Below is my column in The Hill on how Democrats in some blue states are moving from censoring speech to compelling speech in renewed attacks on free speech. They are facing resistance in the courts despite determined efforts to force others to mouth approved viewpoints.
Here is the column:
More than five years ago, I wrote in these pages of a growing trend on the left toward compelled speech — the forcing of citizens to repeat approved views and values. It is an all-too-familiar pattern. Once a faction assumes power, it will often first seek to censor opposing views and then compel the endorsement of approved views.
This week, some of those efforts faced setbacks and challenges in blue states like Washington and Illinois.
In Washington state, many have developed what seems a certain appetite for compelled speech. For example, Democrats recently pushed through legislation that would have compelled priests and other clerics to rat out congregants who confessed to certain criminal acts. Despite objections from many of us that the law was flagrantly unconstitutional, the Democratic-controlled legislature and Democratic governor pushed it through.
The Catholic Church responded to the enactment by telling priests that any compliance would lead to their excommunication.
U.S. District Court Judge Iain D. Johnston enjoined the law, and the Trump Administration sued the state over its effort to turn priests into sacramental snitches. Only after losing in court did the state drop its efforts.
In the meantime, the University of Washington has been fighting to punish professors who refuse to conform to its own orthodox values. In 2022, Professor Stuart Reges triggered a firestorm when he refused to attach a prewritten “Indigenous land acknowledgement” statement to his course syllabi. Such statements are often accompanied by inclusive and tolerant language of fostering different viewpoints in an academic community. However, when Reges decided to write his own land acknowledgment, university administrators dropped any pretense of tolerance.
Reges was not willing to copy and paste onto his syllabus a statement in favor of the indigenous land claim of “the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip, and Muckleshoot nations.” Instead, he wrote, “I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property, the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.”
His reference to the labor theory is a nod to John Locke, who believed in natural rights, including the right to property created through one’s labor.
In my forthcoming book, “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution,” I explore the foundations of the American Republic, including the influence of Locke. The Framers would have been appalled by efforts to compel speech as an example of “democratic despotism.” The Framers saw the greatest danger to our system as coming not from a tyrant but the tyranny of the majority.
Reges came face-to-face with the rage of a majority faction defied. He was told that although the university land acknowledgment was optional, his own acknowledgment was not allowed because it contributed to “a toxic environment.”
This week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in Reges’s favor and allowed his lawsuit to move forward. Judge Daniel Bress wrote that “student discomfort with a professor’s views can prompt discussion and disapproval. But this discomfort is not grounds for the university retaliating against the professor.”
Reges’s lawsuit, brought with the help of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, is a major victory for free speech.
However, the desire to both silence and compel speech continues to grow in tandem.
In Illinois, Democrats have taken up the cudgel of compelled speech on the issue of abortion. Again, over objection that the law was unconstitutional, Democrats and Gov. JB Pritzker passed a law that said that all healthcare providers, including pro-life and religious pregnancy help centers, must extoll to their patients the “benefits” of abortion, even if they have faith-based objections to abortion.
The Catholic Conference of Illinois and other religious organizations are represented by the Becket Fund, a leading defender of religious liberty in the courts.
A district court recently struck down the law, but Illinois refuses to give up. It is appealing the case in the hope of forcing pro-life health professionals to espouse the benefits of abortions.
Cardinal Blase Cupich, Chicago’s archbishop, warned this week that “The Church’s pro-life mission is under attack in Illinois” and called on every Catholic to oppose “this inhumane mandate.”
Note that neither the constitutional guarantee of free speech nor that of free exercise deterred these efforts to compel speech. It is the very face of democratic despotism as the majority brushes aside disfavored views and values as “toxic” or “harmful.” It shows how, 250 years after our founding, the seeds for majoritarian tyranny remain in this (like in any) democratic system.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of the forthcoming “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution” on the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.
Want a solution…Decentralize power
Then Wall Street, Soros, China, etc don’t get one stop shopping
End Federal Aid to cities, states, non-profits and colleges
Outlaw Public Unions the Political Army of the Democrats
Abolish the Democrat Party…2 Civil Wars…2 too many!
you have solutions to anything, just silly bs.
So Jon you still a Democrat?
Jon do you think we should still be bi-partisan?
Or should we
Jail them by 1000’s!!!
