Dennis Prager Show - What are the Limits of Free Speech?
Aired: 2021-02-03
Duration: 03:15


=== Freedom Of Speech With Consequences (02:21) ===

[00:00:00]  You're restating it for me to respond to.
[00:00:03]  Well, yeah, you have freedom of speech, but you're not free to avoid the consequences of your free speech.
[00:00:08]  Is that what you're saying?
[00:00:14]  Or if you are taken off the air, or if you are censored, then that's just how it is.
[00:00:19]  You don't have freedom of speech in that way.
[00:00:20]  It's just involving the government.
[00:00:22]  So it is perfectly fine for you to be fired for your political belief.
[00:00:25]  That's what these people on the left say to me.
[00:00:27]  Well, wait, that's a second argument.
[00:00:29]  That it's not the government doing it is irrelevant to the first argument.
[00:00:33]  Of course there are consequences to what I say.
[00:00:37]  If I say to somebody in the street, you know, you're truly ugly.
[00:00:43]  There are consequences.
[00:00:44]  I may get punched.
[00:00:46]  They may curse me.
[00:00:49]  They just may walk away.
[00:00:52]  Of course, to say that there are consequences to speech is not one of the great insights of modernity.
[00:01:00]  As regards being shut down, then you don't have free speech.
[00:01:05]  They can't have it both ways.
[00:01:07]  Oh, you have free speech until we take it away.
[00:01:11]  That's exactly right.
[00:01:13]  That's my viewpoint as well.
[00:01:15]  Alright, let me leave it at that.
[00:01:17]  I mean, it is unbelievable.
[00:01:18]  The words that are spouted today, it's because the people read the Washington Post and the New York Times too much.
[00:01:24]  So they actually think, or they go to school, and they actually think that those are truly deep points.
[00:01:31]  Oh, you have freedom of speech, but if you exercise it, I take it away.
[00:01:35]  Then you don't have free speech.
[00:01:40]  As regards the argument, well, they're private companies, they're not the government.
[00:01:47]  The private companies got their immunity to lawsuits on the promise that they would be an open forum.
[00:01:56]  Google lives a lie.
[00:01:57]  YouTube lives a lie.
[00:02:00]  Facebook lives a lie.
[00:02:02]  Twitter lives the biggest lie among the lies.

=== Private Enterprise Limits (01:09) ===

[00:02:08]  Yes, give us immunity to lawsuits, but we'll shut down whatever we differ with.
[00:02:15]  So I always ask a question with this new notion that, oh, private enterprise can do what it wants.
[00:02:20]  Really?
[00:02:21]  So if the big three airlines, Delta, American, and United, announced if you come on board with the Wall Street Journal, you can't fly with us, can they do that?
[00:02:29]  Yes or no?
[00:02:31]  Yes or no?
[00:02:35]  Private company, correct?
[00:02:38]  Or how about this?
[00:02:39]  Who'd you vote for?
[00:02:41]  You voted for Trump?
[00:02:43]  Can't come on our American flight.
[00:02:46]  Why not?
[00:02:50]  It's a private company.
[00:02:55]  And it's even worse.
[00:02:57]  I mean, theoretically, if you can't get on American, United, and Delta, you could still get to a destination on Southwest or Alaska or what have you.
[00:03:05]  But if you don't get on the highway of Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, you don't go anywhere.
[00:03:14]  I'm Dennis Prager.