September 19, 2025 • 15 mins
Long-time defender of free speech, Greg Lukianoff, joins Jack Armstrong to talk about the latest attitudes regarding censorship & cancellations on our college campuses, the murder of Charlie Kirk and Jimmy Kimmel drama.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Man, did we get lucky with the timing of this.
Our next guest we could talk to I could talk
to for the next three hours easily, because he's one
of the leading thinkers and a couple of the hottest
topics going right now. So Greg lukian Off, New York
Times best selling author The President of Fire, which is
a foundation for individual rights and expression, all about free speech.
(00:22):
That's with Jimmy Kimmilosa's job. Does that fit into that
whole topic? Is the author of Unlearning Liberty, campus censorship
and the end of American debate, canceling of the American mind,
Cancel culture all about cancel culture, which is hot right now,
of course, and then part of this free press series
on repairing America after the murder of Charlie Kirk and
(00:46):
this particular piece that I've gotten from of me from
Greg Lukianoff Barry. The whole words are violence cliche, which
I would agree with anyway. Welcome back to the Armstrong
and Getty Show, Greg luki on Off, Greg, thanks for
joining us today. Great to be back, man, You obviously
are the man of the moment for a whole bunch
of these topics. Let's start with what you just wrote
(01:07):
the barry the words are violence cliche around the whole
Charlie Kirk thing, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah, you know, I've been defending free speech at Fire
for twenty four years now, and I'd say when I
first started my job, the sort of activist argument that
words can be just like bullets was something that people
kind of rolled their eyes at because it was obviously
a sort of self serving rhetorical blurry, right, But I'd say,
(01:34):
like ten years ago, or maybe even as long as
fifteen years ago, this really started to become a common
argument that I would hear on campus. And then you
started having people who should have known better actually saying, well,
words can cause stress, so therefore that is a lot
like violence. And you know, me and John Hight, who
I wrote probably in the American mind with, we wrote
a piece in The Atlantic saying, no, this is crazy words.
(01:57):
We have a societal agreement and you're supposed to have
it in a democratic society, that there's a bright line
distinction between physical violence and expression of opinion. And I
was I've been screaming to high Heaven to say, like, no,
this is an incredibly foolish idea. It's not progressive. It
gets you back to the thirteenth century AD or BC.
(02:20):
It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, I mean, just as a side on that, I
remember at one point when The New York Times a
couple of years ago actually said intent doesn't matter. So
not only had words become violence, but sometimes the way
they took your words even if you didn't intend it
that way. So, man, you're really into pre enlightenment then,
but go ahead.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, no, no, exactly. And the thing is, of course,
this kind of you know, foolish self serving rhetoric actually
turns into a situation that justifies violence for speech. And
this is oftimes coming from people who think that they're
anti totalitarian. It's like, there's nothing more totalitarian been saying
that I get to respond to your words with violence or,
(03:03):
in the case the horrifying case last week, murder.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Right, So you want to do away with that because
you think it's leading to violence, the saying words are violence,
because that can justify this particular maniac job as feeling
like he's meeting violence with violence.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yet yes, but also I think it's bad for people's
mental health to have this kind of like catastrophizing way
of thinking. About that. And here's the most horrifying thing.
We just released a massive study for our campus free
speech ranking. About one third of the students we surveyed
in about out of like seventy thousand said that at
least in rare cases, violence can be acceptable in response
(03:44):
to speech. Some schools, that answer was over fifty percent
of them. We have done something terribly wrong. If educated
people are being educated in almost half of them think
the violence and response to words. And the funny thing is,
oftentimes it's not that they think it's just acceptable. They
think in some cases it's noble to respond to speakers
(04:04):
with usually the lighter forms of violence like shoutdowns or
blocking people's access. But here we see it, and it's
most chilling and horrifying.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
All right, Since you make this list every year of
where what campuses have the least free speech, there's this
contest going on right now. You know who's worse, Which
side is worse, which side commits more violence, which side
does more cancel culture, that sort of thing. But when
it comes to college campuses, it's pretty one sided, isn't it.
(04:35):
That liberals can say whatever they want and conservatives can't.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
It's a little more complicated than that, but you know,
the fire has been a second to no one and
taking on sort of like what might be called woke censorship.
