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Tara, before we get into the details of your research on the First Amendment and Freeze Beach and so on, give us some idea of how you got into philosophy and how in God's name you're able to talk about Ayn Rand in a real university, she's been kind of taboo there for a long time. I got interested in philosophy in late high school college. I had always been interested in law and politics and history in that area and then in at the University of Virginia, where I was an undergrad, as I was taking some philosophy classes and some political science classes, even their theoretical ones, I didn't find the political theory government courses. I didn't find as deep as probing and as rewarding as the philosophy courses. So I got more interested in philosophy. I ended up double majoring. I had a professor who was very good as a professor in some political and legal courses. I would go talk to him in his hours one day dawned on me. I could do what he does for a living. I want to work on these issues. I want to figure out the answers. So I was just very curious about real fundamental questions and thus developed my interest in having this kind of career. I was fortunate. This UT where I've been since '89, as you said, this was my first job out of grad school and it's just really worked out. I don't work exclusively on Ayn Rand. My perspective is very much influenced and coming from Rand's perspective, but I work on all sorts of issues, sometimes more directly on Rand herself. But reception has been okay. I mean, there are wrinkles and so on in terms of other academic reception. But fortunately, and I think appropriately, she's gained a much more respected hearing in the last few decades within the academy, within academic philosophy and within other fields for good reason. And so I've been okay. Well, what is that good reason? Can you give us a short defense of not agreeing with Ayn Rand? We don't have to go that far, but just you know, why you should take your seriously reader material and so on. I guess I would highlight a couple of things. She takes philosophy dead seriously. And I think it's actually one of the things that turned some people off. She takes it very seriously. She uses strong language. It's not the kind of measured language we're accustomed to in academic journals. Okay. So, you know, she'll be emotional. She will, you know, express, if you see her tapes of her lectures and things, she cares. And she lets on, but she gives reason. And I mean, this is what's, and this is what warrants the attention. It's, she gives reasons, she explains, she's happy to entertain objections and so on. She's not happy to entertain insults as sometimes people leveled at her. But I think in part, in part, because her style was very different and she didn't get an, she didn't get a PhD in philosophy. She was a novelist and saw herself as largely a novelist who wanted to develop these ideas more fully in order to have more credible characters, more credible plot development and so on. But, you know, she doesn't have the usual academic training. She doesn't speak in the usual academic way and her politics do not mesh with the dominant politics in the academy. So, for some of these reasons, I think, a lot of people just, oh, you can't take her seriously. This is pop. Her books, her novels sell a lot. Therefore, she couldn't possibly be serious as a thinker. And I think a lot of people have simply not done her the justice that they do to all sorts of views that they disagree with, which is read them, work to understand them, like really work to understand what she's saying. And then, you know, then try to refute, you know, make whatever arguments against what she says about this or that policy or point in historical philosophy or what have you. But again, largely, I think, well, that has been getting a lot better than it was 30 or 40 years ago, which is good as people do. Yeah. Well, one of the observations I make about identity politics, is it really the identity that's important or the politics? In the case of Rand, you know, she ticks a lot of the identity politics boxes. She's female. She's an immigrant. She's liberal on so many issues, pro-choice, for example, free speech, separation of church and state ticks most of those boxes. She's a member of a minority group, Jewish, although since October 7, that's not such a good thing anymore here in the West. But talk about that later. But the one thing seems to trump all of those, that is to say she's a free market capitalist defender. Yeah. No, I mean, that's definitely a source of hostility. But, you know, in some ways, I'm less interested in what are the psychologies of the people who dismiss her or don't want to take her seriously. And, you know, part of what we're doing in the book, these essays, they're mostly essays by me, as well as a couple of other, I think, excellent essays by Ankar Ghatay, a philosopher, and by Gregory Samiri, a philosopher, as well as a roundtable discussion moderated by Elan Giorno. We're trying to just call attention to an application of her ideas, to some contemporary free speech, first amendment, freedom of religion, controversies, as well as the abiding principles, the kind of principles that Madison, you quoted him at the beginning, right? That Madison and Jefferson and the founders were concerned with. So it's, let's look at what these ideas really mean. Let's look at the first amendment. And the book is not just on free speech. It's deliberately on the first amendment because a really important idea, sort of that Rand led me to appreciate, is that the first amendment is about intellectual freedom more broadly, more deeply than just freedom of speech. It refers to freedom of religion and freedom of the press and of petition and of assembly. And what these things all have in common, because even assembly seems kind of physical. Well, in those days, when our constitution was written, you had to assemble to really be able to organize ideas. You didn't have an internet, you couldn't have a certain kind of campaign that you can today. But the uniting idea of the first amendment is intellectual freedom. Rand was a great champion of individual freedom, intellectual and material. So free minds and free markets. You know, your life is yours as long as you're not infringing on others rights. So again, we're kind of in this book where there aren't essays on Rand per se, but informed by her view, I have pieces on religious exemptions, religious freedom issue or the basis for religion, for religious freedom, even if you're an atheist, you know, as I am as Rand was, right? But the case for religious freedom as simply part of intellectual freedom. So yeah. And her philosophy of objectivism is making the case that there are objective moral values. For example, free speech is an objective moral value. We can defend it. Now, whenever you try to do this, because I try to do this using science, overlapping facts and values and deriving certain values as being fact based and so on it, you get fumes wall thrown up there, right? No is a no art derived from and is the naturalistic fallacy and so on. You deal with that through either objectivism or any other. Well, in a very natural way, I think. And again, the object just for people who may not be familiar who are listening, a standard position that many people take is facts, values, very different kinds of things. You know, we can know that the earth is in flat. We can know that water is age two. Oh, those are facts. But oh, once you're calling things good or bad, right or wrong, that's a completely different realm and reason can't speak to us there. Now, I mean, not everybody thinks that by any stretch, but many people will think that and say that. I mean, one thing I do in terms of just trying to address that concern is point to natural, a natural phenomenon that phenomenon of health for living organisms. Human beings, animals, your pets, other animals, plants, they have needs. And on the basis of figuring out what needs the dog has or the child has, we figure out what we should do, right? Well, you know, if Johnny's going to get the nutrition that he needs or if the basil plant or the tomato plant is going to survive the really dry, hot summer in Austin, it has certain needs. On the basis of those needs, we can figure out the should, what is good for it, what is bad for it. We do this in the health areas. And again, you can talk about the different kinds of species or different, but I mean, just think about it with animals. Think about it with human physical health. We derive odds from is is, so to speak, or value judgments, value conclusions from facts all the time. Now, it's not that we can deduce, you know, deductive reasoning alone won't give us a value out of a set of facts. But if you have certain ends or goals, that's an if, right? But if you want the plant to survive, then you need to water it on this basis. You know, if you want to be healthy, if you want to have a good long life, you need to have this kind of diet and