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Some Future Day evaluates technology at the intersection of culture & law.
Join Marc Beckman and his esteemed guests for insider knowledge surrounding how you can use new technologies to positively impact your life, career, and family. Marc Beckman is Senior Fellow of Emerging Technologies and an Adjunct Professor at NYU, CEO of DMA United, and a member of the New York State Bar Association’s Task Force on Cryptocurrency and Digital Assets.
Marc Beckman: Professor Turley, welcome to Some Future Day. It's really an honor to have you join me today on this episode of Some Future Day. How are you?
Jonathan Turley: Thank you, Marc It's a great pleasure to be with you today
Marc Beckman: Congratulations with your new book. "The Indispensable Right." I think it's very important work, particularly in this time period. it seems like we are so polarized as a nation today. It even feels like this polarization is happening on a global scale. Why is it that people don't want to just talk about policy?
Why do they feel like they need to really, wear [00:03:00] a particular jersey color?
Jonathan Turley: Ha!
Marc Beckman: As opposed to kind of you know really breaking down the issues,
Jonathan Turley: Marc, that's a great question. I wish I had the answer to it. You know, I've been doing, work in the media, uh, for 30 years. I worked twice for NBC twice for CBS, the BBC, and I'm now working with Fox. I've, worked at all these different networks and over that period of time. I've seen considerable changes.
I also write for a number of newspapers. And legal analysis has changed. It used to be that legal analysis was Relatively uniform, we took a certain degree of pride that, our conclusions were, largely tracking each other. We tried to remain detached from the combatants and looking at the issues, but in that environment, we've, we've seen the media change.
It's now a series of silos or echo chambers on both the right and the left. I'm [00:04:00] not too sure that will. Ever go back, to the way it, it was, there was always a fairly liberal bent to media. But we now have a different type of economic model, you know, where you have, networks that are aligned with the viewpoints of, their listeners and their viewers.
but in that environment there is this certain intolerance for people that have more heterogeneous views, you know, you're not allowed to be a hybrid. You have to be the liberal or the conservative, the democrat or the republican,
Marc Beckman: right
Jonathan Turley: And that leads to a lot of, mis, misunderstandings.
understandings about, why you're saying the things that, that you do. try to get things right in terms of legal analysis. And that means, and sometimes I have defended the position of Donald Trump and other times I have not. I've done the same with President Biden. Uh, you, you try to get it right, but in this environment, that's, [00:05:00] that's It's not really tolerated.
You know, you have to play for one team.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, I see that. I see that for sure. But my background is, I don't practice law, but I actually have a legal education. I was admitted to the bar in New York, New Jersey, and waived into DC. And, a consistent thought of mine is, uh, that our constitution, is so strong on its own, our system is so strong on its own, that even if, the society is threading, if we stay true to the Constitution, we could overcome that adversity.
Do you feel, Professor Turley, that our Constitution is still strong enough to, preserve Our, different opinions throughout society now, especially with, you know, I think as we, we go through the summer and then come out of the summer as we're going to see a lot of, uh, heated debate and emotion, uh, probably even hitting the streets and back in the universities again. do you think the constitution is strong enough to withhold such passion?
Jonathan Turley: I do. You know, one of the things that I go [00:06:00] into in the book is that this is not our first age of rage. That's why it's entitled an age of rage, not the age of rage. We've gone through this before. It's ironic that often people who want to limit free speech or other constitutional rights will portray Their times is different.
The threats that they face as existential and unprecedented, they're not. These are the same voices that we've heard throughout our history. They're often saying the very same things. In fact, one of the, uh, aspects of the book that I most value, uh, is to point out that they use the same actual terms.
Things like fake news, was a term used, at the very start of our republic. To support censorship, but we have survived. And one of the reasons is that our constitution wasn't just written for times like these. It was written in a time like this. I mean, the, the Federalists, the Jeffersonians. [00:07:00] hated each other.
The language, the divisions, the accusations are almost identical to the ones we hear today. I once was testifying and a member of Congress told me, you know, Professor, I, I know you always talk about James Madison and the Framers, but these are different times. people today talk like they want to kill each other.
And I interrupted him and said, They were actually trying to kill each other back then. I mean, they weren't just talking about it. That's what the Alien Sedition Acts were. So don't pretend that you're facing some problem that requires you to go rogue, that requires you to take extra constitutional means.
There's nothing new about you or these problems, but what is something we've seen before is a crisis of faith. That's what we're seeing. That's what these voices are. They don't have faith. In the constitutional system, they don't have faith in each other. That's why free speech is always the first thing to be attacked in an age of [00:08:00] rage, because we lack a faith in each other.
Uh, we begin to believe that the only way that the country can survive is if we silence people with opposing views.
Marc Beckman: And that lack of faith that you're talking about isn't just at the level of the citizenry today. It's also in our Congress. I know. from experience and, and in reading your book that we've had senators, including like, for example, Senator Coons, who has stepped up and in the halls of, Senate has suggested that we actually pull back a little bit with regards of of freedom of, speech with regards to the first amendment you know in an effort to protect climate change.
Right?
