs to address the issue of banning people from social media.