'An orgy of vengeance,' disrespecting flags & anthems, and yelling 'Fire' in a crowded theater
Bringing you the latest free speech news (7/28/24)
Stories of the week
Scott Alexander over at
published an excellent piece on the recent right-wing Cancel Culture rampage led by Libs of TikTok which, among other things, resulted in the firing of a Home Depot Employee for making crass comments about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.Among many things Scott wrote that we agree with is that we need a common definition of Cancel Culture. In a forthcoming piece for ERI I’ll argue for the one
and I use in our book “The Canceling of the American Mind,” and why it’s superior to all the others we’ve heard thus far.Cancellation isn’t just morally bad. It also screws over society. And it screws over your own institutions worst of all.
By society I mean: you want scientists to be producing good science, not producing the science least likely to get them cancelled. You want the Federal Reserve filled with the best economists, not the most politically pure economists. No matter how righteous your cause, if you cancel people who don’t agree with it, you end up with the kind of low-quality science and corrupt institutions we’ve grown used to recently. This is bad insofar as you care about things like truth, trust, or national flourishing.
For MSNBC, FIRE’s very own
weighed in on the First Amendment-protected act of flag burning (with caveats) — which occurred during protests on Capitol Hill this week — as well as former president Trump’s and current vice president Harris’ condemnations of it.The conversations spurred by Trump and other advocates of a flag burning ban, however, extend far beyond criminal acts and well into purely expressive conduct. At its core, what’s at stake here is the right of people across the political spectrum to express deeply unpopular political views and be free of retaliation from the government they are criticizing.
I also appeared on ‘Plain English with Derek Thompson’ podcast to discuss mental health, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” and much of the material covered in my recent ERI post with
on the mental health effects of social justice fundamentalism. We’re going to come back to this topic in much greater detail very soon.In a recent paper called “The Politics of Depression,” published by the journal Social Science & Medicine–Mental Health, the epidemiologist Catherine Gimbrone and several coauthors showed that young progressives are significantly more depressed than conservatives, have been for years, and the gap is growing over time. Other studies, including the General Social Survey, show the same.
Why are young progressives so sad? Today’s guest is Greg Lukianoff, the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and coauthor of ‘The Coddling of the American Mind.’ He has written intelligently, critically, and emotionally about happiness, depression, politics, and progressivism.
This week in FIRE’s blog
Let Americans have both a job and a political opinion by
and Aaron Terr
The violence at Trump’s rally near Butler, Pennsylvania, was deeply unsettling, rightly evoking widespread outrage and condemnation. It was an affront to everything American democracy stands for — including our national commitment to resolve our differences peacefully through debate and dialogue. That’s why, in these moments, it’s more important than ever to uphold the values that define our free society, including freedom of speech. That’s especially true when the temptation to punish people for offensive or disturbing statements can feel overwhelming, urgent, and even righteous.
Statement: The Kids Online Safety Act gives government ‘dangerous powers’ over Americans’ expression
“KOSA hands government bureaucrats a powerful weapon to wield over social media websites — one that threatens every American’s ability to express themselves online,” said FIRE Chief Counsel Robert Corn-Revere. “The First Amendment should be a guard against regulatory schemes that treat speech as a dangerous product — like cigarettes or faulty brakes — instead of a fundamental human right. Protecting minors online does not require putting anyone’s First Amendment rights in jeopardy.”
In FIRE’s 2024 College Free Speech Rankings, a sample of 454 students who identified as nonbinary overwhelmingly reported support for illiberal protest tactics. (The survey does not have a separate category for female-to-male or male-to-female transitioners.) Almost nine in ten (86%) nonbinary students, compared to 63% of students overall, said that it could be acceptable to shout down a campus speaker. Seventy-three percent of nonbinary students showed some level of tolerance for physically blocking others from attending a speech, while only 45% of students overall said the same. Most shockingly, 53% — more than half! — of nonbinary students did not categorically oppose the use of physical violence to stop a speech. Compare that to 27% of students overall.