Jonathan Turley: Right. And that's a strange thing. You know, I was raised a liberal Democrat. I'm still quite liberal on social issues. I'm still a Democrat. but I never imagined that the Democratic Party would embrace censorship, blacklisting, the way it has. After all, the McCarthy period, which is discussed in the book, the Red [00:09:00] Scare, those were directed against the left. And now the strongest voices for censorship is coming from the left. And that's why both parties have had. , there, there are periods in which they have become, opponents to free speech. Today, it's the turn, it's the time for the left. But I have to say, it's really quite disorienting.
Uh, you know, I worked for Ted Kennedy, I worked for Mo Udall. , I, If you had told me that there would ever be a time, When Democratic members would stand up and defend censorship, which they have, I would have told you were crazy. I was in one hearing where I testified against the censorship system that is currently, being developed.
Uh, and this is a system that a federal judge called Orwellian. And after Musk bought Twitter and released the Twitter files, Democrats, who had previously said there's no proof of coordination, switched and just started to say that they support censorship because [00:10:00] free speech is dangerous, it's harmful, it has to be controlled.
And one of the members, uh, uh, Goldman from New York, uh, told me, you know, Professor, You know, you seem to forget, because you're an absolutist when it comes to free speech, that, Oliver Wendell Holmes said you can't cry fire in a crowded theater. and I said, Congressman, you do realize, right, that that line comes from Schenck, which the court ultimately abandoned.
it was a line used to uphold the conviction of a socialist for political speech, for simply putting out a pamphlet. What Charles Schenck did is he put out a pamphlet entitled Assert Your Rights. That was the title. Uh, on the back of it, uh, it praised the Constitution. It said, Long Live the Constitution.
It was a pamphlet educating people as to their right to protest. He was put in jail for that. And that line was used to justify it. And Goldman cut me off and said, We don't need a law lecture. today, professor, and I said, [00:11:00] well, we really do need some form of a lecture because strange thing that the book tries to capture is that free speech is one of those rights, which is most cherished at a distance.
Right? We can look back in history and be mortified on what happened in the McCarthy period, what happened under the Adams administration. We can be aghast and say, how could they have ever allowed that to occur? But when you're in a period like this, you lose that perspective. That's why I talk about rage rhetoric.
rage rhetoric is something we have struggled with throughout our history, and it tends to become state rage. That is, when people hear rage rhetoric, either they think it's righteous if they're the ones that are enraged, or dangerous if they don't agree with that viewpoint.
Marc Beckman: let's back up for a second, because I think one thing that you do with the book that's masterful [00:12:00] is you allow for the lay person to really understand the history leading up to the first amendment and why free speech is so important. so I'm curious, how do you define a natural right?
What is a natural right? And then my question to you is, is free speech a natural right?
Jonathan Turley: Well, that's a great question, Marc This book took so long to write because I didn't just want to write another free speech book. There are many fine free speech books out there. But it took me 30 years because I wouldn't let it go, because I wanted to try to figure out why we're still struggling with free speech.
And so I tried to tell that story. through the personalities and the periods that helped create our view of free speech. And this is an unvarnished history. We have often been, far worse, uh, than our advertising. You know, we, we often call ourselves the bastion of free speech, [00:13:00] but we have, in many periods, honored The Modern Hotelier, David Millili, Steve Carran, Stayflexi, SOPs, Clingendael Institute, friend shoring, Rem Korteweg, CRM, CEO, LodgIQ, Dr.
Elizabeth Haas, Pierre Gervois, AIG. What's the foundation for free speech? And I do suggest that free speech is a natural or human right. It's an autonomous right. Now that's a very important distinction. But before I talk about why that's important legally, the idea that free speech is a natural right suggests that we are as human beings dependent on expression to be fully human. I actually talk about studies how physiologically parts of the brain will shrink if you are denied the ability to express yourself. [00:14:00] We have a psychological and physiological need to project ourselves Into the world around us to express ourselves orally or artistically.
The whole idea of a starving artist captures that, that you can have someone who would starve themselves to death because of a need to express themselves. So to be fully human is to be able to speak freely. Now that that notion. was captured at the founding. That is, many of the writers that had the greatest impact on the framers believed that free speech was a natural right given by God.
They often, uh, cited John Locke and other philosophers for that point.
Marc Beckman: Right.
Jonathan Turley: And when the First Amendment was written, James Madison and others believed that to be true. That moment of clarity was lost within a few years. during the Adams administration, but one of the things that [00:15:00] was, that was most seriously lost in that transition was not just that federal courts reverted back to the English or Blackstonian view of free speech, but they denied something that is essential in being human.
something can be a natural or human right without your having to believe, for example, that it comes from God. There's some people that are agnostics or atheists. But you can still believe that free speech is part of the human condition. That to be fully human is to be able to speak freely.
I believe that. I believe it's a natural or human right.
Marc Beckman: I agree.
Jonathan Turley: So what happened then was that they embraced what I call a functionalist view, or an instrumentalist view of free speech. And the way it goes is something like this. That we protect free speech because it's good for democracy. It's good for the marketplace of ideas.
Now all that is true. No one would deny that, that it's hard to have a democracy without free speech. It's the right to protect all [00:16:00] others rights. But the problem with it is if you defend it on that basis, It puts you on a slippery slope. It means that you can have trade offs. So there's some speech that's not good for democracy, right?
