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Sept. 30, 2024 - Where There's Woke - Thomas Smith
38:30
WTW64: Did Students Shut Down Bipartisan Free Speech Event at Yale Law School?
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Time Text
What's so scary about the woke mob?
How often you just don't see them coming.
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down.
The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything.
Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green Eminem will now wear sneakers.
Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke.
This is episode 64.
And I'm Thomas.
That over there is Lydia in a new and improved closet.
How you doing?
Hey, yeah, someone came in and made this a lot better, which is really, really nice.
Yeah, it's like either you identified another sexuality that you're hiding from people, or, you know what I mean?
Like, you'd still be in the closet, be like, oh, I discovered I'm in the closet about another thing, too.
Yeah, yeah, different thing.
New and improved closet.
I'm sure that's actually probably happened.
You know, this part of my life is all about growth, my journey to understand myself, and this is a piece of that.
This hilarious banter is actually relevant, because we're gonna talk about today some really awful anti-queer rights people.
We're on season two, episode six of Things Fell Apart, and we're going to see how far we get.
Here, I'm just going to start.
I'm going to hit play and we're going to see how far we get on this one.
I don't disagree with any of that.
From BBC Radio 4, this is Things Fell Apart, season two.
Accurate.
Trump Yale law students shouting profanities and threats disrupt a free speech event with a bipartisan panel on civil liberties.
Oh, gotta stop it.
All right, psych everyone.
No.
We're not necessarily doing things fell apart today because it's actually perfect.
This is good because for one thing, I think we're things fell aparted out.
However, I will be damned if I don't complete this series.
So this is still part of that.
But as I have copious notes on this episode.
And then I was doing the thing I always do, which is like, well, I'm going to do one last ten listen throughs and see.
And I realized I had intended.
Oh, yeah, of course.
I thought to myself, I intended to track down these quotes he plays at the beginning of this one.
He plays some quotes like you just heard.
I realized like, well, I always want to track those down because it's actually really interesting what he ends up playing.
And there's always something interesting there.
And turns out it is very interesting.
I can't wait to tell you.
But the thing he's referencing, the thing he's playing there is a total bullshit thing.
So this can kind of be a standalone episode on that bullshit thing.
So it's like we're starting this hierarchy of trauma, season two, episode six of Things But the first sound clip is something that we can kind of do a fun departure a little bit.
And it's still relevant because again, he is using all these things to make a point that's stupid and having the context.
We always talk about how much harder it is to provide the context than it is to just play a fucking clip and just be like, listen to those rowdy kids.
They're idiots.
But this is fascinating.
So I stopped.
It literally was like five seconds in.
Okay, let me look this up.
And I, you know, three pages later of solid notes, I'm like, oh yeah, let's just talk about this.
So let's talk about what that was.
Why don't we take our break?
And patrons at patreon.com slash oh where there's woke don't have to hear shitty ads.
You don't want to hear these stupid fucking ads.
We have no control over them.
They suck.
Zero control.
Absolutely no control.
Here's what we can control.
Do you want them on or off?
And we're like, well, we do desperately need them on for some trickle of revenue.
And they're like, Great.
Here's any ad you have no control over.
That's basically it.
There's like, you can turn off like alcohol or politics.
I was like, well, I don't want to turn off politics because there's also left-wing politics.
So anyway, long story short, we have absolutely no control over specifically what ads.
But you don't have to worry about any of that if you're on Patreon, patreon.com slash where there's woke.
Exactly.
And also, what else might they find on the Patreon this month?
Oh man.
We have a bonus we are gearing up to record in moments that I am so excited about with a special guest.
A special guest?
How tall is a special guest?
Incredibly tall.
Weird.
Incredibly tall.
Incredibly bald.
How handsome is he?
Pretty handsome?
I'll answer.
Very handsome.
It's Heath Enright, back on the show.
I love working with Heath, and the topic is gonna be very fun.
It's always fun when I can be like, hey hun, I have a good idea, you do all the work.
You know, that's the amazing, delegating.
Yeah, it's great.
I'm a good manager.
So I thought, you know what would be a good episode right about now?
I says to myself and you, let's track down a bunch of the like fake controversies around Tim Walz.
Because every time I see the right trying to take him on, they're like, this just in.
His neighbors thought his lawn was long once.
I'll be honest, I ran out of time.
