Below is my column in Fox.com on renewed attacks on free speech and the apologists for this anti-free speech movement, including most recently comedian Jon Stewart. From moves to amend the First Amendment to mocking those being targeted, the left is pushing back at polls and efforts to restore free speech values.
Here is the column:
“The First Amendment Is Out of Control.” That headline in a recent column in the New York Times warned Americans of a menace lurking around them and threatening their livelihoods and very lives. That menace is free speech and the media and academia are ramping up attacks on a right that once defined us as a people.
In my new book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss how we are living in the most dangerous anti-free speech period in our history. An alliance of the government, corporations, academia, and media have assembled to create an unprecedented system of censorship, blacklisting, and speech regulation. This movement is expanding and accelerating in its effort to curtail the right that Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once called “indispensable” to our constitutional system.
It is, of course, no easy task to convince a free people to give up a core part of identity and liberty. You have to make them afraid. Very afraid.
The current anti-free speech movement in the United States has its origins in higher education, where faculty have long argued that free speech is harmful. Starting in secondary schools, we have raised a generation of speech phobics who believe that opposing views are triggering and dangerous.
Anti-free speech books have been heralded in the media. University of Michigan Law Professor and MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade has written how dangerous free speech is for the nation. Her book, “Attack from Within,” describes how free speech is what she calls the “Achilles Heel” of America, portraying this right not as the value that defines this nation but the threat that lurks within it.
McQuade and many on the left are working to convince people that “disinformation” is a threat to them and that free speech is the vehicle that makes them vulnerable.
It is a clarion’s call that has been pushed by President Joe Biden who claims that companies refusing to censor citizens are “killing people.” The Biden administration has sought to use disinformation to justify an unprecedented system of censorship.
As I have laid out in testimony before Congress, Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, extended her agency’s mandate over “critical infrastructure” to include “our cognitive infrastructure.” The resulting censorship efforts included combating “malinformation” – described as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.” So, you can cite true facts but still be censored for misleading others.
The media has been running an unrelenting line of anti-free speech columns. Recently, the New York Times ran a column by former Biden official and Columbia University law professor Tim Wu describing how the First Amendment was “out of control” in protecting too much speech.
Wu insists that the First Amendment is now “beginning to threaten many of the essential jobs of the state, such as protecting national security and the safety and privacy of its citizens.” He bizarrely claims that the First Amendment “now mostly protects corporate interests.”
So free speech not only threatens your life, your job, and your privacy, but serves corporate masters. Ready to sign your rights away?
Wait, there is more.
There is a movement afoot to rewrite the First Amendment through an amendment. George Washington University Law School Professor Mary Anne Franks believes that the First Amendment is “aggressively individualistic” and needs to be rewritten to “redo” the work of the Framers.
Her new amendment suggestion replaces the clear statement in favor of a convoluted, ambiguous statement of free speech that will be “subject to responsibility for abuses.” It then adds that “all conflicts of such rights shall be resolved in accordance with the principle of equality and dignity of all persons.”
Franks has also dismissed objections to the censorship on social media and insisted that “the Internet model of free speech is little more than cacophony, where the loudest, most provocative, or most unlikeable voice dominates . . . If we want to protect free speech, we should not only resist the attempt to remake college campuses in the image of the Internet but consider the benefits of remaking the Internet in the image of the university.”
Franks is certainly correct that those “unlikeable voices” are rarely heard in academia today. As discussed in my book, faculties have largely purged conservative, Republican, libertarian, and dissenting professors. The discussion on most campuses now runs from the left to far left without that pesky “cacophony” of opposing viewpoints.
Experts at leading universities were fired or stripped of positions for questioning COVID claims. Conservative faculty have been hounded from schools and conservative sites have been targeted by government-funded programs. Thousands have been banned from social media.
What is particularly maddening for many in the free speech community is how the left has responded to opposition to censorship and blacklisting. Some are claiming to be victims by those who criticize their work to target individuals and groups as disinformation.
Others, like comedian Jon Stewart mock those who object to the erosion of free speech by noting that conservatives are making these objections on television or online. So, according to Stewart, how can there be a problem if you are able to still object? The suggestion is that there can be no threat to free speech unless people are completely silenced.
Stewart insists that “we are surrounded by and inundated with more speech than has ever existed in the history of communication.” In other words, because people can still speak, the well-documented systems of censorship and blacklisting must not be so bad.
It is not clear what Stewart would accept as sufficient censorship. In universities, polls show both faculty and students afraid to speak openly. The government has funded a host of programs to pressure the source of revenue of conservative sites and to target dissenting voices. Yet, because we are raising objections to these trends, Stewart laughs at the very notion that free speech is under fire. After all, he is doing just fine.
What appears to be a punchline to Stewart is a bit more serious for others who have their livelihoods threatened by the anti-free speech movement.