this kind of exercise and so on. If you want the car to run well, you need to get the oil changed at certain intervals and things like that. So it shouldn't, it, it needn't be mysterious or it need, we needn't pretend, we shouldn't pretend that it's mysterious. Again, you can, the fact that we cannot deduce values from facts doesn't mean that we cannot induce them when we have certain ends. So there's a whole, you know, moral philosophy to go down that road. Oh, I love all that stuff. No, I mean, I like using empirical examples. For example, would you rather live in South Korea or North Korea? Well, in terms of health, everybody would go, Oh, yeah, of course, South Korea is better. They make more money. They have better diets. They're two and a half inches taller on average than North Koreans. Well, wouldn't it be legitimate to say they also want to be free? In the same way they want to be healthy, they want to have more choice and options than people in North Korea. And it's not just that they want to be free. It's the fact that they, I mean, the different, it's not even like, Oh, they're more free than the North Koreans, which would imply that for the North, I'm sorry, yeah, that the North Koreans have some free. I mean, those people are not free. And it is the very fact that the South Koreans are free that leads to their better, you know, that allows that enables and facilitates their greater standards. It's not just some weird accident, you know, or maybe, you know, a certain latitude, it's like, it's no, it's the man made condition of here, we're going to respect freedom. And even when that's not done perfectly, the difference that it makes in material wellbeing is tremendous. And that's part of what's challenged and choked when you restrict intellectual freedom. You know, it's not just, Oh, we won't have the same standard of living. If you impose these taxes or these minimum wage laws, you impose laws restricting what people may say, the research they can publish, the ideas they can bat around about whatever the issue about COVID, about gender identity, about genetically modified, right? Once you start to own up, but that's off limits, you can't make that argument, you can adopt that position. Then you're also constricting all of the benefits, I mean, you're limiting your ability to find truth, to expand knowledge and with it, the ability to make the products that knowledge enables us to make the products, the services to come up with these technologies that allow us to talk and so on. Yeah. And that really also, that just gets back again to how intellectual freedom is at the foundational level of the material freedom. Yeah. Such that we can say slavery is objectively, morally, absolutely wrong. In the way Lincoln argued, as I would not be a slave, I would not be a slave owner. It's just the principle of interchangeable perspectives. Can you generalize a moral principle and flip it? And if you can't, then there's something wrong with the moral principle. Yeah. And I mean, what Rand emphasizes, it's in the nature of human being. What we have in common makes us commonly, the requirement of freedom is a requirement of man's nature, where rational beings, we survive by the use of reason, the use of reason, the actual use of your reasoning faculty depends on freedom. That's the same for every human being. Now, again, we can talk about, okay, there are people who are mentally defective, severely limited and so on. But I mean, basically that, and it is because we are the same in nature and by nature, that our entitlement to our own lives, your life is as much yours, Michael, as mine is mine, as his is, you know, whoever the person might be. And we need to respect that. And it is by respecting that, that we all have the best lives, that we can all, in effect, contribute in ways that are most beneficial to all of us, that I can have the win-win relationships, because if that guy's free to think and act on his judgment, now, some people have stupid thoughts, some people have bad judgment, and some people do not very productive things and so on. But it's only when they are free that they're able, in effect, to bring their best to the table that I have them to exchange with and take advantage of. So it's in our interest, our personal self-interest to respect the freedom of others, the rights of others, to try to persuade them when we think they're wrong, but not go for the guns, not try to, oh, I'm just going to coerce you, because I think you're wrong. You know, I think what you're saying is... So the defense of rights can be made on an objective, using reason on an objective value system. So you would disagree then with Jeremy Bentham's famous line about, you know, rights is nonsense and natural rights is nonsense on steel. Yes, to put it mildly, I would disagree with that. I think Mr. Bentham is nonsense on steel at times. Yeah, I agree. But what about conflicting rights issues? On abortion, say, the rights of the fetus to live, the rights of the mother to choose, maybe we can't derive the correct answer. Maybe there's two answers and we have a political system that just works it out as time goes on and one's in power and the other's in power. Well, I mean, all the political system, I suppose, can't work it out in a literal sense. Like, a political system will come to some sorts of compromises and conclusions, whether they're compromises or not, but that doesn't make that doesn't create what our actual rights are. I mean, legal rights are piggyback in a certain sense on moral rights. There are certain moral rights and this is certainly Rand's view in my view. There are certain rights, certain moral rights that we have regardless of what any, excuse me, goddamn legal system says or recognizes. There are rights that people that blacks in South Africa had even during apartheid. Now, the apartheid government did not recognize that, but they were not recognizing a fact that predates, oh, some constitution now saying you have these rights. Okay. Rights, actual rights that individuals possess, hands conflict, we can have conflicting ideas about what our rights are. And one of us can be correct and one of us can be incorrect and we may both be incorrect. But the whole point and purpose of the concept of rights is to, in effect, resolve conflicts. When we have differences like, no, that's my property. That's my tree. No, that's mine. We come up with this concept of rights to try to understand what are actually the spheres of his freedom or her freedom to control. If you then, I mean, so rights are a conflict resolving device. No, no, this is mine. You're going to have to talk me out of it, but you can't just help yourself to it, right? If we then turn around and accept the idea, but rights, of course, themselves can conflict, well, then we're defeating the whole point of having rights in the first place. I actually have an essay on this on conflicts of rights and how to, and I mean, obviously, people seem to have conflicting rights often because they demand, well, I have a right to a welfare payment, well, I have a right to my property. So people make demands, but those demands are not all justified. And that's what a theory of rights will try to sort out. Yeah. Let me get in the first amendment realm with people claiming, well, my right to speak, but when it's on your property, like, no, I don't have a right. I don't have that right. I have a right to speak on my property or on the property that I rent because somebody wanted to freely rent me their auditorium this evening to give this lecture or whatever it might be. I have a right to speak on your show. If you invite me, I can't just, you're going to hear me out. We're going to make you, and I've got any friends behind me, or, you know, New York Times, you're going to publish my letter or journal of philosophy. You're going to publish my articles. I wish, not really, but yeah, I can impose myself just because I desire certain things, even if what I desire is, are good things to desire. It doesn't give me a right to impose on them. Okay. How do you think about this issue ripped off the headlines here? Trans rights are human rights. Okay. I'm on board with that. I don't think trans people should be fired or discriminated against by the government or whatever. But on the other hand, male to female trans who have already gone through puberty, want to compete in women's sports, I say no, because women have rights to compete in their own divisions in sports. They fought for that for 50 years, and that would be wrong. So there you have conflicting rights. Somebody has, you can't have everything. How would you deal with that issue? Well, you can't please everybody, right? Yeah. So let's slow down on this one. I mean, I need to slow myself down on this one. I know it's a tricky one. I didn't have a right. Let's say I want to compete in a certain sport, and I'm a woman. I don't have a right that there be leagues, you know, so just starting at a very basic level. I do not have a right that anybody else provides me with a league in which I'm able