Below is my column on Fox.com on my book and how our current “age of rage” may be the most dangerous for free speech, but it is not our first such period in history. Indeed, the current debate is returning this nation to the very debate that erupted at the start of our Republic.
Here is the column:
As the nation heads into the July 4th holiday, we have rarely been more divided as a people. Ironically, we are still debating the core values that define us, particularly the right to free speech. Indeed, “debate” hardly captures the rising anger and animosity from campuses to Congress. That is also nothing new.
While I have called this “an age of rage,” it is not our first. The United States was born in rage.
Roughly 250 years ago, a group calling itself the Sons of Liberty boarded three ships and dumped almost 100,000 pounds of English tea into the Boston harbor. The “Boston Tea Party” is still celebrated as an act of defiance that helped spark the American Revolution.
It was also an act of rage, a key moment that is the focus of my book out this week, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
As a nation, we have gone through almost cyclic periods of unhinged rage, including periods of what I call “state rage.” The first victim has always been free speech, including in our current age of rage. Indeed, this is arguably the most dangerous anti-free speech period in our history.
“The Indispensable Right“ is a reference to the description of Justice Louis Brandeis of core value in our nation. It is also a reference that captures our inherent conflict with free speech. Brandeis and his colleague Oliver Wendell Holmes are enshrined as civil libertarians who became the “great dissenters,” arguing for rights that remained unrealized for decades.
Yet, these two jurists would support some of the most abusive denials of free speech in our history. Holmes would supply the single most regrettable line of any opinion: that free speech protections do not allow citizens to shout fire in a crowded theater. That paraphrasing of his decision in Schenck v. United States continues to be used today as a rationalization for censorship and limits on free speech.
On free speech, Brandeis and Holmes were no heroes. Our true heroes are detailed in this book, a collection of true dissenters — anarchists, unionists, communists, feminists and others who risked everything to fight for their right to speak.
George Bernard Shaw once said “a reasonable man adjusts himself to the world. An unreasonable man expects the world to adjust itself to him. Therefore, all progress is made by unreasonable people.”
These are stories of wonderfully unreasonable people like Anita Whitney, a feminist who left a family of privilege to fight for social and political justice. The descendent of a family on the Mayflower and niece of Supreme Court Justice Cyrus W. Field, Whitney defied threats of the police that she would be arrested if she spoke in California in 1919 in Oakland.
With police standing around on stage, she refused to be silent and spoke against the lynchings of Blacks occurring around the country. Her abusive conviction would ultimately go before the court (with Brandeis and Holmes) and they would vote to uphold it.
Time and again, this country has abandoned our free speech values as political dissidents were met with state rage in the form of mass crackdowns and imprisonments. It is an unvarnished story of free speech in America and for better or worse, it is our story.
Yet, we have much to learn from this history as this pattern now repeats itself. The book explains why we are living in the most dangerous anti-free speech period in our history.
In the past, free speech has found natural allies in academia and the media. That has changed with a type of triumvirate — the government, corporations, and academia — in a powerful alliance against free speech values.
Ironically, while these groups refer to the unprecedented threat of “fake news” and “disinformation,” those were the very same rationales used first by the Crown and then the U.S. government to crack down on free speech in the early American republic.
The difference is the magnitude of the current censorship system from campuses to corporations to Congress. Law professors are even calling for changing the First Amendment as advancing an “excessively individualistic” view of free speech. The amendment would allow the government to curtail speech to achieve “equity” and protect “dignity.”
Others, including President Biden, have called for greater censorship while politicians and pundits denounce defenders of free speech as “Putin lovers” and “insurrectionist sympathizers.”
Despite watching the alarming rise of this anti-free speech movement and the rapid loss of protections in the West, there is still reason to be hopeful.
For those of us who believe that free speech is a human right, there is an inherent and inescapable optimism. We are wired for free speech as humans. We need to speak freely, to project part of ourselves into the world around us. It is essential to being fully human.
In the end, this alliance may reduce our appetite for free speech but we will never truly lose our taste for it. It is in our DNA. That is why this is not our first or our last age of rage. However, it is not the rage that defines us. It is free speech that defines us.
Let’s analyze the case of the whopper pushed out by Blinken, Morell, Biden and 51 co-signers, obviously deceptive infowarfare, to steer the voters into electing Biden.
Consider that these artful liars all had received taxpayer-funded training in PsyOps, with the understanding that the knowhow was never to be used domestically for political advantage. That golden rule was walked over.
The whopper only had to work for 3 weeks. After that, the truth could come out, and not really matter. This points to the realtime nature of information in a democracy. Justice Harlan’s dictum that “the antidote to bad info is good info” is naive and flaccid in not recognizing the skilled infowarrior’s lead time advantages over the truth-seeker. Finding out the truth has to be achieved in the timeframe WHERE IT STILL MATTERS (pending public decisionmaking, not after the fact). We fought an unnecessary 8-year war in Iraq because the country was duped about WMDs in the hands of Al Qaeda (cooked up by Saddam’s Shiite foes in Iraq). Finding out it was a clever con job isn’t going to bring back the 4000 lives squandered, nor reverse the blunder of tipping power toward Iran in the region.
