Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong Show, Katty.
Speaker 2: Armstrong and Jack, Katy and He arms Draw yet live
Speaker 2: from Studio C Senior feet within the dirty bowels of
Speaker 2: the Armstrong and Getty Information Complex. This is the Armstrong
Speaker 2: and Getty Show for Friday, the tenth of April, the
Speaker 2: Year of Our Lord, twenty twenty six. And you know
Speaker 2: it's funny. I forgot to come up with titles for today.
Speaker 2: Jack is off. He will be checking in later. But
Speaker 2: if I had, it would have something to do with
Speaker 2: astronauts plunging back to Earth, wars that look like ceasefires,
Speaker 2: and ceasefires that look like wars. Milennia making mysterious statements
Speaker 2: might have factored in the title, and I might have
Speaker 2: gone for the Masters as well. I shouldn't curse it.
Speaker 2: I have one friend who is a professional golfer and
Speaker 2: he had a great day in the first round and
Speaker 2: fingers crossed he makes the cutting plays on the weekend. Anyway,
Speaker 2: more on that maybe later. Great show planned out for
Speaker 2: you today, including conversations I'm really looking forward to with
Speaker 2: Greg Lukianov of Fire, which is the Foundation for Individual
Speaker 2: Rights and Expression started out as Foundation for Individual Rights
Speaker 2: and Education, but they've branched out to defend free speech
Speaker 2: in general, which is, you know, is like Mike chihat
Speaker 2: number one talking to Mike Lyons about the situation in
Speaker 2: Iran slash the Straits of Hormuz slash Israel, Lebanon and
Speaker 2: everywhere else that the fighting is going on. And on
Speaker 2: that topic, I really really want to bring to you
Speaker 2: a piece written by a terrific author who says the
Speaker 2: title is why the West refuses to call this a
Speaker 2: holy war when it clearly is. So we'll lay that out. Also,
Speaker 2: Tim Sandefer has a new book out about the Declaration
Speaker 2: of Independence and our nation's two hundred and fiftieth birthday.
Speaker 2: Super thought provoking. Always fun to talk to Tim, And
Speaker 2: we'll also be talking to Gordon Chang during our four
Speaker 2: about this situation with China, which is receded a bit
Speaker 2: into the background, but there are a couple of really
Speaker 2: really interesting angles, including it's become clear Trump two is
Speaker 2: way more conciliatory and dare I say soft on China
Speaker 2: than Trump one was. And I praised Trump one lavishly
Speaker 2: for all of his imperfections waking up the country to
Speaker 2: what a threat China is. So what does all this mean.
Speaker 2: We'll talk about that with the Gordon Chang looking forward
Speaker 2: to that. Why don't we go ahead and start the
Speaker 2: show officially now because we want to talk about the
Speaker 2: topic of the clip. Here we go at Mark.
Speaker 3: I was just talking to an employee out here at
Speaker 3: the Space Center in Houston and they were explaining, Yeah,
Speaker 3: there is no Plan B. They're coming home. The Artemist
Speaker 3: two crew has been up in space for more than
Speaker 3: a week and now they're preparing for the most dangerous
Speaker 3: lag of their journey here, re entry. It's a high
Speaker 3: speed plunge back through the Earth's atmosphere, so oriyan, the
Speaker 3: space craft that they're in is going to slam into
Speaker 3: the atmosphere at nearly twenty five thousand miles an hour.
Speaker 2: Sally Bradley on News Nation. I think it may have
Speaker 2: been on ABC News. Is that the one that bent
Speaker 2: knows jackasses on Katie David Muir ABC? Yep, Yeah, they
Speaker 2: had an expert on that actually put it in a way.
Speaker 2: It never occurred to me. I'm not good at physics
Speaker 2: and that sort of thing, But when you blast off
Speaker 2: the spacecraft with spectacular amounts of energy, and it achieves
Speaker 2: mind boggling speeds and then sling shots around the Moon
Speaker 2: and the rest of it. Something has to arrest that
Speaker 2: energy so it can land gently in the water. All
Speaker 2: of that energy has to get dissipated, and it gets
Speaker 2: dissipated by the re entry into the atmosphere, which is
Speaker 2: again a fire ball of certain death unless the heat
Speaker 2: shield holds. God blessed. Was it the Challenger that broke
Speaker 2: apart on re entry? Apologies if that's not the right
Speaker 2: mission that broke up over Texas, But anyway, their heat
Speaker 2: shield had gotten damaged and failed and it was horrible.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's a near incomprehensible exchange of energy if
Speaker 2: you will to slow the capsule down. Let's go ahead
Speaker 2: a little more with the Alley Bradley report.