1) Russian Hoax, Trump Persecution
2) Protecting bidens, other crimes, jail bad judges
3) Jan 6th entrapment
4) Vote Crimes
5) Helping Illegals & Stealing
6) Child endangerment
7) Who call for Violence
8) COVID
While the Democratic party has done all the things that you mentioned, there are some that maintain hope that the radical left will defeat themselves. Then the party of the not to distant past will return (compromise). That is hard to achieve if all the moderates leave. If the moderates continue to voice, explain and enlighten, perhaps some of the party that is just following their peers, will start to pay attention. I send his posts to friends of mine that are in the Democratic party and hope they read them. I have hope that they will see the light, perhaps the same as Professor Turley.
Hear hear! They are like roaches hiding behind the walls of America’s Constitution, while steadfastly gnawing away at the very foundation of the wall in trying to topple it. I promise they will not like what they get should they ever succeed.
This is what a fascists, authoritarian party looks like. Evil, plain and simple.
If you were educated, you would have learned somethin g more than ranting about fascism every day. Stupid, plain and simple.
One does not have to be educated to recognize how the far leftist fascists have taken over the Democrat party. The far left needs to be fought against at every turn. Someday, hopefully, all the sane and normal Democrats will kick the far left, like you, out of their party. They dont want you.
One does not have to be educated to recognize how the far leftist… that’s exactly the point, if you and farmer could read and then understand materials, you just might have something worthwhile to say instead of howling at the moon all day long here.
Says the werewolf mid howl…
Ano
learned somethin g more than
_____________________________
Is this a new word?
If you were educated, you would have learned somethin g more than ranting about fascism every day. Stupid, plain and simple.
You should take a moment to give thanks that gas prices are falling and making your operating costs much less expensive.
Gaslighting
Gaslighting is the intended psychological manipulation by a low-IQ perpetrator of those they hope to victimize through intentionally misleading that person or group. This involves the perpetrator lying, denying events, and other methods used in the hope their intended victims doubt their perceptions of reality, memories, and feel overly emotional or irrational.
The main five methods of gaslighting that may be used alone or in conjunction with others are: lying, blame shifting, countering, trivializing and withholding.
Upstate, you are right again! Keep up the good work, those of us that are adult, open-minded, intelligent and polite appreciate your comments.
As for Anonymous the Child, please just go away, you are making a fool of yourself. A nasty fool.
Keep up the good work? What work, screaming at anons all day long?
hullbobby… You really think you’re an adult, open-minded, intelligent and polite… then why do you insult anons all day long? “A nasty fool”, recognize those words?
Calling a strike a strike and a ball a ball isn’t nasty, it is truth.
HullBobby,
Well said and spot on!!
why do you insult anons all day long? “A nasty fool”, recognize those words? So now insults are truths?
Democrats > Globalists> Fascists
Fight like it is 1930’s Europe or 1860 America
The Entire Democrat Party is a CRIMINAL Operation set to destroy America
“ student discomfort with a professor’s views can prompt discussion and disapproval. But this discomfort is not grounds for the university retaliating against the professor.”
Mmmm… so the student in Oklahoma who was not comfortable with the assigment and decided to make one of her own and when she was given a failing grade the professor was retaliated against. Weird. I didn’t see the professor defending the Oklahoma professor.
Furthermore, isn’t forcing schools to put up the ten commandments compelling speech too?
That trany professor was trying to force the student into taking a viewpoint or compelled speech and when she pushed back, rightfully so, he failed her. She was fighting against having his viewpoint forced on her.
Idiot!
ROFL!! She didn’t do what the assingment called for. She’s a student and the professor can assign how the work should be done. That is how it works. A student doesn’t get to decide how they do an assigment because they feel like it.
ROFL!! She didn’t do what the assingment called for. She’s a student and the professor can assign how the work should be done.
So a professor at Harvard gives a writing assignment: “Provide a detailed paper on how the 20 years of Clinton, Obama, and Biden administrations made rape and pedophilia the core of White House Democrat culture”.
100% compliance with that assignment? No deviation by even a single student allowed? Because that’s how it works – the Harvard students don’t get to decide how they do that assignment because they feel like it. ROFLMAO!!!!
10 C’s, what doe that have to do with a school assignment?
X, Mr Opposite, just cannot say “Turley you are right, this is wrong, this is un-American and this needs to be shot down by the courts. When you are a contrarian weirdo you must do the opposite, ala George Costanza, in order to feed your odd ego.
hullbobby… You really think you’re an adult, open-minded, intelligent and polite… then why do you insult anons all day long? “A nasty fool”, recognize those words?