There's so many, but it's going to be a really, really fun one.
Yeah, by any means.
It's going to be fun.
So we're going to go over with Heath some of the best Tim Walz controversies.
We're finally shining some light on these things.
Yep.
So that'll be on patreon.com where there's woke.
So that all said, let's take our break and then we'll be talking about the great Yale law protest catastrophe of 2022.
Oh my.
- Oh my. - Yeah.
So here's what I'm gonna do.
Unfortunately, I'm realizing I'm gonna play a little more of the show just because I do want people to know the context he's trying to set here.
So even though I wanted to only get like five seconds in, I realize now it will make more sense if I play a little more and then go back and talk about this first clip.
Okay.
Yeah, law students shouting profanities and threats disrupt a free speech event with a bipartisan panel on civil liberties.
How dare they do that?
What idiots.
For decades, a culture war has raged on college campuses about whether or not to de-platform contentious voices.
The students that protested hurled insults at us, shouted us down.
They were pounding on classroom walls.
It was a terrifying night.
Campus police issuing a shelter-in-place order after college Republicans invited Milo Yiannopoulos to speak.
This is a police generator that was knocked over and set on fire when these protests turned into a riot.
We will not tolerate racism or sexism or hate crimes.
I'm continuing even though that's like four more episodes I need to do just in the first 30 seconds.
But you have to hear what might be the laziest C-minus student framing I've ever... I'm actually in disbelief.
So you heard, you already heard it was complete bullshit.
I'm resisting going off on it because I will for a while.
For decades, a culture war has raged on college campuses about whether or not to de-platform contentious voices.
That's, like, already, but just, it gets so much worse.
Like, that's step one of the stupidest framing ever.
Because how about you talk about, for decades, hardcore right-wing conservative groups like the Federalist Society, like College Republicans, that have been astroturfed into existence, by the way, with big money.
This is not conspiracy theory.
This is not tinfoil.
This is direct facts.
Big money comes in.
Yeah, we had Isaac Kamala on talking about that.
Like there is research, people have the receipts.
This stuff is funded by the Koch brothers.
Big money comes in.
They astroturf this stuff.
Exactly what she said.
I'm glad you remembered that.
I knew I was like, wait, that wasn't us.
Thank you.
Because Isaac was great.
And that was a really good episode.
Absolutely true.
Oh, I also remember the episode.
You can remember another name.
That's your job.
The book about this asshole, the guy with the head face too small for his head.
Face too small for you.
Charlie Kirk.
Oh, Kyle Spencer.
Holy shit.
How does she do it, everyone?
Never mind, this is the show.
What other names do you know?
They're just in your brain.
I know a lot of names.
You can just, like, recall the names at will?
Yeah.
New show, everybody.
How does she do it?
Anyway, I eventually got Charlie Kirk?
Yes.
Yeah, see?
But it's so... The way I'm doing it...
It's just a catastrophe.
It is just an absolute, I don't, just a, just a junkyard of like bullshit Rube Goldberg devices to get maybe kind of the name to my brain.
And then you're like, Kyle.
Oh my God.
Kyle Spencer.
So this is a serious point, though.
It is AstroTurfed.
It is big money coming in there to find the couple Nazi Republican college students because they exist.
I wasn't one of them.
I was almost one of them.
I was too lazy to be one of these people.
I would have listened to them.
There were too many buttons you would have had to press to join.
Yeah, meetings?
Am I going to a meeting?
Fuck off!
I'm not going to a meeting.
But if I had met one of these assholes at lunch, unfortunately, because again, I grew up conservative, I would have listened and been like, damn, yeah, you and me, man, we're conservatives.
Oh my God.
There's like three of us on campus.
I'm so glad I met you when I did.
Hey, but Trump didn't exist back then.
It was different politics.
It was just, you know, very probably racially problematic hatred of Barack Obama back then.
So it's fine.
Oh, no, actually, that was toward the end of school.
This was supporting the Iraq War.
So, you know, it's way better.
Anyway, while Lydia Googles divorce lawyers in our area, which she can do in her new and improved closet.
I've got her better setup where she's able to access her laptop easier, so expect to see those search results.
Anyway, and so to frame it as, I'll repeat, I know it's a lot of nonsense, so I'll repeat.
Quote, for decades, a culture war has raged on college campuses about whether or not to de-platform contentious voices.
