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Oct. 10, 2025 22:59-00:02 - CSPAN

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Discussion on Free Speech & Faith

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unidentified		One of those great examples of the way we're getting out there.
		Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy.
		I'll look now at American freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and religious freedom under the First Amendment, ways those rights can be tied together, and how the American public can have civil political discourse.
		Welcome, welcome.
		It is so amazing to be here today with our friends at AEI, and welcome to Faith and Law's Friday Forum.
		Usually, we would be, we should be today in the Senate Heart office building, but they have a few things going on.
		So, we're so grateful that AEI has brought this wonderful lecture in-house.
		I am Susan Gates.
		I am the Executive Director of Faith and Law, and I would like to welcome all of you who are here and those of you who are watching online.
		It's quite a miracle.
		I just want to thank Yvald Levin for hosting today's forum, as well as Pepperdine University Pete Peterson, for sponsoring this special event.
		Let me tell you a word, short, quick, about Faith and Law.
		We were actually founded 42 years ago, and we have one mission, to encourage and equip Christian policymakers to more fully understand the biblical worldview and its implication for their calling to the public square.
		Today, 42 years later, we're still here on Capitol Hill, a community of staffers and members that meet regularly to think about how faith informs and impacts our calling to the halls of Congress.
		We are nonpartisan.
		We recognize that thoughtful Christians often can and do and will come to different policy conclusions.
		We like to remind ourselves that we're not here to read the mind of God.
		We don't know exactly what is the right marginal tax rate, what to do about transportation policy.
		But we do know this, that God cares about it all.
		He's interested in your work.
		He's calling us into public life because he is sovereign over all creation.
		I've taken to citing a proverb since I think we're all in need of wisdom these days, and I choose the chapter for the day of the week.
		So, this is Proverbs 10, 12.
		Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.
		One word about our upcoming events.
		There's a flyer on your table if you're interested in getting more involved with Faith and Law.
		Next Friday, God willing, Senate willing, Congress willing, we will be hosting Dr. Amy Orr Ewing, speaking on the power of forgiveness in a culture of rage.
		You can sign up for that event and others at our website, faithandlaw.org.
		We would love to have you.
		Now, I would like to invite Bill Wichterman, a president of Faith and Law, to give our opening prayer, as is our practice.
		Thank you, Bill.
		Thank you so much.
		Let me just say it is such an honor to be here at AEI, and it's such an honor to have Robbie George here, somebody who exemplifies what it means to be a Christian in the public square, not only in what he says, but how he says it.
		So, Robbie, thank you so much for all you've given to us.
		I think you have, you, along with Chuck Couls and Father Richard John Newhouse, were some of our most frequent speakers we've ever had in Faith and Law.
		So, we are grateful for your coming back again.
		Please pray with me.
		Lord God, you have called us to the public square to do your bidding in your way.
		We pray that we will be men and women who are wise as serpents and innocent as doves as we go about a pursuit of justice and restraining evil.
		Use us to do your work in your way.
		We thank you for this time together.
		Pray this in Jesus' name.
		Amen.
		All right, now to the main event.
		I would like to make two introductions.
		As Bill said, Dr. George has been a very special friend of faith and law.
		He is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton.
		He has served as the chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom and before that, the President's Council on Bioethics and as a presidential appointee, the United States Commission on Civil Rights.
		It goes on and on.
		Robbie has served as a U.S. member of UNESCO's World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology.
		He's the former Judicia Fellow at the Supreme Court, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clarke Award.
		A graduate of Swarthmore, he holds a JD and MTS degrees from Harvard and the degrees of DPhil, BCL, DCL, and D.Blit from Oxford.
		He's been a visiting professor at Oxford Law School as a member of the American Academy of Science and Letters at the Council of Foreign Relations.
		So honored to have him here today.
		And Pete Peterson, great friend of faith and laws at Pepperdine.
		Pete is the Dean of the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University.
		Yes, he left Malibu to come here today.
		He is a leading national speaker and writer on issues related to civic participation, the use of technology to make government more responsive and transparent.
		Pete co-created and currently co-facilitates the training seminar, Public Engagement, the Vital Leadership Skill in Difficult Times.
		This program has been attended by over 4,500 municipal officials.
		He helped develop the program Leading Smart Communities, which explores ways in which technology is changing government processes.
		The title of today's conversation, and they will be up here and conversing on a very pertinent, timely topic, free speech.
		The title of today's conversation is Faithful Free Speech from Campus to Capitol Hill.
		Please help me welcome Robby George and Pete Peterson.
	Thank you, Robby.
	Thank you, Pete.
	And it's great to be here at AEI.
	Of the many relationships that the School of Public Policy has with this institute, one I think is worth bearing out.
	The School of Public Policy was founded by the late, great social scientist James Q. Wilson back in 1997 and taught with us as our Reagan professor for the better part of the last dozen years of his life.
