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Speaker 1: What a pleasure this is to talk about the freedom

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Speaker 1: of speech the First Amendment, perhaps the most vital principle

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Speaker 1: any self governing people can hold. With Greg Lukianoff of

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Speaker 1: the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Greg is actually

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Speaker 1: the president and CEO, also the author of a handful

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Speaker 1: of books that I have really really enjoyed, including Unlearning, Liberty,

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Speaker 1: Campus Censorship, in the End of American Debate, Freedom from Speech,

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Speaker 1: and I really enjoyed a shortish book that'd be a

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Speaker 1: great place to start the war on words, Arguments against

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Speaker 1: free speech and why they fail with Nadine Strawsen.

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Speaker 2: Greg, welcome, How are you.

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Speaker 3: I'm pretty good.

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Speaker 4: Unfortunately, business is booming for First Amendment attorneys these days,

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Speaker 4: and that's never a good sign.

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Speaker 3: For the country.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I think both sides.

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Speaker 1: Indulged too frequently, too easily in let's silence the other

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Speaker 1: guys because we don't like what they say. Obviously, How

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Speaker 1: would you characterize the state of free speech in the

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Speaker 1: US right now?

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Speaker 3: And we'll just go from there.

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Speaker 4: Well, you know, I want to expand it even from there,

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Speaker 4: because I think people really need to get and I

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Speaker 4: want to say this to your entire audience. Free speech

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Speaker 4: is in trouble globally. Obviously China and Iran and Russia

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Speaker 4: were not free countries, but the level of totalitarianism that

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Speaker 4: you can deliver with a combination of surveillance and AI

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Speaker 4: is terrifying. The European Union and the UK have completely

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Speaker 4: turned turned around on free speech. So they're arresting something

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Speaker 4: like twelve thousand people a year in Britain now for

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Speaker 4: essentially hate speech in Britain.

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Speaker 3: I mean they my mother's British.

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Speaker 4: They used to laugh at us for a political correctness here,

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Speaker 4: and now they're enforcing.

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Speaker 3: It by law.

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Speaker 4: Canada and Ireland we're playing with actually passing a hate

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Speaker 4: speech code that could result in life in prison, and

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Speaker 4: even within the US, like we're the only country left

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Speaker 4: that really cares about free speech, you know, down to

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Speaker 4: our core, and here I'm afraid we're blowing it as

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Speaker 4: well due to partisan politics. So I know, like I'm

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Speaker 4: a gen xer, people my age and older, whether we're right,

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Speaker 4: left or center, we get freedom of speech, but we

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Speaker 4: need people to come together to defend it or opinions.

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Speaker 3: They don't like, just like we used to in the

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Speaker 3: old days. Because the only way.

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Speaker 4: You really prove that you care about free speech is

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Speaker 4: not defending the free speech that you already agree with,

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Speaker 4: but it's the stuff that you actually disdain that that's

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Speaker 4: how you show your commitment.

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Speaker 1: Precisely, I think we need to teach over and over

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Speaker 1: again that it's the sort of speech that anybody would

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Speaker 1: object to that needs to be protected, because speech nobody

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Speaker 1: objects to doesn't need protection, your ninnies.

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Speaker 4: You know, it strucks me well, except on campus sometimes,

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Speaker 4: but something can get you in trouble on campus sometimes

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Speaker 4: It's like, I don't even understand how people manage to

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Speaker 4: be offended by that.

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Speaker 1: You know, I want to get to campuses specifically in

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Speaker 1: a minute. But it struck me as you were describing

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Speaker 1: the globe free speech issues that the motivations beaked behind

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Speaker 1: the cracking down on speech were different in different places.

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Speaker 1: Rampant immigration from the Muslim world in the UK in particular,

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Speaker 1: and Canada is one of the core issues. There, very

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Speaker 1: different issues in the US. But the thought that clicked

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Speaker 1: in my brain, and give me long enough, I'll come

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Speaker 1: up with the obvious is that the right, the fright,

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Speaker 1: the right to free speech is a bulwark against like

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Speaker 1: any out of control cause or philosophy.