And what's really happening there is these astroturf groups are purposefully baiting protest by inviting fucking Nazis to campuses.
And then very reasonable people and some very unreasonable people, because guess what?
Those people are everywhere.
Unreasonable people are everywhere, including when you're younger, when you got more energy, when you're super young and progressive.
You're gonna be energetic and maybe go too far on some stuff, but you're a college kid, so I should never fucking find out about this.
But anyway, they invite these Nazis.
Milo Yiannopoulos, Ann Coulter, fucking whoever, to bait these people, to create the protests and then to sell this fucking storyline.
This is not tinfoil hat.
This is literally what's happening.
And to do no research into that and to just take it, just fucking hook, line and sinker, John Ronson or his researcher, I don't know who, whoever at the BBC sounds, just to take and just be like, yeah, the debate is really whether or not to de-platform.
By the way, not Nazi, harmful, awful piece of shit.
Contentious voices.
I know I always do the gratuitous analogies, but it really does, I think, help because often I'm trying to make a logical point that I feel like I can't get the wording quite right, but I know it's absolutely logically sound.
Contentious voices.
It's just not what it is.
Let's say I think I'm at a fucking train station.
I see someone who I think is holding a gun and I look, oh shit, I think they're about to hurt somebody.
I tackle him.
Now let's say other people were like, wait, he wasn't actually holding a gun.
It was some other item.
Hmm.
And so instead of just saying, Thomas thought that was a gun, and so he tackled the guy, you can judge me on how reasonable was it for me to think that.
How much damage did I do to the guy?
How much disruption did I, if it turns out to not be a gun, by the way.
If it turns out to be a gun, I'm a fucking hero, and maybe you should stop Googling divorce lawyers.
You should think about that.
But if it's not a gun, you can judge me based on that.
But here's what these assholes do.
In order to preserve both sides-ism, they don't call it a gun anymore.
They're like, well, it's a controversial item.
And they say, you know, Thomas thought it was okay to tackle someone just because they had a controversial item.
And so like, why does he, why does he think it looks so many people agree that if you think someone's got a controversial item, you should just be able to tackle them.
What's next?
Can you, can you stab them?
Can you punch it?
Where does it end?
Thomas, can you not handle a controversial item?
You're too coddled to be able to... That really is exactly what's happening here, because these complaints, 100 times out of 100, are specific problems with specific fucking assholes that are like, hey, this person you invited to the campus fucking blows.
They suck.
They're causing literal harm to trans people, to queer people.
This is a gun.
We don't like that you are inviting someone to campus with a gun.
And I accept that other people don't think it's a gun.
Other people are like, no, we don't think they're dangerous.
We don't think they're harming people.
I understand that.
That's what you have to do.
You can't both sides it.
And then treat everyone as though they're acting in accordance with that both sidesy thing.
Contentious voice.
Do you think that anyone would agree with that?
Do you think if you ask, well, okay, should you de-platform contentious voice?
Who's a contentious voice?
I don't know, like a standup comedian that is a little blue?
You know, that works a little blue?
Do you think they'd agree like, yeah, okay, de-platform.
No, it's not about being contentious.
It's about being harmful.
It's about the fucking weapon.
You can disagree with that.
You can disagree with whether or not they're harmful.
They're actually fine.
I disagree with you.
You can disagree with that.
You have to treat what I'm doing, what the students are doing, the points they're making from their point of view.
Yeah.
You don't say, Thomas, you tackled someone for no fucking reason because they had like a cell phone.
I didn't think it was that!
You can't say, so then therefore I will tackle everyone with a cell phone.
I know this is a tortured analogy, but I have just had to watch four hours of newsreel of every single fucking CNN, MSNBC, Fox News.
Oh, contentious voice.
Students don't allow viewpoints.
That's what they do.
It's not logically sound.
It is not.
That is the least bad part of this framing, because it gets worse.
He's a fascist and Berkeley did not welcome him.
But lately, something big and surprising has changed about this particular culture war.
For the longest time, protests over free speech were pretty much confined to college campuses.
What?
What country are you from?
Oh, yeah, that's right.
You're not from this country.
Look, I'm the last person to get all pretentious, but read a fucking book, Jon Ronson.
I know you're an author.
This is coming from me.
I don't read books.
I listen to them.