Speaker 3: Now, if the trajectory is off just a little bit,
Speaker 3: it could be catastrophic. Too steep, the crew could face
Speaker 3: intense g forces and structural stress. Too shallow in the
Speaker 3: spacecraft could bounce off of the atmosphere entirely. The capsule
Speaker 3: is going to generate temperatures close to five thousand degrees
Speaker 3: during re entry, becoming a fireball as it tears through
Speaker 3: the sky. Mission control expects to lose contact with the
Speaker 3: crew for several minutes during reentry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's actually a couple of really good tips for
Speaker 2: your first conversation with a woman. You'd like to impress
Speaker 2: too deep and you'll drive her away too shallow. Same result,
Speaker 2: got to go perfect trajectory, Michael, I know you know this. Yeah,
Speaker 2: studied under my wing for many years and not wrong.
Speaker 2: That's how you landed the beautiful girl you married, you
Speaker 2: lucky dog. So let's plunge on now with the CBS
Speaker 2: Evening News talking about the very same, extremely high risk
Speaker 2: re entry situation.
Speaker 4: The unpiloted artem IS one mission in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: This is video looking outside it's blistering re entry.
Speaker 2: Pieces of the heat shield kept flying off.
Speaker 4: Engineers later found holes and cracks poking the shield's outter Charlayer.
Speaker 4: A crew would have survived, but it was worrisome. NASA
Speaker 4: decided to keep the same heat shield but modify the
Speaker 4: trajectory of a capsule's return. Lead Flight director Jeff Rattigan.
Speaker 2: We've done our homework, and we've really done the testing
Speaker 2: to feel good about it. I do feel good about it.
Speaker 4: Yes, when we talked to the crew about the heat shield,
Speaker 4: they all said they were confident that NASA had made
Speaker 4: the right call and the right fix.
Speaker 2: Fair enough, Katie, you as a grizzled taker inner of
Speaker 2: news is the heat shield might fail stuff clickbait or
Speaker 2: I mean because we've re entered on from space missions
Speaker 2: many times right successfully.
Speaker 5: I think it's the fact that it's the same heat
Speaker 5: shield that they're kind of leaning on because and the
Speaker 5: images that they were talking about in that video it
Speaker 5: looked bad. I mean that the outside was destroyed. So
Speaker 5: if they don't get this new trajectory right, you know,
Speaker 5: this could be awful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Yeah, I'm torn because I don't want to
Speaker 2: overplay this. On the other hand, I'm a huge fan
Speaker 2: of space missions, as are all of us in Jack
Speaker 2: as well, and I worry about these guys as they
Speaker 2: return to Earth. Yeah, NASA is so exacting. If they say, oh, no,
Speaker 2: it was the trajectory and we got it right now,
Speaker 2: I would tend to believe them. I mean, if they
Speaker 2: say the things coming down at eight forty three am,
Speaker 2: it'll be down at eight forty three am, not eight
Speaker 2: forty four or eight forty two. So I certainly hope
Speaker 2: they're as competent as they seem to be, although they're
Speaker 2: having a couple of terrible disasters. One more clip on
Speaker 2: this topic. This is Daniel leave Us, who was an
Speaker 2: I think he was an astronaut.
Speaker 5: Right, he was an astronaut.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, let's hear him.
Speaker 6: I'm going to give you three numbers to remember. Twenty
Speaker 6: five thousand, five thousand and ten. The artimist Ryan capsule
Speaker 6: can be coming in at twenty five thousand miles an
Speaker 6: hour and entering in your atmosphere.
Speaker 1: During that time, it.
Speaker 6: Will be dissipating heat. The peak temperatures on a rime
Speaker 6: will reach five thousand degrees and it'll have to pass
Speaker 6: through that thicker part of the thinner part of the
Speaker 6: atmosphere that fast. It'll take about ten minutes to get
Speaker 6: through it all. So once we get through the first
Speaker 6: ten minutes of re entry, then we're home free and
Speaker 6: pass the peak heating area of re entry.
Speaker 2: Ten or so minutes at five thousand degrees. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: what do you clean your oven at like five hundred,
Speaker 2: five hundred and fifty five fifty so ten times as
Speaker 2: hot as that for ten minutes? Great, Scott. Okay, say
Speaker 2: it quiet, prayer, cross your fingers, or whatever you like
Speaker 2: for America's heroes. I think it's so important that we
Speaker 2: as a country continue to reach out and explore and
Speaker 2: dare to do exciting things, grow scientifically, the intellectually. The
Speaker 2: stare at your naval crowd. Uh, they're they're they're the
Speaker 2: worst thing for the country. We need to continue to
Speaker 2: be bold and and and you know here I am
Speaker 2: prattling on and on about how I want these people
Speaker 2: to be safe, but taking chances, whether it's a country
Speaker 2: or in life, don't don't curl up into the fetal position,
Speaker 2: just wait to be dead as a human being or
Speaker 2: a country. Yeah, kiddy.