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Speaker 4: It absolutely is, because here's the thing, you know, we're

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Speaker 4: our founding fathers were brilliant. They were basically proto neuroscientists,

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Speaker 4: Like they understood that our brains are incredibly good at

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Speaker 4: rationalizing our way into something that suits our interests that

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Speaker 4: we can, you know, kid ourselves, we're actually thinking of

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Speaker 4: all humankind. And power always wants greater control over over

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Speaker 4: speech and even more dramatically truth. And this is one

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Speaker 4: of the reasons why we have the protections of the

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Speaker 4: First Amendment. That's why we have an establishment clubs for

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Speaker 4: that matter. These are things that our system of government

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Speaker 4: really understood. But power will always rationalize its ability to

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Speaker 4: be like I should be able to shut up people

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Speaker 4: who really pissed me off, you know, like I should

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Speaker 4: be able to go after that speech, and here's my

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Speaker 4: high minded, sounded sounding reason.

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Speaker 3: To do it.

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Speaker 4: And having something as powerful as the First Amendment to

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Speaker 4: say no, we're not doing this. Fear has been one

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Speaker 4: of our real, real saving graces, but we're undermining it

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Speaker 4: by a death of a thousand cuts at the moment.

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Speaker 1: Well, and as you mentioned, it is highly disturbing that

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Speaker 1: a lot of the younger generations have and this is

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Speaker 1: entirely our fault have been an esthetized into either not

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Speaker 1: noticing the incursions and free speech or encouraging them a COVID.

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Speaker 1: The COVID period was an absolute nightmare in my opinion,

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Speaker 1: the exercise of government control, quashing of dissent and that

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Speaker 1: sort of thing, but also the cultural.

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Speaker 3: Aspect of it. So COVID in twenty twenty.

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Speaker 4: My organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, used

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Speaker 4: to be the foundation for individual rights in education because

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Speaker 4: we were focused on the really severe threats to free speech,

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Speaker 4: academic freedom, et.

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Speaker 3: Cetera in higher ed.

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Speaker 4: But it was twenty twenty that made us decide that

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Speaker 4: we have to become the Foundation for Individual Rights and

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Speaker 4: Expression to defend free speech for everybody, even beyond campus,

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Speaker 4: because we also saw one government coercion. But even scarier

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Speaker 4: to us in a lot of ways was a lot

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Speaker 4: of Americans saying, I'm going to get it was cancel culture.

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Speaker 4: I wrote a book called Canceling of the American Mind

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Speaker 4: about this to demonstrate with data, you know, that this

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Speaker 4: really happened, and it was insane because there's still people.

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Speaker 3: Who are claiming that, like, this didn't happen.

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Speaker 4: They're like, no, it was a free speech disaster during

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Speaker 4: that time, and we realized that if we have a

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Speaker 4: situation where people really think that you have a right

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Speaker 4: not to be offended and that it's actually noble to

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Speaker 4: censor what you consider to be bad people, we've really

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Speaker 4: fallen astray. So one of the things that makes Fire

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Speaker 4: different is we don't just fight in court, and believe me,

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Speaker 4: we do fight in court.

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Speaker 3: We are also trying to get people to.

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Speaker 4: Understand the philosophy of freedom of speech, how to live

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Speaker 4: with it, and all the benefits of it as well,

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Speaker 4: because we want to make sure we pass this down

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Speaker 4: to our grandkids.

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Speaker 2: Amen to that.

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Speaker 1: We're talking to Greg Lukiano from Fire, So let's talk

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Speaker 1: a little bit about cancel culture. One of the more

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Speaker 1: interesting conversations I've been following through the last several years

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Speaker 1: is what is quote unquote cancel culture as opposed to

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Speaker 1: the birds of what you say, coming home to rust,

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Speaker 1: taking responsibility for what you say. How can you tell

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Speaker 1: if it's quote unquote cancel culture cancer Olgia.