There's some speech that people would view as low value or garbage speech, racist speech, anti Semitic speech. There's lots of forms of speech that courts have struggled with, often not protecting. to the same degree as high value speech. And it's those trade offs, that ability to trade off that led to the crackdowns on free speech throughout these various periods that the book discusses.
And it's because, I think, we lost our way. And I'm sorry to make this answer so long, Marc, but I, there's a long chapter on Oliver Wendell Holmes. Uh, that my publishers initially balked at and asked, you know, do we really need a long chapter on Oliver Wendell Holmes? I was a, I was aghast that they even asked the question.
Marc Beckman: Ha.
[00:17:00] The reason I spent so much time on Oliver Wendell Holmes is when I was finishing this book, I realized that if we want to figure out how we lost our way as a nation, You can see that by seeing how Oliver Wendell Holmes lost his way, because he was responsible, including in the Schenck case, for some of the worst decisions of free speech, some of the most draconian, abusive decisions.
This was a great civil libertarian. But what really struck me as odd about Holmes is that when he talked about natural rights, there was a vehemence, even an anger, uh, to Holmes. He, he rejected it. With such a passion, I wanted to figure out why. And because it was his rejection of any concept of transcendent or natural rights, which led him to some of these terrible decisions.
And what I found was that he was questioning natural law when he was in college at Harvard. But I think that during the civil war, he [00:18:00] really. He became almost angry with concepts that there were pre existing or transcendent rights. He was involved in some of the most bloody, horrible battles of the Civil War.
He was the most unlucky soldier in the history of warfare. Every time he walked on a battlefield, he seemed to get shot. And, you know, he was wounded about four times, one of which almost killed him. And what came out of that was not just someone who wrote, suggested that he was an atheist, but someone who But someone who rejected the concept that there were transcendant rights.
He was the ultimate positivist. He believed that the legitimacy of law is the fact that it was legitimately enacted through a democratic process.
You just threw so much out there, but going back to some of your beginning comments, is there then a hierarchy of protected speech, legally protected speech in the United States of America today?
Jonathan Turley: There is. I mean, the thing is, the court [00:19:00] has struggled with this, uh, because they decoupled, the First Amendment from its, its origins, uh, when we abandoned that view of natural, uh, or human rights as, as the basis for free speech. And the result is that they do make these trade offs, so they have exempted, Fighting words, for example, even obscenity, to allow for some prosecutions to occur. Obscenity is a very good example of why the Supreme Court has gotten free speech wrong. by its very definition, obscenity is a subjective term. and many of these cases came out of the sort of Comstock period. And I have a long, uh, Part of the book on Anthony Comstock, who perfectly personifies the anti free speech movement that has always existed in this country.
He was the most hateful, hypocritical man, uh, [00:20:00] this country's ever produced. He would brag about how many people committed suicide, that he targeted. He was the head of the Society Against Vice in New York.
Marc Beckman: Terrible.
Jonathan Turley: many of these people were homosexuals and others that he, uh, persecuted and he was proud of it.
He was just a horrible human being, but we still have the Comstock Act, right? We still have. The prosecution, at least theoretically of obscenity, even though the court made a mess out of it. it's that degree of, uncertainty, the lack of clarity, that the book talks about. Because it, it allows us in, in ages of rage to make these trade off decisions.
To say, this speech just isn't that valuable.
Marc Beckman: it's funny. You're considering this moment in time, an age of rage. I often use the words that we're living in the age of dumb, and I think there's a combination of like heated passion, plus people, [00:21:00] citizens and people in the government and major leaders of corporations who don't want to do the work to understand why free speech isn't really a bad thing.
It's not so scary. It actually helps facilitate ideas and propel humankind. Forward in many ways. So if we have this, hierarchy of protected speech, then what you're telling me, if I understand correctly, is that legally that right is not absolute. And if that's the case, does it have a chilling effect on an individual's ability to think, to come up with new ideas, to develop new concepts?
Will it chill our ability to propel forward as a society? Um, in the way perhaps that we would if we had absolute freedom of speech, right? Because the concept, Professor Turley, is if I'm going to be penalized for saying something, then I could start to train my mind to not even think in a new or novel way.
And it [00:22:00] stymies innovation, progress socially, um, and beyond. So I'm curious. Um, I realize that's not necessarily a legal issue, but I, I'm curious, you've given this topic a lot of thought obviously, I'm curious what you think about this idea of having a chilling effect on one's ability to think.
Jonathan Turley: No, it does have an effect on our ability to, as you say, move forward the way we conceptualize and speak about things. The Supreme Court has always said that it's the chilling effect on speech that's the greatest danger. From government coercion. And this is what governments try to do. They don't have the time or ability to actively censor every human being in a country.
What they do is they try to punish or coerce some to silence the vast majority of others. And we saw that during the pandemic. I talk about the attacks on free speech during the pandemic in the book. And I just spoke at the University of Chicago and in the front row was a [00:23:00] number of these scientists from Harvard, Stanford, other schools who were banned on social media, uh, who were, fired or stripped of their associations or academic positions.
Now, many of these people have been vindicated. Some of them were banned because they believed in the lab theory of COVID, which now federal agencies agree is the most likely explanation. Others argue that we shouldn't shut down schools and believe that there was natural immunities as good as a vaccination.