But generally the rule is if the censorship comes from
on campus, it comes from the left. If the censorship
because it does not that many conservatives on campus in
the first place, but if it comes from off campus,
it tends to come from the right. And what we're
(05:00):
seeing right now is a big surge of cancelations of
censorship actually being pressured from the right as well.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
So would the hope be that because I think you're right,
I think this puts us in a bad headspace if
we buy into the idea that words are violence. You've
been taught that you should react as if somebody's threatening
to punch you or shoot you when you hear something
you don't like, and that gets everybody's emotions running really,
(05:30):
really high. And then if we could get away with that,
maybe we wouldn't have things like Riley Gaines having to
fight her way out of Berkeley or Charlie Kirk being
shot at exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
It's a foolish idea. I think people, you know, people
who are actually thinking people know that it's just kind
of a rhetorical flirst, but I believe some of these
younger people really do feel like they're in a simplistic
battle of good versus evil, and evil must be stopped.
And by the way, that's an anti intellectual way of
thinking about that's not an intellectual way of thinking.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
The world, no doubt. Before I move on to the
Jimmy Kimmel thing and how it fits into everything, how
optimistic are you for us, like really learning a lesson
from this horrible assassination and turning some sort of corner.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
I would like to say I'm optimistic, but I think
that we're probably in the beginning of a intensifying sort
of free speech crisis, and it's happening not just in
the US, it's happening globally right, So unfortunately, business is
booming in free speech land. So I'm not going to
get a lot of sleep, nor will the good people
of Fire.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Yeah, what's going on in England is just horrifying.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Horrifying, and my mom is British, so it's very personal
to me and they will continue to I did a
piece on my sub sect, the eternally Radical Idea, where
just pointing out the sheer number of people that they're arresting.
It has no parallel. I don't think it has any
parallel in British street. It certainly doesn't have a parallel
in American history in terms of the scale.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
So you've written a lot about cancel culture over the years,
and we've got an example in the last twenty four
hours and since Charlie Kirk's death. So you've got people
being canceled from their jobs for saying sometimes really awful,
awful things. But should they lose their jobs over it?
Should the government be getting involved in putting pressure on
(07:25):
broadcast licenses to get rid of someone like Jimmy Kimmel
because they don't like what they say. Where are you
on this whole thing?
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Oh yeah? So you know, it really is a case
by case thing and canceling of the American mind. You know,
we give a definition of cancel culture, which is the
uptick of campaigns to get people fired or otherwise punished
starting around twenty fourteen for speech that would be protected
for say a public employee. So we ischoose a lot
of like nuanced and common sense to it. But to
(07:52):
be clear, some of the people who are getting punished,
you know, we're saying things relatively tame things that we're seeing,
at least some of USFF were seeing on campus. It's
not all that guy had it coming. It's a little
bit like I really disagree with that guy on a
lot of things, which is, of course, you know, completely
within bounds. But the Jimmy Kimmel stuff, I mean, like, yeah,
he Jimmy Kimmel was kind of a typical kind of
(08:14):
Hollywood guy, like he just he was desperate that this
guy be right wing. And I saw this like in
the media's wall. It's kind of embarrassed for a lot
of mainstream media to be kind of like, well, look,
his parents are Republican. M I'm like, in what universe?
Right the case that your parents were bubbling.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Because no conservative family sends their kids off to college
and they come back, you know, with completely different politics.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Well, I was just thinking about family ties, like sa
Comoy watched as a kid, like, right, yes, that's what
that's more the way it goes. It's a technical term.
It's skinso genesis, but the so so you know, it's
kind of typical that he was kind of implying that
this guy's got to be maga in some of his
uh in his comedy routine on Monday. But then you
(09:01):
know the campaign, and it was really clearly a campaign
to get Jimmy fired. Taking this opportunity really got going,
you know, with Brendan Carr being really clear about it.
And another thing that's really important to point out is that,
you know, months ago, they were saying Jimmy Kimmel's next,
you know, yeah, so this was this was a you know,
(09:22):
I think, a target of opportunity to get this guy fired.