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Speaker 4: The thing that lawyers sounds so frustrating about cancel culture

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Speaker 4: is that because it's about a cultural norm, it has

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Speaker 4: to be a little looser. But really kind of like

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Speaker 4: what And I try to get people think about this

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Speaker 4: in the aggregate that essentially, yes, can a private company

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Speaker 4: decide to fire someone because they don't like their expression,

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Speaker 4: Absolutely they can, and actually under the First Amendment, I'd

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Speaker 4: fight for the right to do that. But I'm always

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Speaker 4: trying to get people to take a deep breath and

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Speaker 4: if you're and ask themselves, do you want to live

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Speaker 4: in the kind of country where you can have an.

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Speaker 3: Opinion or a job but not both.

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Speaker 4: And rethink that, because one of the things that really

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Speaker 4: is falling away is this sense of pluralism that essentially

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Speaker 4: it's okay if my pizza boy wants to vote for

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Speaker 4: Trump or Biden, like it doesn't like, that's fine that

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Speaker 4: you know. I think of these old American idioms that

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Speaker 4: we used to say a lot of times when we

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Speaker 4: were kids that have lost favor, and kids today don't

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Speaker 4: know as much. They're as simple as everyone's entitled to

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Speaker 4: their opinion, to each their own, you know, walk a

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Speaker 4: mile on a man's shoes is kind of thing essentially

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Speaker 4: essentially the same thing.

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Speaker 3: It's a free country, we said all the time, are.

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Speaker 4: Really important small d democratic values. And I think that

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Speaker 4: if you're seeing a situation in which someone, you know, like, yeah, sure,

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Speaker 4: someone's being unprofessional in their job. You know, there's no question,

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Speaker 4: you know, you can fire them. But for example, there

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Speaker 4: was a case of the Washington Post where there was

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Speaker 4: a there was an opinion reporter. He retweeted one slightly

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Speaker 4: I mean, very slightly edgy joke retweeted it, and then

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Speaker 4: of course there was this huge you know, uh, you know,

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Speaker 4: backlash to get him suspended or fired. And I was like, listen,

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Speaker 4: if you want to know what cancel culture and free

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Speaker 4: speech culture look like, what free speech culture looks like

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Speaker 4: is to say, do we really want to punish this

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Speaker 4: Washington Post reporter just for retweeting a joke?

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Speaker 3: Right? Yeah?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's funny.

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Speaker 1: I wrote down this quote and posted on the studio

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Speaker 1: wall here, and I didn't write who said it? In God,

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Speaker 1: I could have been you. It might be Peter Bogosian

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Speaker 1: or Jonathan Hyde. I'm not sure, but what they said

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Speaker 1: was political disagreement is increasingly treated as a serious moral

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Speaker 1: offense rather than a simple difference of opinion. When you

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Speaker 1: see the world that way, punishing someone for holding different

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Speaker 1: views becomes a moral good.

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Speaker 3: That really could be any of us. Come to think

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Speaker 3: of it, I'm stealing it and I hope you.

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Speaker 4: Will, you know, because we want this to catch on,

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Speaker 4: because it really is very much with our own lifetime

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Speaker 4: that we had very different attitudes about free speech as

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Speaker 4: a society. And I will say that the role that

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Speaker 4: k through PhD has played in that erosion is really shameful.

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Speaker 4: So that there was someone who wrote recently on Twitter

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Speaker 4: like given and we are absolutely we fight people all

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Speaker 4: across the spectrum. We were assuing the Trump administration. We're

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Speaker 4: in a lawsuit as Trump himself on free speech grounds.

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Speaker 4: We are true the most nonpartisan institution in the country.

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Speaker 4: But someone actually wrote to my co author Ricky Schlott

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Speaker 4: on Twitter of canceling in the American mind. You know,

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Speaker 4: don't you feel like by comparison, you know, what was

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Speaker 4: happening on college campuses was no big deal or sort

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Speaker 4: of quaint. And I'm like, absolutely not have a situation

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Speaker 4: in which people can I mean something like seventy percent

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Speaker 4: of students think their professors should be reported for offensive speech.