	And I know in this building there is a wonderful painting of Dr. Wilson.
	And to now be speaking with Robbie, who is our current Reagan honorary professor, is just great to see these lines in history overlap.
	So great to be with you, Robbie.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		So why don't we begin with the, as Susan said, that the topic under discussion is faithful free speech from campus to Capitol Hill.
		As we think about this time in our history and the American founding as we head towards America's 250th anniversary, that First Amendment has three freedoms listed in it, religion, speech, and the press.
		And so I'm wondering, just as maybe to set a foundation for our conversation, why do you think the founders connected those three together?
		And as a second question, why do you think in particular those freedoms of religion and speech were so important to the founders?
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		Well, Pete, I'll be happy to address those questions and offer some reflections.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		First, though, let me say what a great joy it is to be with you, my dear friend and my dean in my role as Ronald Reagan, honorary professor at the very distinguished School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		It's also always a treat to be at the American Enterprise Institute, led by my dear friend Robert Doerr and my beloved friend Yuval Levin and others.
		This is just such a great institution, literally doing the Lord's work in Washington, D.C.
		It's not explicitly a religious organization, nor is everyone associated with AEI a religious person.
		But the work that AEI does, I think, really advances what Susan called that worldview, that view of the world that puts at the center of everything the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of each and every member of the human family.
		And of course, that principle is also what faith and law stands for.
		It's what faith and law is all about.
		And I salute Susan.
		I salute my dear old friend Bill Wichterman and everyone who's helped to build faith and law into such an important force on Capitol Hill and more broadly.
		So I want to thank Faith and Law for organizing today's meeting.
		So you asked me about our First Amendment, looking ahead to next year when we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the country, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
		Well, that First Amendment begins with the words, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		That is our First Amendment.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		It was enacted as an amendment.
		It wasn't part of the original Constitution, but it was enacted as an amendment very shortly after the Constitution, which itself, of course, wasn't ratified until quite some time after the founding of the country.
		But the purpose of the Constitution and the purpose of the First Amendment is to effectuate the ideals propounded, put forth, proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence.
		And those ideals are really summarized in the Declaration's second sentence.
		And I hope that we'll keep the focus on that second sentence, we Americans, as we approach the 250th anniversary.
		That's the sentence that I'm sure everyone in the room and everyone listening online could quote.
		We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
		And then after that sentence, the Declaration goes on to say that it's for the securing of these rights that governments are instituted among men.
		In other words, the role of government is to secure rights that government did not create.
		Those rights don't come from the hands of kings or presidents or parliaments or congresses or supreme courts.
		They come from no merely human power and therefore they cannot legitimately be taken away or violated by any merely human power.
		What is the justifying purpose of organized human power, what we call government?
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's the sentence after we hold these truths.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		It is for securing these rights.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		That's the point.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		But as our founding fathers explicitly noted, read your federalist papers, you'll see it right there, government, that organized human power, has two things it has to do if it's to accomplish its mission.
		One, it has to make sure that people do not become predators against each other, that people don't violate each other's rights.
		The government needs to secure our rights against, for example, others who would violate our rights.
		But then, of course, the second task of government is to restrain itself, to secure the people's rights against government itself.
		And that First Amendment, those fundamental freedoms announced right there, are protections that run against the government.
		Congress shall make no law, dot, dot, dot, abridging the freedom of speech.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		It's a prohibition on the powers of Congress, on the powers of government.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		Now, as some of you who have taken constitutional law in law school or perhaps in college know, originally the Bill of Rights did not run against the state governments.
		The word Congress meant the federal government.
		The federal government shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech, etc.
		Beginning in the 1920s or thereabouts, the Supreme Court began to hold that those First Amendment freedoms, the speech and the press, those essential freedoms, ran not only against the national government, but also against the states by what the courts called incorporation via the 14th Amendment, which had been enacted in the meantime in 1868.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Now, what are those freedoms all about?
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		That's really what your question is to me, and what's their relationship.
		They're about ensuring that self-governing citizens, citizens of a democratic republic, can think freely and not only think freely, deliberate together on the basis of their reflections about how we should organize our affairs together.
		The first freedom mentioned, as Dean Peterson pointed out, is the freedom of religion.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Explicitly the free exercise of religion.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		Not just the right to worship freely, but the right to live your life as a religious person, not only in private, but in public.
		Distinguishing our system from the French so-called laicité system, which seeks to drive religion into the private sphere.
		We in America have never accepted that idea of religion or that corrupted idea of freedom of religion.
		We have a robust conception of freedom of religion.
		We welcome citizens, fully clothed in their beliefs, to enter the public square and vie with their fellow citizens on matters of public affairs, public policy, with others on terms of equality, whether they're believers or not believers, for allegiance when it comes to public policy matters, political parties, legislation that may be pending, and so forth.
