THE WASHINGTON UNION PAPERS: NO. 34

DIGITAL LIBERTY & PROTECTING FREE SPEECH IN THE 21ST CENTURY

To the People of the United States,

The battle for liberty is no longer waged with muskets and bayonets, nor even in the courts and legislative halls of our land alone. It is fought in the digital arena, where the great debates of our time are waged, where political movements rise, where information is exchanged, and where, too often, the powerful wield their control not in service of the people, but against them. The right to free speech, enshrined as the first and most sacred liberty of our Republic, is under assault—not by force of law, but by the iron grip of corporate monopolies who have seized the means of communication and declared themselves the arbiters of truth.

In past generations, the enemies of free speech bore the insignia of empires and totalitarian states. Today, they bear the logos of multinational technology corporations, hidden behind walls of legal jargon, community guidelines, and shadowy algorithms. Their influence does not come from the barrel of a gun but from the omnipresence of the digital panopticon, where every word, every thought, every interaction is monitored, categorized, and, when inconvenient to the ruling interests, erased. Orwell’s vision of censorship was the boot of the state stamping on the face of humanity; Huxley’s was an engineered world of pleasure and distraction that numbed the population into submission. We face a hybrid of both.

In 2010, when Arab revolutionaries took to the streets of Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, they did so armed with nothing but their voices and the connective power of social media. The world watched as decades-old regimes trembled beneath the weight of a decentralized network of resistance. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube were not merely platforms—they were battlegrounds for the oppressed. But that moment of digital liberation was short-lived. Those same corporations that once gave a megaphone to the powerless quickly learned that control of information was control of history itself. Today, they wield the power once reserved for secret police and intelligence agencies, deplatforming dissidents, crushing alternative viewpoints, and shaping reality in their own image.

“We are at war, and you are the frontline troops,” declared Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2016 as he demanded total state control over the internet. But the Chinese Communist Party is not alone in recognizing the power of digital supremacy. Silicon Valley, without a mandate from the people, has taken it upon itself to decide which voices may be heard, which narratives may be accepted, and which ideas must be buried beneath an avalanche of censorship. When Canada froze the bank accounts of protesting truckers in 2022, when PayPal threatened to fine users for spreading "misinformation," when Facebook and Twitter colluded with federal agencies to suppress news stories inconvenient to those in power—each of these moments was a dagger in the heart of free society.

From the Catholic Church’s Index of Forbidden Books to the British crown’s crackdown on Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man, history is rife with examples of elites seeking to control thought under the guise of maintaining order. But never before have so few held such unchecked dominion over global discourse. When a handful of unelected executives can silence a sitting U.S. president, ban scientists for questioning official narratives, and throttle independent media at will, we are no longer dealing with a business—we are dealing with an unelected governing body, a shadow government that operates without oversight, without accountability, without fear of the people it claims to serve.

Thomas Jefferson warned us, "Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost." Yet today’s digital press—social media, search engines, online forums—is not merely limited; it is carefully engineered to serve the interests of those who control it. The entire apparatus of Big Tech, from content moderation teams to artificial intelligence-driven fact-checking, exists not to ensure the free flow of information but to manufacture consent.

This is not about right or left. It is not about partisan squabbles or the culture wars of the day. It is about power—who holds it, who controls it, and who is permitted to speak against it. The United States has long stood as a bastion of free speech, yet it now finds itself at the mercy of unelected censors who operate with the impunity of monarchs. This is not the future our founders envisioned. This is not the world we were promised. And it is a world we must refuse to accept.

The architects of the American Revolution knew that the suppression of speech was the precursor to the suppression of all liberties. That truth remains unchanged. Whether by government decree or corporate fiat, censorship is the tool of tyrants, and its presence is an unmistakable warning of what is to come. The fight for free speech is not one battle among many—it is the battle upon which all others depend. It is time to take that fight to those who would silence us, to rip the gag from the mouths of the silenced, to break the algorithmic chains that seek to bind us, and to reclaim our place as free men and women in the digital age.