And I've never been to be clear, I've never seen
something white like this, and people will always do what
about ism, like what about what about like Rose Ambar
or some of these other cases. It's like, I just
haven't seen this level of pressure on mainstream networks to
(09:42):
silence to silence a comedian.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Right Well, because of my politics, I'm highly annoyed by
the treating anybody to the right side of the aisle
as a moron the way Colbert and Kimmel did. But
the problem with the government putting pressure on networks to
get rid of them or broadcast licenses or whatever is
(10:05):
there's going to be a democratic president someday, and I
don't want president Gavin Newsom telling his FCC. Hey, right
wing talk radio is out of control and we need
to do something about this.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, it is interesting the way the Trump administration has
been running things. It seems like they don't care about
the fact that someone else could have used this power
in the future, with kind of like an idea that
they're always going to be the ones who are making
these calls, which I think is foolish, but it's also,
by the way, rightfully banned it in a lot of
these cases by the First Amendment. And Fire's job in
(10:39):
this situation like this is to call balls and strikes.
And I will get people sometimes saying, oh, the political
situation is so intense right now, you have to pick
a side that your quite little First Amendment thing that
you know doesn't really apply it in this kind of battle.
And I'm always like, no, right now, the rules of
the road matter more than ever, and it's our job
(11:01):
to defend them.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Specifically, Charlie Kirk, while he was out there doing his
thing going to college campuses, did you think that was
a productive thing for free speech in America?
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I did. Actually, you know, my disagreement with Charlie Kirk
is mostly due to their scholar, their Scholar Database, the
Scholar watch List, which I was not a big fan
of because it resulted in a lot of people, a
lot of tends to get people fired, a lot of
you know, a lot of cancer culture. We made a
big distinction between just calling out professors, which he totally
(11:33):
can do, but you know when you put like this
is their supervisor and like all this kind of stuff
to try to get them fired, I got an issue
with that. However, you know, Charlie's murder has led me to,
you know, go back and look at some of his
discussions with students, and I think this is having this
effect all over the country. By the way, Yeah, definitely,
So political violence tends to backfire. And I'm like, wow,
(11:54):
Like he dealt with some frustrating questions and he dealt
with them usually like is the ones that I I
saw with pretty civilly. So I've left with an impression
that it was a productive dialogue.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Right. I don't know if you've seen the it's on YouTube.
Charlie Kirk with Bill Maher. They had like a two
hour conversation in Bill Maher's basement a couple of months ago,
pretty recently, and it was it was as civil between
two guys that agree on nothing, as you could possibly imagine,
and if we can't do that, we're doomed.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Yeah, and I'm actually speaking at Sun Valley, not Sun Valley,
at Utah Valley on October thirtieth. And what's crazy. I'm
just gonna admit it. You know, am I a little spooked?
You know? Of course I am. But you can't ever
let the you know, assassin veto win. You have to
actually show up. You have to you know, pick up
(12:49):
the mantle, you have to actually you know, have that discussion.
And I'm hoping to go there with a message of
you know, essentially free speech belongs to us all or
belongs to nobody, because I think the younger people are
being taught that freedom of speech is the weapon of
the bully, the big and the robber baron. And as
I say all the time, that is just that history.
(13:10):
You are being miseducated on this topic. So hopefully I can.
I'm going to try, and Fire is always trying to
contribute to a deeper, more philosophical understanding of the frankly
beautiful role of free speech and human history.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Well, we talk about your books all the time. The
coddling of the American Mind is my partner. Joe's one
of his favorite books of all time. We mentioned stuff
that you write all the time. What particularly would you
like us to point people to right now before I
let you go?
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Sure? I mean, you know, the most important thing is
that fire is currently overwhelmed, So we could really use
support from people, and we need the people who care
about free speech for their own side, but also for
everyone else. We need those principled people are out there
to come and help because right now, to you, the
pun it's a free speech is kind of a house
(13:59):
on fire.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Yeah, Greg Lukiana, thanks for your time.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Yeah, I take care.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah, he is. He is really good and he's absolutely right.
Like I can't stand Jimmy Kimmel. I mean, he makes
my skin crawl. He's so smug, that's the word I
was looking for. He is so freaking smug. But if
the FCC can pressure him off the air, he can
pressure Joe and I off that they can pressure Joe
and I off the air in a different administration. Absolutely,
(14:24):
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dot com slash armstrong. I know a lot of you
are going to be angry and feel like I'm standing
up for Jimmy Kimmel because I'm not just really rolling
around in glee that he got fired. But once you
allow that weapon of canceling people from the FCC to
(15:31):
be wielded against your enemies, it's going to come back.
I just know it is. We've got a lot more
time to talk about this and other stuff. I hope
you can stick around, Armstrong,
Man, did we get lucky with the timing of this.