Speaker 5: Well, And the confidence that these astronauts have too, I mean,
Speaker 5: because I mean they're the ones doing this, and they're
Speaker 5: up there saying, no, this is gonna be this is
Speaker 5: gonna be great. NASA nailed it.
Speaker 2: So I've seen the science. We're fine. Yeah. Maybe they
Speaker 2: just don't want to talk about it. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: that they're just crapping their pants. Can we talk about
Speaker 2: something else, please? I want to talk about the HL anymore.
Speaker 2: I got it all right, So we're gonna break now.
Speaker 2: Sam I on time because we have clips of the
Speaker 2: week and Katie's headlines squeezed together so we can talk
Speaker 2: to Greg lukian Off at the bottom of that the
Speaker 2: hour police do stay with us, Welcome, thanks for being here,
Speaker 2: all right. I came up with a couple of titles
Speaker 2: real quick. First of all, a game of Telephone with
Speaker 2: five different languages. That's what the negotiations remind me of.
Speaker 2: You remember the game of Telephone? Oh he play as
Speaker 2: a kid?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. That game always almost disturbed me because I
Speaker 2: could and it's just the way my brain works. I
Speaker 2: could remember what they said verbatim, I mean exactly, yeah,
Speaker 2: just I couldn't not remember it, so I never quite
Speaker 2: got how it twisted. I would get impatient with people
Speaker 2: and be like, just say what the person said to you,
Speaker 2: not realizing that everybody's brain works differently.
Speaker 5: I never played with people mature enough to not mess
Speaker 5: it up on purpose.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, hilarious. See I have no sense of humor,
Speaker 2: so I wouldn't accept that either. And then my other
Speaker 2: title is going to be be my Guest, because we've
Speaker 2: got some great ones, including Greg Lukianoff coming up in
Speaker 2: Moments from Fire. But first, before we get to Katie's
Speaker 2: headlines were compressing. Everything is making this up as we go.
Speaker 2: Let's take a fun look back at the week that was.
Speaker 2: It's cow clips of the week.
Speaker 1: The weak open the expletive straight, you crazy bastards.
Speaker 2: Open the fine straight, you crazy bastards. Ron in the
Speaker 2: US vowing to send each other to hell. The entire
Speaker 2: country can be taken out in one night, and that
Speaker 2: night might be tomorrow night.
Speaker 5: Failing to meet his terms will result in Iran being bombed.
Speaker 2: Back to the quote Stone Ages, it.
Speaker 4: Was truly the eleventh hour, down to the wire when
Speaker 4: President Trump announced this ceasefire agreement.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we'll be hanging around.
Speaker 2: We're not going anywhere. Stay two of the seas FA
Speaker 2: is already looking shaky right now.
Speaker 5: President Trump's main condition for this truce is not being met.
Speaker 4: The Iranians are still saying publicly they're in control of
Speaker 4: the strait and that it.
Speaker 2: Is closed right now, but we're overlittering and they just
Speaker 2: don't want to stay young.
Speaker 7: What happened.
Speaker 1: I don't think the voters fully understood, and neither did
Speaker 1: we in the public schector, what it was going to
Speaker 1: take to actually get this project delivered.
Speaker 5: I can't stop thinking about how grass lawns are racist
Speaker 5: and like based in white supremacy.
Speaker 1: Ex person I found that strong gluten muscles can increase
Speaker 1: a person's lifespan but also drainer brothers bank account. So
Speaker 1: one of the tests that we do is trying to
Speaker 1: get them to say something like Kim Johnan is a
Speaker 1: ugly pig?
Speaker 7: Could could you say that for me?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I so I have to say as you say, like.
Speaker 3: Like every problem that we have in society right now
Speaker 3: will be fixed when women come together.
Speaker 2: They provided zero dollars to deal with the ongoing genocide
Speaker 2: of MMI w G two s l g b t
Speaker 2: qq i A. Mm I w G two s l g.
Speaker 5: B t q q i A plus the lies linking
Speaker 5: me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today.
Speaker 2: It's clips of the way. We'll see if we can
Speaker 2: get to the millenia Epstein statement. At some point, I
Speaker 2: think most everybody's reaction, including I've heard the White Houses
Speaker 2: was okay, okay, gaybody's quite sure exactly what motivated it.
Speaker 2: There are some clues some author put out some tell
Speaker 2: All Type book has been doing podcasts saying that she
Speaker 2: had an association with Epstein. But I mean, nobody knew
Speaker 2: that had happened until she brought it to our attention.
Speaker 2: So is there more to it than that? Katie? As
Speaker 2: far as you can tell her.
