Foreign Influence and the Immorality of Censorship

Abstract

Americans have worried about foreign influence over domestic political affairs since the United States was founded. Today, those concerns have resulted in calls for restrictions on Americans' rights, including the right to access political speech. Efforts to resist foreigninfluence-motivated restrictions on expression have focused primarily on the ineffectiveness of propaganda at changing political views or behavior. I argue in this essay that these utilitarian arguments, while correct, are incomplete because they fail to account for the moral value of free speech. But recognizing free expression's moral value is critical to ensuring that First Amendment analyses of government attempts to combat foreign influence adequately account for regulated individuals' interests. And they have important implications for resisting nongovernmental censorship, as well.

Keywords: foreign influence, free speech, first amendment, autonomy, censorship, propaganda