Free speech expert Jonathan Turley believes America is in the midst of its “most dangerous” anti-free speech era, calling President Joe Biden the “most anti-free speech president since John Adams.”
Listen to the latest episode of “Quick Start” 👇
Turley, a George Washington University law professor and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” told CBN News that the assaults on free expression today are uniquely troubling. He cited the communications and educational dominance he sees in media and other spheres.
“We’ve had these periods of anti-free speech movements before, but this is the most dangerous,” he said. “And the reason is because we’ve never seen an alliance like this, where the government, corporations, academia, and the media joined together in this attack on free speech.”
Turley lamented newspaper columns he said frame the First Amendment as being “out of control,” and highlighted what he sees as a movement among some academics to “rewrite the First Amendment.”
“What we’re seeing is, perhaps, I think, arguably the most dangerous anti-free speech movement in our history,” he reiterated. “We cannot assume that, even though we’ve gotten through all of the periods discussed in [my book “The Indispensable Right“], that we will get through this one.”
Turley offered a candid response when asked to weigh in on long-held perspectives from many conservatives and Christians that Hollywood, media, and universities hold a bias against right-of-center views.
“I think it is most certainly true,” he said. “I have a long chapter on higher education and it details how much we’ve lost. I would never have imagined when I started teaching three decades ago that higher education would be this intolerant.”
Turley charged that “universities have largely purged conservatives, Republicans, libertarians,” and that many faculties fail to employ many — if any — people who subscribe to these views.
The central problem with higher education today, Turley said, is its penchant to treat “free speech as harmful.” Tragically, he said this positioning has overtaken campuses, pushing free expression to the wayside.
“We have raised a generation of speechphobics,” Turley said. “Students who are taught since they were very young to fear free speech — that they are … right to be triggered when they hear opposing views.”
Looking back at the roots of the First Amendment, Turley said the framers and those who influenced its writing saw free speech in a very specific light.
“[Many believed] free speech was a natural right, something that you got from God,” he said. “It was not something that the government bestowed upon you. It was not something that was granted to you because it helps make for better government.”
Turley continued, “It was something that belonged to you as a human being — that you could not be truly and fully human without being able to speak freely.”
The academic said this was an incredible admission and moment, but too soon the courts started to take a different view on free speech, sparking moments and phases comprised of blatant assaults on its tenets.
He’s hoping “The Indispensable Right” helps reframe the discussion around free speech.
“What the book tries to do is it tells our story through the personalities and periods that help define free speech,” Turley said. “And some of these characters are really quite vivid. They are our heroes, even though they tend to be people on the edges of our political system.”
He continued, “And these are just magnificently unreasonable people that put their lives at risk to say what they had to say.”
Ultimately, despite so much danger and dysfunction surrounding free speech, Turley said he has hope.
“I am optimistic, and here’s why: there’s a certain optimism that comes from believing that free speech is a natural right,” he said. “If you believe that free speech is part of being human, that it’s a God-given right, that it’s what completes us as humans, then you are optimistic.”
Turley said this hope persists despite his belief Biden is the “most anti-free speech president since John Adams.”
“This administration has created a horrific, massive censorship system,” he said. “But, even with all that, they can succeed in diminishing our appetite for free speech, but they can’t really take away our taste for it. Because if you believe it’s a natural right, it’s in our DNA, you really can’t extinguish it any more than you can distinguish faith.”
Watch above for more from Turley.
***As the number of voices facing big-tech censorship continues to grow, please sign up for Faithwire’s daily newsletter and download the CBN News app, invented by our parent company, to stay up-to-date with the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective.***