Stewart has the benefit of being a liberal comedian on a liberal network. Try being a conservative comedian today getting air time on most cable outlets or college campuses. Like so many academics, everything seems just fine to them. With the purging of opposition viewpoints, those who remain have little to complain about.
The effort to assure citizens that “there is nothing to see here” is belied by a massive censorship system described by one federal court as “Orwellian.” Conservatives face cancel campaigns and blacklisting in academic and media forums.
As I discussed in my new book, conservative North Carolina professor Dr. Mike Adams faced calls for termination for years with investigations and cancel campaigns. He repeatedly had to go to court to defend his right to continue to teach. He was then again targeted after an inflammatory tweet. He was done. Under pressure from the university, he agreed to resign with a settlement. Four years ago this month, Adams went home just days before his final day as a professor. He then committed suicide.
Many others have resigned or retired. For them, the anti-speech movement takes away everything that brings meaning to an intellectual life from publications to associations to even employment. It is a chilling message to others not to join the “cacophony of … unlikeable voices.”
Some citizens seem sufficiently afraid or angry to surrender their free speech rights. They have lost faith in free speech. For the rest of us, their crisis of faith cannot be allowed to become a contagion. We must have a reawakening in this country that, despite our many divisions, we remain united by this indispensable human right.
It isnt that the Left is against Free Speech. The goal is ideology. Anything that stands in the way of their Dogmas must be sacrificed. Young Children, developing baby in utero, merit, culture, Christianity, Judaism, objective truths, science, et al, all must be eliminated to make way for their Marxist ideology, e.g. Fidel Castro squashed Cuban culture to create a people without memory, roots nor identity. That Joseph Biden has demonstrable cognitive disorder due to Parkinson’s Disease is a non-issue for the Left. Their zealotry demands that they force all to kneel, with hammer and sickle if need be, so that their nation state is as they envision it. This explains the following NYT piece which would be alarming to normal people but to Left Wing cultists, yes little boys must be castrated, little girls undergo mastectomies, so that their irreligious doctrines prevail.
Why Is the U.S. Still Pretending We Know Gender-Affirming Care Works?
It’s been three months since the release of the Cass Review, an independent assessment of gender treatment for youths commissioned by England’s National Health Service. The four-year review of research, led by Dr. Hilary Cass, one of Britain’s top pediatricians, found no definitive proof that gender dysphoria in children or teenagers was resolved or alleviated by what advocates call gender-affirming care, in which a young person’s declared “gender identity” is affirmed and supported with social transition, puberty blockers and/or cross-sex hormones. Nor, she said, is there clear evidence that transitioning kids decreases the likelihood that gender dysphoric youths will turn to suicide, as adherents of gender-affirming care claim. These findings backed up what critics of this approach have been saying for years.
After the release of Cass’s findings, the British government issued an emergency ban on puberty blockers for people under 18. Medical societies, government officials and legislative panels in Germany, France, Switzerland, Scotland, the Netherlands and Belgium have proposed moving away from a medical approach to gender issues, in some cases directly acknowledging the Cass Review. Scandinavian countries have been moving away from the gender-affirming model for the past few years. Reem Alsalem, the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, called the review’s recommendations “seminal” and said that policies on gender treatments have “breached fundamental principles” of children’s human rights, with “devastating consequences.”
But in the United States, federal agencies and professional associations that have staunchly supported the gender-affirming care model greeted the Cass Review with silence or utter disregard. There’s been no response from the Department of Health and Human Services, whose website says that “gender-affirming care improves the mental health and overall well-being of gender diverse children and adolescents” and which previously pushed to eliminate recommended age minimums for gender surgery. Nor has there been a response from the American Medical Association, which also backs gender-affirming care for pediatric patients.
In other words, the United States continues to put ideology ahead of science.
American medicine, Cass told The Times in May, is “out of date.” She said not a single American medical association or governmental official had reached out to discuss her report. “I think that’s where you’re misleading the public,” Cass said. “You need to be honest about the strength of the evidence and say what you’re going to do to improve it.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/12/opinion/gender-affirming-care-cass-review.html
Estovir,
Well said.
I second Estovir’s Motion! Well said!
We used to have the USSR as a reminder of what a 13 time zone gulag was like.
Now the evil of communism isn’t scorned at all.
Remember when the banning of a book or author made them MORE popular- Lenny Bruce, Nabokov, R. Crumb, Kinsey, et al? Maybe the forbidden fruit theory will right the ship again.
The leftist on this forum can argue the nuance of free speech availability all they want but we should never forget that the Democrats are the ones who wanted to create a new government department called The Department of Misinformation with equal policing powers of the FBI. All of it in the name of saving Democracy. If left in power you can be sure that a new attempt will be made to raise this new Department from the ashes. It’s gone from a hidden agenda to being blatantly proposed. You should believe them when thy tell you who they are.
Chat GPT 3.5 replies to the question: “why did Joseph Stalin use oppression of his people?”