to compete only against this kind of person or only against that kind of person. It is for the individuals, you know, be they big organizations, international, national, region, whatever. If certain people want to join together and establish leagues and these people say this is only for women, or this is only for gay women, or this is only for trans people, or we're going to, we're going to be for women, people who are women at birth, okay? Or it is up to the owners and operators of various leagues to set up whatever kind of leagues they want. I mean, part of what gets messy here and worse than messy is when you have the government involved or the government passing laws and saying, well, you must do this or you're a state school. So you have to do that, right? That's, that's when a lot of the real problems arise. But, and you see the same thing with drug testing. I mean, before the whole trans issue in the last few years, there was a lot of talk about, well, different athletes sometimes take performance enhancing drugs. Should that be allowed in the Olympics or racing, cycling or in Major League Baseball or whatever? And, you know, a proposal that seems reasonable is different leagues can say what they're doing and what their policies are. And if some people, I mean, some people object, it should be pure. You shouldn't have any of these drugs. Okay, then maybe, maybe there's enough people to have a market for those kinds of leagues. We strictly police everybody, no drugs. Others think, you know, a little performance enhancement, a lot of performance enhancement, how you do that, that's part of the skill, right? Some people say, and they want to see that. So you can have leagues that do that. But, again, just by birth or by, I want to play basketball with my kind of people. All right, then I should try to start up a league and get money to support that kind of thing. But I can't demand, you know, state of Texas or University of Texas or NCAA or anybody give me, you know, give me what I want. I don't have that. I mean, it's another form of that kind of imposition on others' freedom to do what they want. But voluntarily have whatever league you want. Yeah, that's that's a great answer. Yeah, these edge cases and conflicting cases always bring out a deeper dive into the principles. Like you mentioned, the masterpiece cake shop versus the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. In one of the. Yeah, I mean, yeah, because, well, let's just go over that one. Just give us the details of what the legal case was and I forget the details. But I'm sure the time was that it was that gay couple that went to yeah, there were no there have been and I'm sure most listeners will recognize in the last 10 or 15 years, I mean, even 15 years now, there have been several cases where a gay couple, there was basically a conflict between a gay couple who wanted some sort of service, let's say for a wedding, a wedding cake or of, you know, a filming of photography or floral arrangements or wedding planning from some company. And that company in these many, I mean, there's a California cake, I think it was California, there's a Colorado case is the masterpiece. The company, even if it was just a small mom and pop shop, said, no, because of our, and it was usually because of our religious convictions, we don't want to foster in any way that kind of relation, you know, you can buy cookies in my shop, you can, you know, I'll make floral arrangements for various things, but not for your wet and talk. So there've been a series of these kinds of cases and they seemingly pose a conflict. And I think there's a certain kind of conflict they do pose within our clashing within the legal system and the regime that we've set up because what the proprietors of the relevant businesses will argue is, this is my freedom of religion, or sometimes they will argue it's my freedom of speech. I don't want to in effect speak on behalf of gay weddings, you know, I might have no animus against gay people, but I don't want to foster gay marriage. Okay. So this is the first amendment, freedom of religion and or freedom of speech claim, they will say. And well, even more, just one more small piece on that, the cake maker, if I recall, describe what he did is as a form of artistic expression, is I'm putting my love and creativity into this cake. And artists don't feel it for that. I just, I don't want to do it. That's why I say sometimes it's my religious freedom. Sometimes it's my free speech, expressive freedom. Like I'm an artist here. And artistic freedom is usually thought of as under free speech, right? So they make one or both either religion or expression speech or both, but it's a first amendment claim. But then you've got the couple that wanted to get their cake there, their flowers or videography there saying, look, the way the 14th amendment, the 14th amendment equal protection of the laws, the way that has been interpreted for a long time now in the United States. So the way that law has been interpreted says, you may not discriminate businesses may not discriminate against gays. So there, thus, we seem to have this conflict between the first amendment and the 14th amendment. Now, in fact, I think the conflict is between a certain interpretation of the 14th amendment, which says, thou shalt not, in fact, even private businesses, shall not protect, I'm sorry, shall not discriminate against gays on the basis of their being gay. Now, I have a very unpopular position on that. I think that's a mistaken interpretation of equal protection. I say that as a gay woman. I don't like being discriminated against, but I have no right to make you do business with me if you don't want to. And the fact that I'm gay or I want to have a gay wedding doesn't change that. So we have set up a conflict, unfortunately, but I think it's by having this bad interpretation of the 14th amendment, which has been understood to say, even private individuals may not associate, right, we're denying the freedom of association of, let's say, the religious bakers, okay, then I want to associate with you, I don't think they should have to. And that's not a, like, also, by not, you know, you can't buy your cake there. You can try to buy somebody else and somebody else will tell you, and you might be frustrated, but I don't have a right that somebody give me the services that I want. Okay, how about restaurants refusing to serve blacks? I think there was, so again, I am against anti-discrimination laws. I think there are and have been historically some limited circumstances in which, for instance, to try to get out of the Jim Crow South and so on, a period of transition in which it was probably appropriate for the government to be more heavy-handed than would normally be appropriate. But I don't think it's compatible with freedom of trade or freedom of association or freedom to dictate to people who they have to deal with. Now, again, apart from some extraordinary circumstances that can't, but, I mean, extraordinary circumstances are by their nature relative, I mean, they're temporary. They're not forever. So. And would it be appropriate for you as a gay woman who were offended by being turned down by the cake baker or restaurant or whatever to go on Yelp and leave a, you know, a negative, not just a negative review, but say, "I just want to let everybody know," and then you go on Twitter and social media and go, "These people are bigots right there." That company right there. Is that your free speech? Well, okay. I certainly have a right to try to publish, like, if I object to something that a company does, whether they do it to me, whether they do it to me because I'm gay, whether they do it because of a certain policy they take on some other political issue and I don't like it, I have the right to not do business with them and to encourage others to not do business with them, to encourage boycotts or whatever. Now, I think people sometimes do this in irresponsible ways or overwrought ways and we see some of this with some cancel culture, but you certainly have a right to, again, to say, "Hey, I had a really bad experience there. Here's why I think it was a bad experience and why I think you shouldn't deal with them." And then you can make up your mind about how serious an offense that was. In your scale of values, is that a really serious thing? Hey Amazon Prime members, why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon Fresh? Shop Prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favorites. Plus, save 10% on Amazon brands, like our new brand Amazon Saver, 365 by Whole Foods Market, a plenty and more. Come back for new deals rotating every week. Don't miss out on savings. Shop Prime exclusive deals at Amazon Fresh. Select varieties. That was horrible of them or simply. I mean, so again, I'm not sympathetic with bigotry, but I'm not sure that it would be fair to call the bakers "bigots." They have different views about marriage than I do. I think they're sorely mistaken in their views of religion to begin with, to believe in a