		Our founders recognize that the public good is served when people can think for themselves about the great questions, the questions of meaning and value, the questions of human nature, the human good, human dignity, human rights, human destiny, and then can communicate freely with each other their thoughts, their ideas, their conclusions, their judgments, their beliefs, and by engaging with each other, get nearer and nearer to the truth of matters,
		nearer and nearer to the truth about what justice and the common good require.
		I'll close my answer to this question, Pete, by recalling those words from James Madison that I think are not recalled often enough, but we would do very well to recall them more often.
		What did Madison say?
		Only a well-instructed people can be permanently a free people.
		And the way we gain instruction is not simply by going to school.
		That's important.
		It's very important.
		But that's not the only way.
		We gain instruction by engaging with each other, by trading reasons and arguments, by doing business with each other in the proper currency of intellectual discourse.
		There is a currency, just as there's an economic currency, it's pounds and pence in Britain and dollars and cents in the United States, there's a currency of intellectual discourse, and that currency consists of reasons, evidence, and arguments.
		We learn from each other by doing business with each other, debating with each other, matters of public affairs, in the currency of reasons and arguments and evidence.
		And that doing of business in that way with that currency gives us the best shot at ruling ourselves well and maintaining a system in which the people do rule themselves and are not ruled by others who consider themselves or are considered to be their betters.
unidentified		We've got a debating and deliberation problem in this country.
		And one of the themes that I wanted to touch on, the subtitle for this talk is From Campus to The Hill, is to explore the relationship between those two places.
		The free speech activist on campus and in academia, Greg Lukianoff, was quoted recently as saying that Americans are waking up to what he called the vagus delusion as it related to the awareness of what's been happening on our campus, university and college campuses.
		He said specifically that for many years Americans thought that what happened on campus stayed on campus.
		But in the last few years we have witnessed in a number of different places, whether it's the post-October 7th protests or various things happening during COVID, various things happening after national elections, that the discussions about free speech, deliberation,
		have transitioned into discussions around cancel culture and the squelching of public opinion.
		First, I wanted to get your assessment as someone on a college campus and speaking obviously on a number of college campuses about your view of the plight of free speech in academia, specifically for students and what they're learning.
		But also, do you see this same connection between ideas and habits developed on our college campuses and what we're now seeing in the broader public square?
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes, I do.
		I think Greg Lukianoff is right on the mark here.
		And I want to salute Greg Lukianoff for the work he does to defend free speech, especially, but not exclusively, on our campuses.
		Greg is really defending free speech across the board, but FHIR, his organization, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, formerly Foundation for Individual Rights and Education, has really been in the forefront of protecting free speech on campus.
		And I'll tell you, Greg is right that what happens on campus doesn't stay on campus.
		For better or for worse, what happens on campus seems in our society to profoundly influence lots of other areas of life.
		Sometimes what happens in corporate boardrooms is a result of what ideas or practices that began have their origins on campus.
		Very often, in my opinion, that's been for the worst, some bad ideas, like the idea that there's a hate speech exception to the First Amendment.
		My students these days come from very good high schools with their 1780 or whatever they are, 1580, 1580 SATs and valedictorian status and the whole thing.
		And they come and in my constitutional interpretation class on the first day when I ask them about free speech and what categories of speech are not protected under the First Amendment, they'll say, well, actual threats.
		And they'll say, yeah, that's right.
		And I'll say defamation.
		They'll say defamation.
		I say, that's right.
		And then they'll say hate speech.
		And I'll say, where on earth did you get that idea?
		There is no such category, which in our constitutional jurisprudence constitutes an exception, and for very good reasons.
		We don't want the government deciding what counts as hate speech and shutting down some people's ideas and arguments on the grounds that they are hate speech.
		That idea began on campus, and it's now spread throughout the culture.
		And it's a very, very bad idea.
		The same with cancel culture, you know, canceling people precisely because they express a view that dissents from the dominant orthodoxy beginning on campus and then in the broader, usually elite sectors of society.
		And we could go on and on with more and more examples.
		So we really should care about what goes on on campus, whether we happen to have at the moment kids or grandkids who are students or whether we ourselves are students or faculty members.
		What happens on campus really is vital to what happens in the broader society.
		And given what I said in my answer to your first question, Pete, I'm resonating with you when you say, well, you know, we have a free speech problem because free speech is a great thing, no bigger defender than me, but I want something beyond free speech.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		I want civil discourse.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		And that goes back to that currency that I was talking about.
		We are abusing our free speech.
		Government shouldn't shut us down, but we are nevertheless abusing our free speech if we use it to call each other names, if we use it to spread falsehoods, if we use it to manipulate people.