“Joseph Stalin used oppression as a means to maintain and consolidate his power in the Soviet Union. There were several reasons why Stalin employed oppression:
1. Consolidation of power: Stalin used oppression to eliminate his political opponents and consolidate his power. He carried out a series of purges, during which many high-ranking officials, military leaders, and intellectuals were executed or sent to labor camps.
2. Control of the population: Stalin used oppression to control the population and suppress dissent. He established a vast network of secret police and informants to monitor the population and punish those who were deemed to be a threat to the state.
3. Implementation of policies: Stalin used oppression to implement his policies, such as collectivization of agriculture and industrialization. These policies were often unpopular and met with resistance, so Stalin used oppression to force people to comply.
4. Ideological purity: Stalin used oppression to enforce ideological purity within the Communist Party and the Soviet Union. He believed that any deviation from the party line was a threat to the revolution and the Soviet state, and he used oppression to stamp out any signs of dissent or deviation.
5. Paranoia: Stalin was known for his paranoia and suspicion of those around him. He believed that there were always plots and conspiracies against him, and he used oppression to eliminate anyone he perceived as a threat.
It’s important to note that Stalin’s use of oppression had a profound impact on the Soviet Union and its people, leading to the deaths of millions of people and leaving a lasting legacy of fear and mistrust.”
Jonathan: If you were really serious about “free speech” you would be discussing the 4,349 books that have been banned from public school libraries in FL and other GOP controlled states. Or what about school teachers who are prohibited from discussing with students issues like race and LGBTQ+? I have pointed out these existential threats to “free speech” in so many previous comments I have lost track. Yet, you only complain when you think conservatives are being targeted.
I sense some desperation in your column when you attack Jon Stewart, the late night comedian and talk show host. He must have struck a nerve. Why? Because he uses humor to point out the hypocrisy of conservatives by claiming their “free speech” rights are being violated. In his monologue the other night Stewart put his finger on conservative’s “victimhood” claim:
“…the idea that there is an all-pervasive, all powerful threat to free speech called ‘cancel culture’ has become a central tenet of modern conservatism. They celebrate their being silenced on podcasts and streaming outlets. They celebrate their being silenced with over 700 books titled about ‘being cancelled’. Why are there so many of these f—ing books?”
That’s the point. If conservatives are being silenced why have they been able to publish so many books on the subject of the “cancel culture”? You new book and all your columns are a testament to the fact that conservatives are NOT being silenced.
Stewart also pointed out in his monologue that the real “cancel culture” is coming from the GOP and DJT’s MAGA wing of the party. Liz Cheney was booted from the Wyoming GOP because she served on the J6 Select Committee. Ronna McDaniel was purged from the RNC because she had the temerity to admit Biden did not “steal” the 2020 election. Anyone in the RNC who does not follow the MAGA agenda has been fired. Stewart ended his monologue with this: “Truth is, Trump is the real cancel culture–emphasis on cult”.
Conservatives continue to play the “victimhood” card–claiming they are the only ones being “cancelled”. When, in fact, conservatives are all over social media. Fox News, where you work, spews out all sorts of right-wing conspiracy theories every day. No one has silenced Sean Hannity or any other of the current Fox hosts.
The problem for you and your fellow travelers is that you are not getting any traction from your claims. Just look at the NY Times current list of the best selling non-fiction books. Dr. Fauci is at the top of the list with his new book “On Call, a Doctor’s Journey in Public Service”. Where is your book on the list? No where to be seen!
“The problem for you and your fellow travelers is that you are not getting any traction from your claims.”
That must be why you come here almost every single day to dispute them?
Or to toss out OT whataboutisms in attempts to distract and deflect?
McIntyre is Parsons in 1984.
Don’t waste your time.
None of the examples you have provided have anything to do with “free speech”. No books have been banned. In public schools in every state, there are huge restrictions upon speech and expression, including what books are available in the libraries. Liz Cheney lost her primary in a landslide because she chose to embrace the “never trump” wing of the party. Ronna McDaniel lost her job because she was incompetent. Conservatives have been routinely cancelled on a wide range of topics. The point of Turley’s article wasn’t complicated. He merely stated that just because SOME avenues still exist for conservatives to deliver their message doesn’t mean they still aren’t being cancelled.
4,349? Wow! I didn’t know there were that many pedophilic LGBTQalphabet groomer books in print. Looks like our country has a major perversion problem.
Exercising discretion in what books are made available to children is not the same thing as banning books. Some of the examples that have made the press have zero place in elementary or midfle schools.
“ Where is your book on the list? No where to be seen!”
Exactly. That’s why Turley is peddling his book whenever and wherever he can. It’s not exactly flying off the shelves. He could claim the “vast censorship movement” is preventing his book from selling as much as it should be.
“It’s not exactly flying off the shelves.”
On Amazon, JT’s book is: #2 in Censorship & Politics; #2 in General Constitutional Law; #4 in History & Theory of Politics.
The Left, yet again, just makes stuff up to smear the opposition.