For the longest time, debates about free speech were only on the campus.
And then where is it going, by the way?
Until suddenly, they exploded out of colleges and into workplaces.
Workplaces?
Including newsrooms.
Including newsrooms.
Does that seem a little arbitrary to you, perhaps?
Yes.
Yes, it does.
Well, this is as far as we're going to get in the episode for this episode.
We have stopped now at around a minute something.
As far as we're going to get, if that seems a little gerrymandered, like that fucking, like, could it be because he has some asshole who's going to complain about how he was censored in the workplace, in the newsroom, and he works in a newsroom?
That's it.
That's that.
Guess what?
It's it's Lee Fong.
Yeah.
The guy we already heard from.
That'll be later.
But like this is the laziest, most sophomoric, gerrymandered fucking intro.
And the example he's going to later bring up is so fucking hyper specific.
It is not universal at all.
And by the way, this has always existed at the workplace.
Fucking unions.
You know how long union busting is still today, by the way.
Still today, but also dates back so far.
The right for a union to try to speak.
At workplaces.
To try to recruit at workplaces.
That is a fucking free speech issue.
That is a way more important free speech issue than whatever fucking nonsense this is going to be about.
Because that involved, especially going back, you know, 1900 fucking way back when.
We've had the First Amendment that whole time, but a lot of this was just not allowed.
They were just union busts.
They'd fucking use violence.
Pre-Labor Day.
Where, yeah, where was the free speech rights back then?
Is that something the founders always believed in and supported?
Or is it actually true that not until we had more liberal Supreme Court that gave us some of these rights in like the fucking 60s did we have these rights?
I'm being very general, but that is kind of how it's worked for the longest time.
That's a free speech debate that is far more important than anything we're talking about.
It dates back a century or more and it already was in the workplace.
It started in the workplace, actually.
That's where these things started.
Before school, I guarantee you free speech debates that of any import and free speech controversies and battles over free speech started.
I'm just, this is my, I'm using the force.
I don't know.
I've looked this up.
I guarantee you it was more common in workplaces and more important in workplaces before universities were inviting in culture or whatever bullshit they were doing.
I guarantee it.
This is just the laziest frame.
It's not historically accurate in any way.
It's significantly inaccurate.
And it's just gerrymandered to introduce the person he happened to talk to who, surprise, surprise, is an anti-woke guy who's got a complaint that's stupid about a thing.
So bad.
So that is what he's setting up.
That is what he's setting up.
Reminder.
I know I had to go ahead a little bit, but I think it's important to set back up and go back to that first quote now.
Let's go back to that first thing he played.
Let's see how this makes sense.
Let's see how much sense it makes, because just to keep you participating a little bit, having heard all you've heard and you've heard enough, what rhetorically is he setting up exactly?
If you kind of want to summarize where he's trying to get you as a listener.
There are people that are coming on to college campus to give a speech or a lecture or a discussion and that represent a variety of viewpoints are being shouted down and prevented from speaking at all because of college kids.
So and the timing is it started at college campuses.
No, it didn't.
And now lately it's moved on.
to workplaces.
And keep in mind that the entirety of this series is about 2020, is about the culture wars of 2020.
So let's go back to that quote and I'll do some detective work and figure out what it's from.
Yeah, law students shouting profanities and threats disrupt a free speech event with a bipartisan panel on civil liberties.
Okay, well, type, type, Google, Google, Google, let's look what that's from.
When do you think that should be from, if this is the timeline he's setting up for us?
I would say literally any time before 2020.
If the thing he is setting up is, here's these things that used to happen on college campuses, and now where we are, it's exploded onto workplaces, I would expect that's like, okay, these are the controversies that have happened, and then we fast forward into current time.
What surprised you to know, as I looked this up, it's from March 10th, 2022.
Oh, wow.
So it's after, that quote is from something after all this.
This is not super important.
That's a little weird, isn't it?
Like, yeah.
Okay.
For the longest time, it raged.
And you're playing this thing from the future?
Like, that's weird.
And also, I go and find that clip.
Oh, I've tracked it down.
Look at this.
I've tracked it down.
Here it is.
Shouting profanities and threats disrupt a free speech event with a bipartisan panel on civil liberties.
That's me.
I found the clip.
What is this source?
EWTN News.
What is that?