God, and then to believe that they get their morality. I mean, I think they're making a lot of bad, self-destructive mistakes, but they have every right to make them. I don't think that makes them bigots exactly. I think many of them sincerely believe what they believe. I think mistakenly believe what they believe, but so the bigots language, I wouldn't reach for the bigots. I mean, I just don't think that's justified in a lot of cases, but you can say what you think is wrong with the policies of somebody, including some private business owner, whatever the policies might be about gay people, about their positions on immigration or taxes or whatever the issue might be. Yeah. Well, if I recall, I think the gay couple didn't go to another baker on purpose. I think it was a test case to try to bring it to some of these are. I mean, they are often test cases, and that one was ultimately decided just on on very narrow technical grounds about some remark that a guy at the Colorado State Commission, the relevant commission had made, but yeah, no, often they are test cases. All right. Let's hit some of the others you have a chapter on the difference or similarities between speech and expression. I recall the Supreme Court voted on that the burning the American flag is a form of expressive speech, and that's allowed, but then there are other instances where it's not the same. So, right, the essay is on the difference between speech and action. And in some ways, I think this is a hard issue and one that's often confused in people's minds, and we speak of things at times. We use this term sometimes in symbolic speech and burning the flag, which you raise, is a good example of that. That is that something that people will often say is symbolic speech. Or a few years ago, some of you may remember in the NFL, a quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, I think was how you say, or Kaepernick, right? Refusing to sort of stand at the playing of the national anthem before games, and he would kneel instead, and people said, well, that's symbolic expression. And many other players joined him. Even the baking of the cake while this is symbolic speech and so on. So, we apply that term, and kindred terms often. Rand was quite firm in the view, and I think she was right, that it's important to distinguish clearly speech and action, because it's important to distinguish persuasion from coercion. When we're in the realm of speaking with one another, even when we disagree vehemently, and when I say things that you find offensive and you do the same, we're in the realm of speaking, of trying to persuade, and nothing that I say can literally twist your arm. You've got to hear what I say and think, oh, to have your mind changed, you've got to do some thinking about what I'm saying to change your mind, right? I think of a famous line from Thomas Jefferson, and I'm going to butcher the line, but it's something, and he was talking about religious freedom, but the point applies more broadly to freedom of speech, intellectual freedom. So, he was speaking specifically of religious freedom here, but he said something like, it does me no injury, no injury, if my neighbor says there are 20 gods or no God, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. What another person says, and again, you can call it expression, you can call it, well, when it's expression, whether they're praying, what another person believes, and even what he says, and even if he's a really persuasive speaker, right, that can't pick my pocket, that doesn't pick my pocket. When I go for the guns, well, so again, it's a difference between speech and action, between trying to persuade, but leaving you free to make up your own mind and just coercing you. I'm going to make you. I'm going to shut you up. I'm going to take away that magazine that you published because we don't like what it publishes, right? Well, now, I'm using coercion against you. I'm using force. I'm picking your pocket. I'm breaking your leg to use the Jefferson metaphor there, right? So, there's a fundamental difference in kind between speech and action, because there's a fundamental difference in kind between coercing a person, forcing him or not letting him do something, and trying to persuade him, and you might succeed, you might fail. But when the government imposes these laws that say, thou shalt not say this, or you must say that, or you must associate with him, now it's infringing on our freedom of action. But it's really important that we, in effect, police the borders between those two speech in action, because if you start bleeding them all together, as increasingly happens, then when the Charlie Hebdo magazine, as in France, several years ago, publishes something that some people find offensive, and their response to that is machine guns and bullets. Well, if we've just leveled, well, speech is action and action is speech, then, well, they're just defending themselves against this speech, and, you know, words wound, we use these metaphors as if they're literally true, and then you have no objection to the fact that they got out the guns, and people are dead as a result. That's different from, I'm very offended, I'm very hurt, I'm very, you know, I'm very hurt, let's say, but not my freedom of action is impinged. So, that's a really important difference. So, yeah, there is one essay, particularly on the difference between speech and action. Yeah, so many interesting test cases there. Several examples come to mind. The Book of Mormon, not the actual Book of Mormon, but the, but the, the musical, the play musical was hilarious, and, you know, the Mormon church took out ads in the play bill for the, for the play. Right, I was probably smart of them too. It's like, maybe a few people get interested in that Mormonism thing. So, maybe it was a, you know, a good, but there was another one on those tests. I don't think this became a legal thing, but when Madonna's video came out, the, like, a virgin video, I think it was, Catholic church was offended. I think she was using crosses in sexual ways or something like that. That would certainly be just free expression as a form of speech, because it's a musical. All right, like, I am not for a repression of offensive speech, you know, or even so-called hate speech. And I mean, one problem is just one problem. It's not even the fundamental, but what is offensive is in the ear of the offended, right? What you find offensive, I find, I find funny. I mean, offensive is an inherently relative concept, right? What is offensive depends on the person, just as what is funny depends on the, the listener, what is delicious, depends. So, it is an inherently non, non-objective basis for making laws, okay? And obviously, the people who are saying the offensive things, they may not think it's offensive at all, at least some of them might not think it's offensive at all. But the even deeper problem is, I don't, being offended doesn't restrict my freedom of action. So again, I don't have the right that other people maintain the sort of environment that terrifies most conducive, most comfortable. It's like, who do I left me boss over you and everybody else? No, no, you will tell this kind of joke and not that one. And you will say this kind of thing and take that kind of, you know, as long as you're leaving me free to lead my own life. Now, I might say, you know, you're a creep and all sorts of ways and I'm not going to have anything further to deal with you because you espouse those offensive views, which can be deeply offensive and, you know, deeply emotionally upsetting to absolutely, but I don't have the right to live. You have a couple quotes here from your book, one from Tony Morrison, oppressive language does more than represent violence. It is violence. And then you have one from the Chronicle of Higher Education. The demarcation between words and actions is blurred. A psychologist and activist argue that language itself can be a form of violence. There, I think they're talking about some studies that find people that are offended by speech actually have physical, I don't know, discomfort or anxiety. They really are hurt. Yeah, yeah. So, right. I mean, what you're pointing to and actually gives me occasion to make perhaps a useful point. But, and I alluded to this quickly a couple of minutes ago. Yeah, I think, you know, there are the rhetoric with which we speak of freedom of speech and speech issues and intellectual freedom more broadly. The rhetoric includes a lot of catchy terms and metaphors, and we have to be careful to understand they are metaphor, like words wound, but not literally, not literally, that doesn't, in no way mean to underestimate or minimize the severe hurt of being exposed, particularly in certain circumstances where it's hard to get away from what might be being said to you directly to demean you and so on. And I, so this is the perhaps useful caveat, I guess. I think there can be circumstances in which now what you are doing is harassing this person. Now what you are doing is so intrusive that