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Speaker 4: And when they actually drilled down into what did they

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Speaker 4: mean by offensive speech, it wasn't for sexually harassing students.

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Speaker 4: It was for saying things like biological sex is real,

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Speaker 4: or you know someone who actually would repeat the data

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Speaker 4: of Roland Fryar, you know from Harvard.

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Speaker 3: Who what basically pointed out, there isn't that much evidence.

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Speaker 4: That there's wildly disproportionate shootings of unarmed black people versus

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Speaker 4: white people by police. And now, to be clear, Roland

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Speaker 4: Fryar said, actually, it's our overall take is that that

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Speaker 4: police shoot too many people in the United States, but

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Speaker 4: that ultimately that that disparity isn't there as much. They

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Speaker 4: were basically saying the students themselves were being taught to

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Speaker 4: police factual statements that in some cases are probably true,

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Speaker 4: right in order to in order to achieve something to

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Speaker 4: protect their ears or something.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, I think it's more than that.

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Speaker 1: And if you don't mind, we need to take a

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Speaker 1: quick break and follow up on that thought and talk

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Speaker 1: about the philosophy that's driving a lot of what the

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Speaker 1: college kids just think is, you know, outlawing hate speech

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Speaker 1: and objectionable speech. But Greg, looking on off of fire, Greg,

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Speaker 1: great to talk to you, hang around just a couple

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Speaker 1: of minutes. Will continue in moments. We are midway through

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Speaker 1: a conversation with Greg looking on off the president and

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Speaker 1: CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and

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Speaker 1: the author of many fine books and co author on

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Speaker 1: that topic, Greg, thanks for hanging around.

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Speaker 3: Really appreciate it. Yeah, no, I was happy to do so.

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Speaker 1: As I often point out on the show, I Joe,

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Speaker 1: the last thing I am as a conspiracy theorist. I'm

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Speaker 1: somebody who's been studying political systems and political movements since

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Speaker 1: I was literally a teenager, and it's the most fascinating

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Speaker 1: subject on earth. And one thing that has really frustrated

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Speaker 1: me is how few people understand that a lot of

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Speaker 1: what we've been talking about, the censorship on campus, the microaggressions,

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Speaker 1: the advanning hate speech, quote unquote, a lot of it

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Speaker 1: is people who've bought the moral argument that that's what

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Speaker 1: they should do. But it is driven by and nobody

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Speaker 1: talks about this the critical theory crowd, the folks who

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Speaker 1: are fans of Michelle Fuco and Franz Fonan, the French

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Speaker 1: philosophers of the mid twentieth century and into the nineteen seventies.

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Speaker 2: As I often say, they.

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Speaker 1: Wrote books, they put their names on the spine, they

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Speaker 1: explained exactly what they wanted to do, and it's exactly

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Speaker 1: what we're witnessing. Any comment agreed, disagree with thoughts?

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Speaker 4: Oh no, absolutely, although I would actually go after you know,

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Speaker 4: because it's not I think er. I am eleven of

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Speaker 4: respect for Herbert Marcus because Herbert marcuse A was a Marxist.

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Speaker 4: He had to flee Germany when the Nazis took over.

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Speaker 4: He lived in academia, I think at Brandeis and UCSD,

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Speaker 4: I think you see San Diego where and he sort

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Speaker 4: of was trying to sort of like reform Marxism because

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Speaker 4: it turned out the proletariat didn't really like the intellectuals,

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Speaker 4: so he kind of like remodeled it so that essentially

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Speaker 4: it would be a combination of the intellectuals he educated

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Speaker 4: in the United States versus with what he very sensitively

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Speaker 4: called ghetto populations against the right. He was incredibly clear

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Speaker 4: that he thought there should be free speech for the

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Speaker 4: left and not for the right. He couldn't have said

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Speaker 4: it more primitively than he did in an essay called

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Speaker 4: repressive tolerance. And that view that you can't really be

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Speaker 4: equal if the bad guys were allowed free speech has

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Speaker 4: taken over in a lot of spaces.