Speaker 5: The only source that I saw really hammering this message
Speaker 5: was CNN, but they were saying, Oh, she's doing this
Speaker 5: so she can get out in front of something before
Speaker 5: it comes out to the public.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okays, No, I just you know what, Malania seems
Speaker 2: like a lovely gal. I can't see making the decisions
Speaker 2: in life she's made. But I'm not a woman and
Speaker 2: a Slovenia supermodel certainly. But thanks for bringing Epstein up again.
Speaker 2: Damn it.
Speaker 5: I know it was so close to just being in
Speaker 5: the just the slight distant past.
Speaker 2: Yeah comes again. All right, let's figure out who's reporting
Speaker 2: what it's lead story. It's Katie Green, Katie, all right.
Speaker 5: Starting with the major networks talking about Iran. Still, ABC,
Speaker 5: Trump says Iran quote better not collect straight of Ormuz toll, CBS,
Speaker 5: US and Iran prepare for talks as shaky ceasefire holds,
Speaker 5: Straight of Hormuz traffic remains low, and NBC Pakistan and
Speaker 5: France condemn Lebanon ceasefire violations.
Speaker 2: Oh, shut up, France. I know Lebanon, I get well.
Speaker 2: Quitd have an armed political parties Lebanon. I know we
Speaker 2: can't help, but they're they're tougher than we are. But France,
Speaker 2: shut up.
Speaker 5: From the Wall Street Journal, inflation rose to three point
Speaker 5: three percent in March, driven by rising fuel costs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is this a trend or a blip? Talking heads
Speaker 2: are gonna babble all day long. I don't think we will,
Speaker 2: but it's not good.
Speaker 5: From The New York Post, Robert McIntyre flips the middle
Speaker 5: finger in wild Master's meltdown.
Speaker 2: Ah, yeah, he was unhinged. He's a really great Scottish golfer,
Speaker 2: kind of pasty, slightly pudgy looking guy, but hot tempered
Speaker 2: and a couple of times he like hit a bad
Speaker 2: shot and slammed his club into the turf, which then
Speaker 2: he and his caddy tried to set right. But you
Speaker 2: don't do that at Augusta National Sun. There are super
Speaker 2: famous champion golf offers who've screwed around, and Augustus said,
Speaker 2: this is an invitational Tournament's son, you will not be
Speaker 2: asked back again. So that's a major scandal in the
Speaker 2: world of golf USA today.
Speaker 5: Are you struggling with dating apps? It could be your
Speaker 5: digital body language.
Speaker 2: Oh, we need to get into that later.
Speaker 5: Yes, study fines talking robot guide dog could change how
Speaker 5: visually impaired people navigate.
Speaker 2: That is one of the area's AI could be wonderful. Yes,
Speaker 2: the handicapped, blind, elderly could be incredible. Please don't crush
Speaker 2: our civilization and drain our vital fluids please.
Speaker 5: And finally, this one from the Babylon b Canadian astronaut
Speaker 5: humanely euthanized after suffering light bruise during moon mission.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a good shot at Canada's culture of death. Yeah, troubling.
Speaker 7: Heavy.
Speaker 2: You ended on a heavy note that was supposed to
Speaker 2: be funny. I heavy guy, Yeah, I know. Wow, wow, wow.
Speaker 2: You want to pick into the Babylon today? Sorry, your
Speaker 2: annual review is going to be a rough one, all right, whatever, Hey,
Speaker 2: can't wait to talk to Greg Luki on Off. He's
Speaker 2: coming up in just a moment or two to talk
Speaker 2: about free speech and speech on campuses and cancel culture
Speaker 2: and all sorts of stuff Whateverwhere of the conversation goes.
Speaker 2: First Amendment on our nation's birthday stay with us, Armstrong
Speaker 2: and Getty. What a pleasure this is to talk about
Speaker 2: the freedom of speech, the First Amendment, perhaps most vital
Speaker 2: principle any self governing people can hold, with Greg luki
Speaker 2: on off of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
Speaker 2: Greg is actually the president and CEO, also the author
Speaker 2: of a handful of books that I have really really enjoyed,
Speaker 2: including Unlearning, Liberty, Campus Censorship, in the End of American Debate,
Speaker 2: Freedom from Speech, and I really enjoyed a short ish
Speaker 2: book that'd be a great place to start, the War
Speaker 2: on Words, Arguments against free speech and why they fail
Speaker 2: with Nadine Strawsen. Greg, welcome, How are you.
Speaker 7: I'm pretty good.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, business is booming for First Amendment attorneys these days,
Speaker 1: and that's never a good sign for the country.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I think both sides indulged too frequently,
Speaker 2: too easily in let's silence the other guys because we
Speaker 2: don't like what they say. Obviously, How would you characterize
Speaker 2: the state of free speech in the US right now?