Our next guest we could talk to I could talk
to for the next three hours easily, because he's one
of the leading thinkers and a couple of the hottest
topics going right now. So Greg lukian Off, New York
Times best selling author The President of Fire, which is
a foundation for individual rights and expression, all about free speech.
(00:22):
That's with Jimmy Kimmilosa's job. Does that fit into that
whole topic? Is the author of Unlearning Liberty, campus censorship
and the end of American debate, canceling of the American mind,
Cancel culture all about cancel culture, which is hot right now,
of course, and then part of this free press series
on repairing America after the murder of Charlie Kirk and
(00:46):
this particular piece that I've gotten from of me from
Greg Lukianoff Barry. The whole words are violence cliche, which
I would agree with anyway. Welcome back to the Armstrong
and Getty Show, Greg luki on Off, Greg, thanks for
joining us today. Great to be back, man, You obviously
are the man of the moment for a whole bunch
of these topics. Let's start with what you just wrote
(01:07):
the barry the words are violence cliche around the whole
Charlie Kirk thing, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah, you know, I've been defending free speech at Fire
for twenty four years now, and I'd say when I
first started my job, the sort of activist argument that
words can be just like bullets was something that people
kind of rolled their eyes at because it was obviously
a sort of self serving rhetorical blurry, right, But I'd say,
(01:34):
like ten years ago, or maybe even as long as
fifteen years ago, this really started to become a common
argument that I would hear on campus. And then you
started having people who should have known better actually saying, well,
words can cause stress, so therefore that is a lot
like violence. And you know, me and John Hight, who
I wrote probably in the American mind with, we wrote
a piece in The Atlantic saying, no, this is crazy words.
(01:57):
We have a societal agreement and you're supposed to have
it in a democratic society, that there's a bright line
distinction between physical violence and expression of opinion. And I
was I've been screaming to high Heaven to say, like, no,
this is an incredibly foolish idea. It's not progressive. It
gets you back to the thirteenth century AD or BC.
(02:20):
It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, I mean, just as a side on that, I
remember at one point when The New York Times a
couple of years ago actually said intent doesn't matter. So
not only had words become violence, but sometimes the way
they took your words even if you didn't intend it
that way. So, man, you're really into pre enlightenment then,
but go ahead.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, no, no, exactly. And the thing is, of course,
this kind of you know, foolish self serving rhetoric actually
turns into a situation that justifies violence for speech. And
this is oftimes coming from people who think that they're
anti totalitarian. It's like, there's nothing more totalitarian been saying
that I get to respond to your words with violence or,
(03:03):
in the case the horrifying case last week, murder.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Right, So you want to do away with that because
you think it's leading to violence, the saying words are violence,
because that can justify this particular maniac job as feeling
like he's meeting violence with violence.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yet yes, but also I think it's bad for people's
mental health to have this kind of like catastrophizing way
of thinking. About that. And here's the most horrifying thing.
We just released a massive study for our campus free
speech ranking. About one third of the students we surveyed
in about out of like seventy thousand said that at
least in rare cases, violence can be acceptable in response
(03:44):
to speech. Some schools, that answer was over fifty percent
of them. We have done something terribly wrong. If educated
people are being educated in almost half of them think
the violence and response to words. And the funny thing is,
oftentimes it's not that they think it's just acceptable. They
think in some cases it's noble to respond to speakers
(04:04):
with usually the lighter forms of violence like shoutdowns or
blocking people's access. But here we see it, and it's
most chilling and horrifying.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
All right, Since you make this list every year of
where what campuses have the least free speech, there's this
contest going on right now. You know who's worse, Which
side is worse, which side commits more violence, which side
does more cancel culture, that sort of thing. But when
it comes to college campuses, it's pretty one sided, isn't it.
(04:35):
That liberals can say whatever they want and conservatives can't.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
It's a little more complicated than that, but you know,
the fire has been a second to no one and
taking on sort of like what might be called woke censorship.