Dennis McIntyre, playing Bribery Biden’s Baghdad Bob, launched this lie:
Jonathan: If you were really serious about “free speech” you would be discussing the 4,349 books that have been banned from public school libraries in FL and other GOP controlled states.
I remember when a school board of Dennis McIntyre’s fellow Soviet Democrat groomers and pedophiles prevented a parent from reading the contents of one of those books into the public record – because they determined it was too obscene for ADULTS to have read to them.
Dennis/Baghdad Bob just HATES that parents have voted to deny Soviet Democrat groomers like Dennis McIntyre putting copies of Hustler Magazine with crotch shots in the libraries of elementary school kids that still believe in Santa Clause.
That doesn’t mean Dennis can’t continue giving his well worn copies of Hustler Magazine to the neighborhood children. He can still buy his child pornography and share it.
Soviet Democrats and groomers/pedophiles (but like Mark Twain, I repeat myself) like Dennis/Baghdad Bob claim that the First Amendment means they have a right to FORCE their child pornography on parents’ children – and parents have no right to decide what are age appropriate books in their childrens’ schools. They do not.
Dennis is one sick groomer/pedophile.
Turley sure complains a lot about opposing views regarding free speech as “anti-free speech”. Lying, misinformation, disinformation, false claims, etc are indeed free speech. BUT, just because it’s free speech it does not mean it is also harmful and mitigating harm is not anti-free speech.
Turley is always a big proponent of civility and orderly discussion. If he is complaining about people like Jon Stewart mocking those against “anti-free speech” because of their hypocrisy while supporting the idea that regulating misinformation, disinformation, and conservative excuses for censorship he’s a massive hypocrite. Thats why others mock his position.
Turley regularly ignore conservatives clear censorship like, book bans, banning, discussion of uncomfortable issues like CRT, inequality, LGBTQ lifestyle, protests against Israel. He even prohibits openly racist comments because they are offensive despite the fact that it is fully protected speech. Regulating harmful or offensive speech is part of maintaining civility. Republicans and conservatives always use civility and decorum as a pretext to censor others. So why can’t government on the interest of maintaining some semblance of honesty regulate misinformation, and disinformation by informing private media about it so that they can decide if it wants limit misinformation, and disinformation? The Supreme Court just issued an opinion that the government communicating with private media is not illegal or unconstitutional.
The constitution does NOT say free speech can only be civil and inoffensive and must respect the rights of others. It does not protect anyone from consequences of exercising it either.
The internet and today’s multiple options to exercise free speech it’s almost impossible to censor, even for government. Turley’s gripes about the “anti-free speech movement” are about perceived bias against conservative speech. He’s complaining that people don’t pay enough attention to conservatives and calls it “ anti-free speech”. Jon Stewart is absolutely right. Conservatives have all the free speech they’ve always had. What they are upset about is that they are being ignored and mocked by a majority of people. Because…they are conservative. That’s part of free speech.
Doubleplusgood.
The Confederate constitutional racist and Soviet Democrat groomer George posted this:
Turley regularly ignore conservatives clear censorship like, book bans, banning, discussion of uncomfortable issues like CRT, inequality, LGBTQ lifestyle, protests against Israel.
George can’t tell us the last time George’s fellow genocidal anti-Semitic supporters of hajji Hamas terrorists were prevented from screaming their genocidal anti-Semitism off private property and in public.
They DO get stopped from continuing to do that when they get flashbacks to their Summer Of Mostly Peaceful Rioting, Pillaging, Looting, Burning and Murder and start committing criminal offenses like assault and trespassing as their means of self expression, just as they did during 2020.
What book bans? I’m not aware of any state that has banned George from buying his weekly supply of porn like Hustler. Or prohibiting his accessing porn videos late at night via the internet, when it’s just him alone dating the palm sisters. Or for that matter, reading them in public, flipped wide open for all to see – as long as he doesn’t indulge himself with a little public Toobin session. I can assure George that his membership in the cult of Onanism is still permissible in law.
George our Confederate constitutional racist is deeply confused due to holding the belief that his free speech rights also includes the right to commit criminal acts as his mechanism for expressing his opinions and views.
George, clearly, is a groomer as well as a racist. The model New Man of the Soviet Democrats brave new world.
Project 2025 is the new Russia Russia Russia. Even Biden in his press conference mentioned it. Next will be they’re going to throw grandma off a cliff. There are some stupid people including some people in this forum who will buy into it. They don’t even realize that they are destroying their own argument with something that most people see as just more silliness. They wore out Trump peeing on a bed in Moscow so they’re grasping to find something new and stupider. Surprise surprise surprise.
TiT,
Well said and spot on.
These are the same people who lied about the Russian collusion for over four years. Some are still spreading that lie.
These are the same people who lied about and continue to lie about inflation.
These are the same people who told us The Biggest Lie of the century, that Biden was “sharp as a tack.”