it is interfering with that person's freedom of action. All right. I mean, if they're in a, if you're subjecting them to a certain environment, like, let's say in the workplace, some, I think there is such a thing as office harassment or imposing emotional, you know, deliberately imposing emotional duress on a person, and our legal system will protect you against that kind of thing. And that I think is legit, right? Now, again, what I object to is the expansion and further expansion of what qualifies as, oh, now you're infringing on my rights or my freedom, okay? But I don't think that that could never happen. I think it does happen in some circumstances if you literally can't, truly can't get away from it because of the conditions around you. And again, we'd want to be a lot more careful about what those conditions are. But yeah, I'm not, there is such a thing as deliberate imposition of, and I forget some of the legal terms here, but emotional duress or distress, such that for any normal person, it would impair their ability to go about their own lives freely. Yeah, you have no right to do that, okay? But that's very different from I write something you find really offensive. You know, I say something about gender that you think is really offensive. That's sorry. Yeah. But okay, again, these test cases where there's overlap, say a corporation has policies about sexual harassment. Here's the rules to tell the guys and put them through training programs to make sure they get it. And we've all done these, you know, here are the things you should not say to women, you know, that are, you know, have sexual innuendo. Okay, that's all private, but, but women have taken their bosses and men and whatever to court when they're sexually harassed. So there, now you have the legal system, which is the public or government. Again, what I meant to be saying just now was that I think it is appropriate that the law does not allow certain things. Now, I'm not saying that the law, that the law shouldn't allow all the things that this private company or that private company puts into its policies, you know, the policies of a private company are for it to determine and then for people to decide, I want to work for that company. I don't want to work for that company. If that's their policy, they're not going to let me make this kind of joke or say, okay, that's all private. But I do think there is room for the government to the government, the law to recognize there are conditions, whether they be in a workplace or on a public street in which someone's being exposed in a way that they, again, broadly speaking, can't get away from to such a kind of insistent berating or threatening. You know, I'm not hurting you yet, but man, the threat just as we protect people against certain kinds of threats, which understandably interfere with their freedom of action. Now, he's scared. He hasn't touched me. He hasn't laid a hand on me, but he's been following there everywhere I go for the last three weeks, you know, and it's getting pretty damn creepy. Okay, you'd want a more technical term than creepy, right? I mean, just as the law should protect from that sort of thing, because it reasonably interferes with your freedom of action, the law should be able to interfere in certain limited circumstances. But again, the objection is we've expanded those circumstances in ways that I think, you know, beyond reason. Okay, more examples here. Pentagon papers, Afghanistan papers, WikiLeaks. Well, here, I mean, we are the government, so don't we have a right to know what the government, the people we've put into government are actually doing. They're lying to us. They're covering up. They're doing things that are unconstitutional, like torture and so on. We wouldn't know about it if it wasn't for these, you know, these brave people that posted these documents. On the other hand, then people can die because our enemies now know who our spies are or whatever. And so how do you think about those kind of issues? Oh boy. I say, oh boy, because I have some thoughts, which I'll share, of course. I haven't thought some of these through all that fully. Okay, so take that for what it's worth. There's a future essay for you. Go ahead and help my professor. No, definitely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I am very interested in writing some more on some of these issues. Okay, so the government is responsible for national security. I mean, just to go down that a little bit, right? And the government is, you know, the basic function of government is to protect our rights. And it's got to do everything necessary, but only what is necessary to do that. And that is going to involve its engagement in certain kinds of activities that would certainly not be permissible for the normal guy, the private citizen, the private organization to engage in. And secrecy of some of its activities can be crucial to the success of those activities. And those activities may themselves be absolutely legitimate law enforcement activities, legitimate, okay, big assumption. But if the laws themselves are legitimate and the foreign policy or the wars that are being waged are themselves legitimate, then there may well be aspects of those where it would compromise the efficacy, the potential efficacy of this mission, if everybody knew in advance when we were going to land, or even just a more local thing, an undercover cop mission or whatever that you call it, right? I mean, no, we have to keep certain information under wraps for a certain period, at least, so that the mission, which is itself justified, has a reasonable chance of success. So my point is, you know, we couldn't have, it would make no sense to have complete transparency of everything the government is doing in real time and so on. Okay. Does the government abuse that discretion? I think it often has abused that district. So on the one hand, I'm saying the government should have some discretion for sure about what it shares with us and when it shares with us. But I think you can put some conditions on that discretion. And I definitely think, and I think most people recognize this, our government, under all sorts of administrations, left, you know, Democrats, Republicans, and so on, for many decades, has often abused that authority. They do themselves no favors by doing so, and they do us no favors. They do us a disservice. They are going to be, you know, I said, the government should do everything necessary at only what's necessary. But when it abuses that authority, by covering things up so as, you know, to cover itself from dodgy actions that they shouldn't be engaged in, that makes us reasonably highly skeptical of the government saying, Oh, no, this is classified, this has got to be classified, right? From everything I read, the government overclassifies, you know, the classified. So, but the fact that they overdo it, that they abuse it doesn't mean there's no justification or that there's no important justification and basis for having them be able to keep certain things from us in certain time periods. And it is always, I mean, to state the obvious, it's always easier to say after the fact or after something has been disclosed. You see, they were lying to us. This should have been open all along. But, you know, you don't know how things are going to burn out until they do. So, but I guess I want to say here is the application of the proper principles of intellectual freedom, the application to some of these sorts of cases that you're raising, it's hard. It takes some serious thinking and more thinking again, in this case, more, you know, the Pentagon papers or what have you, more thinking than I've given it, but we need to recognize that like this, I need to think through a lot more. So, it's not that, oh, if you have the right understanding, or if you go along with Jefferson and Madison or Rand, then just all confusions or questions dissolve and it's easy street. No, the application of intellectual freedom to cases of national security or what the government should and shouldn't disclose, it takes some real doing to figure that out. I think it can be figured out. And I think there are good and right answers, but it takes some real work. But we need to have the open discussions about these issues so that we can figure out both the proper application in terms of government policy and so that we can figure out the truths about whatever the debated issues of the day vaccines or COVID or gender or the genetically, you know, GMOs. Right. Right. Well, yeah, in that Supreme Court case where the Supreme Court allowed the New York Times to publish Pentagon papers and essentially changed Daniel Ellsberg from an evil doer to a hero. But again, some of that's after the fact. If I can make a remark, because just thinking about press freedom and God knows I'm a big advocate of press freedom, but I think as with religious freedom, I think that an idea has developed in a lot of the public consciousness of favoritism for the press or favoritism for religion has what's required. And I think