All of these people, lost, tremendously, in their academic careers. But we also lost, right? I mean, we shut down our schools when most of our European allies did not. And they have not experienced the tremendous cost we have had in mental illness and, and a generation of students who are behind on their education.
But we didn't have that debate. You know, the New York Times science reporter [00:24:00] warned other reporters not to report, for example, on the lab theory and said that that's a racist theory that has no grounding in fact. Well, when you have colleagues telling you that you'll be a racist if you even cover the theory, nobody did.
And nobody stood up for these scientists. So, fighting free speech can cost lives. That's the reason I've been so critical of President Biden. I mean, arguably, President Biden is the most anti free speech president since John Adams, by the mere fact that his administration has created, or supported, and partially funded, the largest censorship system in our history.
Now, they use surrogates, they use social media companies, but it is a massive system And I was very critical when the president doubled down on censorship and said that companies that are not censoring on issues like COVID, are killing people. And then Senator Coons and others that you referred to earlier from the [00:25:00] book said, yeah, but we also need to censor people for climate change.
And. Gender identity issues. See, that's the insatiable aspect of censorship. Once you start to do it, then every group says, well, how about my issue? Why isn't that important enough to silence countervailing viewpoints?
Marc Beckman: So it's this tension that you alluded to earlier of what's in the best interests of the masses, like the social interest versus the individual's interest as it relates to freedom of speech, correct?
Jonathan Turley: Yes, I mean, we're all really the losers here. I mean, because people don't feel they can speak freely. Science does not have the robust debate that it needs. if it had, we might have made greater progress on some of these issues, uh, but more importantly, the country suffers, uh, because you can see how this snowballs.
Uh, you see it today. you certainly see it in higher education. I have a long [00:26:00] chapter on higher education, and as with my, I have a foot in both media and academia, and I feel the same way as an academic. I would have told you 30 years ago. That it would be absurd to think that our, higher education institutions would be as intolerant as they are today.
the self surveys of faculty, where they identify themselves, found that in many cases, in one case, they found that over 40 percent of departments didn't have a single conservative or Republican. They've purged these viewpoints and now most of the debate runs from the left to the far left. Now, I happen to agree with many of those views socially,
Marc Beckman: Sure.
Jonathan Turley: I miss what we had.
And I think it is a loss. To my students.
Marc Beckman: I think so too. I think it even goes further. Um, you're a professor of law, so you're, um, uh, built into the Socratic method, but also into this idea of [00:27:00] presenting both sides of an argument. Whereas for me, I am a professor of, um business. I teach an MBA class and ultimately. I'm teaching one you know for the most part one perspective.
And I think that's where the real danger comes, comes in. But listen to this. I took some data from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. I don't know if you've heard of this
Jonathan Turley: course. Well,
Marc Beckman: this data surrounding this topic specifically is remarkable. They argue that, or they claim that since 2020, there have been 650 attempts to professionally sanction scholars in both public and private. Universities for speech that would be. Quote unquote protected by the First Amendment, FIRE also says one in six professors report having been disciplined or threatened with discipline for their research, and 33 percent report having been pressured by colleagues to avoid researching controversial topics.
If we as a [00:28:00] nation are, um, limiting free speech and free ideas at the academic level, at the How does the next generation and the generation thereafter, look like what's going to happen to our society?
Jonathan Turley: FIRE has some amazing surveys that they have done, and Marc, it also goes to your point about chilling effects, that there's also surveys, a great number of them, showing that a majority of professors and students say that they don't feel free speaking openly in class or even on campus. So, these are people who are self reporting this, and it's uniform.
These are not one or two outliers. These are virtually every poll is showing that faculty and students are afraid. And, you know, I have a free speech blog, and we often track these controversies at universities. And I'll have professors send me stuff every day. And I'll often say, why don't you write on this, and they're often [00:29:00] very honest, and they say, you know, I can't lose this job.
Marc Beckman: Right.
Jonathan Turley: many of them are contract professors, and the fact is that if you get tagged, if you get targeted today in a cancel campaign They take everything that you value as an intellectual. People don't seem to realize it. That you're stripped of associations, publications, speaking opportunities.
Everything that an academic needs to be fully intellectual, you lose it all. And when you see a colleague go through that, Most people say, but for the grace of God, go I, and they remain silent. That's what has really amazed me, is that you've had faculty fired for their, their speech, and virtually none of their colleagues stand up to defend them, because they're afraid.
And the real cost of it, I talk about a, a professor named Adams, who is in, who is in North Carolina. He was a conservative. who was repeatedly targeted, he had to go to court I think three or four times, [00:30:00] won every time, to reinstate himself and then he made some joke on social media and it all started again and they said that they put him under investigation and they finally convinced him to take a settlement, to just simply leave teaching
Marc Beckman: Wow.
Jonathan Turley: and almost on the last day, uh, that he would be a professor, he went home and he killed himself.
Marc Beckman: That's terrible.
Jonathan Turley: And what people need to understand is that those stories are not just stories about tragedies like Adams, but also thousands that view people like Adams and say, I don't want to be that way. I don't want to end up that way. It's better for me to be silent. But the real costs are to the students. You know, I went to University of Chicago and when I went there, I loved every minute of it.