Speaker 2: And we'll just go from there.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I want to expand it even from there,
Speaker 1: because I think people really need to get and I
Speaker 1: want to say this to your entire audience. Free speech
Speaker 1: is in trouble globally. Obviously China and Iran and Russia
Speaker 1: we're not free countries, but the level of totalitarianism that
Speaker 1: you can deliver with.
Speaker 7: A combination of surveillance and AI is terrifying.
Speaker 1: The European Union and the UK have completely turned turned
Speaker 1: around on on free speech. So they're arresting something like
Speaker 1: twelve thousand people a year in Britain now for essentially
Speaker 1: hate speech in Britain.
Speaker 7: I mean they my mother's British.
Speaker 1: They used to laugh at us for political correctness here,
Speaker 1: and now they're enforcing.
Speaker 7: It by law.
Speaker 1: Canada and Ireland we're playing with actually passing a hate
Speaker 1: speech code that could result in life in prison, and
Speaker 1: even within the US, like we're the only country left
Speaker 1: that really cares about free speech, you know, down to
Speaker 1: our core, and here I'm afraid we're blowing it as
Speaker 1: well due to partisan politics. So I know, like I'm
Speaker 1: a gen xer, people my age and older, whether we're right,
Speaker 1: left or center, we get freedom of speech, but we
Speaker 1: need people to come together to defend it for opinions.
Speaker 7: They don't like, just like we used to in the
Speaker 7: old days.
Speaker 1: Because the only way you really prove that you care
Speaker 1: about free speech is not defending the free speech that
Speaker 1: you already agree with, but it's the stuff that you
Speaker 1: actually disdain.
Speaker 7: That's how you show your commitment.
Speaker 2: Precisely, I think we need to teach over and over
Speaker 2: again that it's the sort of speech that anybody would
Speaker 2: object to that needs to be protected, because speech nobody
Speaker 2: objects to doesn't need protection, your ninnies.
Speaker 1: You know, it strikes me well, except on campus sometimes,
Speaker 1: but something can get you in trouble on campus sometimes.
Speaker 1: It's like, I don't even understand how people manage to
Speaker 1: be offended by that.
Speaker 2: You know, I want to get to campuses specifically in
Speaker 2: a minute. But it struck me as you were describing
Speaker 2: the global free speech issues that the motivations beat behind
Speaker 2: the cracking down on speech were different in different places.
Speaker 2: Rampant immigration from the Muslim world in the UK in particular,
Speaker 2: and Canada is one of the core issues. There, very
Speaker 2: different issues in the US. But the thought that clicked
Speaker 2: in my brain, and give me long enough, I'll come
Speaker 2: up with the obvious is that the right, the fright,
Speaker 2: the right to free speech is a bulwark against like
Speaker 2: any out of control cause, or or philosophy.
Speaker 1: It absolutely is, because here's the thing, you know, we're
Speaker 1: our founding fathers were brilliant. They were basically proto neuroscientists,
Speaker 1: Like they understood that our brains are incredibly good at
Speaker 1: rationalizing our way into something that suits our interests that
Speaker 1: we can, you know, kid ourselves, we're actually thinking of
Speaker 1: all humankind. And power always wants greater control over over
Speaker 1: speech and even more dramatically truth. And this is one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why we have the protections of the
Speaker 1: First Amendment.
Speaker 7: That's why we have an establishment clause for that matter.
Speaker 1: There these are things that our system of government really understood,
Speaker 1: but power will always rationalize its ability to be like
Speaker 1: I should be able to shut up people who really
Speaker 1: pissed me off, you know, like I should be able
Speaker 1: to go after that speech. And here's my high minded,
Speaker 1: sounded sounding reason to do it. And having something as
Speaker 1: powerful as the First Amendment to say no, we're not
Speaker 1: doing this ear has been one of our real saving graces,
Speaker 1: but we're undermining it by a death of a thousand
Speaker 1: cuts at the moment.
Speaker 2: Well, and as you mentioned, it is highly disturbing that
Speaker 2: a lot of the younger generations have and this is
Speaker 2: entirely our fault, have been and esthetized into either not
Speaker 2: noticing the incursions in free speech or encouraging them. The
Speaker 2: COVID period was an absolute nightmare in my opinion, the
Speaker 2: exercise of government control, quashing of dissent and that sort
Speaker 2: of thing, but.
Speaker 1: Also the cultural aspect of it. So COVID in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: My organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, used
Speaker 1: to be the foundation for individual rights in education because
Speaker 1: we're focused on the really severe threats to free speech,
Speaker 1: academic freedom, et cetera.
Speaker 2: In higher ed.
