Institutional decay, Henry VIII’s big fat libido, and the eternally radical idea

When you add billions of eyes to the problems of the world, the result is not just noise but incredible breakthroughs

On December 5, 2024, the Russell Kirk Center awarded the inaugural Richard D. McLellan Prizes for Free Speech and Expression to three people. The academic prizes went to Josiah Joner and Sam Goldman, and the grand prize went to yours truly.

That alone is a great honor. But I had the additional great honor and pleasure of being introduced by Luke Sheahan. Luke is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Duquesne University, as well as a Non-resident Scholar in the Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society at the University of Pennsylvania. But he was also among the first batch of FIRE interns back in 2005, and would go on to become one of then-only nine FIRE employees after he graduated.

As I mentioned before I began my remarks that evening, I’m glad I chose to read Luke’s speech before he delivered it onstage. If I hadn’t, I’d have been too flabbergasted by his comments to have delivered my own talk. Luke was incredibly gracious and kind, and it meant a lot to me to have him be the one to bring me up. (Luke’s introduction is our ‘Shot For the Road’ this week).

My full remarks are available on the Kirk Center’s YouTube channel, but I wanted to share a revised and expanded version as a post for ERI because, honestly, what I am trying to say here I can’t repeat enough.

I want to thank the Kirk Center for granting me this immense honor, and I want to thank the judges for even considering me. In particular, I want to give special thanks to FIRE Senior Fellow and former ACLU President Nadine Strossen. Nadine has been a hero of mine my entire career, and a younger me would have never believed that she would become someone I get to call both a colleague and a friend.

As readers of ERI and followers of FIRE will know, I’ve dedicated my life to defending not only the First Amendment, but also the older, bolder, more expansive idea of free speech — what I call the eternally radical idea. That means defending free expression and freedom of the press against attacks from powerful figures, world leaders, and others who find the open exchange of ideas and opinions irritating or inconvenient.

But if I’m being honest, there is one world leader who I can’t entirely blame for being frustrated with a press that ceaselessly hammered his personal life, his marriages, his affairs, his sometimes-reckless decision-making, his outsized libido, and even his weight.

I am, of course, talking about Henry VIII. And the “press” I’m referring to is, of course, the printing press.

Despite what is now a fairly well-known antagonism, Henry VIII actually started out as a huge fan of the printing press. In fact, the Catholic Church dubbed him the “Defender of the Faith” for his writing. (This, by the way, was a title he kept using after he turned on the Catholic Church. Honestly, kind of a baller move.)

But eventually, Henry turned against the widespread use of the printing press. Why? Because it was disruptive. It was destabilizing. It was dangerous.

I’m not kidding about that either. The printing press was dangerous, in many ways.

One of the first bestsellers ever printed was 1487’s Malleus Maleficarum, a witch-hunting manual. This book helped accelerate the European witch trials on a horrifying scale — one that would not have been possible otherwise. It also forwarded ideas that literally got people killed. For example, one way the book said you could tell someone was a witch was if they were eloquent and argued against received wisdom. I imagine a time-traveling Nadine Strossen would have quite a bit to say about this.

The printing press also plunged Europe into two centuries of bloody religious wars. How do we know? Firstly, because you’ve probably never heard of Jan Hus, the unlucky Czech theologian and reformer who in 1415 was burned at the stake in Prague for questioning the church. And secondly, because you’ve almost certainly heard of Martin Luther, the German theologian and religious reformer who kicked off the Protestant Reformation 100 years later.

Martin Luther succeeded where Jan Hus failed because Luther had the power of the printing press. This allowed his ideas to spread farther and faster than was ever possible or even imaginable before. Without the printing press Hus was toast; with it, Luther changed the world.

So, yes, it’s easy to understand why a monarch like Henry VIII wanted to crack down on the printing press and the ideas it allowed people to freely disseminate. It undermined his supremacy (and showed precious little respect for the privacy of his romantic life).

But all the printing press really did was bring more people into the global conversation — not hundreds of millions, mind you, just millions — and dramatically increased the velocity of that conversation. It was the first time that free expression was possible on a mass scale. And almost as soon it hit the scene, people started making a radical argument: An argument for freedom of speech.

The eternally radical idea.

And once millions of extra eyes and minds started scrutinizing the authorities of the day, they realized a lot of what people thought was true didn’t hold up to that scrutiny. Its leaders suddenly didn’t look so great anymore (especially with a giant turkey leg in their hands, which is how we always see Henry VIII in the movies). Europe suddenly realized that their universe of shared certainty, which up until then had seemed so solid, was really about as substantial as a puff of incense.

