This article was originally published by John W. Whitehead at The Rutherford Institution It has been republished with permission from the author. Please contact the author directly for republishing information.
“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech.”—Benjamin Franklin
Everything this nation once stood for is being turned on its head.
We are being asked—no, told—to believe that the greatest threat to America today is not government overreach, endless war, corruption, surveillance, or the steady erosion of constitutional rights.
No, the real threat, it seems, is speech.
Dangerous speech. Hateful speech. Critical speech. Speech that dares to challenge power.
In the wake of the reported assassination attempt on President Trump, the Trump administration has wasted no time advancing a dangerous narrative: that criticism of the president—especially criticism labeling him authoritarian or fascist—is not just wrong, but responsible for violence.
The implication is as chilling as it is unconstitutional: if you criticize the government too harshly, you may be to blame for what happens next.
Taken to its logical conclusion, the government’s argument is this: criticism fuels anger, and anger leads to violence against the Trump administration.
Which means the solution, in the government’s eyes, is simple: silence the criticism—but only when it is leveled at the Trump administration.
When White House officials suggest that calling a president a fascist may constitute libel or slander, they are not merely defending reputations—they are laying the groundwork for criminalizing dissent.
This is how it begins.
This is how republics become regimes.
First, criticism is labeled dangerous. Then it is labeled harmful. Then it is labeled illegal. And before long, it is gone.
Beware of those who want to monitor, muzzle, catalogue and censor speech—especially when the justification is “safety.” Because every time the government claims it must limit freedom to protect the public, what it is really doing is expanding its own power.
The irony is almost too glaring to ignore.
By the standards now being floated by those in power, America’s founders themselves would be considered extremists.
Seditionists. Radicals. Domestic threats.
Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Marquis De Lafayette, and John Adams would certainly have been placed on an anti-government watch list for suggesting that Americans should not only take up arms but be prepared to protect their liberties and defend themselves against the government should it violate their rights.
“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms,” declared Jefferson. He also concluded that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
Observed Franklin: “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!”
“It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government,” insisted Paine.
“When the government violates the people’s rights,” Lafayette warned, “insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties.”
Adams cautioned, “A settled plan to deprive the people of all the benefits, blessings and ends of the contract, to subvert the fundamentals of the constitution, to deprive them of all share in making and executing laws, will justify a revolution.”
And who could forget Patrick Henry with his ultimatum: “Give me liberty or give me death!”
By today’s standards, these are not the words of patriots.
They are the words of people who would be surveilled, flagged, censored—and likely arrested.
Had the government of their day succeeded in suppressing their “dangerous speech,” there would have been no Revolution. No Declaration of Independence. No Constitution. No Bill of Rights.
You see, the right to criticize the government is not a side issue.
It is the foundation of a free society. And yet, that foundation is already cracking.
Conduct your own experiment in how much dissent is tolerated: stand on a street corner—or in a courtroom, at a city council meeting, or on a university campus—and try denouncing the government using the founders’ rhetoric.
You won’t last long.
At best, you’ll be dismissed. At worst, you’ll be labeled a threat.
So much for a nation built on dissent.
That principle of free speech is supposed to be non-negotiable. Increasingly, it is treated as optional. Which is precisely why it is under attack.
Anti-government speech has become a four-letter word.
More and more, any speech that challenges authority—exposes corruption, questions policy, or calls out abuses of power—is being recast as dangerous, extremist, or even violent.
The categories keep expanding: Hate speech. Misinformation. Disinformation. Conspiratorial speech. Radical speech. Anti-government speech.
Different labels, same goal: control the narrative.
What has changed is not the tactic—it’s the target.
Under the previous administration, “dangerous speech” meant election denial, COVID dissent, and those who challenged official narratives about public health and national security.
Now, under the Trump administration, “dangerous speech” means media outlets that report unfavorably on the government, comedians who mock those in power, and citizens who dare to call authoritarianism by its name.
The script keeps flipping depending on who is in power, but the ending never changes: censorship.
If the government can control speech, it can control thought. And if it can control thought, it can control you.
As comedian Lenny Bruce once observed, “If you can’t say ‘F@#k,’ you can’t say, ‘F@#k the government.’”
