Just because you have free speech does not mean you are free from the consequences of your speech. Some speech ought to be shamed and shunned by society. Some ideas ought to be treated with contempt and hostility. We need to stop excusing all idiocy and indecency on the faulty basis of "free speech." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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| Before we get going, I wanted to mention the Western Conservative Summit is June 8th, next week. | |
| The Colorado Convention Center in Denver, I'm going to be speaking on June 8th, and so I hope to see you there. | |
| The Western Conservative Summit is the largest gathering of conservatives that happens every year outside of D.C., which is a big bonus, because as someone who goes to D.C. on a regular basis, I can tell you that if you could spend your whole life and never enter that cursed city, you will be doing something right. | |
| Should be a good time and hope to see you there. | |
| Let's talk about free speech. | |
| Free speech is one of the most overused, misused, misunderstood phrases and concepts in American society today. | |
| Everybody claims to be in favor of free speech. | |
| Everyone tends to make everything into a free speech issue. | |
| Everyone is always saying that their own free speech rights are being infringed upon. | |
| And while we are constantly talking about free speech, I think in the vast majority of cases, and with the vast majority of controversies that we argue about, they really have nothing at all to do with free speech. | |
| I think 95% of the time, probably, that's a conservative estimate, when somebody says, this is about free speech, it actually is not about free speech at all. | |
| That's most of the time. | |
| I think this is particularly relevant to discuss today. | |
| The reason it's on my mind today is because this has been a week which has featured a blizzard of phony free speech claims. | |
| Let's start with, of course, Roseanne. | |
| We don't have to go through that whole thing again, but she said what she said about Valerie Jarrett. | |
| She was fired, of course. And Roseanne's supporters and people who like the show, many of them said, this is a free speech issue. | |
| She needs to be... No, she should still have her show in the interests of free speech. | |
| But free speech had nothing to do with it. | |
| Then we had Samantha Bee on the other end of the spectrum. | |
| She called Ivanka Trump a feckless C word and she's had some other revolting things about Ivanka as well. | |
| This is just another in a long line of unfunny vile things that this person has said on a nightly basis. | |
| And I was among those who called for her to be fired. | |
| And I was told that I didn't value free speech and I was infringing on the first amendment for taking that position. | |
| This is the way it goes generally. | |
| If you believe that a person ought to suffer consequences for saying gross and reprehensible things, or if you believe that gross and reprehensible things ought not be said in the first place, even if you think that they should be allowed to be said, you don't think that they should be said in any case, then you're going to be accused of infringing on the first amendment. | |
| There's a lot of confusion here, clearly. | |
| And I think if we're gonna talk about free speech, we should probably begin by trying to determine what exactly free speech is. | |
| What is free speech? | |
| I think there's kind of two ways of looking at it. | |
| There's the right way and the wrong way. | |
| So when you say free speech, you could be referring to that free speech which is enshrined in the First Amendment, the legal free speech. | |
| And the First Amendment gives you the right to express your views and beliefs, especially your political views and your religious beliefs, without being punished by the government or without being censored by the government. | |
| It prohibits the government from passing laws that would require you to hold a certain view or prohibit you from holding certain views. | |
| That's what the First Amendment's all about. | |
| It's all about the government. It's got nothing to do with how the culture reacts to speech. | |
| It's all about what the government does and doesn't do. | |
| And it's not absolute, of course. | |
| There are restrictions. It's not enough to say or it's not accurate to say that free speech means you can say whatever you want and the government can't stop you. | |
| No, you can't say whatever you want. | |
| You can't slander. You can't lie under oath. | |
| You can't intentionally incite violence against another person. | |
| You can't shout fire in a crowded theater. | |
| You can't do those kinds of things. | |
| So there are restrictions on free speech, and I think most people agree that there ought to be those restrictions. | |