Once, the press was the safeguard of democracy, the voice of the people against the ambitions of kings and the excesses of government. Today, that voice is filtered, censored, and suppressed by a handful of unelected executives who operate with impunity, accountable neither to the people nor to the principles of the Republic. It is not Congress that determines whose words are permissible—it is the faceless bureaucracy of Silicon Valley. It is not the courts that weigh the merits of free expression—it is algorithms programmed to elevate some voices while burying others. It is not the will of the people that shapes the digital public square—it is the whims of an elite class that fears no ballot box, no recall, no check upon its power save its own profit-seeking interests.

This is the great perversion of the age: that the most powerful platforms for speech in human history are controlled not by free citizens, but by corporations whose loyalties are not to democracy, but to wealth; whose motives are not justice, but convenience; whose philosophy is not liberty, but control. They tell us that censorship is for our own good, that moderation is necessary to protect public order, that speech itself must be regulated to prevent offense. They claim the mantle of neutrality even as they silence dissent, deplatform critics, and algorithmically manipulate the flow of information to shape public perception. This is not freedom. This is not democracy. This is digital tyranny.

A nation cannot endure if its discourse is dictated by a cartel of oligarchs. A republic cannot function if its public forum is held hostage by the very institutions that profit from its decay. And a people cannot remain free if their right to speak, to think, to challenge, to question is met not with open debate but with the silent erasure of digital exile.

Let no one say that this is the natural order of things. Let no one say that private corporations are entitled to govern the realm of public discourse without restraint. The First Amendment binds the hand of government, but the spirit of liberty demands that no entity, be it public or private, be permitted to rule over the speech of free men. Just as we would not tolerate a single newspaper monopolizing the press, just as we would not permit a single party to dictate the course of elections, so too must we reject the domination of our digital landscape by an unelected and unaccountable few.

The solution is not more government overreach, nor the replacement of one centralized power with another. It is a return to the principles of a free and open society. The people must demand that the public square remain truly public. The digital commons, where ideas are exchanged and movements are born, must not be subject to the arbitrary decrees of those who fear the consequences of free inquiry. It is the right of every citizen to speak without the shadow of algorithmic suppression. It is the duty of our institutions to ensure that free speech is not merely a constitutional right, but a functional reality in the digital age.

A new framework is needed—one that restores power to the people, limits the influence of digital monopolies, and upholds the founding promise of free and open discourse. The United States has long rejected the concentration of power in the hands of a select few. It did so when it broke up the monopolies of Standard Oil and AT&T, when it dismantled the unchecked dominance of the railroad barons, and when it took on the corruption of the financial sector. And yet, in the 21st century, we have allowed a handful of unelected oligarchs to seize control of the digital world, to dictate the terms of modern speech, and to consolidate influence over the very fabric of public discourse. The Washington Union Party will not stand idle as the fundamental rights of the American people are eroded by corporate fiat. If Big Tech will not abide by the principles of free speech, then it must be bound by them.

The internet was once heralded as the great equalizer, a digital frontier where every voice could be heard, where ideas could compete freely, and where information could flow unimpeded. It was, as Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in Packingham v. North Carolina (2017), “the modern public square.” Yet, today, it is nothing more than a walled garden controlled by corporations with an insatiable hunger for power. Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter—these are not mere companies; they are the custodians of modern communication, the gatekeepers of human interaction, the architects of reality itself. Their power surpasses that of any newspaper or television network in history. Their ability to suppress, amplify, or manipulate information is a force more insidious than state propaganda. And yet, they operate without constitutional restraint, without democratic accountability, without fear of reprisal. No king, no parliament, no congress has wielded such unchecked dominion over the speech of a free people. If they insist on controlling the public square, then they must be regulated as a public utility, subject to the same obligations of fairness and neutrality that once governed the airwaves.