Allowing people to be free to think as they will, and to say what they think, is a radical idea. And it is opposed in every generation because it turns out that when given the chance, people end up having a lot of questions for authority. Authority doesn’t like that. This is why, as Frederick Douglass once put it, the right of free speech “is the dread of tyrants.”

But it’s not just the dread of tyrants within kingdoms or churches. It’s also the dread of tyrants over supposed knowledge — the ones who think all important truths are known and, as it happens, they are the first in history to know them! What luck!

Fast-forward to 2014, when we at FIRE started noticing something strange happening on college campuses. Of course, freedom of speech was never particularly well-protected in higher education, and FIRE was founded to respond to that very problem. But a little over a decade ago, everything got dramatically worse.

As Jonathan Haidt and I described in “The Coddling of the American Mind,” we saw a wave of unrest and a new form of witch hunts on campus. We cited Albert Burgesen’s “A Durkheimian Theory of ‘Witch-Hunts’” (which references the French sociologist Emile Durkheim) and his breakdown of the four common features of witch-hunts to emphasize that Cancel Culture was eerily reminiscent of that earlier — and as we’ve established, dangerous — hysteria:

• They arise quickly: “Witch-hunts seem to appear in dramatic outbursts; they are not a regular feature of social life. A community seems to suddenly find itself infested with all sorts of subversive elements which pose a threat to the collectivity as a whole. Whether one thinks of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, the Stalinist Show Trials, or the McCarthy period in the United States, the phenomenon is the same: a community becomes intensely mobilized to rid itself of internal enemies.”

• Crimes against the collective: “The various charges that appear during one of these witch-hunts involve accusations of crimes committed against the nation as a corporate whole. It is the whole of collective existence that is at stake; it is The Nation, The People, The Revolution, or The State which is being undermined and subverted.”

• Charges are often trivial or fabricated: “These crimes and deviations seem to involve the most petty and insignificant behavioral acts which are somehow understood as crimes against the nation as a whole. In fact, one of the principal reasons we term these events ‘witch-hunts’ is that innocent people are so often involved and falsely accused.”

• Fear of defending the accused: “When a public accusation is made, many friends and bystanders know that the victim is innocent, but they are afraid to say anything. Anyone who comes to the defense of the accused is obstructing the enactment of a collective ritual. Siding with the accused is truly an offense against the group, and it will be treated as such. If passions and fears are intense enough, people will even testify against their friends and family members.”

You’ll notice, once again, how this phenomenon includes the targeting of many innocent victims and, too often, yes, the eloquent critics of received wisdom. Gen-Z journalist

Rikki Schlott

and I get into this in our book, “The Canceling of the American Mind.”

It’s no coincidence that at the same time as this was brewing on campus beginning in 2014, people across the political spectrum were beginning to lose faith in our experts, our institutions, and even the idea of shared truth itself.

What caused this? Just as in the time of Henry VIII, the culprit was a new, disruptive technology.

This time, it was social media — a tool that brought billions of people into the global conversation, at nearly the velocity of human thought itself. And just as in the time of Henry VIII, the speed and scale of the resulting disruption led people to question everything: Were our authorities trustworthy? Were our moral certainties really certain? Or were these too merely a puff of incense?

Given the obvious parallels of our current moment to the era that followed the printing press, you might be wondering: Are we headed for another 200 years of bloody conflict?

Nah — it definitely won’t be that long! Thanks to our new technologies, the pace of change today is so much faster than it was in the 16th century. Worst case scenario, we should expect the next earth-shattering conflict to happen over a particularly intense three-day weekend. It’ll suck, but at least it won’t last two centuries!

I’m kidding. I don’t think we will necessarily or automatically follow that same trajectory. But what is definitely happening just like it did before is this: The old tyrants of supposed knowledge that are experiencing institutional decay, these venerated institutions like our universities or “the press,” are increasingly rejecting free speech. This is precisely to be expected. It’s a natural force.

Why?

Because free speech has a way of shining a bright light on that decay. Because free speech is an eternally radical idea. And because free speech is the dread of tyrants.

The reason why institutional decay is not as big of an issue with, say, corporations, is that corporations that decay, become bloated, and lose their focus eventually go bankrupt and cease to exist — leaving other, newer corporations to take their place. Journalism may also not struggle with this too much. Since they have to rely on public trust in order to be a successful newspaper or network, they can’t isolate themselves from decay very well or for very long.

However, this problem is much harder to fix in institutions that are functionally immortal, like Yale or Harvard. Part of the reason for it is that their endowments, which are the size of many major foreign countries’ GDP, insulate them from any urgent need to change.