| So it's not absolute, but that's basically what free speech is. | |
| Great. Then there's the second. | |
| There's the incorrect, I think, usage of this term free speech. | |
| And it's a little bit unclear to me exactly what it means, because it's obvious that when most people say free speech, they're not referring to the legal free speech. | |
| Because, like I said, when they use the phrase, they're using it in a context that has nothing to do with legal free speech at all. | |
| So, obviously, they mean something else. | |
| They're talking about a different kind of free speech. | |
| And it seems, and this is just me kind of based on context, it seems like most of the time when this term free speech is used, what the person is referring to is a kind of cultural free speech. | |
| And what they're saying is that the culture ought to be welcoming of all speech. | |
| And what they're saying is that a person like Roseanne or Samantha Bee shouldn't be fired for saying reprehensible things because we should be a society that welcomes and tolerates all speech, even reprehensible speech. | |
| And we should never attempt to correct or suppress or otherwise punish any speech at all. | |
| They believe that legal free speech is not enough, so we have to have this cultural free speech as well. | |
| Where we're welcoming and tolerant of all speech. | |
| Now, I don't believe in that kind of free speech. | |
| I don't think that anyone really believes in it, to be honest with you. | |
| I think a lot of people claim to believe in it, but in reality, even if you say, yeah, people should be able to say whatever they want, we shouldn't try to punish them for it. | |
| You may say that, but I don't think you really mean it, because I think you draw the line somewhere, too. | |
| Maybe for you, Samantha Bee didn't cross that line. | |
| Maybe Roseanne didn't cross that line. | |
| But there is a line. | |
| Almost definitely there is a line. | |
| There is something that a person can say, especially in a public position, that would make you go, they need to be fired for that. | |
| So I think everyone has a line, but we claim not to because we all want to be so open-minded. | |
| And so we say, oh, we're so open-minded. | |
| I don't claim to be open-minded. | |
| I'm not open-minded. | |
| I'm all about figuring out what the truth is. | |
| And once I know the truth, I'm sticking with that. | |
| I'm not even going to consider a falsehood. | |
| I'm just going to stick with what the truth is. | |
| And I also believe that we all should operate with some human decency. | |
| And I'm pretty narrow-minded about that. | |
| I don't think that... No, I think decency is the way to go. | |
| So I'm not going to consider indecency. | |
| I think, no, decency. That's the way. | |
| I don't believe that we as a society are obliged to be welcoming and tolerant of all speech. | |
| I don't believe that a person should be able to say the most vile and disgusting and reprehensible things and suffer no penalty whatsoever for saying them. | |
| I don't believe that. Our founders didn't believe that. | |
| That's not what our founders were talking about when they talked about free speech. | |
| This is a concept of free speech that is rather new and rather frankly ridiculous. | |
| Because what we're doing is we're drawing a line now between speech and decency, and what we're saying is that you have to choose between being a society with free speech or a society with decency. | |
| I don't agree with that. I think we can be both. | |
| But it seems like a lot of people think that any attempt by individuals and the marketplace to contain and control the filth and stupidity that is spewed Or any attempt to free ourselves from having to be exposed to the filth and stupidity every second of every day is a violation of free speech by this way of thinking. | |
| I strongly disagree with that way of thinking. | |
| Here's how I think about it. | |
| I think you have the legal right to be a profane babbling idiot. | |
| You have the legal right. | |
| I have the right to treat your profane babbling idiocy as profane babbling idiocy. | |
| I not only have the right to do so, I am right in doing so. | |
| That's how I should treat it. | |
| That's how society should treat it. | |
| I think we should strive to be a society where we are all legally free to say what we want within reason, but we still would make the effort to speak and behave with some decorum because we know that we will face shame and stigma from society if we don't. | |
| That's the kind of society we should be. | |
| That's the kind of society we used to be. | |
| In the 1950s, a woman wasn't going to get up there in public and call somebody else a feckless C-word. | |
| Because she would have been shamed for that. | |
| There would have been too much shame and stigma. | |