We can have legitimate debate over HOW best to confront these outrageous manipulations of public opinion — made by “unreasonable people” (nice euphemism, JT, for activists who lie to exert power). Govt. prosecution is a totally wrongheaded approach with very serious invitations toward autocratic rule. Public Frauds fast torts is a much softer approach, and avoids those danger of overcentralizing authority to regulate political information. Public Frauds lawsuits reserve power to the People to confront political lies in a timely manner by filing suit immediately when the whopper is launched — and forcing immediate discovery on the perpetrators. That’s going to act as a deterrent.
If you have a better idea, let’s discuss it.
But, the idea of democracy being led around by the nose by its most zealous, dishonest activists through artful fabrications (soon to be assisted by deep fakes)?…to sit back and accept that as “indispensible free speech” is giving up on the moral foundation upon which a free country depends. It’s ceding the upper hand to fanatics with PsyOps chops. It predicts one serious blunder after another.
So let’s get clear. Are you OK with what the 51 “spies that lie” did? Are you satisfied to allow the current (and future) election infospace be corruptly manipulated like that?…and then just whine about afterwards?
Or, do you want elections and other policy decisions to be conducted in a trustworthy infospace?
GFY with your torts, pea brain in california
Thats what we want.
Can Turley Explain 28 Different Handles?
On Wednesday evening this comment thread featured a burst of activity that can only be the work of a professional troll farm.
Between 7:59 and 9:16 pm there were 28 different posts generating 28 different handles. ‘Handles being those colored ink blot icons followed by names.
28 overtly bogus names creating a cynical collage of convoluted comments all written by Floyd ‘Turdrunner’ Estovir.
These posts were intended as a demonstration of technical capabilities. The capacity to keep generating new ink blot handles every 2-3 minutes for 76 minutes total.
Let’s be honest here, non-proffessional commenters don’t have the ability to keep changing handles every 2-3 minutes. Only specialized computer applications can do that kind of work.
These 28 posts, from last evening, are proof that professional trolls are actively manipulating Johnathan Turley’s blog.
Though ironically this column sweeps aside the possibility that disinformation exists in America’s online universe!
Which makes Johnathan Turley a tragically comical columnist. The academic championing free speech while his blog is occupied by what is, quote possibly a Russian troll.
Solution?
What the fvck are you talking about, you simpleton?
Changing “handles” is a matter of:
Watch this:
Hfhehdhxuchs@gmail.com
Turdrunner
Then
Jduehshhj@gmail.com
Gigi
Then
Jchieiejfhs@$37377.com
Floyd
That took 15 seconds
Peter Hill, You gotta be the second dumbest mother fvcker on the planet, next to Dennis McIntyre
Its the Russians
Its the russians!!
“collage of convoluted comments”
What, are you daft? Those comments made perfect sense to me. What did you not understand?
By the way, Peter, weren’t you previously banned from this space?
You’ve written a good book – I’m hundreds pages in plus skipped around – but I’m left with a compelling underlying issue – what difference does it make…so long as qualified immunity reigns? If the trappers of free speech can tramp – with impunity – anyway – then why bother about pie in the sky free speech? That is by the logic of the supreme- immunity reigns and all common law was cut out in 67 and 82 – so really until we address immunity – free speech is moot. Just saying.
I hate to echo chamber – but the scouts has spoken and said we have free speech – and girsuch for the reasons you muster in your book – but that right is without a remedy – so it’s not really a right – it’s illusory. So long as the govt is immune from suit all our rights are illusory really. Indeed the dog chasing no tail since 1967 and 1982 – means “the law” is stuck in 67 and 82 – bc immunity- so the only way forward is – facial- challenges- to strike a “law” – maybe as applied – doubtful – bc their always be seditious reasons- so while the court pines its a market place – in reality it’s not – bc immunity protects the cashiers et al . Until we grapple with the immunity cases – free speech is mere pie in the sky. It doesn’t matter what gorsuch says … because it will never happen. Bcin reality – the only way for free speech is immunity be un-precedented by the scouts- yeah they can say advisory we have all these rights – but the look at their other hand that says immunity – so we don’t have the rights. Illusory maybe?
Sorry to echo again- but the supreme by their own cases can’t give “advoisoty” opinions- yet that’s all they do re free sp see ch! They froze the law – there hS to be a case on point – to upset imminity- it’s a joke – a joke the people maybe getting sick of – but who can tell them that? Tail circular. No one so we are left with facials- no luck – so as applied despite the chiller until then! It’s a farce turley . And today the just made it more farcical k e . Thec1st is a joke – the sooner we realiz3 it the better- lest we lie to our posterity!
Has Alejandro Mayorkas ever told the truth? Asking for a friend.
DRUG TEST 45!
Maxine, what about 46?
Sure, drug test all 46 of them!
Why is it that every time i see a picture of Rachel Levine, i get a hankering for Quaker Oats?
A report today was that the NYT will have 29 people there.
28 to fact check Trump and one to operate the beads in Bidens rectum.
They refer to this guy as Bidens check mate.
Word is that Trump intends to refer to Joe as Senator, just to see if he figures out he’s not.