There is precedent for this. In 1949, the Fairness Doctrine was introduced, requiring broadcasters to present controversial issues in an equitable and balanced manner. Though later repealed, it recognized an undeniable truth: when a medium becomes the primary conduit of public discourse, it cannot be left entirely to private interest. When railroad magnates throttled commerce by controlling transportation routes, government intervention was not just an option—it was a necessity. When telecommunication giants sought to corner the market, they were brought to heel. The internet—once decentralized, once open—has now been seized by a handful of monopolies who act as both arbiters and executioners of modern speech. This is no different from past corporate overreach, except that now the stakes are even higher. The ability to communicate freely, to dissent without fear, to share and receive knowledge without interference—these are the bedrock principles of a free society. When they are placed in the hands of an unelected elite, democracy itself is in jeopardy.

It is not enough to simply complain about Silicon Valley’s abuses. Action must be taken. The Washington Union Party will introduce the Digital Liberty Act, a sweeping legislative framework that will strip Big Tech of its unchecked authority and return the internet to the people. Under this act, the following measures will be implemented:

1.     Any digital platform that meets the threshold of a public utility, defined as any service with over 50 million U.S. users, must be bound by strict First Amendment protections. No longer will corporations be permitted to wield unchecked authority over public discourse, engaging in arbitrary deplatforming, selectively silencing voices they deem inconvenient, or deploying algorithmic suppression to steer narratives in their favor. The principles that once governed free speech in the physical public square must now be applied with equal rigor to its digital counterpart. Just as telephone companies were barred from denying service based on the content of a conversation, so too must these digital behemoths be restrained from deciding who may speak and what may be said. A free society cannot abide a system where private entities, answerable to no one but themselves, serve as the gatekeepers of communication. The time for self-regulation has passed. The people will reclaim their right to speak openly, without fear of corporate censorship or digital exile.

2.     Big Tech firms will no longer be permitted to operate in the shadows, manipulating discourse through opaque moderation policies and hidden algorithmic biases. The unchecked power to suppress speech, elevate preferred narratives, and throttle dissenting voices under the guise of 'community standards' has transformed these corporations from neutral platforms into ideological enforcers. Transparency must be enforced with the full weight of law. Every content moderation decision, every algorithmic adjustment, every shadowban must be made visible to the public. No more secretive blacklists, no more quiet purges of disfavored opinions. Independent oversight must ensure that content moderation is applied fairly, consistently, and free from ideological prejudice. The American people will no longer tolerate a digital landscape where the rules shift according to the political winds of Silicon Valley. If these corporations wish to wield such influence over public discourse, they must do so in the open, subject to the scrutiny and accountability that democracy demands.

3.     The entanglement between government agencies and private corporations in the suppression of constitutionally protected speech is a direct violation of the principles of a free society. Federal agencies will no longer be permitted to quietly coordinate with digital platforms to silence dissent, suppress news stories, or manipulate public discourse under the guise of content moderation. When a government agency requests the removal of content or the deplatforming of individuals, it must be treated as an act of state censorship, subjected to full judicial scrutiny and constitutional challenge. The days of bureaucrats hiding behind corporate intermediaries to suppress speech must come to an end. The government cannot outsource tyranny, nor can private corporations serve as willing accomplices in the erosion of fundamental rights. If the First Amendment binds the hand of government, it must equally restrain those who act on its behalf. The Washington Union Party will ensure that every instance of collusion between the state and Big Tech is met with legal consequences, and that the American people are never again subjected to the covert machinations of an unholy alliance between Silicon Valley and Washington.

