Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, " Twitter Files " reporter Matt Taibbi compared the current cooperation between the U.S. government and major social media platforms to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Those acts restricted speech and press freedoms during wartime.

Taibbi focused on the U.S. government’s current war on "disinformation" and the dangers it poses to basic civil liberties. "Some will say, 'So what? Why shouldn’t we eliminate disinformation?'" Taibbi said, playing devil’s advocate. He continued with the answer, "To begin with, you can’t have a state-sponsored system targeting 'disinformation' without striking at the essence of the right to free speech. ... The two ideas are in direct conflict."

"Many of the fears driving what my colleague Michael Shellenberger calls the 'Censorship-Industrial Complex' also inspired the infamous Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798," he claimed. "The latter outlawed 'any false, scandalous, and malicious writing against Congress or the president.'" Taibbi compared how opponents of these 18th-century policies were often cast as treasonous, similar to how critics of the government’s disinformation campaigns have been cast as stooges for foreign powers like Russia. In the Twitter Files, Taibbi and colleagues discovered government agencies falsely accusing legitimate right-leaning accounts of being " Russian bots " seemingly based on mere suspicion.

Jefferson was a fierce opponent to the controversial 1798 laws. Citing America’s third president, Taibbi observed, "Jefferson, in vehemently opposing these laws, said democracy cannot survive in a country where power is given to people 'whose suspicions may be the evidence.'" Directly quoting Jefferson, Taibbi recited, "It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism."

The independent journalist then laid out how in a democratic society, central authorities simply declaring things true or untrue without debate threatens basic liberty. "In a free society, we don’t mandate truth; we arrive at it through discussion and debate," Taibbi said. "Any group that claims the 'confidence' to decide fact and fiction, especially in the name of protecting democracy, is always, itself, the real threat to democracy."

Bingo. You can’t police speech in the way the government appears to want to to know and expect any kind of truly free society. A censorship state is incompatible with a democratic republic. "This is why 'anti-disinformation' just doesn’t work," Taibbi concluded.

Free speech means precisely that: free — not just right, correct, or factual speech but lies, wrongness, fabrication, and fantasy. It’s the nature of the thing. Imagine the arrogance of thinking you and your high-positioned co-workers alone could correctly parse and label all speech.

It's absurd.

Jack Hunter ( @jackhunter74 ) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).