Now it is Project 2025, which Trump has already said it is not apart of his campaign.
“Trump has already said it is not apart of his campaign”
By ‘not apart’ you’re saying it’s not separate from?
So it IS something he’s involved with. Thanks for clarifying.
@Thinkitthrough
I’ve thought similar. ‘MAGA’ has no effect anymore to invoke fear, so the uber-malevolent ‘Project 2025’ it will be. 🙄🙄 The left are clowns and spoiled children. Pure projection. The REAL ‘Project 2025’ goes by names such as, ‘Net Zero’, ‘The Great Reset’, ‘Inflation Reduction Act’, and began in earnest with something known as, ‘The Affordable Care Act’.
There is no longer any question in my mind that from day one in 2021, this ‘administration’ set out to wreak so much orchestrated havoc, as quickly as possible, in difficult to reverse ways, that it would be nigh impossible to clean it up. It is madness, and they simply will not relent. The only solution is to get them out of power. Even then we are likely looking at generations of rebuilding.
James,
Well said.
I agree about the rebuilding part. Even longer with all the unelected officials who just add to the problem.
The democrats, because they are responsible for current and past miserable realities, must distract the masses with bogus false futures.
Hey democrats, show us a good product of your leadership anywhere in the US over the past 75 years… You have nothing to show but wakes of destruction, death, and despair.
If Project 2025 has the Democrats and Lefties frightened, then I am probably in favour of it, and I have not even taken the time to research it.
Project 2025 is just the latest Democrat scare tactic. Just do a Google trend on it and you’ll see that a month ago nobody was doing a search on Project 2025 and now people are searching the crap out of it.
Project 2025 is the Democrat’s version of Emmanuel Goldstein’s (i.e., Trump) Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism.
Professor Turley,
By framing your argument entirely in conservative vs. liberal terms, you grossly distort the perspectives of the individuals you cite. For example, Wu’s article was a negative response to the NetChoice decision, in which Kagan reaffirmed the hands-off approach the Court has taken to online speech for nearly three decades. Despite the “inescapable” nature of social media, as Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the majority, courts have a “necessary role” in safeguarding platforms’ free speech rights. “To the extent that social-media platforms create expressive products, they receive the First Amendment’s protection,” Kagan wrote.
This was a pro-free speech opinion written by a liberal justice, in response to anti-free legislation passed by two conservative states, TX and FL.
The NetChoice cases demonstrate that free speech issues do not always align with traditional left-right politics. Not long ago in 2014, I remember in my state of North Carolina, a conservative law that required doctors to show an ultrasound to pregnant women considering abortion was challenged on free speech grounds by liberal doctors. Forcing doctors to show pregnant women the ultrasound when there was no medical reason to do so amounted to compelled political speech.
Here, with NetChoice, you have a similar scenario, where liberals on the Court are standing up in support of corporate free speech rights.
If you are true defender of the First Amendment, it should not matter whether its defenders hail from one side of the aisle or the other.
Civil liberties are a double-edged scalpel.
If speech is so ‘free’
why did my internet bill go up again?
The media has been running an unrelenting line of anti-free speech columns.
That’s like a church working to curtail religious-freedom or a privacy-obsessed individual trying to get rid of the Fourth Amendment. Why would they act against their own interests? I don’t deny that that’s happening (with the media), but I’m asking why?
@oldmanfromkansas
My guess would be due to the fact that they intend to hold onto power and shape law into something that makes said power permanent and impenetrable. Just like other regimes throughout history. 🤷🏽♂️
The modern left is just twisted.
oldmanfromkansas says That’s like a church working to curtail religious-freedom
Or a devout Catholic President and Speaker of the House pushing for elective birth control abortions right up to the point of birth?
Perhaps “Homosexuals For Hamas” protesting in defense of hajji terrorists who would airmail them one way from the sixth floor roof of a building to the streets below?
Or if you prefer, all the media rushing to be first to court to sue Trump for ejecting Jim Acosta from the White House press pool – and then being silent as a tomb when the oldest newspaper in America, the New York Post, was censored and prevented from publishing the Biden Bribery Laptop.
This is where Woke intersectionality crashes up on it’s own rocks. The end result is what is primary, principles have nothing to do with it – especially when they had none to begin with.
Free speech is a value that defines this nation, and an “Achilles Heel” of America which is a major threat. Both are true. Lies and false statements have a real risk of destroying our democracy. No one want the government to limit speech, so it is on the media and politicians to be honest, and on the rest of us to refuse to tolerate lies. Unfortunate MAGAs, their media, and candidates are willingly failing to do this.
Yet you come here and spread misinformation, disinformation and malformation on a regular basis.
See your comment below which myself and several others have pointed out and corrected.
Says Upstate who himself has had things pointed out and corrected.
You mean the comment that I took directly off page 5 of P2025?
Nonsense.
