Amazon does not have an obligation to provide its customers with every possible item they want. If Amazon wants to boycott a certain book, then they absolutely have the right to do so. Nor do the people have the right to buy anything they want from a provider like Amazon.

Boonton, as a theoretical matter concerning the capacity to distinguish political from other forms of speech, you are probably right. As a historical question of what the Founders meant you are almost certainly wrong. Wikipedia’s a pretty good introduction to this subject of “speech” referring primarily to political speech (it is a political constitution, after all). The vast majority of the early cases were ones dealing with political speech. Non-political speech (to the extent that such a determination can be made) was and is not held to be protected by the First Amendment to the same extent as political speech (to the extent that such a determination can be made). Let me quote at length and note especially the bold:

Commercial speech is speech done on behalf of a company or individual for the purpose of making a profit. Unlike political speech, the Supreme Court does not afford commercial speech full protection under the First Amendment. To effectively distinguish commercial speech from other types of speech for purposes of litigation, the Supreme Court uses a list of four indicia

The federal government and the states have long been permitted to limit obscenity or pornography. While The Supreme Court has generally refused to give obscenity any protection under the First Amendment, pornography is subject to little regulation. However, the exact definition of obscenity and pornography has changed over time.

Additionally, the highly educated Founders lived decades before the Civil War and the 14th Amendment and so would have understood that while there might be limits to federal interference in speech, no such legal limits would automatically apply to states. Being aware of pornography, they would have opted for state laws to passed against them if they believed such a law would be prudent. Being practical men, few such laws were passed not because they thought the First Amendment protects pornographic literature but because of other prudential considerations and perhaps because of a lack of need. Unlike people today, they didn’t feel comfortable with a massive burden of federal laws seeping into every corner and crevice of life.

So yes, the First Amendment protects political speech first and foremost in theory. If you only meant that it is at some level impossible to say which speech is “political” and which is not, well then I would agree with you and note that is one of the reasons why liberalism (classical or progressive) is incoherent.

The more accurate answer is that Amazon seeks to act like a Google of Books. It has no editors, buyers or reviewers deciding which books to sell. It wants to sell just about every book that’s published. Hence just about every book that is published is instantly listed. It will, however, have actual humans look at items after the fact if they think there may be some trouble. This seems to be what they did here.

Albert
“Fearing the likely consequences of a government restricting disfavored political speech, namely the repression of those not in power, the term “censorship” was utilized. ”

Yea yea but the First Amendment says ‘speech’, not ‘political speech’. The Founders were highly educated men who were well aware that there was a lot of printed material which was neither religious nor political speech. At least some of them were probably even aware that literary pornography was being written, printed and distributed. If they wanted to have crafted the 1st to limit freedom of speech to only political or religious speech they could have done so, they didn’t.

Yes, yes, I know. “Censorship” has a negative connotation, and Amazon is banking on that connotation to subconsciously fool the reader into thinking that a sensible argument has been provided. But no real argument is there. Just a vague statement that, at best, simply means “it is wrong to ban books from websites, but we’re not going to explain why,” or at worst, is purposely vague in order to give Amazon wiggle room to do whatever it wants.

Both the latter uses, of course, mistake the entire point of the idea of censorship, which is to limit the powers of the government in a modern liberal nation-state for prudential considerations tied to its role as the final (legitimate) coercive authority in the realm. Fearing the likely consequences of a government restricting disfavored political speech, namely the repression of those not in power, the term “censorship” was utilized.

But it was meant to bind, I think, only a particular authoritative institution–the government–because of its particular nature and character rather than any and all authorities (e. g. a parent over child, Amazon over its business). Unfortunately, “liberated” modern people have tended to reject or suspect all forms of authority without distinction, so we hear “censorship” applied to even the most appropriate of restraining actions.

And yet, part of the confusion occurring here is also because what counts as “political” speech is not quite coherent in modern liberal societies with its deluded technocratic vision of a polity divorced from a religious conception of the good (which is impossible). You need only be familiar with an Aristotelian conception of politics to see the problem with how we understand “political.” As (true) aspects of the postmodern critique filter through society and people start realizing the neat divisions of modernity are not so coherent, there will be continuing (and not altogether unjustified) confusion concerning the forms and language (e.g. “censorship”) of our late-modern society.

It’s funny. When I scrolled down to read this sentence at the end of your post … I saw in big boldface the title of the post below:

A Longing for Weirdness

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LOL! I think that’s your answer, Mr. Gilson!