Brings news and analysis from a Catholic perspective to TV viewers across the English-speaking world.
Oh, there we go.
That's a bizarre source, don't you think?
Yeah.
Already I was like, what is happening?
So I'm expecting history.
And to be fair, the next clip is from something from 2016, 17.
Okay.
That makes more sense.
I would think the chronology of what you're doing is this all happened leading up to, again, the focus on the series is 2020 and what exploded in 2020, the culture wars around that time, right?
That's been the whole fucking thing.
You would think this would be the before times.
The next event is 2017.
But this one's from 2022.
Not that long ago, you know?
And the source you're using is a Catholic YouTube thing?
And their framing of what happened?
Yeah, it's weird.
How do you even do that?
It goes to this question we've had about this whole thing.
Like, where is he getting his information?
Why, why, why is that the source at all that you would use?
I know it's like, I get that sometimes you play Fox News coverage of something to make a point, but we're in fact zone narrator voice here.
We're not in look at how these right-wingers distort events.
We're at, here's what's happening.
Right.
And every source is a right-wing clip.
So, here's the funny thing.
Just again, I like to use you and it creates a lot of tension in our marriage, so it's good.
What do you think this event was based on what you heard?
This is not trick questions.
Just tell me as a listener.
I'm just trying to keep you as the average listener what's going on.
I can replay it if you want.
Yeah, can you replay it?
Sure.
I get it.
It's hard to find a divorce lawyer, so she's...
She's had to, like, Google a lot and Yelp, and then Yelp's all weird now.
It's kind of hard to find the right results.
Yale law students shouting profanities and threats disrupt a free speech event with a bipartisan panel on civil liberties.
Okay.
Bipartisan panel, civil liberties, and free speech.
Free speech event.
Yeah, free speech event.
There's about a million more places that summarize this Fox and Friends.
There is new video emerging of a protest at Yale Law School last week, moments before the cops had to be called in.
Oh my god, the cops had to be called in.
The event was ironically about the importance of free speech, featuring a liberal atheist and a conservative Christian looking to find common ground.
And the speakers were great with that.
It was the people in the audience who had the problem with it.
So yeah, it's a bipartisan panel about free speech, right?
It's like, oh, the importance of free speech.
And these protesters are like down with free speech.
How dare you?
Yeah.
Isn't that the kind of the indication you're getting?
Yeah, definitely.
But I did want to just note that I think doing this show has, like, spidey sense.
Oh, you gotta put yourself in them.
I'm trying to— I know.
I hear free speech and I'm like, ooh.
Pretend you are just a normie overhearing some television coverage.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, if I'm a normie and I don't listen to Where There's Woke and learn a lot of great things from the show, I think I would view it as, why are they, you know, shouting down people who just want to talk about how important it is to have opinions?
Yeah.
The students have gotten so bad, they can't even handle free speech.
They don't even want free speech to exist.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Campus craziness.
And then it makes it all the way.
And look, I'm not sure if I'm going to later do this, but I kind of want to sometime go through a sampling of the 420,000 videos about this that are all the same thing, because it does illustrate the point, the larger point about this show.
There's a million people.
Sorry.
There's a group of really dedicated people who are on the same message and have a bunch of Russian money and shit and other just billionaire money.
that are creating, that are astroturfing this thing.
And every time there's one of these bullshit things, this Yale protest, the results are all that.
They're all that.
And then it filters to the mainstream.
Then the mainstream picks up their version of it and is so susceptible, even like MSNBC, even like liberal people are so susceptible to just accepting their version of events.
Right.
And one part of that is Joe Rogan.
We all have the time on our hands to be offended by everything.
Where before we were out there trying to collect some food and some clean water.
I'm not saying we were trying to do that 10 years ago, but we've gotten to the point now where we can all be offended as fuck over anything.
There was a free speech conversation, debate, held at Yale, just may have been this past week, and it was interrupted by a large protest from a bunch of the law students there.
They objected to the fact that there was a free speech debate.
They objected to the fact that there's a free speech debate.
And it's dangerous.
And these kids, they don't realize how dangerous it is.
When you stifle debate, then who decides what can and can't be talked about?
It's not.
It's just noticed.
It's so funny.
You could hear that they're blanking out the F-words.
Oh, that's why it like skips a little bit.
Yeah.
And also the F-words aren't in the captions.