To me, it was like going into the Star Wars bar scene, you know, where you just had every different type of ideology, [00:31:00] morals, values. I lived in a vegetarian cooperative, and downstairs we had Trotskyites that would meet, and upstairs we had militant vegans, and next door we had libertarians, and I thought most of them were absolutely insane.
I loved every minute of it. I love talking to them because I love talking to people that could see what I was seeing and see something completely different. You just don't have that as much today on our campuses. And it's a shame. I mean, I feel sorry for students because of what we have done to higher education.
Marc Beckman: Well it goes even uh further. only do we not have that diversity in intellectual thought, but we actually, this maybe goes back to my concept of the age of dumb, we go out of our way, both professors and students to disrupt speakers, guests who come to the university to share a point of view that might not be very popular amongst the student body and the [00:32:00] academics.
And, um, I think that's pretty remarkable too. And the funny part of it, Professor Turling, I'll let you, let you, uh comment on it in a second, is that it's being packaged, it's being marketed by the disruptors as if they need to silence the speaker with the opposing point of view in the name of free speech, right?
Their action of disrupting, of silencing their guest is to benefit free speech. It's insane.
Jonathan Turley: No, it's absurd. And it is, in fact, probably the most popular viewpoint today. Free speech is on the decline. It's being taught as harmful, threatening. We've raised a generation of speech phobics. Who've been told since secondary school that they will be triggered, that they shouldn't have to listen to opposing views.
And it's gotten to the point that a federal judge could go, as you know, to Stanford and be shouted down because he was conservative. And then finally an assistant dean stands up and then joins in in attacking him. And says, what [00:33:00] made you, you know, consider coming to Stanford and expressing these views when you know many people would find them upsetting?
And that really captured for many of us where we are now. Uh, it sort of flips the harm principle of John Stuart Mill, where these academics are saying free speech is harmful, therefore, uh, we can restrict it. and they do it, this intolerance in the name of, tolerance. I, I debated John Yoo once. Uh, I was a big critic of his torture memo.
And some students, uh, stood up and interrupted the debate. And they were finally let out. And when I went outside, they said, Professor, we want you to know that wasn't, we support you. You know that. And I said, why do you think I support you? What you did was wrong. You're not engaged in free speech. That's not free speech.
Silencing others is not free speech. You can protest outside of an event, but you didn't want people [00:34:00] to hear what John Yoo was saying. And that's wrong. but that's the heckler's veto culture we have.
Marc Beckman: Professor Turley, I think you would really appreciate a conversation I had on this show on Some Future Day with the former editor in chief of the Wall Street Journal. He spoke about the perception of the modern day journalist thinking that their job, their role is actually to create the narrative versus reporting the facts.
Um, and then you had mentioned earlier in our conversation that Um, that narrative is built into, you know, whatever channel it is that you're watching. We know what Fox is going to say and we know what MSNBC going to say, but if free speech is in peril at the university level, I think that could really have a massive impact on society. for years and years to come, maybe, maybe of the sort we've never seen before, like, I don't remember ever in my lifetime. I'm, a middle aged man now. I don't remember ever in my [00:35:00] lifetime, a time where the conflicting ideas weren't welcomed in an welcome in an academic setting. Um, how do you feel about that?
Do you think that there's a way that this concept at the academic level could be turned around? We have competing ideas, are welcome.
Jonathan Turley: Well, I have a long chapter on the media because it has gone through a fundamental change. Uh, journalism or J schools, uh, now reject objectivity and neutrality. They say that reporters should do that and they're sawing at the branch we're sitting on. Right. Uh, they trust in the media is an all time low.
Uh, newspapers, like the Washington Post lost $77 million last year. They've lost half their view, their readership. And recently a new editor came and told the reporters, this is a direct quote, nobody's reading your stuff. And they proceeded, and they still are proceeding, to try to get him fired. But he was dropping this truth bomb for a reason, right?
He was trying to [00:36:00] say, look, This isn't working. Whatever we're doing isn't working. But the fact is that the anti free speech movement today came from higher education. It's now metastasized in the media and politics, but it came from higher education. And it is, in my view, the most dangerous anti-free speech movement in our history.
And the reason is because of what you touched on, Marc, which is We've never seen this Profile, this alliance of interest. We've never had the government, corporations, academia, the media, aligned so solidly against free speech. I mean, you had the New York Times just recently run yet another article about, it was entitled, The First Amendment is Out of Control.
Uh, you have one of my colleagues.
Marc Beckman: York Times. Could you imagine that? The New York Times, they're in the business of speech.
Jonathan Turley: And you have one of my colleagues who is leading an effort to [00:37:00] amend the First Amendment. She says that the First Amendment is quote excessively individualistic and that free speech should be balanced against equity. You have a, my book came out with a number of anti free speech books saying how free speech is harmful, a threat.
One author, a law professor in Michigan said free speech is the Achilles heel of the United States.
Marc Beckman: Wow.
Jonathan Turley: So this movement came from higher education. It's now spreading. And the question is, how do we get out of this period? Because we can't assume that just because we came out of the earlier ages of rage, that we'll come out of this one intact.
This is different. I mean this is a much greater threat than anything we have faced before.