Speaker 1: But it was twenty twenty that made us decide that
Speaker 1: we have to become the Foundation for Individual Rights and
Speaker 1: Expression to defend free speech forever everybody, even beyond campus,
Speaker 1: because we also.
Speaker 7: Saw one government coercion. But even scarier to us in
Speaker 7: a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: Was a lot of Americans saying I'm going to get you.
Speaker 7: It was cancel culture.
Speaker 1: I wrote a book called Canceling of the American Mind
Speaker 1: about this to demonstrate with data, you know, that this
Speaker 1: really happened, and it was insane because there's still people
Speaker 1: who are claiming that like this didn't happen, Like no
Speaker 1: it was a free speech disaster during that time, and
Speaker 1: we realized that if we have a situation where people
Speaker 1: really think that you have a right not to be
Speaker 1: offended and that it's actually noble to censor what you
Speaker 1: consider to be bad people, we've really fallen astray. So
Speaker 1: one of the things that makes Fire different is we
Speaker 1: don't just fight in court, and believe me, we do
Speaker 1: fight in court. We are also trying to get people
Speaker 1: to understand the philosophy of freedom of speech, how to
Speaker 1: live with it, and all the benefits of it as well,
Speaker 1: because we want to make sure we pass this down
Speaker 1: to our grandkids.
Speaker 2: Amen to that. We're talking to Greg Lukiano from Fire,
Speaker 2: So let's talk a little about cancel culture. One of
Speaker 2: the more interesting conversations I've been following through the last
Speaker 2: several years is what is quote unquote cancel culture as
Speaker 2: opposed to the birds of what you say, coming home
Speaker 2: to rust taking responsibility for what you say. How can
Speaker 2: you tell if it's quote unquote cancel culture cancer oultia.
Speaker 1: The thing that lawyers sounds so frustrating about cancel culture
Speaker 1: is that it because it's about a cultural norm.
Speaker 7: It has to be at a little.
Speaker 1: Looser but really kind of like what And I try
Speaker 1: to get people think about this in the aggregate that essentially, yes,
Speaker 1: can I private company decide to fire someone because they
Speaker 1: don't like their expression? Absolutely they can, and actually under
Speaker 1: the First Amendment, I'd fight for the right to do that.
Speaker 1: But I'm always trying to get people to take a
Speaker 1: deep breath and if you're and ask themselves, do you
Speaker 1: want to live in the kind of country where you
Speaker 1: can have an opinion or a job but not both
Speaker 1: and rethink that because one of the things that really
Speaker 1: is falling away is this sense of pluralism that essentially
Speaker 1: it's okay if Mike Itizza boy wants to vote for
Speaker 1: Trump or Biden, like it doesn't like, that's fine that
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 7: I think of these.
Speaker 1: Old American idioms that we used to say a lot
Speaker 1: of times when we were kids that have lost favor,
Speaker 1: and kids today don't know as much they are as
Speaker 1: simple as everyone's entitled to their opinion, to each their own,
Speaker 1: you know, walk a mile on a man's shoes is
Speaker 1: kind of things.
Speaker 7: Essentially the same thing.
Speaker 1: It's a free country, we said all the time, are
Speaker 1: really important small d democratic values.
Speaker 7: And I think that if you're.
Speaker 1: Seeing a situation in which someone, you know, like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: someone's being unprofessional in their job. You know, there's no question,
Speaker 1: you know, you can fire them. But for example, there
Speaker 1: was a case of the Washington Post where there was
Speaker 1: a there was an opinion reporter. He retweeted one slightly
Speaker 1: I mean, very slightly edgy joke tweeted it, and then
Speaker 1: of course there was this huge, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: backlash to get him suspended or fired. And I was like, listen,
Speaker 1: if you want to know what cancel culture and free
Speaker 1: speech culture look like, what free speech culture looks like
Speaker 1: is to say, do we really want to punish this
Speaker 1: Washington Post reporter just for retweeting a joke?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, So it's funny. I wrote down this quote
Speaker 2: and posted on the studio wall here, and I didn't
Speaker 2: write who said it? In God, I could have been you.
Speaker 2: It might be Peter Bogosian or Jonathan Hyde. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: But what they said was political disagreement is increasingly treated
Speaker 2: as a serious moral offense rather than a simple difference
Speaker 2: of opinion. When you see the world that way, punishing
Speaker 2: someone for holding different views becomes a moral good. I
Speaker 2: thought that was a really good explanation that.
Speaker 1: Really could be any of us, come to think of it,
Speaker 1: I'm stealing it and I hope you will, you know,
Speaker 1: because we want this to catch on, because it really
Speaker 1: is very much with our own lifetime that we had
Speaker 1: very different attitudes about free speech as a society. And
Speaker 1: I will say that the role that k through PhD
Speaker 1: has played in that erosion is really shameful. So that
Speaker 1: there was someone who wrote recently on Twitter like given,
Speaker 1: and we are absolutely we fight people all across the spectrum.