that's a serious mistake. So let's talk about the press for a minute. And I actually think there are lessons to be learned from what the First Amendment says about religious freedom is in religious freedom in particular. It talks about it has these two clauses, right? The government will, and again, I'm not getting the exact language, right? But the government will either establish nor interfere with the free exercise of, right? We're not going to establish any religion. We're not going to say this is the church religion, you know, the Anglican church of the state religion. We're not going to establish any religion, but nor are we going to interfere with the exercise of whatever the hell religion you want to practice. Okay. We need that same sort of separation, complete neutrality. When it comes to religious belief, we need that same in regard to what the press says in regard to what anybody says on any issue. We're not going to help it along. We're not going to subsidize it, which would be a form of establishment. I mean, one form of establishment is you declare this is the state religion. This is provda. This is toss. This is the state story and no other will be published, right? That's the interfering with the free exercise. No, but also if you suck, no, we're not going to outlaw others, but we're going to give a lot of money to these newspapers or these podcasters or these blog. We're not going to give money in effect. You're doing the same thing and in principle, you're doing the same thing. So I think we need that same sort of neutrality. When it comes to ideas, whether they're religious ideas, ideas in the media about all sorts of issues, the government should be hands off. But I think... (speaking in foreign language) Because a free press is an extremely valuable thing. You know, a genuinely free press and a vigorous objective press, which decreasingly we have, that can be tremendously valuable to society, but it doesn't give us the right to it and it doesn't give the government the authority to decide this is responsible press, no, you not so much. So we'll give you money or we'll respect your freedom, but not your freedom. Let the market of ideas sort that out and let people, individuals, perhaps be a little more responsible than a lot of us have been in recent decades about our consumption of news and our thinking about the news that we digest. Because I think what's happened in this, you know, the most recent years, all the understandable worries about quote misinformation, but again, you have to put it in quote, because what even counts as misinformation is itself debated, right? But what happens is people feel overwhelmed and say, okay, government sorted out for us. Government imposed some rules on the social media companies or on others that'll make them keep that bad nasty misinformation or as opposed to let me do my own damn thinking rather than just have this cognitive paternalism coming down from the government of, oh, they'll sort it all out. So I think, I mean, I think there's a lot to be said on that actually do have a new paper coming out in the journal in a few months on the whole some of the misinformation argument and debate. So God knows his point about, yeah. Yeah, when I was writing my Holocaust denial book book about Holocaust denial, I was amazed to find how many countries it's illegal to deny the Holocaust or revise it like Canada. Yeah, no, it's it's sad. And obviously that's not in any way a brief for Holocaust denial. But it's yeah, you know, Rand put it, I think this way, a gun is not an argument. And that's really a variation on what's going on here, you know, telling people you may not say that that doesn't change anybody's minds. Yeah, right. I mean, if I if I mute you, I press the mute button, that doesn't change your mind talking, thinking, if you want to think if you don't, okay, you don't. But that's what changes minds, right? Not cutting off your mic. You know, because if you cut off Galileo's mic, it doesn't change the the motion of the planets. All right, you cut off his mic, you can shut them up, but that doesn't make them wrong. And we're not going to find out was he wrong? Was he right? Did he have a point to what's going on? Unless we hear what they have to say. And then we can show what's wrong with what they have to say when they're doing Holocaust or so many things I want to ask you about. So international law, and let's say different moral values in different countries. So Islamic, some Islamic countries feel it is their right to oppress women, make them wear the veil and whatnot, or even female genital mutilation. Mind your own business Western countries, this is our right to practice our religious freedom here. And this is what we think is the best way for our society to live. Don't we have a moral obligation on objective moral values to try to do something to defend human rights that are, you know, being violated in other countries? There's a few different issues here. I think it is false of these regimes to say we have the right to completely decimate the rights of the women involved. It's like, no, there's no right to just trash, demolish the rights of those individuals. I mean, go back to something I was talking about earlier. Each individual by virtue of his nature, not by virtue of what country he was born in, either what geographic part of the globe or who happens to be the governors in this country or that country. That's not where you get your basic rights from. It's from your nature as a human being. So these women in Afghanistan or Iran or China or wherever, they have right. I mean, we all individuals have right. Now, should the West be saying so, yeah, I mean, we should stand up in that, but it is not the obligation of the West or the U.S. to defend, to go to war, for instance, to undertake violent means to defend the rights of everybody around the world. But we should not be engaged in any sort of cooperation, which with those who act on the premise that they have some sort of claim or authority or legitimacy in absolutely trampling people's rights. And it's a travesty for some of these regimes to present it as we have the right to impose these laws, which actually infringe on them. I mean, they have no clue of what rights are. And we shouldn't pretend that they do. So economic sanctions would be a legitimate way to deal with that. Oh, legitimate. Absolutely. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think so. But not war. Well, not sacrificing our, yeah, and I don't think we lose anything by sanctioning these nations and saying, we're not going to help you in any way. Okay, another topic, libel and slander. I'm just thinking about this today because I just posted a solo podcast episode and about to release a sub-stack text of it about Tucker Carlson's latest podcast episode with this guy named Darrell Cooper calls himself his historian. Tucker just called him this week, America's greatest historian, at least known, but should be taken seriously. He thinks Hitler was misunderstood, was a peacemaker, only wanted to have a, you know, Pox Europa, and it was Churchill. That was the real autocrat and war monger here. And he goes on and on about this stuff. And, you know, this is like classic historic Holocaust. Holocaust is not at all what we think it was and on and on. All right. Now, Tucker should be free to have anybody he wants on his podcast. He can have flat earthers and whatever he wants. Fine. But, and I should be free to say what in response. Okay, I debunked it, but I also called him a bullshitter, but I was careful to say in cognitive psychology circles, this is an actual term, bullshitter. A bullshitter is somebody who's different from a liar. A liar knows what the truth is and is purposely distorting it for their own reason. A bullshitter is just throwing shit at the system as Steve Bannon famously said, right? I don't know if it's true or not. Who cares? It doesn't matter. I'm just saying stuff just for the hell of it. So, I mean, that's up against the line. If I said, I think Tucker Carlson is an embezzler or, I don't know, a child molester or something, that would be libelous. I could be sued for that, right? So, where do you draw the line? How do you think about libel and slander? This will be frustrating, I'm sure, but that's another one. It's sort of in my pile to think about more carefully, but as the law is, and I understand good reasons for this, there is a difference between making a factual claim about another, I mean, there are qualifications that need to be put on all of this and there are questions that can reasonably be asked about what I'm about to say, but there's a difference between saying something like, there are cockroaches and mice all over the kitchen of your pizza place and your pizza is bad. Your pizza is too spicy or too bland or too chintzy on the mozzarella, whatever. But again, I'm trying to get out with that example is a fact he's an embezzler. Oh, now that's an actual verifiable claim, right? An embezzler? Okay, what's the evidence for that, right? Whereas