Marc Beckman: Why are people so afraid of free speech, free ideas? The, this marketplace of ideas that I believe Holmes, um, was it Holmes or Brandeis that,
Jonathan Turley: Right. And with the marketplaces, it's this towering idea to preserve all the different [00:38:00] issues and ideas in the marketplace because it strengthens us. And look, I'm a dinosaur. I believe that the best solution to bad speech is good speech. But the one thing this book lays out is I talk about Europe, where the anti free speech movement has been raging for decades.
Marc Beckman: yeah.
Jonathan Turley: And free speech is in a free fall in Germany, France, Great Britain, Canada, all of our close allies. They are criminalizing wider and wider arrays of speech where people are arrested. A minister was arrested for denouncing homosexuality. You even had a government minister in England put under investigation for criticizing immigrants.
This, the problem with censorship is it does have this insatiable aspect. It expands. It's like a gas in a closed space. You expand the space, the gas will fill it. And so this tide has now reached our [00:39:00] shores. that's what we're sort of looking at. But I'll note one thing about this. And that is when you, when you ask Marc, what do, what are we afraid of?
Why do we do this? Um, look at Germany. Germany, I can understand. They wanted to ban speech of Nazis. desperately wanna see the neo-Nazi movement, uh, evaporate everywhere in the world. So they ban Nazi simples, Nazi ideology, and various other references to, Nazi activities or white supremacists, uh, activities.
It is one of the most longstanding and, and broad censorship systems in the world. And when I talk to my colleagues in Germany, I always say, how's it going? Right? Everything I see is that your neo Nazi movement is at a record high. It's burgeoning. Right? You force them underground. You allow them to claim that they're victims.
And their ranks have [00:40:00] never been larger. But you know what is smaller? Free speech. So a recent poll in Germany found only 17 percent of people in Germany felt comfortable speaking freely in public. 17%! So they're silencing the wrong people. Right? But it's still a popular movement. The people they are targeting are flourishing.
And the rest of the citizens are in this chilling mode of free speech.
Marc Beckman: think it's fair to say. That, when we try historically to repress speech surrounding these vile ideas of anti semitism and racism and, you know, other related topics, it just never goes away. It's always there. You're saying that it's blossoming, but, you know, if we look throughout history, it's always there.
Jonathan Turley: Yeah, it's always there. And the point is that censorship has never killed a single idea. It has never worked. It has a uniformly [00:41:00] Consistent failure rate, and yet people constantly grab it because the temptation is so great. Instead of answering someone, why don't I just stop them from speaking? And it's an immediate relief, but it does nothing.
And instead, free speech actually has a way of combating bad ideas. I want those neo Nazis to speak publicly, because I want to know who they are. I want to know where they are. I want to know how many there are. And I want to mock them. Right? The most effective way of combating bad ideas is to mock them and to expose them for what they are, the hateful, grotesque people they are.
We're not having that debate because we have this artificial silence imposed through censorship. And so they go underground where they flourish.
Marc Beckman: And it's really institutionalized, as you said earlier, that we kind of glossed over it, but I want to go back to the idea of our government. Um really, uh activating this concept [00:42:00] of censorship and, and repression of, of speech. Um, you had mentioned, you, you made a big statement there surrounding President Biden and the Biden administration.
I know that he created this Disinformation Governance Board. I remember it was, Um, there was a leader of it, I think her last name was Jankiewicz, where like they put her up for a second and then they quickly like put her aside. But in your book, you kind of uncover the fact that this movement is much bigger than Jankiewicz on her own, that it actually spread out further and that there's budget allocation towards different entities.
Can you highlight that a little bit?
Jonathan Turley: I was one of the earliest critics of the Disinformation Governance Board and Jankowicz. And because of the public backlash, they shut down the board and they got rid of Jankowicz. By the way, she then proceeded to sue her critics for defamation. And just this week, a federal judge rejected her lawsuit, but in the [00:43:00] middle of his opinion, he noted that Jankowicz said, I'm not engaged.
I was not engaged in censorship. What we did in the Biden administration was not censorship on the disinformation governance board. And this federal judge said, yes, it was. That it meets the definition of censorship, so it can't be defamation, it's true, and people are allowed to have opposing opinions.
But I thought I was telling that Jankowicz went from calling opposing opinions disinformation to calling them defamation. And the idea is to try to chill your critics, but one of the things I've, I've written probably a hundred columns on the censorship system. I've testified about a dozen times on censorship in Congress.
And what we found was that after the board was shut down, uh, Secretary Mayorkas made it sound in the public that this was now a done deal. What he didn't mention is that his agency and other agencies were funding much larger efforts doing the same thing. [00:44:00] And so after the Twitter files were released, uh, when Elon Musk bought that company, uh, we finally had the proof of this massive censorship system.
And the degree of sophistication is really breathtaking. Uh, they're very good at this. They've made a cottage industry out of silencing and targeting others. Universities are playing a big role in that. there's millions and millions of dollars out there. They've essentially made free speech a commodity, uh, where the limitation can be quite profitable.
And so one of the more, I think chilling aspects to this is that some of the grants from the US government have gone to efforts to target the revenue streams. of conservative and other sites. It's a very sophisticated way of killing free speech. You, you chill the advertisers, you chill the sources of revenue.