Anyone who uses the phrase “our democracy” is a freedom-hating commie. Even Justice Sotomayor stooped to that level in her dissent recently. And the idiot talking heads on TV constantly use that phrase, although in their case they’re just puppets reading off a script written by freedom-hating commies.
Didn’t you just use the term ‘our democracy’?? Even though you used it to express your hate for democracy?
Yup
@Sammy: Re: “No one wants the government to limit speech, so it is on the media and politicians to be honest, and on the rest of us to refuse to tolerate lies.” “The Speech or Debate Clause, found in Article I, Section 6, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution, PROTECTS members of Congress from lawsuits and investigations related to their legislative work. The clause states that members of Congress “shall not be questioned in any other Place” for their speech or debate in either house of Congress, with the exception of treason, felony, or breach of the peace. The clause also PROTECTS members from arrest while attending sessions of Congress or traveling to and from them, with the same exceptions.” Given that, Adam Schiff is still in possession of his irrefutable evidence of Russian collusion on the part of Donald Trump, spoken about within and without the ‘hallowed halls’, and no one is holding that narcissistic sack of moral and ethical turpitude to account for not offering it up. For that matter, he still has the support of his constituency. Don’t let THAT get lost on you. So what’s your point??? Borrowing from popular culture. the ‘red flag’ Turley is waving concerns itself with an agenda in both the media and academia which can best be summed up as ‘He who controls ‘The Spice’, control the Universe’.
Sammy the sophomoric Soviet Democrat apparatchik tried this piece of channeling their crimes onto others:
No one want the government to limit speech, so it is on the media and politicians to be honest, and on the rest of us to refuse to tolerate lies.
But you tolerated, accepted, and promoted the Obama/Biden government “Russia Dossier” lie for over four years. As did your Mainstream Media propagandists.
But you tolerated, accepted, and promoted the Obama/Biden government “the Biden Bribery Laptop is only Russian election disinformation” lie for years. As did your Mainstream Media propagandists.
Unfortunate MAGAs, their media, and candidates are willingly failing to do this.
And this is how Soviet Democrat Marxist Useful Idiot apparatchiks lie their skinny Marxist asses off, attempting to channel onto their opponents what they openly do themselves.
Can’t we at least get the Soviet Democrats to send a better version of political apparatchik over to this comments section?
Lets point out that Trump wants to criminalize porn and label librarians as sex offenders if anything they consider objectionable is found in the library. So Turley crying about free speech is BS.
“So Turley crying about free speech is BS.”
Nice ad hominem.
Next time, try an argument.
Can you please post quotes from Trump about doing either of those?
How about is pledge to “Enough is Enough” to criminalize all pornography:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/2302392/trump-signs-anti-pornography-pledge/
What Sammy is trying to say is “Trump and conservatives don’t want 7 year old CHILDREN reading about how to perform oral sex”.
Straw man much?
Nice logical fallacy, bro.
No, Sammy. Trump wants to criminalize pornography in elementary school libraries. Anyone with any degree of common sense and a sense of morals would agree with that. Pornography has no place where under aged children can get access to it. Why do you leftists want to expose children to pornography? Oh, that is right. You are groomers.
No, that is not what Project 2025 is proposing. From page 38:
“Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed.”
Outlawing ALL pornography (which it bizarrely defines as including “transgender ideology” – as if ideology is pornography?!) is not a pro-First Amendment policy.
Please check your facts instead of redirecting to a straw man logical fallacy.
https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
Trump is NOT going to support the First Amendment on this issue.
There is no connection between Trump and Project 2025. He said so himself.
Check your facts.
Generally speaking you’re quite deluded always. In this post you add abject idiocy to your delusion.
UpstateFarmer, to believe there is no connection between Trump and Project 2025 is absurd. You are saying he has no ties to the Heritage Foundation that gave him a list to choose from to select SCOTUS nominees and that he isn’t tied to the several people from his past administration who were the writers of Project 2025. He doesn’t know Stephen Miller for example. One of his alleged VP possibilities, J.D. Vance is out bragging about Project 2025, he must not have got the word to keep quiet. Yes Trump said he knew nothing about Project 2025. He also claimed to not know David Duke and the Proud Boys. He claimed not to know E, Jean Carroll (I’ve seen pictures that say otherwise) and that he never slept with Stormy Daniels who has described his penis. Guess what, Trump lies! You repeating his lies destroys your credibility.
I have never read a single one of your comments that could not have been written by some shill from the DNC. You seem to be totally bereft of any sort of ability to think independently. Are you for real?
I independently think Trump has ties to Project 2025, are you saying you believe he doesn’t?
Sounds like a Blue anon conspiracy theory.
Check the record for yourself.
I am saying that you probably would think that, because you have been told that in some echo chamber somewhere. You never seem to stray away from the Democrat Plantation. I seriously doubt that you have the ability to think independently on anything, based on your comments. As far as “Trump has ties”, what exactly are those ties? That is a pretty wide open statement. Do you have ties to Dementia, because you support Biden? Do you have ties to criminality, because you are Democrat, and Democrats have enabled criminals in some locales.