Speaker 1: We were assuing the Trump administration. We're in a lawsuit
Speaker 1: as Trump.
Speaker 7: Himself on free speech grounds.
Speaker 1: We are true the most nonpartisan institution in the country.
Speaker 1: But someone actually wrote to my co author Ricky Schlott
Speaker 1: on Twitter, of canceling the American mind. You know, don't
Speaker 1: you feel like by comparison, you know, what was happening
Speaker 1: on college campuses was no big deal or sort of quaint,
Speaker 1: And I'm.
Speaker 7: Like, absolutely not have a.
Speaker 1: Situation in which people can I mean something like seventy
Speaker 1: percent of students think their professors should be reported for
Speaker 1: offensive speech. And when they actually drilled down into what
Speaker 1: did they mean by a sense of speech, it wasn't
Speaker 1: for sexually harassing students. It was for saying things like
Speaker 1: biological sex is real, or you know someone who actually
Speaker 1: would repeat the data of Roland Fryar, you know from Harvard,
Speaker 1: who basically pointed out there isn't that much evidence that
Speaker 1: there's wildly disproportionate shootings of unarmed black people versus white
Speaker 1: people by police. And now, to be clear, Roland Fryar said, actually,
Speaker 1: our overall take is that the police shoot too many
Speaker 1: people in the United States, but that ultimately that that
Speaker 1: that disparity isn't there as much. They were basically saying
Speaker 1: the students themselves were being taught to police factual statements
Speaker 1: that in some cases are probably true, right in order
Speaker 1: to in order to to I don't achieve something to
Speaker 1: protect their ears or something.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, I think it's more than that. And
Speaker 2: if you don't mind, we need to take a quick
Speaker 2: break and follow up on that thought and talk of
Speaker 2: about the philosophy that's driving a lot of what the
Speaker 2: college kids just think is, you know, outlawing hate speech
Speaker 2: and objectionable speech. But Greg Lookian off of Fire Greg,
Speaker 2: great to talk to you hang around just a couple
Speaker 2: of minutes will continue in moments. We are midway through
Speaker 2: a conversation with Greg looking on Off, the president and
Speaker 2: CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and
Speaker 2: the author of many fine books and co author on
Speaker 2: that topic. Greg, thanks for hanging around. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, no, I was happy to do so.
Speaker 2: As I often point out on the show, I Joe
Speaker 2: Gettim the last thing I am as a conspiracy theorist.
Speaker 2: I'm somebody who's been studying political systems and political movements
Speaker 2: since I was literally a teenager, and it's the most
Speaker 2: fascinating subject on earth. And one thing that has really
Speaker 2: frustrated me is how few people understand that a lot
Speaker 2: of what we've been talking about, the censorship on campus,
Speaker 2: the microaggressions, the advanning hate speech, quote unquote, it is
Speaker 2: people who've bought the moral argument that that's what they
Speaker 2: should do, but it is driven by and nobody talks
Speaker 2: about this the critical theory crowd. The folks who are
Speaker 2: fans of Michelle Fuco and Franz Fonan, the French philosophers
Speaker 2: of the mid twentieth century and into the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2: As I often say, they wrote books, they put their
Speaker 2: names on the spine. They explained exactly what they wanted
Speaker 2: to do, and it's exactly what we're witnessing. Any comment agreed,
Speaker 2: disagree with thoughts?
Speaker 1: Oh no, absolutely, although I would actually go after you know,
Speaker 1: because it's not a thinker. I have eleven of respect
Speaker 1: for Herbert Marcus because Herbert marcuse A was a Marxist.
Speaker 1: He had to flee Germany when the Nazis took over.
Speaker 1: He lived in academia, I think at Brandeis and UCSD,
Speaker 1: I think you see San Diego where and he sort
Speaker 1: of was trying to sort of like reform Marxism because
Speaker 1: it turned out the proletariat didn't really like the intellectuals,
Speaker 1: so he kind of like remodeled it so that essentially
Speaker 1: it would be a combination of the intellectuals he educated
Speaker 1: in the United States versus with what he very sensitifically
Speaker 1: called ghetto populations against the right.
Speaker 7: He was incredibly clear.
Speaker 1: That he thought there should be free speech for the
Speaker 1: left and not for the right. He couldn't have said
Speaker 1: it more primitively than he did in an essay called
Speaker 1: repressive tolerance, and that view that you can't really be
Speaker 1: equal if the bad guys were allowed. Free speech has
Speaker 1: taken over in a lot of spaces. Even when I
Speaker 1: was at school, even though I was in law school
Speaker 1: back in ninety seven, I was running into this argument already, and.