		No, the purpose of free speech is to enable us to get at the truth of things, to engage with each other, challenge each other, criticize each other, learn from each other.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		But that's only going to happen.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		Those goals are only going to be achieved if we eschew the shouting and the name-calling and the manipulation and all that and actually do business in the currency of reasons, arguments, and evidence.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		We need civil discourse.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		And that means we need people to model civil discourse.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		We need people, not only those in the public eye, politicians, celebrities, public intellectuals, and so forth.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		We need the grown-ups who influence kids, mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, auntie and uncle, coach, teacher, pastor, professor.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		They all need to model that.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		And we need civil discourse because we desperately need civic friendship.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		Republican government only works if, in the long run, we find a way to treat people with whom we disagree, not as enemies to be defeated and destroyed, but as friends to be reasoned with, persuaded, engaged with, learned from, even when we deeply disagree.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		That civic friendship is badly frayed.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		I think it's only been in worse condition once in our national history.
		And we don't want to relive that experience.
		You don't need me to tell you what that was or preach to you about the 750,000 dead people that were a result of that catastrophe.
		But we're as bad as we've ever been when it comes to civic friendship and civil discourse today, except for that period of the Civil War.
		We're in the condition today that our country was in in 1800 when the country was very bitterly divided.
		There was a partisan divide between the Federalists and the so-called Democratic Republicans or the Jeffersonians.
		The bitterness, the name-calling, the collapse of civic friendship almost destroyed the country.
		There was a real question about whether the country would survive the election of 1800.
		This nascent Democratic Republic, you know, barely a couple of decades old, a real question whether it would survive.
		There was a question of whether the Federalists would give up power if they lost, which they did, the election of 1800.
		God bless John Adams.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		He did the right thing.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		He gave up power.
		He turned it over to people he despised, and the country survived.
		But I'll tell you, it was a darn close-run thing.
		And we should make sure that we don't get near that place again in this country.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		And that means we have some repairing to do of our institutions.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		And those institutions don't repair themselves.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		It takes people setting examples, doing the right thing, living by our principles and our values, and not being hypocrites if we're to avoid the catastrophe.
unidentified		You know, Robbie, I was going to come to this a little bit later, but I'll go to it now.
		One of the things that I see as dean of a graduate policy school that's explicitly committed to what we call viewpoint diversity is that it's not enough to provide welcoming environments both inside the classroom and outside the classroom for students to express different points of view.
		What we see every year at the policy school is we actually see friendships being formed by people coming from very different perspectives.
		And dare I say, every once in a while there's a marriage that comes out of these very diverse relationships politically.
		You've had a long-standing friendship with Cornell West and you've obviously you have a new book out, Truth Matters, on that relationship and more broadly the search for truth.
		And I'm just wondering as one of the other things you share is a common Christian faith.
		And I'm wondering to what degree you see the importance of faith as providing a foundation for the kind of civic friendship.
		I'm sure you're not saying it's necessary, but at the same way, maybe people of faith should be thinking more about the importance of civic friendship.
		And I just wondered your thoughts on the importance of people who share a faith developing those relationships and putting in context these political leanings and ideologies.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank you for mentioning my work with Brother Cornell West.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		We began teaching together 20 years ago.
		And those seminars that began when he was at Princeton and we were teaching together were some of the greatest blessings of my academic career.
		Cornell and I are obviously in very, very different places politically.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Cornell is honorary chairman of Democratic Socialists of America.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		I am Reagan, Ronald Reagan, honorary professor at Pepperdine.
		So that'll tell you we're in very, very different places politically.
		And yet, we are dear friends and not just friends, people who work together as teachers.
		We go around the country doing programming together.
		We try to set the example.
		We try to practice what both of us preach about civil discourse.
		We do have a new book out together.
		It's called Truth Matters, subtitled A Dialogue on Productive Disagreement in an Age of Division.
		I hope that you'll have a look at it and not just have a look at it.
		If you have college-age or even high school-age children or grandchildren, please encourage them to look at our book.
		I mean, if you don't want to buy it, go get it out of the library.
		But we especially want to reach young men and women who are buying into this highly polarized, ideologically and politically partisan messaging that you see all over the country.
		So please encourage young people to look at our book and encourage them by example that you set to engage with people with whom they disagree in a way that's truly civil.
		And by that I mean not just being polite to each other.
		Now, if being polite to each other were just the best we can do, I'd take it over the alternative.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		But that's not civil discourse.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		Let's not pretend that's civil discourse.
		That's polytests.
		It's fine, it's good when your mom taught you it, that she was right, 100%.
		We need that, but we need more than that.
		The difference is this, or the addition that you get with civil discourse beyond polytests is this.
		In civil discourse, you are engaging with people with whom you disagree in a truth-seeking spirit.
		What do I mean by a truth-seeking spirit?
		That is, a spirit in which you are not just preaching and teaching the other person, preaching to and teaching the other person.
		You are willing to learn from the other person.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		And that takes a predicate, and it's a predicate that we know as a virtue.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		And that's the virtue of humility.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		The recognition that in fact we do have something to learn from the other guy, even if he's wrong, because we ourselves are fallible, imperfect, frail, fallible, fallen human beings.