No, you might have a brain somewhere deep inside your head, but I have not ever seen you do anything but parrot DNC talking points.
I don’t recall ever seeing anything from you until today. Hello. I’ve been known to express my views on a subject before the DNC has a position if they ever do. I’ve written that Biden should drop out of the race and that I can’t unsee the debate. I also think him a safer candidate than Donald J. Trump. You are supporting a felon who has sexually assaulted and harrassed women, along with having his charity and university shut down for fraud.
Which statements again prove my point. I have never seen you say anything that could not have been put out by a DNC shill. I am not accusing you of being a DNC shill, because Lord Knows, there are plenty of base Democrats who believe every bit of DNC garbage spewed out. I suspect that were you nominated for SCOTUS, you would not know nothing about birthing babies either. Or what a woman is.
I do not say this with any rancor towards you, it is just that you are so predictable and such a good little follower. I am more ashamed for you, like I was for Ketanji Brown Jackson or whatever her name is. For God’s Sake, use your brain!
I suspect the DNC has almost no effect on regular people not working for the DNC or candidates receiving money from them. When they issue statements (those of them I see) I likely have formed my own conclusions and if a subject mattered to me I probably wrote about it. RNC statements take a little longer to come out because they have to wait for Trump to tell them what they think if they want to keep their job.
Picture of them together were presented at trial. Check for yourself.
enigmainblackcom came here race baiting with this:
UpstateFarmer, to believe there is no connection between Trump and Project 2025 is absurd… Guess what, Trump lies!
Good thing Biden doesn’t! Nor Obama! And especially not you! Sometimes when you appear here you seem to be a blend of Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton in drag.
You wrote on your blog that you come here race baiting, looking for material to write about and publish on your blog. How many viewers are you at now? 10?
More to the point, it’s telling that you lie about Trump in defense of Bribery Biden – a lifelong racist who has pure contempt for you from his first days in elected office. You are essentially his whore; your mouth is his cock holster.
It was Biden, not Trump, who told Americans from the Senate floor he didn’t want his children forced to go to school with jungle bunnies like you.
It was Biden, not Trump, who fought school desegregation beside the last of the Kluxxer Democrats.
It was Biden, not Trump, that told the world he hadn’t met a single decent, clean, well spoken black American in his 40 years in Washington DC – until he met a mulatto white boy, raised in White Privilege, who had abandoned his white privilege to run for office as a po’ black chil’… Bolshevik Barack Obama.
So where’s YOUR credibility – giving a lifelong racist like Biden a pass while claiming Trump is the Kluxxer?
You look and have the stench of being the epitome of Bribery Biden’s Uncle Tom.
Did you bend the knee because Bribery Biden told you that if you don’t support him, you can’t be black?
Thank God there ARE good decent black Americans in this country like Dr. Thomas Sowell, Justice Thomas, Dr. Walter Williams. It would be horrible for people to think all black Americans are vile bags of racist corruption like you.
If I were race baiting (this conversation had nothing to do with race) I certainly would have caught a big one. “Jungle bunnies,” really? I don’t claim Donald Trump is a “Kluxxer,” they would be far too common for him to associate with. Maybe his dad as he coincidentally got arrested with several Klan members and they shared the same lawyer. I picture Donald as more of a Nazi with the cool uniforms.
“There is no connection between Trump and Project 2025.” — How about the 140 former Trump staffers that are part of Project 2025?
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/project-2025-trump-heritage-foundation-what-know-rcna161338
Trump delivered the Heritage Foundation’s keynote speech in April 2022, where he said with respect to Project 2025: “This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”
Do you really, honestly believe your above post? Come on, man.
Upstate is right. As a factual matter there is no connection. The MSM has been pushing the lie that there is one, and as a result many people believe there is one (as reflected above).
Upstate, thank goodness Trump has never lied about anything.
More right wing talking points? You said you’re an ‘alt-news’ guy.
Yet you’re here every day propping up the Republicans. Hmmm.
The two key sentences on that page are “Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned.” Seems clearly worded to me.
And it is not apart of Trump’s campaign. What part of that fact can you not accept?
Trump said in regards to the Heritage Foundation “This is a great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork & detail plans for exactly what our movement will do … when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”
Project 2025 will be the blueprint for the Trump administration.
Really?
Do you have the winning Powerball tickets too?
Try reading the RNC platform they recently released. That looks a lot more like a blueprint for a Trump admin.
The RNC platform does not address Trump’s stance on this issue… So how does that contradict Project 2025?
“And it is not apart of Trump’s campaign. What part of that fact can you not accept?”
(Apart = separated by a distance)
So Upstate is again confirming it IS part of Trump’s plan.
The biggest connection between porn and children are all the MAGAs being caught with CSAM and arrested for abusing children. Trump himself has been identified as someone who abuses children.