We’ll add weirdo to the list. Recognize that?
Hullbobby, so…you want to compell me to say something positive about Professor Turley because….? How ironic.
Turley is clearly biased becuase he’s paid to be. Nothing wrong with that. I also don’t have to express agreement with everything the Professor says. I could just remain silent on that. There will always be some criticism on the professor’s arguments when they are incrediblly one sided.
I also don’t have to express agreement with everything the Professor says or the adlosent rants of hullbooby, farmer or any other of the Brown Shirts.
Watch it X, the MAGAotts want everyone commenting here to swear an allegiance to a republican government. Its their version of the indigenous land acknowledgement. statement. They don’t get the irony.
And X, once you’ve dispensed with the MAGAotts… are we still on for our Grindr date once you’ve finished commenting today? I have the cutest little Furry Tranny costume that I just KNOW you’ll love.
X says Turley is clearly biased becuase he’s paid to be.
Our noble X is completely unbiased in his dependable and daily insults and smears of his host Professor Turley. X is eager to assure us that every single day Professor Turley is corrupt and biased, while every single day he, X, is right and unbiased.
The only remaining question is whether X does his daily Democrat Communist Clown show for pay – or out of deep sexual perversion which drives his daily stalking of Professor Turley.
This is not an academic exercise, Professor! It’s legitimate fodder for rebellion! If the Democrat Party, or anyone else, demands compelled speech or any other form of government compulsion that clashes with our natural rights, then we should and must treat them as the enemy of the American Republic. It’s really that simple. As the Declaration states, We The People have the right and the responsibility to remedy that problem. First we protest. Then we disobey. Then, if no relief is forthcoming, we take matters into our own hands and exert the power we have as free citizens. The clock of civility is ticking down. Pick a side before one is chosen for you
What!! No Trump haters commenting on how what Washington and Illinois are attempting to force down our throats is our own good. Let’s make it a mandate that all illegals must be made citizens and anyone opposing that will be prosecuted for a hate crime
Noted: “… the constitutional guarantee of free speech nor that of free exercise deterred these efforts to compel speech …” -JT
En re:
“Hello, babies. …” -Kurt Vonnegut
“Talk low, talk slow, and don’t say too much,” -John Wayne
“The three ego Cs are as follows…. Criticize. Condemn. Complain” -Dale Carnegie
“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” -Robert Francis Kennedy
“better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have,” -Franz Kafka
What many people miss is that the First Amendment did not arise from abstract theory or good intentions. It was born from lived experience with coercion, compelled loyalty, and state intrusion into conscience.
The Constitution tells us how liberty is protected, but it does not explain why those protections were necessary. That explanation is found in the history that led to the Declaration of Independence.
When people assume “the Constitution will protect us” while forgetting the tyranny that made it necessary, they are repeating the same mistake made over and over in history. Rights do not erode because they are formally repealed. They erode because people forget what it felt like to lose them.
The Constitution won’t protect us once the Dems get rid of the filibuster, add 2 blue states and then pack the Court.
I ask sadly, would a new Court made up of 15 Justices with 5 new Ketanji Brown Jacksons overturn these insane “Land Acknowledgment statements? Of course not. We were Manchin and Sinema away from the end of the First Amendment.
Think the issue is the hypocrisy of liberal whites. The university’s Land Acknowledgement Statement? A white dominated business on stolen land, yet make no effort to return or compensate the Suquamish, Tulalip, and Muckleshoot nations?
You’re a particularly stupid commenter, every day, all day long you rant, and insult commenters here, demanding they pledge allegiance to the republican party.
What company stole land? Please tell us the company name, how they stole the land, when they stole the land and your remedy for your made up crime.
Think the issue is the hypocrisy of liberal whites.
How is it that The Smartest Guy In The Room, Bolshevik Barack, with all of his awareness of the evils of the Rich White Privilege he cast aside to run as a po’ black chil’ from the ghetto didn’t notice it before?
The Heritage Folks, with their centuries of inter-tribal and inter-familial conquests, warfare, genocide, raiding, slavery, human sacrifice and cannibalism resulting in brutish and short violent lives, ran into a tribe they couldn’t successfully carry that out against.
And so today’s communist Democrats – the paragons of respect for personal property – now demand NO FAIR!!!!
