FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff Discusses the Importance of Free Speech

Greg Lukianoff, CEO of FIRE, addressing the audience at FIRE's recent gala expanding its free speech mission beyond schools and colleges. I created the following transcript based on this video:

Athens. 375 BCE. The agora. A man goes before the agora, and he talks about a better world in which the smartest of us would would lead us the people who can understand the real and permanent truth that exists beyond our common understanding. It would be a new and better world led by the Guardian class. And a man stands up and says, "Plato, this sounds awful. Like really awful. "By philosopher kings, you mean like you right? And you really think us dummies sit and watched shadows all day?"

Fast forward ahead to the French Revolution. Robespierre is defending the terror by citing the general will. This same figure pops up again, and says, by "general will," you mean like yours, right?

Fast forward again, to default to the Bolshevik revolution. People say to Lenin, "You know, I don't know if you're seeing this. But your system makes good people into suckers and sociopaths and gives them superpowers, right?"

And then fast forward again to the Nazis. And someone stands up and says, "So you guys think you're really into evolution, and you don't understand biodiversity?"

And sometimes these people managed to survive because instead of saying any of this stuff, they stand up and instead say, "I don't want to get guillotine. Anybody else want to move to the United States?"

And a lot of us are descended from these very types of people. I am for one. And why do I bring this weirdo up? Because he is us. He is people like the people in this room. People who do not like the arrogance of power. People who do not like the idea that someone who thinks they're smarter than us is going to tell us what to say or what to think. It's the personality that brings us all together.

So one thing that all the weirdos that I work out at FIRE have in common is we hate bullies. What is our job? Our job is to fight the Guardians, now and forever. And the problem is, of course, that a lot of times, this is a population that self-elects in every generation, the ones who are going to save us from ourselves. Weirdly enough, they oftentimes claim to speak for the people, which doesn't really work. The funny thing is they usually talk about, "Oh, I speak to the people. I mean, maybe there's people over there. They're the real people. You might have false consciousness or something.

And whenever you hear this, and it's very important to say today, when someone says that they claim to speak for the people, you should say to them, "Why don't you let the people speak for themselves?" That is the wisdom of the First Amendment. So what do we get as we celebrate free speech, as we celebrate the First Amendment? We should remember what we fight for, because the fight is getting harder. But we need to remember why we fight for it. So what does free speech give us? Free speech does not give us certainty. And that's a good thing. Certainty is a dangerous illusion. But it does give us richness. It does give us complexity. It does give us nuance. It does give us awe if we're lucky. And it gives us the only chance we'll ever have to know the world as it really is. And what does free speech give us that's better than civility? Candor, and authenticity. Authenticity. You cannot be yourself if you're not allowed to speak. Censorship is a tactic used over and over again that societies use to lie to themselves that they're just fine. And that's why I've joked for years that censorship is like taking Xanax for syphilis. It makes you feel a little better about your horrible disease. But your horrible disease keeps getting worse.

What else can free speech give you that the Guardians can't? Individuality? You can't have individuality without freedom of speech. There's a cynicism that often goes with this. Just remember that when people talk about being unique individuals--and we have all of this kind of putting people in the groups--remember, your individual uniqueness is a scientific and mathematical fact. Not some goofy poetic vision. It's literally true and never let someone take that away from you.

On the Other Side, none of us are all that smart individually, except for maybe Steve Pinker, who's here tonight. But if we stay curious, intellectually humble and keep talking to each other, we can know a billion billion times more than any lone human being. It'll be messy. It'll be strange. It'll sometimes be troubling. But I'd rather live in the real world with the unruly and ever-evolving lot of you than to live in the dreary conformity of any utopia. I want nothing to do with utopia. It's a place where humans can't go and stay fully human. The chaotic paradise, the loud, creative cacophony of a free people, is where I want to be.

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The Annual Love-In with the White House and “Journalists”

Have you recently visited any of the left-leaning corporate media outlets to try to find one thing, anything, that they write that is critical of Joe Biden and Democrats? What are the odds that even your favorite politician can do no wrong for 2 1/2 years? But it happens over and over. With only a few notable exceptions (e.g., Tucker Carlson), it also happens on the right.

Well, it's time for those journalists to celebrate with the country's centers of power and you will never hear Glenn Greendald heap such scorn upon other human beings. It's because they are proudly abandoning their mission to be adversaries of the White House, not buddies seeking to get even more friendly. The net result is what you don't see: News accounts that **** badly on the White House. Here's an transcript from Glenn's Rumble show, System Update:

s repulsive as it is to watch corporate journalists make this pilgrimage to the White House that they make every year under the guise of the White House Correspondents Dinner, where they pretend to celebrate their commitment to press freedom and the important role they play in safeguarding our democracy, it actually is important to look at because it is one night where they let the mask drop and reveal who and what they really are. It's become kind of like the Oscars, in the sense that – in many senses, actually, but one important one is that it is not just one night, but many days leading up to it, where they have all kinds of parties that are the buzziest of the ones that they get to attend. But they also spend a lot of time before the event trying to justify to the American people why it is that these people who claim to be our watchdogs, the people who are safeguarding our basic rights, who are holding our government accountable, are instead dressing up like it's the Oscars, in gowns and tuxedos, and appearing with celebrities and the politicians they supposedly hold accountable at the gaudiest and sleaziest event you can possibly imagine held at the White House hosted by Joe Biden, the person whom they're supposed to be adversarially covering.