the kind of evidence that's even relevant to is a dishonest creep or your pizza's lousy. The kind of evidence that's relevant to that is more, is less subject to objective proof, and that's what the law, as I understand that the law of libel and slander is trying to recognize that there is a difference there. Will there be some hard borderline cases? Yeah, I mean, in all things, there are, but that's not a reason to not distinguish the two to say we should protect it all or we should not protect any of it, right? I mean, there is a, like, you're saying I'm an embezzler, prove it. But if you can't, now you have taken a white people who believe that because you've been spreading this false rumor, and let's suppose it was a knowingly false rumor in this case, you've been spreading this about me. So people aren't dealing with me. I'm suffering materially as a result of your deliberate misrepresentation. Whereas when you give your opinion of the pizza place or you give your opinion, he's a jerk as a columnist or a television commentator. Don't waste your time with him. That's, that's readily understandable as your opinion, your, your estimate, your evaluation of him is this. People have all sorts of different evaluations of all sorts of different things. That doesn't take away. You know, you're saying he's a jerk. You can tell I'm getting on. There's so many things I'd like to pile on about Tucker Carlson. But, you know, he's a fool is a very different kind of claim about someone from he's an embezzler, or he harassed those women or much more verifiable kinds of claims. And I think that's what libel law is properly trying to get the difference. Yeah, okay, excitement to violence. Does my speech get people to act in a certain way? So they're the words that, you know, words are violence, not directly. But what about indirectly? I think there are circumstances in which the environment is such that saying certain things to this crowd in this moment in these circumstances, go get that damn abortion doctor. Here are the bricks. He gets home at 613 Hudson Street at about 715 every night. That's when he'll be like giving you all the specifics of how to carry out. Now, again, I'm just giving you one example here. But my point is to try to show that I do think there are circumstances in which you're saying it to these people in these conditions where you're kind of facilitating there. Yeah, it's imminent incitement of violence. Let's go do it now. And I'll help you do it. I'll give you the information you need. I'll give you the weapons you need or whatever. I think that can be. It's like, I was just talking. That doesn't seem a good enough. Like, no, you were more than just talking. That's very different from I advocate and I will write essays and so on that we should overthrow capitalism. That's not a direct or immediate threat to anybody's liberty. It's serious. I take ideas very seriously. I take theoretical and long term plans very seriously. But the entertaining of certain ideas, the putting them forth in pamphlets, the giving talks about like giving a lecture to those same people on why we should really overthrow this system and adopt this other system. That does not endanger anyone's freedom in the same way that the kind of abortion doctor scenario does. Now, again, will there sometimes be some tough cases? Yes. You know, a borderline is, I mean, there have been some that have gone to the courts. Let me also say, though, one of the things that's really important here, I think in drawing this line, is this going to be an infringement on others' rights? And it's not only the imminence of the danger because, and actually, Ankar Ghate, one of the contributors to the essay collection, was saying this in a different interview just the other day. And I thought he was making a very good point here. You can plan a crime. You don't have right to plan a crime. That should be against law. And that is, if we find out you're actually plotting, or there's a conspiracy afoot to plant this crime, you can plan to crime over a long period of time, right? I mean, you can plan an attack. You can plan an attack on the World Trade Center in Manhattan. You can plan all sorts of attacks or a bank, heist, or whatever. The fact that you're doing it, well, it's not imminent incitement to violence, but we're getting together every week here to lay our plans. And then Joe reports that he did this and Mary did that and so on. What's important there is the, we're just talking at that meeting on Monday night or that meeting next Saturday afternoon, but we're not just talking. We're talking in ways to facilitate, to enable us to actually seize that money or embezzle or rob that bank or attack that business and building and so on. So it's the threat to others' freedom of action and the immediacy of that, but not immediacy in the sense of, oh, it's got to be tonight or tomorrow morning. It's not that immediacy that's crucial. Yeah. Well, that was part of the interesting thing in the Nuremberg trials where they all just said, well, I had to. The boss told me I had to do it. But there was no evidence that they would have been punished had they not gone along with, let's say, pushing Jews into the gas chambers or in the case of the Einstein's group. And is that true shooting? That there was no one that's true. Yes. Really? Yeah, that like, like studies of the Einstein's group, and these are the police battalions who followed the vermots into Poland and Ukraine and into Russia. And they were kind of mopping up killing all the Jews and gypsies and anybody else that they wanted to eliminate, you know, literally going door to door, house to house, you know, gun to the back of the head or line them up at the pit and shoot them. You know, later they said, well, we had to do it. But there was no evidence. And in fact, there's evidence that they were given the option to back out. You don't have to do this. But there was social pressures like there's a whole film about this based on Christopher Browning's book Ordinary Men. It's about this one police battalion. And they were given the option to not participate. But there was a lot of social pressure, like, you know, don't be a pussy, get in there and do the job like the real men are doing like, and, you know, they got shit faced afterwards. And, you know, there was a lot of other things going on because they didn't like doing it. I mean, it was hard to kill people at close range. And anyway, there's an interesting case study there, you know, to what it's not brainwashing, but there is strong influences going on there. But they could have backed out. You could have said no, and some did, but but most went along for social pressure reasons. It's a little bit like Vincent Booyosi's book, Helter Skelter, where he talks about getting at the Manson trial. You know, Manson was not at either of the murder scenes. He didn't kill anybody, at least at those two instances. He got the women to do it. And that guy, Tex Watson. So Booyosi had to convince the jury that Manson's influence was so strong that he is also guilty over these women. But on the other hand, it wasn't so strong that they didn't have some volition. And therefore, they're also morally culpable. Yeah. Let me read to you the most famous case of the incitement to violence. This is from US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, which you know very well, in his unanimous decision in the 1919 case of shank versus the United States. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree. Anyway, I didn't know much about that case until I read it. It's like, what are what was this clear and present danger? It was 15,000 flyers distributed to draft age men during the First World War that encouraged them to assert your rights, do not submit to intimidation. And if you do not assert and support your rights, you are helping to deny or disparage rights, which is the solemn duty of all citizens and residents of the United States to retain the right to what freedom? Freedom from what? Slavery. So this was the shank is Charles shank, the socialist party of Philadelphia who argued that the draft is a form of slavery. The government is taking your body and and you may die under its command in a war when you can script a man and compel him to go fight against his will. You violate the most sacred right of personal liberty and substitute for it what Daniel Webster called despotism in its worst form. And then in this flyer, it said a conscript is little better than a convict. He is deprived of his liberty and of his right to think and act as a free man. A conscripted citizen is forced to surrender his right as a citizen and become a subject. Anyway, it goes on and I like this. He goes, yeah, these guys have a pretty good point, even though I'm not a socialist. And I thought Holmes made a bad decision there. Well, I, okay, you mean in wanting to clamp down on that? Yeah, is that really a clear and present danger? Is this a pretty short? No, well, so I'm a little embarrassed to say I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty sure that Holmes himself sort of recanted or reversed himself on that shortly there after, right? He did. That's right. Also, in the history of American law, it judges came to think clear and present danger is too vague a standard. And they ultimately move to this imminent incitement of violence kind of thing. I think that was in a 60s case, Brandenburg, the Ohio or something. But I think there were some interim cases in between in which even Holmes thought, no, no, this is too broad a standard and pamphlets opposing the draft or favoring the draft are exactly the sort of thing that I think should be allowed because there's, I mean, yes, even now again, there may be some circumstances of wartime when certain language perhaps might, it might be legitimate to restrict it. But this is what I mean about the general policies that you're about. Yeah, you should be able to do that as opposed to, you don't say, no, this is bad. You should oppose the draft. Yeah, I think that's legit to speak in those ways. Yeah. But again, once you set up the clear and present danger standard without an objective measure of what exactly that is, you're opening the door, and the language is crucial. You know, people love to say, oh, that's just the language issue of those are word games. No, the words we use directly affect the protections that we get or that we don't get. You know, so when you call something violence that isn't, then you start restricting people's freedom of speech, when it's really speech, and you stop protecting people from what they should be protected from, the imposition of others will on you and so on. So the words we use, God knows the standards by which the law proceeds are crucial. Sadly, we have a lot of cowardice on the part of lawmakers and sometimes judges. They don't want to be too specific because they don't want to be reigned in. They don't want to be disliked by this particularly among legislators. Well, I don't want that constituency to be unhappy with me and I don't want that constituency. So we'll enact some legislation with really vague standards and we'll kick it down the road to the courts. We'll let them sort it out. And then the courts try to sort it out. And everybody says, oh, the courts, you're taking too much power unto yourselves. Well, that's because you're damn legislators. I mean, at least that's one really sadly common scenario that we've fallen into. Yeah. Okay, prostitution and pornography. I'm pretty libertarian on these things with consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedrooms and none of my business. But on the other hand, the argument would be it lowers community standards. It's like graffiti. It just kind of brings the whole neighborhood down to have these houses of ill repute right next to the library or whatever. What's the solution to that? Is this just, you know, private people could do what they want? But what about a community and public land? I don't have a right to a certain kind of community here. Like by the neighborhood, if I don't want those neighbors doing that, whatever it might be, buy their house. But if I don't buy their house, the fact that I don't want it or me and my name, everybody on this side of the left, we don't like what you're doing too bad, tough like it's not ours. So community yet. I mean, we all understand that there are benefits. There are benefits to living in certain kind of communities and there are downsides living in certain kinds of communities. But that doesn't give us the right to say this is the right kind of community or the good kind of community. And we're going to make you by law, by zoning restrictions. We're going to make you comport to any particular persons or the government's view of a good community. I have a claim to it. Now, I can try to persuade people, you know, to do certain things in certain areas and so on, or I can try to buy them out or just move to a community that's more to my liking in terms of what goes on in that neighborhood of that. But yeah, so it's some of these issues. Just a little bit more. Again, I guess you'd put age restrictions on this, you know, that that teenage girls who are, I don't know, homeless and drug addicted and put into prostitution, that state has an obligation to stop that. Yeah, no, I do think minors are in a class by themselves. Like I do think, I don't think, oh, you know, full principles of adult liberty should kick in when you're two, you know, or as soon as you can put an out in a verb together, okay, you're on your own kit. No, but yeah, I mean, I do think that the law appropriately distinguishes minors from majors or adults and that some treatments should be different. All right, let's wrap up here with the last big questions here about current events. You ask, is Twitter a platform or a publisher? Is Facebook an information service or a telecommunications company? We're in the middle of this fight right now. Yeah, we certainly are. What are your thoughts on all that? Yeah, so my thoughts are they're more like platforms. So I think some of the, in all honesty, I think some of our categories and classifications from the past may need some updating. Even just within the last 10 years, closer to 10 years ago, when I started, when you started reading about, oh, yeah, you'd read in journalistic pieces, are they this or that? Does it have to be one or the other? I mean, there are things that some of these social media companies do, and I should say, I don't use any of them or not on Facebook. I don't, so I don't know where if I speak in a very first-handed experiential way, but I think basically they are platforms that allow, at least many, many of them, serve primarily as platforms that allow and facilitate all sorts of people, private individuals, private other organizations, to post on them. And then, and they should be treated as platforms rather than publishers in terms of the liability. So I, I am a fan of 230. I don't think that should be repealed. However, I'm open to ideas about hey, what are the alternative categories of platform, publisher, hybrid, and so on. But then the next question is, and what's the practical value of that? That is, should the law treat you differently in fundamental terms, depending on whether you're speaking or you're broadcasting now, or what, right? So it's not that I think, oh, there's a clearly different set of responsibilities, legal responsibilities that goes with being put in this bucket or that bucket, but certainly it is helpful to think about an analogy that is often raised. Bookstores, we don't have bookstores responsible for selling a great variety of books that espouse a great variety of views. Some of them horrific, objectively horrific, some of them offensive to some people and not others and so on. But we don't say, oh, the bookseller or the magazine, you know, the newspaper shop when there used to be such things, that's old 38 magazines is responsible for everything in those magazines. Well, similarly, the platforms, I think, should not be responsible for what these other people say. Again, there can be very specialized circumstances in which, if you're knowingly promoting something that does pose a day, you know, not immediate danger of rights infringement or something, I think there can be some circumstances in which that can be off limits. But again, part of what we need a lot more careful thinking about this, and we short circuit that thinking when we simply go for the government solutions as, oh, we've got this problem. The way to solve it is to have a law that says you're not going to be able to publish that or you're not. No, we need to think about it. I mean, this is, it's very complicated and it's a sophisticated whole new business. Some of these platforms and even the selling businesses, the Amazon's of this world that have allowed these intricate kinds of relationships between many, many people and sellers and vendors and in between, you know, the intermediary parties. And we need to sort that out. But, you know, I think with a lot more care, then we're doing, when we just try to slap on these legislative fixes of, well, you may not say that, you must say this. So there's a lot more work to be done, but helpful, important work to be done. Well, I mean, I think, yeah, some regimes like North Korea, they're not just trying to control their citizen's speech, but their thoughts. Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. And when, I mean, you can't separate, when you shut people up or when you can try to control what they're saying, the deeper effect of that is what you'll even think. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, there's that phenomenon called pluralistic ignorance or the spiral of silence, where everybody thinks everybody else thinks something, even though they don't, because no one talks, or they're not allowed to talk. It's thought control. And I mean, think about 1984. Yeah, it's you shrink the vocabulary, you shrink the mind. Yeah, that's a really important idea, I think. Yeah. 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