So for example, after the board was. [00:45:00] suspended, uh, grants went to another global effort, which told advertisers what sites you should not be supporting. And of the 10 sites it chose, all 10 were conservative sites. They were libertarian sites.
Marc Beckman: The
Jonathan Turley: was
Marc Beckman: originated from the U. S. federal government.
Jonathan Turley: that the U. S. government was funding part of that effort.
We also just learned in the last few weeks that there's a separate effort being used to help fund targeting of advertisers. again, connected to the U. S. government and on that list with 10, by the way, they included people like the folks at Reason Magazine or the Reason site. This is a, this is a legal site of dweebs.
These are a bunch of libertarian professors who just talk about cases and they listed that site as one of the 10 most dangerous. And then Huffington Post was listed as the 10, one of the 10 [00:46:00] best, most reliable sites for advertisers.
Marc Beckman: Which other notable, more, popular names were in that grouping of 10 that were, being censored?
Jonathan Turley: I believe the New York Post was up there, uh, as, as one of them. Uh, but it was, it was basically the, the list that, uh, Liberals hate, like it's all the news sites, that liberals view as, as far right. And many of them are very conservative. Uh, you had a member of Congress, actually a couple, pushing, cable, carriers, uh, um, and why they would allow Fox News to be aired.
Now Fox News is not just the most popular of the cable networks, but it has twice Viewership of competitors like CNN. Now that's not to brag, that's simply saying that these were members that were asking carriers to take the most popular news cable program off the air. That's the, that's [00:47:00] how this culture can corrode your judgment when it becomes insatiable again.
That we shouldn't have to hear opposing views.
Marc Beckman: It's truly, it's truly remarkable. So you mentioned, the Twitter files and, and a lot was uncovered there. but it seems like people never really cared. Like, do you find that there's a certain type of malaise when it comes to censorship? Like the, some of the cases that you just mentioned, That happens, you said this week, they should be all over the news, but we're not even hearing about it.
Admittedly, this is the first time I'm learning about it myself. And I'm a, I'm a voracious reader. , why are we not hearing more about these very important topics surrounding censorship and the limitation of the first amendment,
Jonathan Turley: Well, the media is not covering it. And quite frankly, the media is one of the allies in this movement. I'm shocked to say that because I've been part of the media for 30 years as a columnist and as a legal analyst on television. But I'm shocked to say it. part of it is because the media just doesn't [00:48:00] report on it.
It's part of losing this objectivity and neutrality, from J schools as the touchstones of, of journalism. But you're right, Marc. Part of the problem with free speech is it's an abstraction, right? It always loses to more concrete things when, you know, governments say, you know, free speech is going to cause terrorism.
I mean, people know what terrorism is. It's a car bomb going off on their street. You know, when I speak at university I often ask the students If they would sell me their right of free speech, and I used to say, I'll give you $2 million. And I realized that was a mistake because $2 million is a bit of an abstraction.
I got much better results when I offered $200,000. When I said 200,000, the hands would go up.
Marc Beckman: Wow.
Jonathan Turley: And it's because people could envision what 200, 000 is, right? It is my college education. It's a down payment on a house or a car. [00:49:00] And the reason they have that honest. response is that many of them just don't see when was the last time I used free speech.
It's the great irony of a free people, that if you're a free people, you've never known the absence of freedom.
Marc Beckman: it's totally Orwellian. And then the idea of the government coercing social media to restrict certain information. or the access to certain information from the citizenry is boggling to me as well. Like going back to, um, Twitter and, and, and other channels of social media now, like we, it was uncovered in the Twitter files that the United States government, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, Professor Turley, but I think it was both the Trump administration and the Biden administration were both using social media, to coerce speech, to have. an impact on the access to information that we, the citizenry, were able to get. I know the Hunter Biden laptop is often referenced, but it goes even beyond that. Can you paint that picture for the audience a little bit, [00:50:00] please?
Jonathan Turley: Yeah. I mean, there is one thing this book says is that there, there are no clean hands here. That, uh, the effort to limit speech, has run rampant in both parties throughout history. is a virus. I talk about something James Madison wrote in 1800, and Madison was one of the truly faithful framers when it came to free speech.
John Adams became a terrible hypocrite. So did Jefferson. But Madison, If anything got stronger on free speech. And he wrote a piece talking about the monster that lives within us. The monster that lives within government of sedition, prosecutions. That this monster comes forth. When we're afraid, or we're angry, and the book actually talks repeatedly about how we slay Madison's monster, what we have to do to finally break from, [00:51:00] from that history.
And what you're left with in this history, which, which the book goes through all of these periods, is that there is this recurrence where every generation concludes that it's facing a unique threat. And that free speech has to be the first thing to be curtailed. It's the same voices that we hear over and over again, but they pretend they're saying it for the first time.
The danger is that some generation is going to believe it. And it worries me because with higher education as the font of this anti free speech movement, we are training citizens to believe it. And we're creating a crisis of faith. They no longer have faith in free speech, or the Constitution, or each other.
And that's the only thing that could endanger our constitutional system, is that refusal to [00:52:00] take that leap of faith. That we have historically,
Marc Beckman: Well, I don't have a lot of confidence that we're going to get there, especially because your students are willing to sell off their freedom of speech for only 200, 000. I mean, that's really alarming, Professor Turley.