And so, in the days leading up to the event, they spend a lot of time trying to justify what it is that they're doing and within those justifications reside a great deal of insight into how they actually think. As I said, it's a mask-dropping event. They know what it makes them look like, but they do it anyway because they're so desperate for the self-importance that it provides. It's really why they do their job – to be around power or to be accepted by power, to feel as though they're part of the Royal Court – and so, it's way too valuable to their sense of purpose and self-identity to relinquish it, even though they know that it's one of the most revealing lights that ever get shined on them.

You can view the entire episode here, at Rumble.com

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Michael Shellenberger: Totalitarianism is on the Rise

If I heard anyone saying these things three years ago, I would have thought that person needed help for a mental condition. Based on many things I've read and seen in the past three years, however, I am gravely concerned that Michael Shellenberger is not overstating the problems we face:

Around the world, politicians have either just passed or are on the cusp of passing sweeping new laws, which would allow governments to censor ordinary citizens on social media and other Internet platforms.

Under the guise of preventing “harm” and holding large tech companies accountable, several countries are establishing a vast and interlinked censorship apparatus, a new investigation by Public finds.

Politicians, NGOs, and their enablers in the news media claim that their goal is merely to protect the public from “disinformation.” But vague definitions and loopholes in new laws will create avenues for broad application, overreach, and abuse.

In Ireland, for example, the government may soon be able to imprison citizens simply for possessing material that officials decide is “hateful.” Under the RESTRICT Act in the US, the government may soon have the authority to monitor the Internet activity of any American deemed a security risk.

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Daniel Dennett’s Proposal on How to Disagree

Daniel Dennett's recipe for a successful critical commentary:

1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.” 2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement). 3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target. 4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

Notice the total absence of ad hominem attacks. That's good, because I listen to many sorts of people, all of them flawed human beings like me. Every day I sort through this batch of conflicting information to try to make sense of things. Some of the people I highly trust sometimes fall off the rails. Some of the people I mostly don't trust sometimes say things that make sense. I work very hard to avoid the Manichean trap of dividing people into "good" people and "bad" people.

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Why You Need to Know about Julian Assange of Wikileaks

What you need to know about Julian Assange on the Fourth Anniversary of his Imprisonment. On Glenn Greenwald's System Update, the Free Speech Alternative to YouTube.

An excerpt of the transcript of this show from Glenn's site at Locals:

There's, I think, a very good strong case to make that Julian Assange is definitely one of the most consequential and intrepid journalists of the last, say, 50 years, if not the single most important pioneering journalist of his generation. He has almost certainly broken more major stories than almost every single employee of the mainstream media outlet combined. They don't hate Julian Assange, despite the fact that he's broken so many stories. They hate him precisely because of that – in part because he shined. He holds up a mirror showing what they really are. He is what they pretend to be.

While the mainstream media constantly publishes stories that they dress up as leaks but in fact are nothing more than propaganda messaging tasks given to them by the CIA and the FBI and Homeland Security, which pick up the phone and pick their favorite reporter and tell them what to go plant in the newspaper to disseminate propaganda to the American people, Assange never does that and never had to and never would. He shows the American people and the world the secrets the CIA and the FBI and the Pentagon and Homeland Security don't want you to see. And that's why those agencies hate him. And that's why the employees and the media outlets that serve those agencies also hate him. That is the reason that he's in prison.

Almost every single employee of The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and NBC, on a daily basis – you can pick up those newspapers or if you have the misfortune to listen to those networks, you will hear or read them saying – “anonymous officials told us” X, Y, and Z, they publish classified information all the time. But they don't end up like Julian Assange or Jack Teixeira – the 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts National Guard was hunted this week by The New York Times and The Washington Post and then arrested yesterday by the FBI because he is accused of having leaked classified documents.

The difference between the mainstream media on the one hand and Assange and Jack Teixeira and people like Edward Snowden on the other is that the mainstream media publishes leaks that are authorized, that the U.S. Security State wants you to see because they're forms of propaganda and that's why they're never punished. That's why they don't end up in prison. They get book deals; they get put on television and they're applauded by the U.S. government. The people who end up in prison are those who show you the secrets they want to hide. That's the main difference. It's the difference between being a propagandist and being a journalist. Julian Assange is a journalist, and that's the reason he's in prison.

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