The Limits of Free Speech Libertinism

During the final month of the 2024 campaign, in an apparent last-ditch effort to appeal to young men who were defecting from the Democratic Party, PACs backing Kamala Harris released ads warning that a Republican administration would ban pornography. To those old enough to remember, it felt like a brief throwback to days when liberals celebrated Larry Flynt as a champion of free expression, over and against the censorious religious right—and an abrupt reversal of the usual positions taken in last year’s presidential contest. As Greg Conti notes in Compact this week, “[f]ree speech was integral to the Trump platform and the Republicans’ 2024 strategy generally,” whereas leading Democrats seemed to regret the existence of the First Amendment.