		The biblical message here, you know, is a very helpful one there, the human fall.
		Federalist 10 is all about the fallenness of the human condition.
		And it's that spirit of intellectual humility, the more than merely notional acknowledgement that we are fallible, that the other guy might have something to teach us, which is one of the key predicates or foundations for true civil discourse that goes beyond polytests, where people are really trying to seek the truth, including the truth about justice and the common good together.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Back to the work that Cornell and I do together, I think it does help that we share a common faith.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		As you say, you don't need to share that faith or even a faith to believe a religious faith, to believe in the importance of civil discourse.
		But we certainly find, Cornell and I certainly find, that it does help.
		After all, there's no such thing as an abstract friendship.
		A friendship is always concrete.
		It's your friendship with somebody.
		In particular.
		And in particular.
		And it's always integrated around some sharing of something.
		Well, since Cornell and I don't share political beliefs, and in many cases don't share moral beliefs, not all, but they're big moral questions on which we disagree, what's it going to be?
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Well, one thing we do share is a belief in the importance of free speech.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		We are both free speech advocates, very nearly free speech fundamentalists.
		We will allow certain restrictions on speech, but in very narrow categories.
		But beyond that, there is that worldview sharing, that faith sharing.
		Both of us have been shaped, and everything about our approach to the world is connected to the belief put forth in Genesis 1, the teaching of Genesis 1, that the human being, the human person, the individual, the human being, though fashioned from the mere dust of the earth, mere mortal stuff, and despite all our fallibility and frailty, is nevertheless, each and every human being,
		made in the very image and likeness of the divine creator and ruler of all that is, in the image and likeness of God.
		It's that concept of the imago dei, which really binds the two of us together.
		Now, when you try to apply to concrete moral and especially political questions, well, what does it mean to honor the image of God in each other, disagreement is going to break out.
		And the further you get into the weeds, into the details, the more room there is for reasonable people of goodwill to disagree.
		But that disagreement will be more tolerable.
		And you can engage with each other despite it and make progress in trying to get at the truth of things if you have that shared foundation.
		After all, that principle that I talked about a moment ago, the principle of the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of each and every member of the human family, how is it that we have that?
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Well, the Judeo-Christian story, the story that begins in the Hebrew Bible, that's picked up and spread by Christianity, it's because we're made in the image and likeness of God.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		Pretty darn good account of it.
		So if you share that, you got a foundation on which to work.
		If you have no such foundation, then it's going to be hard to stay friends when things get hot, when you're disagreeing not merely about the superficial, trivial, relatively minor things in life, but the big, important questions, the things that really matter to you, the beliefs that we most deeply cherish and that are parts of our own identity.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		If you don't have that foundation, you're likely to fall into the following trap, and I see especially young people today falling into it all the time.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		And that's the trap of supposing that if somebody challenges my beliefs or actions that I take on the basis of my beliefs or my sense of who I am, these beliefs that shape my identity, then that is not just a disagreement with me.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		That's a personal attack on me.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		If you believe X, then you are attacking me.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Or you are attacking people I love.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		You're attacking my very identity.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		That is toxic, my friends.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		It's absolutely toxic.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		That shuts down discussion every bit as much as some fundamentalist who says, well, look, I have nothing to argue with you about because the Bible says, and I'm right and you're wrong.
		That's a conversation stopper.
		Well, so is your treating my critique of your views as a personal attack on you.
		That's a conversation stopper.
unidentified		Just as a heads up to the audience here, we're going to be going to your questions, so I just want you to have those developing.
		I wanted to ask a question based on an event that took place actually right in this room several years ago.
		I organized a panel with Yaval Levin's help on the lack of viewpoint diversity in academia.
		One of the panelists is a scholar named Sam Goldman, who I know you know, was at George Washington University at the time, is now at the University of Florida.
		And he said in that discussion something that I obviously have not forgotten, and I think it's somewhat pertinent to this conversation.
		When asked why we were seeing this growing ideological hardening on campuses, Sam said, you know, I think it's actually a direct correlation to the growing secularization that we're seeing in our culture.
		That as that secularization continues, the spiritual or religious impulse, which is certainly part of our human nature, does not go away.
		It actually, when brought into a campus environment, becomes infused into an entirely different set of dogmas, but nonetheless, very strongly held.
		And what were once disagreements about policy and philosophy have now become religious disagreements, even if not acknowledged in that way.
		And I thought Sam had an important point.
		We do speak in our colleges and universities about we're going to turn you into world changers and you're going to fix all these massive problems and the responsibility is on you and we're going to empower you to do to make all these massive changes in the world.
		But some of these things are really deep challenges of human nature.
		And I wonder what your take was on this connection that Sam has talked about, about if we're going to withdraw or close off the public square to people of faith engaging, is that at least part and parcel of the growing ideological hardening that we're seeing on our college campuses, which, as we said before, is now no longer staying on those campuses,
		but now spreading into the broader public and political square?
