Some of my neighbors have put up yard signs for Harris/Walz. I find it quite humorous, but I highly encourage it. It provides a good chuckle that the campaign is spending money on yard signs in California. One of the neighbors added an alteration stating not voting for Trump would shut down the liar. Lying certainly is in the eye of the beholder, but suppression of free speech is largely coming from one side, and it isn’t Trump.
I decided to read Jonathan Turley’s new book The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage. Turley is one of the real voices of reasons in our culture today. A long-time law professor at George Washington University, he has a significant distaste for Mr. Trump, and he is a lifelong Democrat. Yet he often comments in Mr. Trump’s favor because of the appalling actions of his opposition. He is what used to be called a “straight shooter.”
His book is a fascinating history on the issue of free speech which he thinks is at the center of the freedom established by our Constitution. He ably shifts from law professor to historian to educate his readers on the fascinating development of free speech throughout many societies and millennium tracing back to Sophocles and Socrates in ancient Greece. He brings us through to modern times and the development of the concept of free speech. including in our Constitution by James Madison in a manner unlike any country in the world.
Turley stated he believes it is an unvarnished history of free speech he has worked on for over 30 years. He expressed, “Every generation believes there is an existential threat from free speech that justifies crackdowns or censorship.”
Once he finishes defining the history of free speech from ancient times through America’s challenges, he focuses on the three components of the destruction of free speech today: the press, universities and government.
Turley believes that the Musk acquisition of Twitter and the subsequent release of the Twitter Files was a monumental moment. The responsibility for reviewing the files was turned over to three principal people, Bari Weiss, Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi, with assistance from a few other top journalists.
They discovered an estimated 80 FBI agents were targeting private citizens for disinformation. They found the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) was funded through a state department bogus entity, the National Endowment for Democracy. They focused on ten sites which included the New York Post, Reason, RealClearPolitics, the Daily Wire, Blaze Media, One America New Network, The Federalist, Newsmax, the American Spectator and the American Conservative. You may notice all these sites are right of center. The government tried to influence advertisers away from the sites alleging they were spreading disinformation.
We will never know how much they spent on suppressing our free speech because of all the slush money floating around from the humongous funding bills that passed like the $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill.
Turley stated he has been taken aback by how the anti-free speech movement has culminated in America. He went on to say, “The anti-free speech movement began in higher education.” He documents the demise of free speech on college campuses in great detail. This was catapulted by two events.
First, a book co-authored by Michael Bérubé, an English professor at Penn State, and Jennifer Ruth, a professor in the College of Arts at Portland State defined current thinking. Their book is entitled It’s Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy and the Future of Academic Freedom. In it they express:
“The First Amendment has no bearing on academic freedom, because the First Amendment has no relation to scholarly expertise. It forbids the prior restraint of speech by the state. Free speech is an individual right. Whereas academic freedom, as a collective right of the faculty, insists that professorial research and teaching be autonomous from external influence.”
This statement provides free license for a department to restrict the diversity of thought and input because the research or ideas do not adhere to the mainstream. If you believe this is dangerous it gets worse. A recent ruling by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against a professor who was sanctioned for speaking out against diversity policies. Judge Stephanie Thacker wrote that the professor was not fired because of speaking out, but because he was not being collegial. Another case used this rationale on another professor who was judged to be properly dismissed for non-collegial behavior.
The court basically said fall in line and keep your mouth shut or the gang of thugs can jeopardize your livelihood.
This reverberates throughout the entire university as students suppress any thought of expressing themselves to counter the prevailing doctrines. These students then carry these inhibitions with them out into their post-college working life.
Turley told me, “We have to restore intellectual diversity at universities. Public universities offer a chance to restore that diversity. Taxpayers have to stand up to the faculty and demand open-mindedness.”
The third element crushing free speech is the Press. Turley told me that it generates from journalism schools with their lack of divergence of teaching which follows directly to the newsrooms. He stated it has caused an abundance of major new outlets to follow the failure of the Washington Post. The Post lost $100 million in 2023. It had massive layoffs in 2023 followed by more in 2024 along with the significant ones at CNN.
Turley’s decision to detail the history of free speech comes at a momentous crossroads of our history. We are challenged by expanding governmental complicity in restrictions and shrinking diversity of thought at our historical bulwarks protecting free interchange of ideas. His book offers a substantial definition of what we face in the future. He believes, “Free speech is the one right that sustains every other right.” He is correct on that.
We are experiencing an election where one side states the future of our democracy is on the ballot. That side and its allies are working to limit the essential part of our democracy – our freedom to express our thoughts freely. Don’t let them fool you by saying that their opponents are the danger.
Read the book, then join Professor Turley and me in the battle to save our free speech as more and more the three elements want to extinguish it.