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Speaker 3: Even when I was at school.

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Speaker 4: Even though I was in law school back in ninety seven,

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Speaker 4: I was running into this argument already, and.

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Speaker 3: I was like, I worked at the ACLU. I grew

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Speaker 3: up believing that free.

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Speaker 4: Speech was like the defining sort of liberal characteristic. But

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Speaker 4: unfortunately we have this sort of terminological term where you

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Speaker 4: have this kind of like much more typically old European

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Speaker 4: style Frankfurt school left that is very hostile to free

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Speaker 4: speech but calls itself liberal. And so I personally think

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Speaker 4: right now the center left and the center right have

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Speaker 4: much more in common with each other than they do

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Speaker 4: with their wings. And when you look at the data,

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Speaker 4: we are the majority and then some, and we believe

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Speaker 4: in freedom of speech. And we have to talk back

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Speaker 4: to these people who don't realize that they're spouting Marcus

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Speaker 4: and fucout and all these people who, by the way,

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Speaker 4: people in their own lifetimes like Hoppermass who just died,

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Speaker 4: did an incredible job of refuting these weren't in my opinion,

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Speaker 4: particularly deep thinkers. Are good historians, but unfortunately we have

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Speaker 4: a lot of people who think that the morality is

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Speaker 4: on the side of the censor.

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Speaker 1: Greg we only have about two minutes left. Let's let's

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Speaker 1: jump to an action plan.

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Speaker 3: Now.

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Speaker 1: I support fire in every way I can, including financially.

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Speaker 1: What's the most important thing everybody listening can do or

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Speaker 1: things they can do to help fight for free speech?

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Speaker 4: You know, please find out more about us, But the

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Speaker 4: most important thing you can do is to make it

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Speaker 4: known that when someone gets in trouble for speech you

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Speaker 4: personally disagree with, you do not think they should be fired,

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Speaker 4: You do not think they should be arrested, You do

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Speaker 4: not think and stand up for them unapologetically. Because that's

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Speaker 4: the thing that brought people like me.

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Speaker 3: Into this business.

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Speaker 4: Seeing the acl use stand up for the rights of them,

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Speaker 4: as you know, Jewish lawyers standing up for them, that

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Speaker 4: was the most principled thing I'd ever even heard of

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Speaker 4: in my entire life. And that's the kind of thing

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Speaker 4: that gets people to understand that free speech belongs to everyone,

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Speaker 4: or it belongs to no one.

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Speaker 2: Right here.

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Speaker 1: You know, I grew up only a few miles from Skokie, Illinois,

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Speaker 1: and following that drama as a gosh a kid, teenager

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Speaker 1: or whatever I was, and having my parents explain that

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Speaker 1: principle to me, it gives me chills thinking about it

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Speaker 1: because it was such a fulmative moment.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I was about that.

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Speaker 4: My parents were both immigrants, and I grew up in

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Speaker 4: a neighborhood with a lot of immigrant kids, and the

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Speaker 4: idea that, you know, our families fled countries where they

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Speaker 4: didn't have freedom speech, and we were finally in a

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Speaker 4: country that was so principled that people would even defend

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Speaker 4: their enemies.

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Speaker 1: Let's not give it up, Greg, LOOKI on off of fire.

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Speaker 1: We'll have a link so you can find it easily

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Speaker 1: enough in his books and that sort of thing at

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Speaker 1: Armstrong and Geddy dot com.

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Speaker 2: Greg, it's always a pleasure.

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Speaker 1: It's been too long. I hope we can do it again.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely all right, thanks thanks Greg, LOOKI on off. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I seriously get so fired up about this stuff. I've

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Speaker 1: threatened many times to get a First Amendment tattoo, but

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Speaker 1: I don't want a tattoo at all, so I don't

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Speaker 1: think that's going to happen.

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Speaker 2: Armstrong and Getty