And I realized, oh yeah, it's because the Alliance Defending Freedom tweeted this video.
Oh my God.
So they have to replace it with like.
Oh gosh darn it!
And meanwhile it's Joe.
And they don't care.
This guy, I couldn't actually even find who it was.
I think it might be someone from there.
I don't know who this guy is.
But like, they're dropping F-bombs left and right.
They don't care except when they want to sanitize it for their little Christian mad audience.
Yeah.
People debate.
Then who decides what can and can't be talked about?
Yeah.
Who decides?
It's not going to be you.
I got news for you.
And these woke kids who think because they scream the loudest and they pull fire alarms and they stop discussions and they stifle debates, they think that they have more control than they really do.
But what they do in that is they set a precedent.
And that precedent is you can stifle information that makes you uncomfortable.
You can stifle discussions where people have points of view that you don't agree with.
And you think you're right, so you think you should be able to stop those points of view.
That is not the way to do it.
It's just not.
It's never been the way to do it.
It's a dangerous precedent to set because then when more power is acquired... You get the point.
Yeah.
So why don't we... I'll help you be the average person.
I think we're to believe from all this that there was an event called free speech, yay or nay.
Free speech in defense and or... But you also heard something bipartisan.
You heard something about agreement.
So maybe it was like, Free speech is good.
Here's two different people, like one right, one left, who agree it's good, maybe.
Yeah, and they come to it from different positions.
Yeah, and then the Yale communists, woke communist leftists are like, fuck this, we don't want to hear that at all.
We don't like free speech.
Not at all.
We want to turn off free speech.
We don't want you to be able to even do your events.
And I'm not really exaggerating.
That's where we've gotten to.
This is Joe Rogan.
This is eleventy billion people.
I know I've played CNN, Fox News, whatever.
I wouldn't be surprised if this fucking version is the one more people heard just because of Joe Rogan.
It didn't come from Joe Rogan.
It came from this guy.
But, you know, like still nobody nobody ever checks.
All right.
You want to know what the event was?
Yes.
Tell me.
Okay, well, I will go to the flyer for the event.
Now, it is the Yale Federalist Society.
Okay.
And it is true, legally, and this is how we do our shit with the First Amendment in this country, and I don't think it's necessarily entirely correct, but it is the atmosphere we're in.
There are these Conservative groups, as we've already talked about, oftentimes they're astroturfed.
And if they invite someone to speak, legally, they got to be allowed to do that.
That is true.
Like, it sucks that they can just invite fucking Hitler Jr.
And then, like, the law's like, yep, you gotta let him.
I get it.
There's some play in the joints there, I think, here and there, depending on the school policy.
But if it's a federally funded school, if it's not a federally funded school, actually, the school can just say whatever.
Oh yeah, Hillsdale gets to do whatever they want.
Exactly.
Isn't it funny that those Hillsdale students, don't they need to hear both sides?
Don't they need to learn how to understand arguments from both sides?
I've had to listen to it 400 times.
You need to be able to hear the argument.
Fuck you.
Okay.
So it's the Yale Federalist Society presents.
This is a Supreme Court case that we covered back in the day on OA, and it's very hard to pronounce.
Zwegbenam v. Przewitzki.
And the event has someone that we know.
Actually, I'm actually a little disappointed because I think that she was invited to exactly create this exact thing.
The liberal side?
Yeah.
Can you have a guess?
Someone who's been on OA.
Someone who's been on OA.
They keep referring to her as a humanist, American Humanist Association-like person.
Oh, Monica Miller?
Yep, that's it.
How does she do it, everyone?
How does Livia know these names?
Yep, they've got Kristen Wagoner, someone you know and have prepared a little bit on, and Monica Miller, I guess moderated by Kate Stith, a professor at Yale Law School.
So it is called, the event, the actual title of the event, Uzwagbenum v. Przewski, colon, Litigating Civil Rights.
Okay, so do you see free speech in there anywhere?
No, nothing about free speech.
And the weird thing is, it's not at all about free speech.
It's not even like, oh, technically they didn't include it on the poster.
It is a civil rights issue.
It is a First Amendment religious freedom issue that the case is about.
So the reason they have Monica Miller, I don't know how premeditated this was with Yale Federalist Society, I'm not sure, but if it was, it was dastardly because their whole thing was, hey, we got two different sides.
