June 10, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 107 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session

[Pages S2839-S2840]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          THE FIRST AMENDMENT

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, yesterday, I explained that we cannot 
let the First Amendment become another casualty of this troubled 
moment. No matter how charged the issue, peaceful protests must be 
protected, from suppression by governments or hijackings by violent 
mobs. In the United States of America, people get to protest.
  In our country, people also get to worship. As I explained yesterday, 
local officials cannot selectively enforce health restrictions to 
privilege some First Amendment gatherings over others. If mayors are 
posing for photographs in massive demonstrations, there is no reason 
why small, careful church services should stay banned
  These are formal constitutional questions, but our American culture 
of free expression and open debate is not only threatened from the top 
down by the government, it can also dry up from beneath.
  If we are to maintain the civic discourse that has made us great, 
American citizens and American institutions need to want it. In the 
last several years, the New York Times has published op-eds from 
Vladimir Putin, the foreign minister of Iran, and a leader of the 
Muslim Brotherhood. They have published an essay arguing for greater 
normalization of pedophilia. As far as I know, none of those decisions 
occasioned public revolts from the paper's staff, hand-wringing 
apologies from the editors, or an overhaul of the masthead. Presumably, 
it was understood that pushing the envelope and airing disagreements 
are necessary in a free market of ideas.

[[Page S2840]]

  But 1 week ago, the Gray Lady finally met her match. Vladimir Putin? 
No problem. Iranian propaganda? Sure. But nothing could have prepared 
them for 800 words from the junior Senator from Arkansas.
  Senator Cotton wrote an op-ed explaining a position which one survey 
found 58 percent of Americans agreed with. He argued that leadership in 
several cities had proven they either couldn't or wouldn't stop the 
riots, so President Trump should use Federal troops to secure the 
peace, as several Presidents have in our history. His view was 
controversial, no question, but there is also no question it was a 
legitimate view for a Senator to express.
  Looting and arson were crippling cities nightly. Some local 
authorities seemed to be functionally sacrificing their cities' small 
businesses to appease the mob. In Chicago, we have since learned, even 
Democratic aldermen were literally crying and pleading with their 
Democratic mayor to do something, they said. So a U.S. Senator wrote 
about it.
  Immediately, his idea was met with strong criticism. Now, that ought 
to be par for the course. In a free and open society, speech begets 
speech. Arguments beget counterarguments. We discuss and debate as 
fellow citizens. But that is not quite what happened. Instead of trying 
to win the argument, the far left tried to end the discussion.
  By now, we all know the routine. We have seen this movie before. 
Rather than actually rebut speech, the far left tried to silence the 
speaker with a mixture of misrepresentations, sanctimonious moralizing, 
and bizarre, emotional word salads that nobody else could have standing 
to question. This silencing tactic has escaped from the ivory tower and 
is spreading throughout American life. This sounds like Mad Libs 
mixture between a therapy session and a university's H.R. department.
  So, sure enough, instead of attempting to defeat Senator Cotton's 
ideas, the left set out to ban him from polite society. Some New York 
Times employees flooded social media to claim their bosses have risked 
reporters' physical safety with the Senator's scary words. Outside 
leftists blasted the paper for airing the argument. The Times itself 
began lying about what Senator Cotton had said. The paper's own Twitter 
account has claimed he had called for a crackdown on peaceful protests, 
when he specifically distinguished them from violent rioters.
  One of the Times' own opinion writers devoted her own column the next 
day to calling his view ``fascist'' and proclaiming him outside ``the 
bounds of legitimate debate.''
  Remember, this is a sitting Senator discussing a proposition that had 
the majority of support from the American people, discussing a power 
that Congress gave to Presidents 213 years ago and which Presidents in 
the past have exercised.
  Oh, but the facts couldn't hold a candle to the hurt feelings. The 
New York Times erred grievously by making people confront a different 
viewpoint. They had hurt their feelings by making them confront a 
different viewpoint. They had to atone. So when the dust settled, a top 
opinion editor was gone. His deputy was reassigned. The piece was 
pulled out of the print edition, and a wandering multiparagraph apology 
now precedes it online. We are talking the New York Times. I understand 
the new editor has made it clear that staff should notify her 
immediately if any published opinion makes them uncomfortable--if any 
published opinion makes them uncomfortable?
  One of our Nation's most storied newspapers just had its intellectual 
independence challenged by an angry mob, and they folded like a house 
of cards. A jury of people on Twitter indicted them as accessories to a 
thought crime, and instead of telling them to go take a hike, the paper 
pleaded guilty and begged for mercy. Their readers' comfortable bubble 
was reinflated. Their safe space was safe again.
  Now, our colleague from Arkansas has a unique job. The far left 
cannot write angry emails to a university president or a publisher to 
get him fired. He cannot be silenced by professions of outrage or the 
use of magic words like ``problematic.'' His only bosses are his 
constituents.
  This broader, leftwing obsession with banning heretics from the 
public square will be poison for this country if it persists. Our 
Republic can survive a pandemic, it can survive civil unrest, but ideas 
and deliberation are our very foundation. America cannot be America if 
civil disagreement becomes a contradiction in terms.
  The liberal tradition in this country used to pride itself on being 
broad-minded, but we have spent years watching major universities 
slowly exchange debate for uniformity and rigor for psychological 
comfort. Now, we see the free press repeating that error.
  Let's hope we look back on this as a silly anomaly and not a sad 
turning point for our democracy

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