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Well, let me tell you what I think the powerful element of truth is in what Sam says there.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		We human beings want to live lives that mean something.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		We want our lives to be meaningful.
		There's a wonderful book that perhaps some of you have read by the Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl called Man's Search for Meaning.
		If you haven't read that book, please read it.
		If you haven't read it recently, please reread it because it's a very important book.
		It's literally a timeless book.
		It will be relevant wherever there are human beings.
		And a premise of the book is that we are meaning-seeking creatures.
		Now, many of the systems of meaning that we have constructed, we human beings, over time and across cultures, we would classify as religious traditions.
		Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and so forth.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		But there can be systems that play the role of those religious traditions in the lives of people who are not religious according to the standard kind of understanding of what religion is.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		There can be alternative secular ideologies that function to make people's lives meaningful.
		People use them in the search for meaning.
		And I do think it's fair to say that today, in the case of some, not all, I think it's very important not to paint with too broad a brush here, in the lives of some secular people, certainly many secular young people, left-wing ideologies, in some cases right-wing ideologies, a kind of neo-pagan right-wing ideology.
		It's much smaller right now than the left-wing secular ideologies.
		But you'll see secular ideologies like that playing the role of religion.
		And just as religions can become fundamentalist or people can become fundamentalist members of their faith, fundamentalist Christians, fundamentalist Muslims or what have you, you can have secular forms of fundamentalism.
		They can be extremely dogmatic.
		The people who buy into them, subscribe to them, can become very hardcore.
		They become ideologues.
		And what happens when people become, whether they're explicitly religious or it's a secular doctrine, what happens when people become dogmatists and ideologues?
		They're not interested in hearing criticism.
		They're not interested in hearing challenges.
		They're not interested in trying to learn from other people.
		They're not interested in anything that would really qualify as a meaningful debate.
		It's all about winning, bringing the other guy over by hook or by crook or by force.
		And then it becomes very dangerous.
		Then it becomes a threat, whether it's a religion or a secular doctrine, whether it's Christianity or Judaism or Marxism or utilitarianism or some neo-Marxist ideology.
		It becomes a threat to basic civil liberties.
		And you will find people losing patience, as many people today have lost patience with freedom of speech.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		The man who murdered Charlie Kirk had lost patience with freedom of speech.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Kirk had to be silenced in that young man's opinion because he was guilty of wrong speak.
unidentified		He was really guilty of bad think.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		That's an extreme case, but it's bad and dangerous to our republic and dangerous to the cause of truth-seeking, even if it doesn't eventuate in murder.
		It's still toxic to our civic life.
		And it's toxic to the whole mission of universities as truth-seeking institutions.
		If people buy into conformism and groupthink and dogma and ideology in universities, universities can't do their jobs.
		Universities only work if we confront our students with the best that has been thought and said, the best arguments, the best evidence on the competing sides of questions on which reasonable people of goodwill disagree.
unidentified		And that's an awful lot of questions.
		Let's open it up to questions.
		We've got a good 10 to 15 minutes here.
		We've got people with microphones, and we are on C-SPAN, just to make you not put any extra pressure on you for these questions, but just wait for the microphone to come.
		So, yes.
		My name is Joe Freeman.
		I'm an alumnus of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		Joan, I'm having trouble hearing you.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Can you hold that microphone right up here?
unidentified		My name is Joe Freeman.
		Can you hear me?
		Yeah.
		I'm an alumnus of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes, yeah.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Mario Savio.
unidentified		Yes.
		Yeah.
		Among others.
		Since you are the Ronald Reagan professor, you may remember that when he first ran for governor in 1966, he ran in part against us.
		A major theme was those ungrateful students who were rising up on campus and demanding the right to say anything they damn well pleased on a university campus, which was a prestigious place that should not allow bad opinions.
		Would you compare that to the attempt today to suppress political speech, for example, students who utter pro-Palestinian viewpoints?
		Now, Charlie, the guy who killed Charlie Kirk was not a student.
		He and he clearly took his opinion far, much further than any student has done.
		Although, as you point out, it's sort of in the same realm.
		But could you compare what Reagan did that helped him win the governorship of California to what is going on today?
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think what it's important to acknowledge is that the threats to basic civil liberties, including the freedom of speech, can come and have come from both the right and the left.
		Neither the right nor the left has been innocent when it comes to doing things that are contrary to the principles of freedom of speech.
		During the Redscares, you had what we would count today as conservatives suppressing freedom of speech.
		Today, very often, it's people on the left within universities who are suppressing freedom of speech.
		But now, even people on the right, who a year or two ago were defending freedom of speech, are calling for some restrictions on freedom of speech, going back to a kind of earlier phenomenon on the conservative side.
		When I was growing up, just as when you were in the free speech movement, free speech was considered a left-wing cause.