But generally the rule is if the censorship comes from
on campus, it comes from the left. If the censorship
because it does not that many conservatives on campus in
the first place, but if it comes from off campus,
it tends to come from the right. And what we're
(05:00):
seeing right now is a big surge of cancelations of
censorship actually being pressured from the right as well.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
So would the hope be that because I think you're right,
I think this puts us in a bad headspace if
we buy into the idea that words are violence. You've
been taught that you should react as if somebody's threatening
to punch you or shoot you when you hear something
you don't like, and that gets everybody's emotions running really,
(05:30):
really high. And then if we could get away with that,
maybe we wouldn't have things like Riley Gaines having to
fight her way out of Berkeley or Charlie Kirk being
shot at exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
It's a foolish idea. I think people, you know, people
who are actually thinking people know that it's just kind
of a rhetorical flirst, but I believe some of these
younger people really do feel like they're in a simplistic
battle of good versus evil, and evil must be stopped.
And by the way, that's an anti intellectual way of
thinking about that's not an intellectual way of thinking.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
The world, no doubt. Before I move on to the
Jimmy Kimmel thing and how it fits into everything, how
optimistic are you for us, like really learning a lesson
from this horrible assassination and turning some sort of corner.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
I would like to say I'm optimistic, but I think
that we're probably in the beginning of a intensifying sort
of free speech crisis, and it's happening not just in
the US, it's happening globally right, So unfortunately, business is
booming in free speech land. So I'm not going to
get a lot of sleep, nor will the good people
of Fire.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Yeah, what's going on in England is just horrifying.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Horrifying, and my mom is British, so it's very personal
to me and they will continue to I did a
piece on my sub sect, the eternally Radical Idea, where
just pointing out the sheer number of people that they're arresting.
It has no parallel. I don't think it has any
parallel in British street. It certainly doesn't have a parallel
in American history in terms of the scale.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
So you've written a lot about cancel culture over the years,
and we've got an example in the last twenty four
hours and since Charlie Kirk's death. So you've got people
being canceled from their jobs for saying sometimes really awful,
awful things. But should they lose their jobs over it?
Should the government be getting involved in putting pressure on
(07:25):
broadcast licenses to get rid of someone like Jimmy Kimmel
because they don't like what they say. Where are you
on this whole thing?
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Oh yeah? So you know, it really is a case
by case thing and canceling of the American mind. You know,
we give a definition of cancel culture, which is the
uptick of campaigns to get people fired or otherwise punished
starting around twenty fourteen for speech that would be protected
for say a public employee. So we ischoose a lot
of like nuanced and common sense to it. But to
(07:52):
be clear, some of the people who are getting punished,
you know, we're saying things relatively tame things that we're seeing,
at least some of USFF were seeing on campus. It's
not all that guy had it coming. It's a little
bit like I really disagree with that guy on a
lot of things, which is, of course, you know, completely
within bounds. But the Jimmy Kimmel stuff, I mean, like, yeah,
he Jimmy Kimmel was kind of a typical kind of
(08:14):
Hollywood guy, like he just he was desperate that this
guy be right wing. And I saw this like in
the media's wall. It's kind of embarrassed for a lot
of mainstream media to be kind of like, well, look,
his parents are Republican. M I'm like, in what universe?
Right the case that your parents were bubbling.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Because no conservative family sends their kids off to college
and they come back, you know, with completely different politics.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Well, I was just thinking about family ties, like sa
Comoy watched as a kid, like, right, yes, that's what
that's more the way it goes. It's a technical term.
It's skinso genesis, but the so so you know, it's
kind of typical that he was kind of implying that
this guy's got to be maga in some of his
uh in his comedy routine on Monday. But then you
(09:01):
know the campaign, and it was really clearly a campaign
to get Jimmy fired. Taking this opportunity really got going,
you know, with Brendan Carr being really clear about it.
And another thing that's really important to point out is that,
you know, months ago, they were saying Jimmy Kimmel's next,
you know, yeah, so this was this was a you know,
(09:22):
I think, a target of opportunity to get this guy fired.
And I've never been to be clear, I've never seen
something white like this, and people will always do what
about ism, like what about what about like Rose Ambar
or some of these other cases. It's like, I just
haven't seen this level of pressure on mainstream networks to
(09:42):
silence to silence a comedian.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Right Well, because of my politics, I'm highly annoyed by
the treating anybody to the right side of the aisle
as a moron the way Colbert and Kimmel did. But
the problem with the government putting pressure on networks to
get rid of them or broadcast licenses or whatever is
(10:05):
there's going to be a democratic president someday, and I
don't want president Gavin Newsom telling his FCC. Hey, right
wing talk radio is out of control and we need
to do something about this.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, it is interesting the way the Trump administration has
been running things. It seems like they don't care about
the fact that someone else could have used this power
in the future, with kind of like an idea that
they're always going to be the ones who are making
these calls, which I think is foolish, but it's also,
by the way, rightfully banned it in a lot of
these cases by the First Amendment. And Fire's job in
(10:39):
this situation like this is to call balls and strikes.
