Painting with a broad brush, Democrats grant significantly more deference to government than do Republicans when it comes to regulating free speech.
The most glaring gap is between conservatives and liberals, i.e., between Republicans and Democrats.
On the issue of free expression, at least, Republicans are not the authoritarian party.
Republicans were most likely to say Americans have too little freedom, while only 22% of Democrats feel that way.
Fully three-fourths of Democrats believe government has a responsibility to limit "hateful" social media posts, while Republicans are more split, with 50% believing the government has a responsibility to restrict hateful posts.
Democrats are significantly more likely than Republicans to favor stifling the free speech rights of political extremists.
Republicans don't vary by the group: Only about half of GOP voters favor censorship - whether asked about the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis, or the Communist Party.
If Republicans' aversion to censorship was transactional, they would have identified Democratic-friendly misinformation for removal.
"Regardless of the partisan slant of the content, Democrats are more likely to support the removal of content, while Republicans are more likely to oppose removing content," the study noted.
Asked a series of questions about what kind of speakers should be barred from college campuses, Democrats more often based their decision on the political slant of the speaker while Republicans were chary of the whole censorship enterprise.
"Even on issues in which one might expect Republicans to be more offended, they were less likely than Democrats to support cancelling the speaker," the Cato study found.
No comments:
Post a Comment