Sammy Lyin’ Like A Proud Biden said this:
Lets point out that Trump wants to criminalize porn and label librarians as sex offenders
Sammy also pointed out that the Russia Dossier was real and completely verified by US intelligence agencies.
Sammy also pointed out that Vice President Biden never once met or spoke with any of his family’s customers from the governments of Communist China and Russia.
Sammy also pointed out that the Biden Bribery Laptop was confirmed to be nothing but Russian election disinformation.
I don’t think Sammy has to worry about Trump arresting him for his vast collection of Hustler magazines nor for his Prime memberships for every internet porn channel.
On the other hand, the parents of those children might kick Sammy’s ass if they catch him once again trying to show their little kiddies centerfold pictures from Hustler magazine.
“Free speech for me, NOT for thee.” –Professor Mary Anne Franks
PUPPY WATCH
Pease not that once again, the lack of a “predawn update” of puppy watch, is accompanied by comments from Lawn Boy Elvis Bug.
Sniveling Bug obsessed troll^^^
Never a good idea to give too much credit to the supposed wisdom of actors and comedians. I’ve found Stewart, over the years, to be funny, but I’ve never confused that for brilliance. Bill Mahar has funny moments too. He gives the impression of high intelligence mostly because he has moments of pragmatism. However, they’re usually very brief moments and in Hollywood, that kind of thing is a rarity, so at times he sounds like an “intellectual”. Its a little people who place too much deep meaning on song lyrics. They were likely written by a guy on a tour bus, that was high, mostly because the words rhymed.
I’ve found Stewart, over the years, to be funny, but I’ve never confused that for brilliance. Bill Mahar has funny moments too.
Neither of them – nor any one of that crowd – could come even remotely close to Harvey Korman, Tim Conway, etc and their generation when it came to being funny. That’s aside from the fact that those earlier generations of comedians could appeal to ALL Americans – not just one political party.
And they could be funny without being vicious and spiteful. Your shit is weak when you have to make lies a major part of your act in order to get your audience to laugh at what you’re saying.
The same people that for 4 years told us Biden was fine are the people that want to have the keys to banning “misinformation”.
The same people that two weeks ago were claiming that Republicans were using something called cheap fakes are demanding we police what people claim in the political arena.
The people that are now telling us, like “reporter” Chuck Todd, that two years ago a CABINET SECRATERY told him that they all knew that Biden was toast but the news hounds didn’t say a word until the cover was blow, are now the people claiming the other side lies and obfuscates.
Joe Biden, the biggest liar in politics during our era is hiring people to stop others from “lying” in public arenas.
HullBobby,
The Biggest Lie of this decade, perhaps this century, is all the lies told that Biden was “sharp as a tack.” Not only all those lies but the number of people involved in promoting those lies. From the Biden admin to MSM.
It is the Biggest Lie.
Yes there are much bigger lies than that.
That have had much more negative impacts.
Why do you keep peddling this same comment?
No. The Biggest Lie, that Biden is “sharp as a tack” gave us Bidenomics, Bidenflation, impacting 90% of Americans.
The Biggest Lie gave us two wars, thousands wounded or dead.
The Biggest Lie gave us child mutilations, chemical castrations and mental health harm on children.
The Biggest Lie gave us millions of illegals, some of whom have assaulted, raped and murdered young women and even children.
You need to be reminded of The Biggest Lie that has brought so much misery upon Americans. Everyday.
If there had been true free speech in Germany would the nazi’s have ever risen to power? The brownshirts were neccesary to stop free speech which was a precondition to preparing the ground to sieze power.
Wouldn’t that make, by the reasoning of the left, anyone who opposes free speech a Nazi? Asking for a friend.
I applaud Turls holding off to the third paragraph before plugging his book. That’s awesome….
However, he can’t hide his rage at opposing viewpoints to his being able to be voiced in the public sphere. Sounds like he hates his colleague at GW. And he completely mischarecterizes McQuade’s book. My guess is she pointed out some of his flawed thinking in one of her TV appearances. Being thin skinned in a free speech world is a Turley feature.
YAWN
Whenever I see the word “Turls” I know the person is an idiot and I stop reading.
Thanks for reading, troll.
Behold the noble self-sacrificing cowardly Anonymous Soviet Democrat Marxist Useful Idiot:
I applaud Turls holding off to the third paragraph before plugging his book. That’s awesome….
Reflect for a moment on the physical heroism this Soviet Democrat Marxist Useful Idiot has put before us on display. Voluntarily comes here (anonymously of course… too terrified to have a user name) to willingly subject its Birthing Person self to Turls horrible opinions and viewpoints. A weaker person would simply unsubscribe.
Where do the Soviet Democrats like Bribery Biden find such magnificent Birthing Person Men such as these!
“[T]he First Amendment is ‘aggressively individualistic’ . . .”
That is true. Embrace it, proudly.
The only alternative is the aggressive collectivism of a dictatorship (such as China) — and the eradication of all rights.