4.     The right to digital self-ownership is the next great frontier in the battle for individual liberty. Just as the Founders declared that no government could claim dominion over a person's body or conscience, so too must we assert that no corporation has the right to seize, exploit, or commodify our digital identities without our explicit consent. The current reality is a dystopian inversion of this principle—where users are not customers, but products, their data harvested, sold, and manipulated for profit without their knowledge or control. This ends now. Users will have full legal ownership over their data, with the absolute right to determine how, when, and if it is used. The invasive tracking mechanisms deployed under the guise of 'enhanced user experience' will be outlawed, and any platform engaging in covert data collection will face stringent penalties. Furthermore, digital platforms will no longer hold users hostage by monopolizing their online presence. Every person will have the right to freely transfer their accounts, data, and digital histories to alternative platforms without penalty or suppression. The days of corporate feudalism, where users exist at the mercy of Silicon Valley overlords, are over. The Washington Union Party will enshrine these rights into law, ensuring that the digital age remains one of empowerment, not enslavement.

5.     The unchecked dominance of a few corporations over the digital economy represents one of the greatest threats to free markets, free speech, and individual liberty. Companies such as Google, which has extended its reach into search, advertising, email, and video streaming, have amassed an unprecedented level of power—power that no single entity should possess. This level of consolidation is not the product of innovation alone; it is the result of strategic acquisitions, suppression of competition, and deliberate efforts to monopolize entire sectors of the digital landscape. History has shown us the consequences of allowing such monopolistic control to fester. The robber barons of the 19th century were not defeated through good faith negotiations; they were brought to heel through bold legislative action that restored competition and protected the public from economic tyranny. The Washington Union Party will not hesitate to apply these same principles to the digital giants of our time. The stranglehold that a few corporations have on the internet must be broken. If they will not voluntarily relinquish their grip, they will be dismantled through aggressive antitrust enforcement. No single company should dictate the flow of information, control the lifeblood of digital commerce, or hold the keys to public discourse. We will ensure that competition is restored, innovation is no longer stifled, and the American people are no longer forced to exist under the rule of digital overlords.

6.     The weaponization of digital platforms to engage in politically motivated deplatforming or election interference is an affront to the very foundation of a free society. No corporation, regardless of its size or technological prowess, should be permitted to determine which political voices are allowed to exist within the digital commons. The power to silence dissent, to erase opposition, and to influence electoral outcomes is a power no private entity should wield unchecked. Therefore, companies that engage in such conduct will face not only public scrutiny but severe legal and financial consequences. The Washington Union Party will ensure that those who manipulate public discourse under the guise of content moderation or algorithmic neutrality are held accountable. If a platform is found guilty of politically motivated censorship, it will face crippling fines, loss of liability protections, and the full force of antitrust enforcement. If an entity is complicit in interfering with elections through suppression, shadow-banning, or selective amplification of information, it will be prosecuted as an enemy of democracy. The American people will not stand by as their fundamental rights are subjugated to the whims of Silicon Valley oligarchs. Justice will be served, and the digital public square will be reclaimed.

If it wields its power as a tool of suppression, then it must face the full force of the law in defense of the liberties it seeks to extinguish. There will be no half-measures, no weak compromises, no empty rhetoric. The days of performative congressional hearings, where Silicon Valley titans feign ignorance and walk away unscathed, are over. The Washington Union Party will treat these corporate autocrats as they deserve to be treated—not as innovators, not as entrepreneurs, but as tyrants who have usurped the rights of a free people.

When the railroads sought to exploit the economy, they were brought to heel. When AT&T monopolized communication, it was broken apart. When media conglomerates threatened the free press, they were forced to abide by fairness and competition laws. And now, in the digital age, we will do the same. The Washington Union Party stands resolute: the internet must be free, speech must be protected, and power must return to the people. Big Tech has drawn its battle lines. It has declared war on dissent. It has positioned itself as the new ruling class of the digital age. It is time to meet that challenge head-on. It is time to break them.

A Digital Bill of Rights must be established—one that guarantees all Americans the right to access and engage in the digital commons without fear of arbitrary censorship. Transparency in content moderation must be mandated, ensuring that no voice is silenced without cause or recourse. Algorithmic manipulation must be revealed, subject to independent oversight, so that no corporation can secretly shape the beliefs of a people for profit or power. The collusion between government agencies and technology firms to silence speech must be ended, and the right to digital privacy must be enshrined as the next great frontier of civil liberties.

