This week, in the Streisand effect: Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker had their UK travel visas revoked because "their presence...may not be conducive to the public good.”
This, from the land that gave us John Stuart Mill, is shameful.
Me for @TheFIREorg:
https://t.co/Qpz9I2wZZb
@ScottGreenfield@CathyYoung63@glukianoff Indeed.
It's just sad to me because it's so revealing. They accuse you of the very crime they themselves would commit/are committing, because they find it hard to believe anyone has principles if they don't.
Bob Corn-Revere is one of the nation’s leading First Amendment litigators and a longtime advocate for free expression.
With over four decades of experience, he has argued landmark cases, advised FCC leadership, and now is joining us at Soapbox, our free speech conference.
What is the original meaning of the First Amendment's free speech protection?
I explored the question in a recent webinar . . .
When you look at the First Amendment—“Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech”—I think many of us see “Congress shall make no law” and say, “Oh, it’s obvious: It can make no law affecting freedom of speech.”
But on the other hand, some people look at that and ask, “What does 'The Freedom of Speech' mean?” They look at "The Freedom of Speech" as a noun, as something that has boundaries around it. Throughout the first 150 years of American history, and up until today, we’re trying to negotiate what those boundaries are.
The point I always come back to, having studied this history, is that I don’t even think the founders knew what it meant. For that reason, it’s more important to look at how the founding era actually practiced free speech. You have people criticizing John Adams, calling him bald, crippled, and toothless. They’re criticizing politicians in ways that you could never have criticized the Crown in Great Britain.
So I happen to think that you need to have a more expansive view of free speech, because that’s how the colonists and early Americans actually practiced it. Indeed, there was a famous First Amendment scholar named Leonard Levy who wrote a book called Legacy of Suppression, which argued that the founders only had this Blackstonian view, this no-prior-restraints view of free speech.
But he later changed his mind. He said, in effect, “Looking at how these colonial-era and Revolutionary-era Americans practiced it, they had a much more expansive view of freedom of speech than anyone in Great Britain would have thought they had.”
We have very regrettably had to cancel our @Econoclasts event with Hasan Piker this week. He was going to be challenged in a new and interesting way — now that cannot happen.
@UnHerd stands for free thinking, free enquiry and free expression. For meeting bad arguments with counter-arguments, not cancelling or "de-platforming". The ideal of free speech only counts if you defend the right of those you strongly disagree with to speak. Otherwise it is meaningless.
Personally I have been very depressed by people on the political Right who have talked the talk on free speech for years — we have campaigned alongside them against censorship over Covid, gender and much else — but who are now seemingly all too happy to forcibly silence people they don't agree with.
We will continue to fight against intellectual dishonesty, illiberalism and boneheadedness whichever political colour it takes.
This week, in the Streisand effect: Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker had their UK travel visas revoked because "their presence...may not be conducive to the public good.”
This, from the land that gave us John Stuart Mill, is shameful.
Me for @TheFIREorg:
https://t.co/Qpz9I2wZZb
@gmgeiko First season was interesting. Season 2 got really really ridiculous—to the point where a school play apparently went on for like four hours and had a budget to rival a Marvel movie—but ended in a good spot and should have been left alone. I haven't bothered to watch Season 3.