This illiberalism doesn’t only hurt some dominant majority. It hurts everyone. I am trans myself, and my identity has not saved me from ending up on the wrong end of trans activism.
This week in ERI
This week we’re cross-posting with
and Courtney Balaker over at the “Coddling of the American Mind Movie” Substack to reshare a multi-part series I began in 2020 called “Catching Up with Coddling.” We’ll be reviewing and revising those old posts with new data and other updates, and sharing them with you here in the coming weeks and months.International free speech story of the week
Hong Kong man found guilty of insulting Chinese anthem at volleyball game by Hillary Leung at The Hong Kong Free Press
A Hong Kong man has been found guilty of insulting the Chinese national anthem at an international volleyball game last year. Chan Pak-yui appeared at Kowloon City Magistrates’ Courts on Friday to receive his verdict after standing trial in April.
He was accused of publicly and intentionally insulting the national anthem at the Hong Kong Coliseum last June after he covered his ears when the March of the Volunteers was played before the FIVB Volleyball Women’s Nations League match on June 16, 2023. He was also said to have sung Do You Hear the People Sing, a song from musical Les Miserables that was popular during the pro-democracy protests in 2014 and 2019.
London Calling: Ronnie’s First Amendment Rundown
This week, a case from a galaxy far, far away — California. After Disney famously fired Gina Carano from “The Mandalorian” (and by extension excluded her from spin-offs) in response to public outcry over her social media activity around race, gender, COVID, and the 2020 election, saying “she didn’t align with Company values,” Carano sued under state law that bars employers from interfering with employees’ political activities or affiliations, or their “adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.”
Leaning heavily on the standard for early stages of a case that require accepting all facts plaintiffs allege and all inferences from them, the court rejected Disney’s defense that the First Amendment bars Carano’s claims even assuming (without conceding) she sufficiently alleged wrongful discharge motivated by political activity, holding neither Disney’s expressive associational rights nor its free speech rights automatically barred the suit. In doing so, the court rejected in this context (among other things), the notion that “casting and the resulting work of entertainment” are “inseparable” such that First Amendment protections for the end-product must also apply to casting.
However, even at this early stage, it acknowledged Disney “might, with a more developed factual record, be able to prevail on their First Amendment defense,” and that Carano’s remedies may be limited, citing in particular that while the state laws allow employees to seek reinstatement, “it is far from clear…such relief would, in this context, comport with the First Amendment.”
Video of the month
Is there anything FIRE Legal Director Will Creeley can’t do? He’s already a top-notch First Amendment lawyer who oversees FIRE’s Litigation, Legislative and Policy, Policy Reform, and Targeted Advocacy departments; a mentor to interns and students interested in free speech; a writer, author, and editor (he co-authored the fantastic “First Things First: A Modern Coursebook on Free Speech Fundamentals”), a public speaker (who gave a barnburner of an address at last year’s FIRE gala in New York City), and one of our 25 Faces of Free Speech.
That should be plenty, but apparently he’s also got the acting bug! Check out this fantastic video featuring Will tearing down one of those free speech canards that simply won’t die: “You can’t yell ‘Fire’ in a crowded theater.”
I really like the Video of the Month.
But it missed a point. Yes, you can shout 'Fire' in a crowded theater, if the theatre is on fire. And you are generally not culpable if you THOUGHT it was on fire but were wrong.
The analogy, applied to reality, means that a person can denounce their government, a party, a government agency, or a specific official, if they see them as a threat to citizen's rights. Labeling the denunciations as 'disinformation', 'misinformation', or 'hate speech' is just a totalitarian ploy to stomp on our essential right to criticize government. Our right to denounce government or any part of it is the number one reason why we have a first amendment.
The percentages of young people who feel entitled to act out abusive verbal behavior and physical coercion against people with whom they disagree is absolutely appalling! That a quarter of them allow so easily for actual violence against those with whom this disagree is frightening! The danger they pose to other individuals and to civilized life has to be decreased, and there needs to be focused attention on how to re-socialize these antisocial teenagers and young adults.