We got a humanist and the opposite of a humanist, a fucking asshole Christian.
A dehumanist.
I know, I love unironically, they're like, we got two totally both sides.
You know, a humanist who's like cool with people and like doesn't want to hurt people and Kristen Wagner, you know, both sides.
And they agree on this case.
They both filed briefs on the same side of this case.
Oh, okay.
Got it.
Wow.
Here's the problem with that.
And I'm very disappointed that Monica Miller was involved in this.
I get it.
You're invited to a thing.
I get it.
You know, you're invited, especially Yale.
That's awesome.
If I was invited to a Yale Law thing, I'd be like, that's awesome.
It is the fucking Fair Law Society, so that sucks.
But unfortunately, this is a trick because the thing they agree on is a very technical bullshit that was at the heart of the case.
Oh, I see.
So here is Uzwegbunum V. Przewski.
It was that case.
I actually remembered it because, again, we did cover it.
I didn't remember it at first.
So there's a student, Uzwegbunum, at Georgia Gwinnett College in Lawrenceville, Georgia.
OK.
And while at school, he converted to Christianity, apparently, and he wanted to proselytize on campus.
He was stopped by campus security and told that religious recruitments or proselytizing was limited to certain free speech zones on campus, use of which you had to register ahead of time.
Okay.
Now that's a time, place, and manner restriction that I don't think I have any problem with.
Like, I feel like, hey, you're trying to fucking recruit.
I don't either.
Yeah, like, you're still allowed to do it, but you gotta, like, hey, we can't, don't wanna have just everybody trying to proselytize to our fucking students.
Roaming the halls, like, more classes going on.
You could do it wherever you want.
Like, yeah, no way.
Now, he did follow the procedure to register a block of time.
OK.
But due to a student complaint, his activities were determined to be violating the policy that disallows speech that disturbs the peace and or comfort of the students or faculty.
Oh, like saying like you're going to burn in hell.
Now, here's the problem.
Here's the problem with these fucking things all the time.
Because the case that got to the Supreme Court doesn't turn on any of that because we're dealing with a threshold issue.
Right, right.
The reason it's there is a total technicality, and so what you do is you assume the best, or you disregard it, actually.
It honestly doesn't matter.
But you assume the best for the student.
Now, we don't know.
It's not in the facts that I've seen.
Maybe it's somewhere in the case history, but this isn't opening arguments.
I haven't figured that out.
We don't know if he was an asshole and yelled about how gays are going to burn in hell.
We don't know.
There may have been an entirely good reason, but it doesn't actually matter because, and this is how the law works.
I'm totally cool with this.
This is how it has to be.
The issue was he made no further attempts to proselytize and he graduated from college.
And then years later, the Alliance Defending Fascism, sorry, Alliance Defending Freedom filed Record scratch.
I just came up with that now.
Has anyone ever said that?
I've never heard anyone say that.
See?
Record scratch.
The Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit, but like it's kind of way too late.
You know, like it's after he graduated.
You know, that's a technical issue.
And after the filing of the suit, the college changed its policies on the free speech zones.
And that renders the claims moot since the activities were no longer regulated.
And also he had graduated and no longer was associated with the college.
Now, this is the interesting thing, because I'm pretty sure that if this was anything other than a Christian, the right is like, we don't care.
It's moot.
Fuck off.
Yeah.
That's usually what it is.
So I want to say I have no problem with Monica Miller and everybody on the left who was in favor of the student in this lawsuit, because we are on the side of the people on the left are on the side of not Limiting or hindering or getting rid of avenues for people to sue over their civil rights.
This is one where, hey, here's what we're gonna do.
We're gonna go ahead and piggyback on this because it's a Christian, the fucking right-wing idiots will probably be a fan of it, and we'll support this and It's good because it sets a precedent for being able to sue later.
The specific technical thing is that, yes, it's too late, but we're saying the college should still be liable for nominal damages, as it had violated his rights at some point in the past.
Nominal damages, typically a single dollar, are generally assigned to assert that wrongdoing has occurred.
So it's like, it's a way... Symbolic.
Yes.
And apparently there's something with Taylor Swift doing this at some point, you know, whatever that is.
I don't know, something about a dollar.
I don't remember the case, but yeah, it is a dollar.