| Nobody would have applauded. Nobody would have laughed. | |
| Everybody would have said, that's disgusting. | |
| You should be ashamed of yourself. | |
| You should be ashamed. | |
| What's wrong with you? | |
| That's how it would have been treated. | |
| That's how it should be treated. | |
| We should all be completely intolerant of that kind of language. | |
| And we should be completely intolerant of certain opinions. | |
| And I know that opinions have become this sacred holy thing where we say, oh, it's somebody's opinion, so we have to respect it. | |
| I don't care if it's your opinion. | |
| If it's wrong and stupid, then I'm going to treat it that way. | |
| I don't have to respect it just because it's your opinion. | |
| People like to say, well, everyone is entitled to his own opinion. | |
| Yeah, that's true. A guy is entitled to his own opinion. | |
| Fine. I mean, in the sense that he's allowed to form opinions and nobody can stop him. | |
| But he's not entitled to have those opinions taken seriously. | |
| He's not entitled for those opinions to be welcomed or accepted. | |
| And he's not necessarily free, or he ought not be free necessarily, from the consequences of expressing those opinions. | |
| A white supremacist or a black supremacist or any kind of racial supremacist because they come in all colors, by the way, but a racial supremacist should experience social consequences for those views because they are deranged and evil and idiotic and they're also dangerous if enough people adopt them. | |
| We've seen what happens when a majority of a population become racial supremacist. | |
| It has led to some of the worst bloodshed and persecution in the history of mankind. | |
| So yeah, We should, as a society, militate against those opinions because they're so awful and there's nothing redeeming about them at all. | |
| They don't deserve to be taken seriously. | |
| Should the government prevent racial supremacists from gathering together and saying their stupid opinions? | |
| No. But should society shun that speech and mock it and treat it with contempt? | |
| Yes. Absolutely. | |
| Again, just because you say something doesn't automatically make it legitimate. | |
| Just because it's your belief or your opinion doesn't mean it's not repugnant and foolish and thus deserving of ridicule. | |
| We've developed this really childish idea that, like I said, that all opinions are valuable. | |
| All opinions are valuable. | |
| We should listen to all opinions. | |
| No, we shouldn't. There are a lot of really opinions that are utterly worthless. | |
| Should be treated that way. | |
| Well, that's my opinion. | |
| So? What does that mean? | |
| That's like if you took a big steaming pile of dung, right? | |
| And you took it and you put it on a plate and you served it to somebody and you said, here, it's food. | |
| And then the person said, I don't want to eat that. | |
| And then you said, but it's food! | |
| It's my food that I'm giving you! | |
| Yeah, but it's still a steaming pile of dung, isn't it? | |
| The fact that it's food, and that it's you who's serving it to me, that doesn't mean anything. | |
| In fact, it just makes me think less of you, that you're giving me this. | |
| That's all it does. It doesn't make the steaming pile of dung less disgusting. | |
| This is why I think there is, I'm trying to think of the, make sure I'm putting this the right way, because I know it's, we tend to think of free speech in America as the most holy and sacred thing. | |
| But it's not really. | |
| The most holy and sacred and precious thing is the truth. | |
| That's what really matters. | |
| Truth. And so, I think we should be a little bit less focused on free speech. | |
| And we should be a little bit more focused on what is right, on the truth. | |
| So we should spend less time clamoring about what our rights are and more time talking about what is right. | |
| Society should give legal rights to everyone, but it should only embrace and accept that which is right and decent. | |
| So, you know, this is a point that I've made about the situation on college campuses. | |
| I think that the conservative critique of the environment on college campuses is a bit misdirected, and it kind of misses the point. | |
| Because if you were to ask the average conservative, what's the biggest problem on modern college campuses, on most college campuses, liberal college campuses especially, which is most of them, I think the average conservative, what are they going to say? | |
| They're going to say that the big problem is that these campuses are so intolerant of and hostile to opposing ideas. | |
| No, that's not the problem, actually. | |
| The problem is that colleges today are so hostile to and intolerant of the right ideas. | |
| That's the problem. | |
| It's that they're hostile to the truth. | |
