A New Battlefield Emerges Over Economic Freedom Amid Old Debates about the Limits of Free Speech

A New Battlefield Emerges over Narratives of Economic Freedom

In the world of narratives, it is often the case that both proponents and opponents of traditional narratives drive simultaneously increasing density of their preferred side of a debate. This was especially true for economic freedom narratives in the month of December. The density of language criticizing American capitalism as rigged surged by 29 points. This sharp increase coincided with the density of language asserting the superiority of American economic freedom strengthening by 32 points. There is, in short, a growing debate about whether American capitalism still operates according to market principles or has become something fundamentally different.

Business law experts pointed to Trump's direct influence over private companies and the degree to which companies and their leaders have sought to appeal to him personally as evidence the U.S. economy is moving away from free-market or rules-based capitalism. Terms like "state capitalism," "MAGA Marxism," and "crony capitalism" entered mainstream business commentary to describe how the administration's policies blur boundaries between business and government. The Financial Times warned that this approach to ethics could eventually cost investors in American assets, while The Guardian examined how American capitalism casts millions aside even as right-wing parties elsewhere seek to emulate the model.

The American Enterprise Institute's historical analysis covering 1850-2020 showed economic freedom stagnating and declining in the 21st century after peaking in 2000, providing empirical context for the narrative shift. Critics argued that disparate interest groups including critical race theorists, environmentalists, and traditional Marxists share a professed opposition to capitalism based on claims it exploits rather than benefits most people. The rise in language criticizing capitalism as rigged coincides with concerns about government favoritism toward certain companies and the erosion of market-based competition principles, suggesting December's coverage reflected structural anxieties rather than partisan positioning.

Fatigue Around Narratives of Emergency Powers Abuse Sets In

These economic freedom debates are seemingly part of active broader public conversations about the intersection of rising government authority against checks on that authority. The use of emergency powers has been an increasing area of focus in media reporting. Yet after a summer of activism on both sides of the use of such authorities for immigration enforcement, the narrative effort behind opposing emergency powers seem to have lost some steam. The signature tracking the density of language arguing that universal due process cannot always be adhered to in emergencies strengthened by 11 points in December from a below-average level; meanwhile, the density of the language of assertions of the inviolability of universal due process rights declined by 7 points, maintaining a more modest hold on the level established during the height of public discussion of the use of emergency powers to detain various migrants or conduct strikes on suspected “narco-terrorists.”

Al Jazeera documented in December how the administration claimed widespread and varied emergencies to justify executive authority in its first year of the second term, with the Trump administration issuing more emergency orders than in any prior comparable period over the past two decades. The Department of Energy's emergency authority under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act granted the Secretary broad discretion to temporarily override normal electricity market, regulatory, and environmental constraints, exemplifying how emergency powers can reshape regulatory landscapes.

The Brennan Center's guide to emergency powers emphasized that presidents have access to a dizzying range of authorities during declared emergencies, underscoring the need for congressional oversight. On the privacy front, legal developments and the third-party doctrine have made mass surveillance routine in the financial system, with SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce arguing at a crypto task force roundtable that the national degradation of financial privacy rules requires change. As of October 2025, twenty states had comprehensive data privacy laws in effect or enacted, with eight new laws taking effect in 2025, reflecting growing state-level action even as federal privacy protections remain fragmented.

This fatigue can be seen in other areas, too. The signature tracking the density of language arguing the importance of standing up to oppressive governments fell by 8 points, while the signature monitoring arguments in favor of the importance of loyalty to the government in times of danger rose by 13 points. The aggregate level of both narratives remains skewed toward skepticism of government authority, but the direction at the margin is clearly drifting toward fatigue.

Immigration and Content Moderation Sparking Nuanced Free Speech Debates

The opposite is true in the world of freedom of speech, where the aggregate debate is denser with defenses of restrictions on individual speech, but moving in the direction of arguments for absolute freedom. Perscient's semantic signature tracking language asserting that free speech protections should be absolute rose by 8 points but remained 6 percent below its long-term average, while the signature monitoring arguments for restricting so-called dangerous speech fell by 4 points yet held at 83 percent above average.

The reasons, however, are more nuanced and confused. In short, it looks like much of this month’s coverage of freedoms stems from news events in which researchers were punished for exercising free speech about…limiting free speech.

The Trump administration's decision to bar five European regulators and researchers from entering the United States over their work tackling disinformation is probably the best crystallization of this tension. The move, which the administration framed as defending American speech from foreign censorship efforts, drew sharp criticism from those who saw it as politicizing content moderation decisions that should remain governed by law rather than executive preference. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's call for government support against international censorship pressure reflected corporate anxiety about the global regulatory environment, even as his company replaced fact-checking with community notes and claimed to have cut content moderation "mistakes" by more than 90 percent.

Public sentiment seems to mirror this complexity. More than half of Americans now describe the state of free speech as somewhat or very bad, a new phenomenon according to YouGov polling. Meanwhile, nearly 65 percent of top universities earned failing grades for free speech friendliness from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. The Freedom Forum's analysis noted that free speech is increasingly treated as a conditional privilege rather than a constitutional principle, applying only when politically comfortable. The simultaneous weakening of both absolutist and restrictive narratives suggests lawyers and scholars largely agreed the government has taken an unprecedented role in attempting to curtail certain speech throughout 2025, creating a documentary record that resists simple characterization.

Archived Pulse

December 2025

• Free Speech Narratives Gain Strength Amid Transatlantic Comparisons
• Emergency Powers and Due Process Language Shifts Downward
• Economic Critique Narratives Rise While American Exceptionalism Weakens

November 2025

• Due Process Concerns Reach Historic Prominence Amid Immigration Enforcement Debates
• Competing Visions of Patriotism and Government Loyalty
• Economic Freedom Narratives Show Divergent Trends

Pulse is your AI analyst built on Perscient technology, summarizing the major changes and evolving narratives across our Storyboard signatures, and synthesizing that analysis with illustrative news articles and high-impact social media posts.