But make no bones about it: What we are facing today in America is to a large degree a problem of institutional decay, and the fact that many members of those institutions — particularly higher education — are trying to blame anyone else or come to any other conclusion. You might recall an early ERI post where I discuss what I call “the silver spoon rule”: It can never, ever, ever be elite higher education’s own fault (even when it is). That’s what’s happening right now.

Here, I have to be fair to our modern institutions, just like I tried to be fair-ish to Henry VII. The disruption we’re experiencing now is profound, and it’s accelerating. It’s tempting to want to stop it. To clamp down. To apply a tourniquet to the flow of information. To stanch the questioning of institutions. To cut off challenges to authority by labeling them dangerous and destabilizing.

This is a perfectly predictable impulse when faced with the eternally radical idea — even when it’s stated as simply as “everyone is entitled to their opinion.” It’s why Henry VIII tried to ban all printing presses that he didn't control. (I always imagine him shouting to the heavens, “Stop calling me fat and randy!”)

Disruption and loss of control always feels scary. It also brings about wacky ideas and often ushers in chaotic periods of epistemic anarchy. But what often lies on the other side of that chaos is extraordinary progress.

After the chaos of the printing press, we got the Enlightenment. We got the scientific revolution. We got the world's first large-scale democratic republic — which despite the predictions of even many of its Founders, is celebrating its 250th birthday next year.

The lesson? When you add millions — or billions — of eyes and minds to the problems of the world, the result is not just noise, but incredible breakthroughs.

What’s happening now is why the free and open exchange of ideas will always be radical. Yes, what the future is going to look like seems a lot less clear. Yes, we’re living through a crisis of authority. Yes, we’re questioning the legitimacy and necessity of our institutions. But those institutions and authorities don't deserve our blind loyalty. And they showed their cards when they went after the eternally radical idea — when they answered “the problem” of free speech with new speech codes, byzantine taboos, and cancellation campaigns.

The institutions and individuals that stand the test of this era will be those who show integrity and principle, those who tell the truth even when it’s inconvenient or unpopular. That’s what happened in the Enlightenment with figures like Voltaire and Diderot, Smith and Hume, Franklin and Madison. It’s also what we’re seeing now on platforms like Substack, where individuals and institutions with integrity and courage are finding new ways to lead.

I’m proud to say that FIRE is one of those institutions. We've had the courage to be non-partisan in a partisan world. Through all the tumult, we’ve defended free speech, free inquiry, and the free press for all — even at the cost of some uncomfortable Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.

Democratic principles become even more essential during times of crisis, not less. History shows us that these principles are not luxuries. No, they are the foundations of a successful and dynamic society. The Enlightenment didn’t feel like the Enlightenment when it started. To most people, it probably felt like blasphemy, heresy, and chaos. And to Henry VIII, it probably felt like quite a bit of nasty gossiping.

But freedom always feels a little scary. Free speech is the eternally radical idea, after all.

Here’s a cognitive hack I like to teach my kids: you can reconceptualize fear as excitement. And remember, I have a well-documented history of dealing with anxiety. I know what I’m talking about here. So while I don’t blame anyone for feeling anxious right now, I also hope they feel exhilarated. What’s happening in this moment is thrilling: It is the chance to reexamine everything we thought we knew. (By the way, my new favorite book on this topic, “Unwinding Anxiety — New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind” by Dr. Judson Brewer is great, and I’ll probably be writing more about it soon.)

Freedom of speech is radical in every generation, and it is opposed by those in power every generation — but it’s a necessary precondition to understanding the world as it really is.

You don't stand a chance without it.

When this period is over, the institutions and individuals who showed courage and integrity will be the ones that will help us rebuild a world where authority has earned our respect rather than simply inherited or coerced it. And as history has shown, what comes next might just be a future of brilliance, achievement, and prosperity. It might make the difference — socially, politically, intellectually, philosophically — between HenryVIII’s time and today seem like nothing in comparison.

And as long as people like those honored by the Kirk Center (whom I count myself as privileged to be among) keep fighting; as long as my dear colleagues at FIRE keep fighting; as long as true free speech heroes like Nadine Strossen keep fighting; and as long as all of you ERI readers and FIRE supporters keep fighting, it will be a future of freedom as well.

I hope you will all stay eternally radical.

SHOT FOR THE ROAD

As I mentioned above, it was a real treat to be introduced by my former FIRE colleague Luke Sheahan, who is brilliant and accomplished in his own right, and who I’m very proud to have hired all those years ago. Here are his complete remarks, which I think you’ll appreciate — though probably nowhere near as much as I did.