Bruce understood what those in power have always known: language is power. That’s why he was prosecuted.
That’s why dissenters are always targeted first.
And that’s why the government’s growing obsession with policing speech should alarm every American—regardless of political affiliation.
Here is where the hypocrisy becomes impossible to ignore.
When conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was assassinated, the Trump administration and its allies demanded consequences not just for the assassin but for anyone who dared to criticize Kirk.
Public figures were targeted. Jobs were threatened. Comedians were singled out. Among them: late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, who faced calls to be fired for voicing criticism of Kirk.
Now, the same playbook is being used again—this time against those who mock or criticize President Trump and his family.
The message is unmistakable: criticize the wrong people, and your livelihood may be next—not because you committed a crime, but because your words were treated as one.
The latest example: the Trump administration is once again targeting former FBI director James Comey—this time for posting a photo of seashells spelling out “8647,” a slang expression of opposition to Trump, the nation’s 47th president.
A social media post. Treated like a threat.
This is how dissent is being redefined—not as a constitutional right but as a threat.
Yet while the government wrings its hands over so-called dangerous rhetoric, it continues to wield—and expand—its own machinery of violence.
Most recently, the Justice Department has signaled its intent to expand the use of the death penalty, including execution by firing squad.
Let that sink in.
Criticism is being treated as a threat to public safety, while the police state openly embraces more brutal forms of punishment.
This is the same government that claims speech must be curtailed to prevent violence, even as it institutionalizes violence as a matter of policy.
This is not about safety.
It is about control. Because once speech is treated as violence, it becomes easy to justify real violence by the government in response.
History makes one thing clear: governments do not fear violence nearly as much as they fear dissent. That is why the first target of any regime drifting toward authoritarianism is not the gun. It is the voice.
What we are witnessing now is the slow but steady normalization of censorship. A creeping acceptance that some ideas are too dangerous to be heard.
We’ve seen this before. As George Orwell warned, “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
We are dangerously close to that point.
The First Amendment was not designed to protect polite speech.
It was designed to protect political speech—uncomfortable speech, provocative speech, dissenting speech, anti-government speech.
Speech that challenges power.
Because once that speech is gone, everything else goes with it.
And if we allow the government to decide which words are too dangerous to be spoken, it won’t be long before we discover that the most dangerous words of all are the ones that speak truth to power.
We are further down that road than most Americans realize.
This is the part of the story Americans should recognize.
First, the government tells you certain speech is dangerous. Then it tells you those who engage in it are dangerous. Then it tells you those people must be monitored, silenced, and, eventually, punished. And all the while, it wraps these measures in the language of safety, unity, and national security.
This is not new. It is as old as tyranny itself.
What we’re dealing with today is a government that wants to suppress dangerous words—words about its warring empire, words about its land grabs, words about its militarized police, words about its killing, its poisoning and its corruption—in order to keep its lies going.
What we are witnessing is a nation undergoing a nervous breakdown over this growing tension between our increasingly untenable reality and the lies being perpetrated by a government that has grown too power-hungry, egotistical, militaristic and disconnected from its revolutionary birthright.
As we warned in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the road to authoritarianism is paved with small compromises—especially when it comes to speech, dissent, and the willingness of the citizenry to push back.
And the only antidote is the truth.
If the government censors get their way, there will be no more First Amendment.
There will be no more Bill of Rights.
And there will be no more freedom in America as we have known it.
This is how freedom rises or falls.
The government’s tolerance for dissent is shrinking. And as that tolerance disappears, the danger is no longer theoretical.
Anti-government speech is becoming a liability.
Speech that exposes corruption, challenges authority, or questions official narratives is being flagged, monitored, and, in some cases, punished.
The list of “dangerous” speech keeps growing. The space for dissent keeps shrinking.
And for those who still believe in exercising their First Amendment rights, the risks are becoming harder to ignore.
With every passing day, the line between a free society and a controlled one is being erased—replaced by a system where speech is monitored, dissent is punished, and truth itself is treated as a threat.
And once that happens, freedom doesn’t just fade—it dies, one silenced voice at a time.