Hullbobby, so much drama and pearl clutching. Sheesh. If democrats ever end up with full control of congress and the prosidency they can absolutely do the things you say. Republicans have been championing the whole Unitary executive theory for Trump. But it seems they will be firmly opposed to it once a Democrat is in office. I mean…turnabout is fair play. Right?
hullbobby, courts can be weakened, packed, or politicized, but that has always been true. The Constitution does not stand or fall on any single institution. It stands or falls on whether citizens still understand and defend the principles that made those limits necessary in the first place.
The real danger isn’t that one side might change the rules. It’s that too many people now think liberty depends only on who controls the levers.
In Reges, the 6th Circuit did more than just allow the case to continue; it granted summary judgment in favor of Reges on the two critical issues.
Sorry, I meant the 9th Circuit.
Note how students, or at least their supposed feelings, are weaponized against dissent.
Tyrannical compelled speech is the anthesis of free speech: q.v., the U.S. Constitution, Amendment No. 1. Full and final stop.
Nothing was “compelled”. BTW, the 1st A has no bearing on a school assignment.
So getting FEDERAL FUNDS has no bearing on whether an entity can abuse the 1st A? Great legal reasoning there champ. So is it your contention that a school can ban Black students? Or make Black students have “separate but equal” classes? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
Do you know for a fact they receive fed monies? Anon made no comment about that. Yet you think you found a flaw in a comment. BTW, what does that comment have to do with legal reasoning per se? Its a declarative sentence, not a legal opinion, nothing more. Idiot.
Try answering my question. Can a college deny entrance to Black people?
Do you know for a fact they receive fed monies?
Well hello there whining little sealion! No young nephews to help you with your inability to do a basic web search – rather than just snivel “You have no proof”?
University Of Washington
Office Of Federal Relations
“In fiscal year 2023, the University of Washington received approximately $1.19 billion in federal funding.”
The founding document is the Constitution of the United States of America of 1787, as ratified by nine states in 1788. If professor of law Turley and so many others can’t get that right then what can they get right? Politically independent and objective senior citizen Charles G. Shaver.
I guess maybe you are the expert and PROFESSOR Turley, whose blog this is, is just some punk off the street????
some punk off the street???? More insults hullbooby?
The Democratic Party is flagrantly unconstitutional, the Democratic-controlled legislature is delusional and Democratic politicians are evil.
Unconstitutional? Look here folks, this is what stupidity looks like.
The difference between Democrat and Communist continues to narrow.
Only if your eyesight is disappearing.
The most dangerous group of fascists in America is the authoritarian left. Time and time again the left–Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot, Castro, Ho, Kim–forces strict compliance with its own approved ideology.
The most dangerous group of fascists in America is the authoritarian right. Fixed it.
The far left in this country lives under a fundamental misconception that if only the people understood how just, good, and correct are our policies, they too would be believers. Thus, when the people are not in compliance, they try to force compliance. This is nothing short of desperation, assuming the people will comply with the agency they themselves constantly violate, the law.
On Free Speech, it seems, the first amendment may have scored a point or two lately. Illinois is an exception, having a presidential hopeful calling the shots. But he is merely hoisting his own petard.
But,but,but Trump.
The left will destroy free speech no matter what. They hate the truth.
So what is the truth? Your warped interpretation of reality?
Certainly the left is pushing us into a warped facsimile of North Korea. Unfortunately, they have not been equipped by their education, either parental or institutional, with the tools of thought which would enable them to see where that goes. Since my parents did teach me to think, I can see that horrific destination.
And when we get there, those who drove the process will blame the rest of us who didn’t want any part of it, first to last.
facsimile of North Korea. Really? How could you possibly know that? From reading Breitbart etc. I assume. Ignorance reigns in conservative USA.
So basically the left is doing what fascists do. But we aren’t calling them fascists? For some reason, Professor Rurley and others like him don’t want to deal with what they consider sinking to a lower level and not productive. I really don’t think they understand that they cannot foster civility with people on the left right nowby they’re on extremely tolerant behavior. So they continue to call antifa anti fascist, when they are the fascists and allow the left to rule public opinion.
The left is fascist. Fascism is socialism, the opposite of communism socialism, but still socialism. Two different sides of the same coin.
Hitler’s Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
Benito Mussolini began his political career within the Italian Socialist Party (PSI).
Both are authoritarian. Both have ruthless dictators.
Both promise to take care of everyone for the greater good and fail because the state is what matters (socialism)
Both seek to export their ideology onto other states and often invade and set up puppet governments. All the soviets not Russia, and the Vichy government in France are examples.
Both have always been complete failures.