A key Republican on the Federal Election Commission has raised new claims that Democrats are angling to regulate conservative free speech and the Internet just like McCarthyism tried to silence the left in the 1950s.
“We can’t go back to that era. Whether now it is the left attacking conservative right speech but at that time it was conservatives attacking liberal speakers and associations,” warned FEC Commissioner Lee Goodman in a broadcast for the RealClear Radio Hour and Competitiveness Enterprise Institute.
“My greatest concern is that we lose our collective memory about what McCarthyism looked like, and that we not allow the laws of our land to be used to turn subpoenas into overriding policies that regularly invade people’s associations and invade their free speech rights,” he warned.
Goodman has led a long fight on the FEC to block what he sees are Democratic efforts to silence conservative media and fundraising.
He singled out a fellow commissioner who once called the FEC “dysfunctional” because it couldn’t agree on new regulations.
“There has been an active effort within the commission, principally by one commissioner, Commissioner Ann Ravel, to begin regulating speech and YouTube posts on the Internet,” said Goodman. “And I’ve just drawn a line and I’ve fought very hard to protect that freedom.”
He also told RealClear Radio Hour host William Frezza, “The narrative of ‘dysfunction’ is really those who want to regulate more and are frustrated that the three Republican commissioners take a more libertarian viewpoint on the extent to which we regulate free speech in America.”
He compared the fight over free speech on college campuses to what he is seeing in Washington.
On campuses, he said, “The intellectual left in America has decided that it is prudent, and wise, and we can achieve a superior society by controlling free speech.”
Goodman added, “Some want to make the democracy at large like a college campus. And they believe that government should be empowered to very carefully regulate speech in the name of a number of very high-sounding public policies like egalitarianism, like preventing subversion of American democracy and our Constitution, if you remember McCarthyism.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