		But over the past decade or decade and a half, free speech on campuses has come to be considered a conservative cause.
		But now you have some conservatives, including some conservatives exercising power, who seem to be not so keen to protect free speech anymore.
		We all heard the Attorney General of the United States, Pam Bondi, just the other day say, well, free speech is one thing, but hate speech is another thing.
		Now, that's what the left had, people on the left had been saying for the past 15 or 20 years.
unidentified		That's what Charlie Kirk's murderer said.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Said, exactly.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		And it's what conservatives had been rightly criticizing.
		Now you're hearing it from the mouth of a conservative.
		My former student, Ted Cruz, God bless him.
		Ted, who studied constitutional law with me at Princeton, immediately and unequivocally condemned Pam Bondi's claim that there was a distinction between free speech and hate speech.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		And I thought to myself, I'll be darned.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		Ted was paying attention in class that day.
		And he was absolutely right.
		Same with Ted and other, to their credit, some other conservatives who criticized their fellow conservatives who were defending the federal communications chairman who had tried to put some pressure on, I forget which one of the networks it was to take action against that late night comedian.
		It was Kimmel, the late night comedian.
		Now, there's a completely independent question of whether the network had the proper authority to say, look, if you're going to tell lies under our auspices in your broadcast, then we're not going to keep you on.
		But it's a completely different thing for the government to put pressure on a private company to fire somebody for speech they disagree with.
		I don't want to trust the government.
		Anybody in the government, and I don't care whether it's a government I voted for or a government I hate, I don't want anybody in government having that kind of power over speech.
unidentified		I tell you what, though, I would love to see more from the free speech movement condemning hate speech as a concept.
unidentified		I think what you're saying.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know what I mean?
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		Just to be clear, I think what you mean condemning the idea that there's a hate speech.
unidentified		There is a hate speech provision.
unidentified		I think it was great that Ted Cruz did it, but I would have loved to see more progressives critique Attorney General Bondi's comments and just saying, I thought we were beyond this.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		I think we should all agree, left and right, that there is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		Now, there are exceptions to the First Amendment's free speech protection.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		Actual threats.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Not abstract threats.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		Some of you who are lawyers will know the case of Brandenburg against Ohio in 1969.
		Abstract threats are, like it or not, protected speech.
		But a genuine concrete threat, I'm going to punch you in the nose, that is not protected speech.
		Defamation is not protected speech.
		incitement to violence where it is deliberate and the violence is imminent and for easily foreseeable, that's not protected speech.
		And then there are reasonable time, place, and manner regulations of otherwise protected speech so long as they're viewpoint neutral and generally so long as they're content neutral as well.
		But we need to appreciate more fully than we do the breadth of our free speech protections and we need to be vigilant in making sure that nobody, right nor left, undermines those free speech protections.
		We have the gold standard.
		We in the United States.
		European countries don't, most European countries don't have the free speech protections we have.
unidentified		And we're seeing that.
unidentified		And that's right.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		And we're better off as a country for having those free speech protections.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		But it's up to we the people to understand them and to support them, practice them.
unidentified		Yes, in the middle.
		Yes, my name is Roger Cotretti, and I'm an author and a retired business executive for ComSat, IBM, VeriSign, technology companies, and by coincidence was student body president at Georgetown in the early 1970s and was proud to broker between Young Americans for Freedom and the SDS,
		who remarkably enough respected the others' rights at that time to totally say bad things that just it was not an impossible thing to do.
		But times have changed and I want to drill down on what I think is really the fundamental issues.
		You've talked about it, but I'm not sure I understand what your solution is other than exhortations and that is hate speech.
		I mean the message that we're hearing today is that when I'm confronted with hate speech, I feel bad.
		I throw up.
		I can't sleep.
		It hurts me.
		So and therefore it should be legally prohibited because I can't get to sleep any longer.
		I mean that there's a consequence of it not hitting somebody.
		So how do specifically other than the exhortations, is there anything you would specifically suggest on how to deal with what I think is really the fulcrum issue and that is hate speech?
robert george ▲ ● ▼		No.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		You'd be very blunt and very clear.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		I'm up against any restrictions of speech falling outside those narrow categories that have been established in our Constitution.
unidentified		But I think he's also saying that the antecedent to hate speech is using terms like safety and harm and some of these issues that someone will say if they're hearing what they describe as hate speech that they need a safe space or you're harming my safety.
unidentified		The inversion of the Sticks and Stones mantra.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but my response to that is grow up.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		You know, you're going to hear challenges to your views and you should because you're going to be, it turns out you're wrong about something.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		All of us are, right?
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Tell me if I'm wrong.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		I mean, is there anybody in the room today who only has true beliefs in his or her head and has no false beliefs?
unidentified		Raise your hand.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		No, obviously not.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		We all know that some of the beliefs we have are false.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Now, if we're ever going to, and we also know that that's true.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Some of the beliefs we have are false.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		That can be true not just about the minor, trivial, superficial things of life.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		That can be true about the deep, important things of life, not just the things we don't care that much about.