Speaker 7: I was like, I worked at the ACL you.
Speaker 1: I grew up believing that free speech was like the
Speaker 1: defining sort of liberal characteristic. But unfortunately we have this
Speaker 1: sort of terminological term where you have this kind of
Speaker 1: like much more typically old European side Frankfurt school left
Speaker 1: that is very hostile to free speech but calls itself liberal.
Speaker 1: And so I personally think right now the center left
Speaker 1: and the center right have much more in common with
Speaker 1: each other than they do with their wings. And when
Speaker 1: look at the data, we are the majority and then some,
Speaker 1: and we believe in freedom of speech. And we have
Speaker 1: to talk back to these people who don't realize that
Speaker 1: they're spouting Marcus and fucout and all these people who,
Speaker 1: by the way, people in their own lifetimes like Hoppermass
Speaker 1: who just died, did an incredible job of refuting these
Speaker 1: weren't in my opinion, particularly deep thinkers are good historians.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately we have a lot of people who think
Speaker 1: that the morality.
Speaker 7: Is on the side of the Center.
Speaker 2: Greg, we only have about two minutes left. Let's let's
Speaker 2: jump to an action plan. Now. I support fire in
Speaker 2: every way I can, including financially. What's the most important
Speaker 2: thing everybody listening can do or things they can do
Speaker 2: to help fight for free speech?
Speaker 7: Yeah, please find out more about us.
Speaker 1: But the most important thing you can do is to
Speaker 1: make it known that when someone gets in trouble for
Speaker 1: speech you personally disagree with, you do not think they
Speaker 1: should be fired, You do not think they should be arrested,
Speaker 1: You do not think and stand up for them unapologetically.
Speaker 1: Because that's the thing that brought people like me.
Speaker 7: Into this business.
Speaker 1: Seeing the acl USE stand up for the rights of them,
Speaker 1: I sings, you know, Jewish lawyers standing up for them.
Speaker 1: That was the most principled thing I'd ever even heard
Speaker 1: of in my entire life. And that's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that gets people to understand that free speech belongs
Speaker 1: to everyone, or it belongs to no one.
Speaker 2: Right here here, you know, I grew up only a
Speaker 2: few miles from Skokie, Illinois, and following that drama as
Speaker 2: a gosh a kid, teenager or whatever it was, and
Speaker 2: having my parents explain that principle. To me, it gives
Speaker 2: me chills thinking about it because it was such a
Speaker 2: formative moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I was about my parents were both immigrants,
Speaker 1: and I grew up in a neighborhood with a lot
Speaker 1: of immigrants kids, and the idea that you know, our
Speaker 1: families fled countries where they didn't have freedom speech, and
Speaker 1: we were finally in a country that was so principled
Speaker 1: that people would even defend their enemies.
Speaker 2: Let's not give it up, Greg, LOOKI on off of fire.
Speaker 2: We'll have a link so you can find it easily
Speaker 2: enough in his books and that sort of thing at
Speaker 2: Armstrong and Geddy dot com. Greg, it's always a pleasure.
Speaker 2: It's been too long. I hope we can do it again.
Speaker 2: Absolutely all right, Thanks thanks Greg, LOOKI on off. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I seriously get so fired up about this stuff. I've
Speaker 2: threatened many times to get a First Amendment tattoo, but
Speaker 2: I don't want a tattoo at all, so I don't
Speaker 2: think that's going to happen. Coming up next hour, we
Speaker 2: will catch up on the situation in the Gulf, the
Speaker 2: Straights of Horror moves. We'll talk to Mike Lyons also.
Speaker 2: Oh and I'm excited about this. If you were listening,
Speaker 2: I think it was two days ago. During hour two
Speaker 2: of the show, we were talking about the miserable state
Speaker 2: of education in America, the public schools, the government schools
Speaker 2: as I prefer to call them. And boy did we
Speaker 2: get reaction from educators that the folks in the belly
Speaker 2: of the beast fighting, you know, against some of the
Speaker 2: stuff every day, and their impressions about what's wrong with
Speaker 2: American government schools. Is that's the testimony I think we
Speaker 2: all really need to hear, right, So we're going to
Speaker 2: hit that next hour. Jack's going to be checking in
Speaker 2: from a scenic saline of Kansas, where he's visiting a
Speaker 2: family and where our careers together got started actually many
Speaker 2: years ago. So I hope you can stay tuned. If
Speaker 2: you can't, you can always subscribe to the podcast and
Speaker 2: miss nothing. It downloads automatically if you subscribe Armstrong and
Speaker 2: Getty on demand Armstrong and Getty