Jonathan Turley: it is. And that's the reason I start those speeches as I try to explore with them. And I appreciate, I have to coax them to be honest. And, uh, and I then try to talk about why it is you just gave me your free speech. And in the end, I think that we do make some progress. Many of these students. have been in a fairly anti free speech environment their entire educational lives.
I've had law students have taken my class and they've said it's the first time they've heard of some of the theories or some of the philosophers I've talked about on free speech
Marc Beckman: Wow.
Jonathan Turley: and so I think that part of what this book tries to do is to find a way [00:53:00] of an awakening. See, there's a, there's a strange thing here, Marc, that as depressing as these periods are, um, the idea of monsters living within us and all of that,
Marc Beckman: Sure.
Jonathan Turley: I am very optimistic in the end.
And the reason is that if you believe that free speech Is part of the human condition. If you believe that we cannot be completely human without free speech, then you have a certain optimism that even a massive censorship system like today might diminish the appetite for free speech, but it can't extinguish the taste for it.
That if you believe we're hardwired for free speech, we can never really lose it. And that's the reason I'm optimistic. All of those speeches you talked about, Marc, where people sold me their free speech, I felt that after we spoke, that many really were less willing
Marc Beckman: That's
Jonathan Turley: those trade offs.
Marc Beckman: That's encouraging. [00:54:00] It's just the fact that, censorship has become so institutionalized now. When you talk about, it happening in government, academia, in corporations, with the media, it's just, is this the biggest moment in time for censorship in the United States history?
Jonathan Turley: I think it is. This is one of the things that the book talks about, why this is the most dangerous period. We've never seen anything like this. Um, it was brilliant. Uh, this, this huge system now of academia and government and corporations, uh, it is the largest censorship system in our history. It has been far more successful than, for example, what the Chinese have done with their great firewall.
Uh, we have outdone them. Uh, many times over, and it's through this type of censorship by surrogate, and that's one of the reasons why I think the Supreme Court made a mistake in passing on a couple of recent cases. This is an unprecedented threat, and the court had to [00:55:00] do something it doesn't like to do, which is to sort of think outside the box, to look again at free speech protections, and in light of this new, truly existential threat to free speech.
Marc Beckman: Other than yourself, who are some of the other, um leaders with regards or advocates with regards to, the first amendment today?
Jonathan Turley: Oh, there are many wonderful advocates. Nadine Straussen at the New York Law School, former president of the ACLU, is one of my heroes. I mean, she was the head of the ACLU at its heyday. I'm one of the old guard that used to work with the ACLU. The ACLU has really changed in its view of free speech. Uh, so she's part of that old guard.
you have many other, uh, faculty around the country and journal and some columnists that are beginning to raise alarms over what we're facing. Uh, and many of them have been hit very hard. People like [00:56:00] Philip Hamburger and others have, have gone to court to fight for, uh, free speech. So there is. an alliance out there.
A sort of free speech corps that exists. what we need to do, and what this book tries to do, is to understand what free speech is. How we got lost and how we can regain the ground we lost. Right now, this anti free speech wave from Europe is hitting our shores. There are many people in the United States allied with that effort.
You know, when Elon Musk bought Twitter and said that he was going to reduce censorship, it was telling that the first thing Hillary Clinton did is she went to Europe to ask them to use the European digital laws To force Musk to censor citizens. Uh, so we have allies with this European movement. Uh, and we, [00:57:00] we have to respond to that and we have to respond to it because we have a wonderful product or right to sell, right?
Free speech is the thing that defines us. It is the indispensable right. But we need for people to understand why it's indispensable to them.
Marc Beckman: it's tough though. I mean, I even find myself from time to time, trying to be brave to say something that might be my opinion. I might think it's a fact, but it might not be popular with my audience. And I've never in my life thought I would have to be brave to make a statement. But here we are, right, Professor Turley.
Jonathan Turley: that's true, yes.
Marc Beckman: You've given me an enormous amount of, insight today mostly, but of your time as well. And, we have a tradition on the show. We end the show The show name is inspired by James Joyce, Some Future Day.
And what I do is I kind of use the beginning of, a sentence with that. It's a [00:58:00] leading, uh, sentence, I guess, or a leading question of sorts. And then my guest finishes the sentence for me. I can't articulate because I'm exhausted, but I think you got it. Are you game?
Jonathan Turley: uh, yes, this is surprising. Let's go for it. I'm a little bit fearful and timid, but let's try it.
Marc Beckman: Oh my God, you're so articulate, intelligent, cogent, and well organized with your thoughts. not concerned for you. So in some future day, the First Amendment will evolve to be.
Jonathan Turley: A rallying point for humanity, a definitional point for all human beings to embrace what they have in common. A common article of faith, not just in free speech, but in each other.
Marc Beckman: That's beautiful. And I hope it, I hope it is realized
Jonathan Turley: I'm so glad I got through that.
Marc Beckman: Professor Turley, thank you so much for joining me on Some Future Day [00:59:00] today. It's really been a pleasure meeting you.
Jonathan Turley: Thank you, Marc. It's been a great honor. Thank you.
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