And I will get people sometimes saying, oh, the political
situation is so intense right now, you have to pick
a side that your quite little First Amendment thing that
you know doesn't really apply it in this kind of battle.
And I'm always like, no, right now, the rules of
the road matter more than ever, and it's our job
(11:01):
to defend them.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Specifically, Charlie Kirk, while he was out there doing his
thing going to college campuses, did you think that was
a productive thing for free speech in America?
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I did. Actually, you know, my disagreement with Charlie Kirk
is mostly due to their scholar, their Scholar Database, the
Scholar watch List, which I was not a big fan
of because it resulted in a lot of people, a
lot of tends to get people fired, a lot of
you know, a lot of cancer culture. We made a
big distinction between just calling out professors, which he totally
(11:33):
can do, but you know when you put like this
is their supervisor and like all this kind of stuff
to try to get them fired, I got an issue
with that. However, you know, Charlie's murder has led me to,
you know, go back and look at some of his
discussions with students, and I think this is having this
effect all over the country. By the way, Yeah, definitely,
So political violence tends to backfire. And I'm like, wow,
(11:54):
Like he dealt with some frustrating questions and he dealt
with them usually like is the ones that I I
saw with pretty civilly. So I've left with an impression
that it was a productive dialogue.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Right. I don't know if you've seen the it's on YouTube.
Charlie Kirk with Bill Maher. They had like a two
hour conversation in Bill Maher's basement a couple of months ago,
pretty recently, and it was it was as civil between
two guys that agree on nothing, as you could possibly imagine,
and if we can't do that, we're doomed.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Yeah, and I'm actually speaking at Sun Valley, not Sun Valley,
at Utah Valley on October thirtieth. And what's crazy. I'm
just gonna admit it. You know, am I a little spooked?
You know? Of course I am. But you can't ever
let the you know, assassin veto win. You have to
actually show up. You have to you know, pick up
(12:49):
the mantle, you have to actually you know, have that discussion.
And I'm hoping to go there with a message of
you know, essentially free speech belongs to us all or
belongs to nobody, because I think the younger people are
being taught that freedom of speech is the weapon of
the bully, the big and the robber baron. And as
I say all the time, that is just that history.
(13:10):
You are being miseducated on this topic. So hopefully I can.
I'm going to try, and Fire is always trying to
contribute to a deeper, more philosophical understanding of the frankly
beautiful role of free speech and human history.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Well, we talk about your books all the time. The
coddling of the American Mind is my partner. Joe's one
of his favorite books of all time. We mentioned stuff
that you write all the time. What particularly would you
like us to point people to right now before I
let you go?
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Sure? I mean, you know, the most important thing is
that fire is currently overwhelmed, So we could really use
support from people, and we need the people who care
about free speech for their own side, but also for
everyone else. We need those principled people are out there
to come and help because right now, to you, the
pun it's a free speech is kind of a house
(13:59):
on fire.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Yeah, Greg Lukiana, thanks for your time.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Yeah, I take care.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah, he is. He is really good and he's absolutely right.
Like I can't stand Jimmy Kimmel. I mean, he makes
my skin crawl. He's so smug, that's the word I
was looking for. He is so freaking smug. But if
the FCC can pressure him off the air, he can
pressure Joe and I off that they can pressure Joe
and I off the air in a different administration. Absolutely,
(14:24):
so that bothers me. I want to tell you about
trust and will real quick. This is just a really
really good idea. If you don't have a trust and
will or trust or will. You could end up in
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(15:07):
and will get twenty percent off on your estate planned
documents by visiting trustinwill dot com slash armstrong. That's trustinwill
dot com slash armstrong. I know a lot of you
are going to be angry and feel like I'm standing
up for Jimmy Kimmel because I'm not just really rolling
around in glee that he got fired. But once you
allow that weapon of canceling people from the FCC to
(15:31):
be wielded against your enemies, it's going to come back.
I just know it is. We've got a lot more
time to talk about this and other stuff. I hope
you can stick around, Armstrong,
Hosts And Creators
Joe Getty
Jack Armstrong
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