| My point is, there's nothing wrong with being hostile to an idea, because some ideas deserve hostility. | |
| The idea that it's okay to kill babies in the womb is a stupid, insane, evil, irrational, idiotic view that deserves to be treated with contempt and hatred. | |
| The view itself should be treated with contempt and hatred and ridicule. | |
| That's how awful and dumb it is. | |
| Just because it's an opposing idea from my own doesn't mean I respect it. | |
| No, you think it's okay to kill babies. | |
| I don't respect that. | |
| What's wrong with you? | |
| Are you crazy? No, it's not okay to kill babies. | |
| It's just the same thing if you came up to me and you said, you know what, I really think maybe it's okay to enslave black people. | |
| I'm not going to sit here and say, okay, well let's sit down and have a conversation. | |
| I'm going to say, that's insane, what's wrong with you? | |
| Of course it's not okay. | |
| Get out of here, I'm not even going to listen to that. | |
| You'll say, but no, hear me out. | |
| No, I'm not going to listen. I'm not going to hear you out. | |
| Because I'm not an idiot and I know that that's wrong. | |
| Of course it's wrong. There's nothing interesting or redeeming you can say in favor of it. | |
| So no, it is okay sometimes to treat ideas with hostility. | |
| That's a sign of societal health if we're treating, if we are directing that hostility and that contempt in the right direction. | |
| The problem is our society misdirects it. | |
| And we often treat the truth and the right ideas with contempt. | |
| That's the problem. So conservatives, they need to stop whining and saying, well, no, listen to my ideas because they're the opposing ideas and they deserve to be respected. | |
| Stop that. Stop being weak. | |
| No, stand up and say, listen to my ideas because my ideas are right. | |
| That's why they deserve to be listened to. | |
| Because they're true and they're right and you're wrong. | |
| That's why you should listen to me. | |
| It's not just because it's the opposing idea. | |
| I'm not going to put my ideas in a big basket called ideas and lump it in with all other ideas. | |
| No, this is the right idea. | |
| The idea that you shouldn't kill babies is right. | |
| And that's why you should listen to it. | |
| That's why my idea deserves more respect than yours. | |
| Because you think we should kill babies. | |
| And that's wrong and stupid and insane. | |
| There are a few, it's rare that you encounter it, but there are some college campuses out there, mostly small conservative Christian schools, where if you went there and tried to argue for killing babies, you would just be laughed out of the room. | |
| You know why? | |
| Because the people on campus are morally and intellectually formed, and so they have no interest in that idiocy. | |
| You see? And that's good. | |
| Because what's the real goal of education? | |
| It's not to make open-minded people who listen to opposing ideas. | |
| No. It's to make people who understand and are grounded in the truth. | |
| That is the only thing that matters in life. | |
| It's the whole point of existence is truth. | |
| It's the only thing that matters. | |
| That's what education is for. | |
| And the problem with education is that we are creating people who are hostile to truth. | |
| If we were to take that hostility, or if they were to take it and direct it to falsehood and evil and depravity, then that would be good. | |
| That's an improvement. | |
| That's growth. That's what we want. | |
| All right. You get my point. | |
| Hopefully. This is just... | |
| It's become a special pet peeve of mine. | |
| All these people who have the truth on their side, yet they demand to be listened to on the basis of free speech and open dialogue. | |
| Like, what is wrong with you? | |
| You have the truth. | |
| Why not bring... That's the point! | |
| So, in conclusion, legal free speech is great, and we should absolutely fight for it. | |
| And in the cases where it is threatened, let's take the case that's going to be The verdict will be declared by the Supreme Court in the next week or two. | |
| Masterpiece Cake Shop and their fight against the LGBT mob. | |
| Now, that is a real, honest-to-God free speech issue. | |
| And if Masterpiece Cake Shop loses, then that's essentially the end of the First Amendment. | |
| So that's a big deal. And so we've got to pay attention to that. | |
| So where legal free speech is actually threatened, we need to defend it. | |
| But outside of that, you're under no obligation. | |
| To tolerate or take seriously falsehood, indecency, vulgarity, profanity, etc. | |
| And you shouldn't. | |
| And society shouldn't. | |
| And that's the society that we should build. | |
| Thanks for listening, everybody. | |
| I'll talk to you next week. |