Dennis Prager Show - Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process
Aired: 2021-04-28
Duration: 06:56


=== Why We Want Free Speech (06:56) ===

[00:00:00]  Alan Dershowitz's newest book, and every one of his books is important, which is rare for an author, and utterly readable.
[00:00:09]  The Case Against the New Censorship, Protecting Free Speech from Big Tech Progressives and Universities.
[00:00:14]  When we left, I had noted that it is worthy of note that in the subtitle of the book, Protecting Free Speech from Big Tech Progressives and Universities, we don't see government.
[00:00:27]  And you then...
[00:00:28]  Well pointed out.
[00:00:30]  Every case you had, a free speech against the government, you won.
[00:00:34]  This is much more serious a threat, isn't it?
[00:00:38]  It's much more serious.
[00:00:40]  It's more serious than McCarthyism because we don't have the legal recourse against Google and Facebook.
[00:00:47]  We don't have the legal recourse against private universities.
[00:00:50]  We don't have the legal recourse against individual progressives.
[00:00:55]  Who cancel?
[00:00:55]  And there's another thing that's important, and your listeners may not appreciate this as much as some of my friends would.
[00:01:02]  A lot of the people who are at the forefront of censorship are our friends.
[00:01:06]  They're our friends' children.
[00:01:07]  They're our grandchildren, our nieces, our nephews.
[00:01:10]  You know, in McCarthyism, it was pretty easy because Joe McCarthy was not a particularly likable guy, and it was easy to see him as an evil force.
[00:01:19]  The people who are censoring today, many of them are good people.
[00:01:23]  Justice Brandeis once said the greatest dangers to liberty worked in people of zeal who have no understanding.
[00:01:30]  Good intentions, but no understanding.
[00:01:32]  And I think the new censors, the people on the hard left, think they're doing the right thing.
[00:01:38]  And a lot of young people I know, good, decent people who are against racial discrimination, who are in favor of the environment, who are in favor of good values, don't understand the need for process.
[00:01:51]  The need for procedures, the need for patience, the need for democratic values to get where they want to get.
[00:01:57]  They just want to get where they want to get because they know they're right.
[00:02:00]  And they're much harder to fight against than government.
[00:02:04]  So, okay, the $64,000 question, and it didn't begin with PragerU, but, you know, there were four editorials in one year at the Wall Street Journal about our being censored.
[00:02:17]  TikTok has just removed one of our most well-known spokespeople.
[00:02:22]  Just removed.
[00:02:23]  She has no more account.
[00:02:25]  She's a young black woman who is extraordinary.
[00:02:29]  Amalia is her name.
[00:02:33]  It doesn't even resonate with people.
[00:02:36]  So how do you fight if they are, well, are they really protected in doing this?
[00:02:44]  Well, they're protected in some respects and not in others.
[00:02:47]  I'll give you one more example.
[00:02:48]  Some of you may have heard me say this before, but, you know, Bobby Kennedy challenged me to debate the son of a former attorney general who's an environmental lawyer, but also a vaccine skeptic.
[00:02:59]  And I'm not a vaccine skeptic.
[00:03:00]  I go with the science.
[00:03:01]  And we had this great debate, and people watched it from all over the country.
[00:03:05]  They loved it.
[00:03:06]  Some people changed their minds.
[00:03:07]  Some people didn't change their minds.
[00:03:08]  YouTube took it down.
[00:03:10]  They didn't want anybody to think that vaccines are a debatable issue in America or elections are debatable issues in America.
[00:03:18]  How do you fight back?
[00:03:19]  Number one, you take away their special privileges under Section 230 of the Decency and Communication Act.
[00:03:26]  They can't both decide to censor and then be exempt from any defamation or other lawsuits.
[00:03:32]  So that's the first step.
[00:03:34]  Section 230 has to be changed.
[00:03:36]  Every media company has to check a box.
[00:03:39]  Either you check a box saying you will not censor, you're just a platform, anything goes.
[00:03:44]  In which case you get the benefit of 230, or you check a box saying, no, we have the right to pick and choose, and then you don't get 230. That's one legal way of fighting back.
[00:03:53]  The other way is to create a better mousetrap, and Rumble is trying to do that.
[00:03:57]  They're competing with YouTube.
[00:03:59]  They put up my debate with Kennedy.
[00:04:01]  And, you know, people said to me, oh, you must be very happy.
[00:04:05]  YouTube thinks you won the debate.
[00:04:07]  I don't want to win the debate by censorship.
[00:04:09]  I wanted to win the debate in the court of public opinion.
[00:04:12]  I want people to hear both sides and agree with me or agree with him.
[00:04:16]  That's what the nature of democratic open debate is.
[00:04:19]  I don't want some kid who just graduated college or some machine making a decision that they can't hear me debating Bobby Kennedy.
[00:04:28]  That's just so un-American and so wrong.
[00:04:30]  And so we have to fight back.
[00:04:32]  One of the ways I fight back is to write books and appear on shows like yours and thank God for shows like yours.
[00:04:38]  Because you are part of the open marketplace of ideas, and you are part of the answer to the new censors.
[00:04:45]  Yeah.
[00:04:46]  Well, I want people to understand, well, I think my listeners do, that the threat is unique because it's coming from the private world, and that is, as you correctly point out, unprecedented since the 18th century.
[00:05:03]  We've never had this since the 1780s.
[00:05:07]  Yeah.
[00:05:08]  But even in the 1790s, when we had the Alien and Sedition Act, that was the government.
[00:05:14]  And they were able to rescind it.
[00:05:16]  And Jefferson pardoned all the people who were convicted under the Alien and Sedition Act.
[00:05:19]  What is your position on vaccination passports?
[00:05:24]  Well, I wouldn't call them vaccination passports.
[00:05:27]  I would like to know when I go into a restaurant or a movie theater or send my kid back to university, I would like to know what their policy is on vaccination.
[00:05:38]  And if they don't require vaccination, I might take my business elsewhere.
[00:05:43]  But the irony is that liberals want to make sure that you have ID that shows you've been vaccinated, but they don't want you to show ID to vote.
[00:05:53]  And some conservatives take the opposite view.
[00:05:56]  They want to show ID to vote, but not ID on vaccines.
[00:06:01]  So I'm not saying they're in consistent positions.
[00:06:04]  But in general, look, I don't like passports.
[00:06:06]  I don't like show me your papers, please.
[00:06:08]  But I do think that there are understandable reasons why people should want to know what the policy of an institution is.
[00:06:17]  As far as vaccination is concerned.
[00:06:20]  If you don't want to vaccinate, fine, but I really don't want you in my home.
[00:06:25]  Well, we differ on that one, which is great, because I was getting worried that we might not have any differences.
[00:06:31]  No, we have differences.
[00:06:32]  Of course, of course.
[00:06:33]  I know that.
[00:06:34]  I voted for Joe Biden.
[00:06:36]  Hey, I voted for Joe Biden.
[00:06:38]  Yom Kippur is coming up, and you can repent.
[00:06:42]  That's the beauty of it.
[00:06:43]  I have repented so many times.
[00:06:45]  I've repented mostly my votes for Barack Obama, particularly my second vote for Barack Obama, which I think I was tricked into doing, and I blame myself for doing that.