		We can be wrong about the things we're really, that we really deeply care about and the things that we're almost dead sure that we're right about.
		That's the human condition.
		And if we're ever going to be able to swap out at least some of the, we'll never get rid of them all, but at least some of those false beliefs and swap in true beliefs for them, we're going to have to allow ourselves to be challenged.
		If we don't allow ourselves to be challenged, and this means not just not using law to shut down people's free speech, it means not disappearing from the conversation.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		It means actively participating and listening and hearing stuff that offends you.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		But if we're ever going to make any progress towards swapping out false beliefs and swapping in some true beliefs in their place, then we're going to have to allow ourselves to be challenged.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		And we answer, I know it's a cliche, but it happens to be true.
		We answer bad speech or false speech with good speech and true speech.
		The answer to bad speech is more speech.
		It's not government stepping in.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		It's not walking away and refusing to listen.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Now, having said that, I'm talking about speech in the proper currency of intellectual discourse.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		You have no obligation to stand there while somebody's shouting at you and calling you names.
		That gets us nowhere.
		I'm not saying you have to stay in that conversation.
		But if a serious person is willing to give reasons and arguments, is challenging even your most fundamental beliefs, no matter how much it hurts, because we do wrap our emotions more or less tightly around our convictions.
unidentified		It will hurt.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		It might mean that I don't sleep very well at night because somebody's challenged, say, my Christian faith.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		Nevertheless, for the sake of the truth, I need to be willing to be challenged.
unidentified		Another question over on this side, in the back.
		Yes, hello.
		Alex Blinkoff with the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.
		I want to ask you about history.
		You mentioned both 1800 and 1860 as these messy moments where a new normal was created in American politics, in one case very violently.
		And other examples that come to mind would be like Jacksonian democracy's rise and the very negative partisanship of the Gilded Age.
		What lesson do you think modern Americans can and should take from these upheavals in past American civics?
robert george ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank you.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		It's a great question.
		The fundamental lesson is that those first three words in the Constitution are not just idle phraseology and verbiage.
		We the people.
		Ultimately, it is up to we the people to be the protectors and guarantors of our own fundamental civil liberties.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		And that means we need to understand them, understand their importance, understand how they work, what their limits are and what their limits aren't.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		We need to actually educate ourselves and promote civic education.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		I'm glad to see finally, thank God, it's late, but at least it's come, a revival of civic education around the country, the establishment of important institutions, the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine, but all the new schools and institutes of public policy around the country at state and private universities.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		Right here in town, the new Johns Hopkins School of Public Policy dedicated to exactly what I am exhorting you to do here.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		That is educate yourself about our basic civic order, including those fundamental freedoms.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		If we look at our history, when have we almost lost our Republican form of government?
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		When have we almost lost our basic civil liberties?
robert george ▲ ● ▼		It's when partisanship and faction have become so intense, the group think that conformism has become so entrenched on the competing sides that people think we can no longer be civic friends.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		We can no longer be fellow citizens.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		When the Federalists are refusing to be fellow citizens with the Jeffersonians and the Jeffersonians are refusing to be fellow citizens with the Federalists, you're on the edge of losing your Republican form of government and your basic civil liberties.
robert george ▲ ● ▼		And so we know now that we're in a highly polarized situation.
robert p george ▲ ● ▼		We've got to take that very seriously.
		And that's why I'm calling for the grown-ups and not just the celebrities and the public intellectuals and the politicians, but mom and dad and coach and pastor and teacher to model for the young people who you influence what it means to be a true partisan of civic friendship.
		If your kids or your grandkids or your students hear nothing but partisanship from you, and if they never see you engaging in a truly friendly relationship with a person who disagrees with you, what lesson are they going to draw from that?
		Not a very good lesson, but look at the lesson they will draw if they know that you engage with somebody in the way that I'm blessed to engage with Cornell West.
		Somebody, everybody knows the two of us really disagree about politics.
		And yet we're able to engage with each other, learn from each other, affirm each other as human beings.
		And I just want that to spread all over the country.
		Not just with the big famous people, but with the moms and dads and the teachers and the pastors and the coaches.
unidentified		Amen, Brother George and Anderson.
		Thank you so much, Dr. George, Dean Peterson.
		Thank you all for being here.
		I would just like to say this is a fabulous event also for Faith and Law.
		We've launched a founding freedom series to begin to look at questions like this that will run throughout the year.
		So come back and get involved with our community.
		A quick word of prayer.
		Father God, thank you for our nation, our treasured freedoms, the ability to speak, to listen for reason and evidence and arguments.
		Make us great civic friends and enable us to be repairers of the breach.
		We pray in your name.
		Amen.
		Now, Yuval, I think, has a word, but thank you all.
		Eat the rest of the Chick-fil-A.
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