The American people have never been content to submit to the rule of oligarchs. They did not throw off the chains of monarchy only to be bound by the dictates of tech executives. They did not fight for the right to free expression only to see it curtailed by terms of service written in legalese.

And they will not, they cannot, they must not, allow the future of speech, the future of debate, the future of democracy itself to be dictated by those who see them not as citizens, but as users to be managed, data to be harvested, opinions to be molded.

The digital age is upon us. It has shattered the barriers of geography, given voice to the voiceless, and empowered an entire generation with the tools to challenge authority in ways once thought impossible. It is a new frontier, vast and untamed, where revolutions are sparked in a tweet, where truths are uncovered in the archives of forgotten forums, where the might of institutions crumbles beneath the weight of a single viral moment. It should have been the greatest triumph of democracy in human history—the final liberation of speech from the chokehold of kings and tyrants. But instead, it has become a battlefield where those who built these digital platforms now act as emperors, deciding who may speak and what may be said. The promise of the internet has been hijacked, and its fate now rests in the hands of those willing to fight for it.

The time for complacency is over. The time for half-measures, for polite appeals, for supplicating before the thrones of Silicon Valley overlords, has passed. The people must not simply request their rights—they must seize them. They must shatter the illusion that a handful of unelected billionaires have the right to determine the parameters of public discourse. They must reject the lie that censorship, when wielded by corporate hands, is anything less than tyranny. They must remember that every moment of human progress has been won not through obedience, but through defiance. The American Revolution did not succeed because the colonists asked for permission. The civil rights movement did not advance because its leaders sought approval. The truth has never triumphed because it was convenient. It has triumphed because men and women dared to defy those who sought to suppress it.

A war is being waged—not with bullets or bayonets, but with the silent suppression of speech, the quiet rewriting of history, the algorithmic burial of dissent. It is a war where the casualties are not counted in bodies but in voices erased, movements dismantled, ideas unspoken for fear of digital exile. And like all wars, it will not be won through inaction. It will not be won by those who cower before the gatekeepers, hoping that compliance will earn them leniency. It will only be won by those who understand that liberty is not something given—it is something taken.

The people must rise. They must boycott platforms that engage in ideological purges. They must demand legislation that protects the right to speak freely in the digital public square. They must build alternatives, forge new networks where speech cannot be throttled, where no single entity holds dominion over the truth. They must refuse to be complicit in their own subjugation. They must, as generations before them have done, stand unyielding in the face of tyranny, whether it wears the uniform of a government official or the polished suit of a Silicon Valley executive.

The battle for free speech is the battle for the Republic itself. A nation where men and women fear to speak is a nation already lost. A people who willingly surrender their right to think, to question, to challenge, are a people who deserve their chains. But America was not built by the timid. It was not built by those who accepted silence as the price of security. It was built by those who understood that speech—unfettered, unfiltered, unafraid—is the very foundation of liberty.

This is the hour of decision. Either the people reclaim their voice, or they submit to the slow suffocation of their rights beneath the weight of corporate censors and government collusion. Either they rise, or they allow themselves to be buried beneath the algorithmic erasure of history. Either they fight, or they lose everything. There is no middle ground. There is no compromise to be made with those who see speech as a privilege to be granted rather than a right to be defended.

For if free speech is lost in the digital age, it is lost forever. And with it, so too is the Republic itself. But it will not be lost. Not if the people remember who they are. Not if they remember that no force, no corporation, no government, no tyrant, no empire, has ever been able to silence a people who refuse to be silent. Let them try. Let them throttle accounts, shadowban dissent, deplatform those who will not conform. Let them believe they can extinguish the flame of free expression with the cold steel of censorship. They will fail. Because in the end, the truth does not die. It does not bow. It does not yield. It only waits for those with the courage to speak it aloud.

Now is the time to speak.