I think Gwyneth Paltrow did the same thing for the skiing issue, you know, where they don't want payment, they just want recognition that they're on the right.
Yeah, it's related.
It's related to all that.
It's the fact that like, hey, no, it's still alive because nominal damages.
And it allows people to still say, I want this to go forward, even though the policy has changed.
And even though they can't like assign a monetary value, you can't be like, well, because I couldn't proselytize, that's worth a million dollars.
Yeah, it doesn't really make sense.
So this is good.
All in all, this is good.
Now, that doesn't mean that this student is good.
That doesn't mean the Alliance Defending Freedom is good.
That doesn't mean this case made sense, because maybe the guy was being a total piece of shit.
And maybe had it been on the merits, the school would have been able to say, yeah, he's harassing people.
That's why we're not letting... Who knows?
But I think in an effort to avoid that, avoid the controversy, who knows, for whatever reason, they changed their policies, they mooted the lawsuit, and so they tried to get out of it.
And that's what went to the Supreme Court.
The ADF said, hey, no, nominal damages, that should still allow us to sue.
That is the thing that they agree on.
That's it.
Should nominal damages be a good reason to keep this case going or should it not?
And it goes all the way up to the Supreme Court and it goes 8-1 in the first and only time that fucking Chief Justice Roberts has been the lone dissenter because Roberts is like, hey, no, I thought we love technicalities that don't let people have civil rights.
Like I thought we were We were really good with that.
The lone dissenter, crazy.
Yep, 8-1.
And the rest of the Republicans on the court were like, nah, he's a Christian, so probably whatever.
I don't know, I didn't read the fucking decision, but I'm guessing that's their motivation.
Because this has gone the other way so many times, where if it's anything on the left, if it's anyone trying to not be killed or something, you know, executed, it's always some technicality.
Oh, technicality!
Sorry, should have thought of that before you were executed just now.
Yeah.
It's always that shit.
So that is the quote unquote, like the coming together, the sort of like agreeing on quote, litigating civil rights, which is a very general way to put that point.
Like we know what Chris, this is why I kind of wish Monica Miller hadn't really done this.
We know what Kristen Wagner wants out of this.
Yeah.
We know what the fascists on the right want out of this.
The only thing we agree with is, hey, cool, another avenue to sue over your civil rights being violated.
That's the thing people on the left tend to like because we like civil rights.
The people on the right are like, we like when Christians have privilege.
This one incident was another way to extend Christian privilege.
So, contrary to this being a free speech panel on free speech and debate of free speech that the kids can't even handle free speech, it's about this very technical issue.
Now, one might wonder, if it's about this very technical issue, why do all the kids disagree so much?
Why are they all so mad?
Why are they so mad about this?
Shouldn't that set off your spidey senses slightly?
Well, next time on Where There's Woke.
If your spidey senses hold you, that's weird that they're so mad about this technical issue involving nominal damages.
Why would they be so mad about that?
About a dollar.
Great question!
Well, not only that, about like a case that was 8-1, the liberals on the court were for it, Monica Miller's for it.
Why are they protesting?
That seems weird.
So much for the tolerant left.
Why are they so mad?
Well, you'll find out the answer to that question next episode.
My guess is it has to do with Kristen.
It may have to do with the fascist that was invited to the thing.
Spoilers!
We're going to talk all about that and there's so much more on this Yale event.
And we haven't even gotten to like a bunch of the fallout.
God, it gets so bad.
This gets really bad, by the way.
This gets like in the name of quote unquote free speech.
People on the right violate the free speech and the rights and just the dignity of people on the left so badly.
I can't wait to tell you about it.
It's actually fucking outrageous.
And I remember this vaguely at the time, and then, you know, we move on.
But the harm is ongoing from this.
So can't wait to break that all down for you.
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Get you some heath.
Get you some heath.
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Get those eyebrows.
Sorry.
Plug your ears, hun.
That's what I'm about to do.
Get me some heath.
I don't need to plug my ears.
You're right.
And I can't wait to talk about bogus Tim Walz controversies on that bonus.
So join us for that.
Otherwise, we'll see you for next episode that's not really things fell fine.
YouTube is, I'm not going to do another fucking thing, I'm not going to do another fucking thing, but I hate YouTube fucking thing, but I hate YouTube God, it's impossible.
It just goes off into whatever.
Whatever they want to show you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
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